Don't Take It for Granted with Pastor Noel Laws

Welcome to the Medichurch podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at Medichurch.

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.

Good to see everybody.

Glad you can make some time in your weekend to be a part of this service.

As Pastor Clayton said, my name is Noel.

I'm the worship pastor here at MetaCurch.

And as always, such an honor to be able to bring you guys a word today.

Now, if you've been with us for the past couple weeks and you know that we just got out of a five-week series where we went through the book of Jonah called Rescue.

And all throughout the series, so many people made decisions to put their faith in Jesus.

And we got to end the series by having a baptismal service.

If you're here, it was really incredible.

So many people went through the waters.

And before the baptism service, Pastor Clayton let us know that in all of 22, in the entire year of 2022, we baptized 69 people.

Well, y'all want to know how many we baptized last week?

Just last Sunday, we baptized 63 people.

Just last Sunday.

Yeah, we can give it up for God.

That brings our year total to 104 people baptized this year at MetaCurch.

We're so grateful for how God is moving in this movement and moving in your lives.

We love to celebrate these times with y'all when you go from death to life, when you go from being out of relationship with God to being in relationship with God.

And it's my prayer today that the message I have for us will be an encouragement to anyone who has put their faith in Jesus.

And if you haven't put your faith in Jesus, maybe it'll give you a broader understanding of what that actually means today.

You know, when people put their faith in Jesus, it always seems like they inevitably have these questions about this new faith.

Mainly like, did it stick?

Like, is this faith real?

Was I really saved?

Is my eternal status secure?

Well, today we're gonna answer those questions in a message that I'm calling.

Don't take it for granted.

Would you pray with me?

Heavenly Father, I am so grateful for the truth of your word that we don't have to wonder uh about how you feel about um these topics, God, that you are very clear and that you give us the answers that we're looking for.

And so, God, I pray that um you would give us understanding today of this message, that we would be able to leave here uh knowing where we stand with you, Father.

We love you.

And we prayed in Jesus' name, and everyone said together.

Amen.

Now, I've told you guys before that I grew up in church, and when I say I grew up in church, I mean like I almost literally grew up in church.

We went to church three times a week.

We went on Sunday morning, we went on Sunday evening, and we went on Wednesday evening.

And on top of that, both my parents were heavily involved in the different ministries at our church, and so it wasn't uncommon for me and my brothers to be up at the church multiple days of the week outside of service time.

And I gotta say, I kind of loved it.

I always had so much fun at the church.

And uh, our church was small, it was a tight-knit group.

On any given Sunday, we probably had about 70 people at most on Sunday morning.

Just for context, that's like the first five rows of seats in front of me here.

It was not a large church.

And on Sunday evening, we were even smaller.

We only had about 20 people that would come on Sunday evening.

In fact, we had so few people who came to Sunday evening service that afterwards we kind of had this tradition that everybody in the service would get in their cars and we'd all go to Dairy Queen, take over a section and have some fellowship and some ice cream.

Man, it's one of my favorite memories about Sunday evening church.

But you guys know how life works, especially when you're a kid.

Just because I was going to Dairy Queen doesn't mean I was guaranteed to get an ice cream cone.

I had to earn it, right?

And if I goofed around too much during church, which I was pretty guilty of, I like to make my older brothers laugh, or if I was disrespectful in any way, if I didn't listen to the sermon, then I could easily lose this treat of an ice cream cone before I had ever gotten to Dairy Queen.

In other words, I couldn't take it for granted that ice cream was in my future.

It all depended on how I behaved.

We were a tight-knit group, and when I think of the people that I went to church with as I was growing up, I have almost nothing but fond memories.

But when it came to the preaching, I have a little bit different of a perspective.

Now, I can remember the first sermon I ever heard, and it took place all the way back in the 80s.

And if you're 40 or older, let's just admit it.

The 80s were a long time ago, right?

It was a different time.

And the pastor we had in this church, or one I remember preaching, was what we would call a hellfire and brimstone pastor.

Does anybody remember those pastors?

Anybody?

Okay, well, not all of you, so let me just tell you what a hellfire and brimstone pastor was.

This was a term that was used to describe a style of preaching in which descriptions of judgment and eternal damnation, that means going to hell, were used to encourage you to repent.

In other words, these pastors were literally trying to scare the hell out of you, and they were quite persuasive.

I remember being terrified in church.

Now, I didn't understand exactly back then at that young age what it meant to repent.

I have a better understanding of it now, of course.

But back then it was kind of simple in my mind.

Repent meant to ask forgiveness for your sins, and it didn't take me long to put one-on-one together.

You had to ask forgiveness for your sins, and if you didn't, you would go to hell.

This style of preaching had a profound effect on my life.

As I imagine it would anyone, especially a younger child.

And at the age of five or six, I began to be afraid to go to sleep at night.

It wasn't like a typical afraid to go to sleep at night when you're a kid.

I was literally scared every night that something was gonna happen and I would go to hell.

Like I was afraid that I would fall asleep, that I would die sometime in the middle of the night, and I would go to hell.

Or I'd be convinced, like if there was a thunderstorm in the middle of the night, that the world was literally ending, like this revelation kind of description, and I would go to hell.

Or I was scared that Jesus would come back and he would send me to.

Yeah.

All the time I was just obsessed with this idea that I was going to hell, and yet I believed in Jesus.

And even though I believed in Jesus, I had no assurance of my relationship with God.

And that was a real problem.

I didn't know if I was actually saved or not.

I mean, if I was saved, then why was I always scared that I was gonna go to hell for some reason?

The message to me was clear at that age.

Do not take your salvation for granted.

You had to earn it, and if you weren't careful, you could easily lose it because that's how life works.

Let me tell you why I bring this up.

As I mentioned earlier, so many of you in this room have placed your faith in Jesus.

And what I've seen over my 15-year ministry career is what I saw in myself growing up.

Like you've placed your faith in Jesus, and yet you have no assurance of your relationship with God.

Some of you have been believers for a long, long time.

And yet, if you're honest with yourself, if I were to ask you, if you died right now, would you go to heaven or hell?

You couldn't honestly answer.

You have no assurance.

For some of you new believers, you maybe thought that when you left this building after placing your faith in Jesus, that everything would be completely different.

And yet, when you left, everything was kind of the same.

The circumstances hadn't necessarily changed.

Maybe you're still living in that same sin you were living in before you place your faith in Jesus, and you think, well, maybe I didn't do it right.

Maybe I'm not actually saved.

No matter which side of the coin you find yourself on, it all boils down to whether or not you have assurance of your relationship with God.

And the way we measure that for ourselves is how we behave.

The Bible calls how we behave our works.

There's good works and there's bad works.

And over the course of the history of church, at some point we began to believe that we could tell ourselves whether we are saved or not by the things we do.

So if you do good works, then you're probably saved.

And if you do bad works, then you're probably not saved.

We're gonna call this a works-based salvation.

And a works-based salvation says that you should not take your salvation for granted.

A works-based salvation says that it's our works that earn us salvation, and by continuing to do these good works, we can make sure we keep our salvation.

But should we ever stop doing those good works?

Should we become entangled in our sin or our bad works and we're in danger of losing that salvation?

Works-based salvation actually makes a lot of sense to us because everything in our life is measured by something.

Anytime you perform well in something, you get rewarded.

And anytime you perform poorly in something, you might be penalized, or you might be punished, or you may even lose that thing that you've performed poorly in.

And so we take these metrics and we apply them to our faith life.

And a works-based salvation reminds us that this is actually how life works.

That's why we say things like, don't take it for granted.

The connotation is that whatever you're taking for granted, you could actually lose.

Like, don't take your spouse for granted, you could lose them one day.

Don't take your job for granted because you could lose your job one day.

We say this as a word of warning.

It's not necessarily something that we say in a positive light.

And when we push a workspace salvation, we might as well be saying, you better act right, or God might take back his forgiveness.

You can't take him for granted.

But is this what the Bible actually teaches us?

Is this the offer of salvation that we see Jesus making us?

Unfortunately for us, the writers of the New Testament, speak to this very issue with astounding clarity.

And we're gonna jump right into a verse that tells us very clearly where our salvation actually comes from.

And we're gonna find it in a letter written by the Apostle Paul to a church in Ephesus.

Now, a note I want to make about the Apostle Paul is that before Paul was Paul, Paul was Saul.

And Saul was a part of the religious elite in the Jewish culture.

He was a Pharisee.

That meant he followed the Judaic law to the letter.

He was possibly the biggest believer in a works-based salvation until he met Jesus.

And then he did a 180.

Look at what he says in Ephesians chapter 2.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

He says, For you are saved.

This is what he's telling the church in Ephesus.

You are saved by grace through faith.

And this is not from yourselves.

It is God's gift, not from works, so that no one can boast.

Now let's just look at the highlights of this verse.

I'm gonna put it back up.

There's gonna be some highlighted words.

I want you guys to read that.

I'll read everything else.

Can y'all read the highlighted words?

Okay, meta church, I'm trusting you.

Y'all didn't give me a lot of faith there, but I'm gonna trust you anyway.

Y'all read the highlighted words.

For you are saved by grace through, not from works.

You'll see that it clearly does not say that you are saved by grace through works.

If you could be saved by your own works, it wouldn't have been necessary for God to send his only son to die on a cross for you if you could save yourself by your own works.

Paul's clear, the only work that saves you is the work of grace.

And the work of grace is a gift from God that's enacted in our life through our faith in Jesus.

You cannot save yourself.

The problem with a works-based salvation is that we're constantly either qualifying ourselves for salvation or disqualifying ourselves for salvation, and neither one is actually true.

Only grace enacted through faith can save you.

The Bible does not teach a works-based salvation.

Instead, what the Bible actually teaches is a faith-based salvation.

Now, just to be clear, I'm not saying you shouldn't do good works.

I mean, the next verse in this letter says this for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.

So we are to do good works, but these good works are not for your salvation.

These good works do not save you, they don't bring you into eternity with God.

Only your faith can do that.

Only God's gift of grace can do that.

Instead, your good works serve a different purpose in your life.

One of the things your good works will do for you is bring you into closer relationship with God.

Once you believe in Jesus, you enter into a relationship with him.

And that will never, ever, ever change.

Once you're in relationship with God, you are forever sealed in him.

But your works, how you live, will determine how close you are to God.

The more you live the way the Bible says to live, the closer you can actually get to God, and the more you live opposed to what the Bible says, the further away you get from God.

You want to do good works, you want to be close to God.

The second thing that your good works do is it shows the world around you the transformative power of God in your life.

It'll make people see that there is something different going on inside of you.

It's your witness, it's your testimony, it'll lead people to Him.

So let me say this clearly: how you live matters.

That's why we harp on applications so much here at Meta Church.

We actually do believe that when you read your Bible and when you pray and when you come to service, that the Holy Spirit will enlighten you and empower you to go out into the world around you and affect the people that you are around.

But if you're gonna be that, you're gonna have to be clear that salvation is a gift of God's grace enacted by faith.

You cannot earn it and you can't lose it.

So, what exactly does the gift of grace through faith give us?

We're gonna look at what's possibly the most popular Bible verse in all of the Bible for that answer.

And since we already read something together, we're just gonna read this one together as well.

It's good to have scripture coming out of your mouth.

And so I'll give you the verse reference, and then let's all read this together.

The verse is John 3, 16.

For God loved the world in this way.

He gave his one and only Son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.

This is a promise that we hinge all of our eternities on.

That when we actually believe in Jesus, and we say believe in Jesus, we mean believe in who he says he is, the Son of God, and we believe in what he said he did, died on a cross for our sins, and was resurrected three days later.

That when we believe in those two things, that we go from death to eternal life.

This verse is so simple to understand.

Whoever believes in him shall not perish.

And yet it's a hard one for us to grasp because we're so used to having to earn everything we receive.

And what I've seen time and time again, and what I did myself as an ultra-religious person, is I would add the word and right at the end of this verse.

I would add it where it says, Whoever believes in him, and then I would fill in the blank with whatever work I thought I needed to do to be good enough for this gift that God had to offer.

You've probably seen it in your life.

It might sound something like this.

So whoever believes in him and never sins again, whoever believes in him and gets it all right all the time, whoever believes in him and reads their Bible every single day, or gives sacrificially, or does whatever it seems to make you worthy enough for such a gift as eternal life.

If you're adding an and to this verse, like it's faith and something else that saves you, you're not helping this verse.

You're actually taking away from the amazing gift that God has given us through his son, Jesus.

The other part of the problem we deal with as believers is we serve a completely righteous and a completely holy God.

And here we are still sinners, still feeling unworthy of his love and his grace, his forgiveness.

And that's when that works-based salvation kind of creeps its way into our mind.

It's like we start to think that if we can do enough good things and we'll be actually righteous enough to be in relationship with God.

But the problem is, is how good is good enough to be close to God?

It's a noble thought, it's admirable, but it can be crushing when we inevitably fail.

It can make us question everything.

We need to shift our perspective of what righteousness actually looks like to God.

We need to shift it from an earthly human perspective to a godly and heavenly perspective.

And we're gonna see what God considers to be righteous through the story of Abraham in the Old Testament.

Now, we're just gonna summarize this because the story of Abraham is like really long, and so I'll give you kind of like the null notes on this.

Abraham was married to a woman named Sarah.

Abraham and Sarah really wanted to have kids, and yet they never conceived a child.

They got pretty old and kind of gave up on the idea.

They reconciled with themselves that they wouldn't have any kids, and that's about the time that God comes to Abraham and he says, Hey, Abraham, I'm gonna make your lineage into a great nation.

Not just Abraham, I'm gonna give you a kid, but that your lineage is actually gonna be a great nation.

In fact, they're gonna be so great that they're gonna be as numerous as the stars in the sky.

Now, this probably seemed a little impossible to anyone else, right?

Because Abraham at this time was in his 70s, and his wife was in her 50s, far past the childbearing years.

And yet, here's what the Bible said was Abraham's reaction.

It says that Abraham believed the Lord, and he, the Lord, credited it to him as righteousness.

Abraham heard what God said.

He didn't question it.

He simply believed that what God had said would actually happen.

And it's that thing, that belief, that moment of belief, that God considers him righteous in.

There were no actions that took place, it was just belief.

And so God makes a covenant with Abraham.

And a covenant is like basically like making a deal that says, if you do this, then I'll do this.

And the way they would seal this deal looks a lot different than what we would do today.

You know, if you enter into some kind of agreement with someone, you usually have this long contract, and then everybody that's gonna be a part of the deal will sign on the dotted line.

This wasn't how it worked in the ancient biblical times.

Instead, what they would do is they would take animals, they cut them right down the middle, they would let the halves fall to the left and to the right, and the blood would kind of flow in between the two halves, and everyone that was gonna take part in the covenant or the deal that was being made would walk right through the blood.

And this shows that they were gonna take responsibility for their part of the deal.

And so God tells Abraham, when he's gonna make this covenant, he says, Go get these animals, prepare them, and let's make this covenant legit.

And so Abraham does it.

He gets the animals, he cuts them, he makes a little blood creak flow, and right before Abraham goes to walk through the blood, God causes him to fall into a deep sleep.

And when Abraham wakes up, he realizes that God has passed through the blood and no one else.

In fact, Abraham never walks through the blood.

God was letting Abraham know that this promise that was made was all on him, that there was nothing left for Abraham to do because he believed God, that's all it took for God to take on the full weight of this promise.

Now it took like 20 years before he had a child with Sarah, but along the way, he made some mistakes.

Like he had a child with Sarah's servant Hagar, and God came back, and you know what he did?

He reaffirmed the promise.

He did not come to Abraham and say, Hey, this isn't what I said I was gonna do.

I thought you were righteous, and yet you did this thing, so now I removed this promise.

That's not what God did.

God reaffirms the promise, and it comes to pass because the covenant that was made was all on God.

It wasn't on Abraham, it wasn't up to how he behaved.

He was already considered righteous because of his belief and what God had said.

And Abraham's lineage did become great.

It's where the Israelite people came from.

In fact, most of the biblical stories of the heroes of the faith that we know are direct descendants of Abraham, all the way up to the most important man in all of history, Jesus.

It's through Jesus that we've been given this gift of grace that saves us, and just like Abraham, all we have to do is believe what God says about something that seems impossible.

Ephesians tells us that our works can't save us, that only grace through faith can do that.

The good works that you do don't keep your salvation intact, and your bad works don't nullify that grace in your life.

In John, we learn that if we believe in Jesus, we will return receive eternal life.

There's nothing that needs to be added to that because the work of Christ was completed on the cross and through his resurrection.

And the story of Abraham shows us that we can actually be considered righteous, not because of our actions, but because our belief in what God says is true.

A works based salvation says don't take it for granted.

But scripture says something completely different.

And Paul's letter to the Galatians, he writes again, contrasting works and faith based belief.

He once again uses Abraham to show that God.

God has given us eternal life, not based on works of the law, but on a promise that He will give it to those who have faith.

Galatians 3 18 says, For if the inheritance is based off the law, if what you receive from God is a result of how you obey all the rules, it is no longer based on a promise, but God has granted it to Abraham by a means of promise.

God granted us salvation.

It's a promise for those who have faith.

It's not earned and it can't be lost.

A works-based salvation says, don't take it for granted.

But a faith-based salvation says, do take it as granted.

If you've believed in Jesus, then you've been granted eternal life.

You didn't earn it.

Jesus did that on the cross, and you can't lose it because it's a promise from God.

You know, I spent most of my life as a believer without any assurance of my salvation.

I was always afraid that the sin in my life was going to send me to hell, even though I had put my faith in Jesus.

I spent all of my teenage years and my young adult years walking around in judgment of others, pointing my finger at anything I saw them doing that went against the Bible.

And I wasn't doing it for their good.

I wasn't trying to help them, I can tell you that for sure.

I was trying to prove to myself that I actually was saved in light of what they were doing wrong.

It was a thing that had kept me stuck my entire life when it came to Jesus.

And the whole time I was trying to live, or at least, you know, I was really trying to live this legalistic life, a by the book kind of life.

Not one time did I ever stop sinning.

In fact, if anything, I was sinning even more.

It's like I had target fixation.

I was obsessed with my sin and it sending me to hell.

And it's like the more I looked at it, the more I turned to it.

I certainly wasn't living in the freedom that Jesus has to offer.

I did finally find it though.

I was 30 years old.

It was 2013, Valentine's Day.

The most important day of my entire life.

I won't go through all the particulars of what happened that day, but through a seemingly, seemingly mundane list of occurrences that day, I found myself being really introspective as I got home from work.

And it was about this time that God began to flood my mind with scripture.

I mean just scripture after scripture, all these verses I had been learning my entire life.

And it was truly like each one of these scriptures was a puzzle piece.

And each puzzle piece fit into each other.

And at the end of it, I had this full picture of what God's grace actually is.

If you could talk to people who knew me back then, Pastor Clayton was one of them.

They would tell you, it's like I left work one day, one way, and I came back the other day, and I was completely different.

And the truth is, it didn't take a day.

It was a matter of minutes.

It's like a light turned on for me, and I finally understood what God did for us through Jesus.

Here's the gist of what I learned that broke me out of my fear and my lack of assurance.

It's that when Jesus died on the cross, he granted forgiveness for all sin to those who would put their faith in the work that he did.

This gift of forgiveness wasn't a one-for-one kind of forgiveness.

That's kind of always how I viewed it.

It's like I would commit a sin and then I would ask forgiveness for that sin because I just disqualified myself in the way I used to believe.

Or if I did 10 sins throughout the day and forgot to ask forgiveness, then I would spend that evening in prayer asking forgiveness for each one of those sins until I thought I had remembered all the sins I committed that day.

It's not that kind of a gift.

It's not a one-for-one kind of forgiveness.

Instead, the kind of forgiveness that Jesus offers to you when you put your faith in him is a once and for all forgiveness.

Forgiveness one time for all of your sin.

And I know that seems a little bit hard to understand because there's sin that we haven't even committed yet.

You will commit more sin in your life.

But what we have to understand about God, about Jesus, about the Holy Spirit, is that they exist beyond our timeline.

They're at the beginning of time and they're at the end of time.

They're at all places and all times, all at the same time.

And when Jesus forgave you, he didn't forgive you at age 10 or age 15 or 30 or 60.

He forgave you as a soul.

For all of time, that's your past, your present, and your future.

He's seen it all.

And he forgives it all.

It seems impossible, I know.

Certainly it does in our cultural context where we have to earn everything we get and we can lose those things that we've earned if we don't behave properly.

But just like God took on the full weight of the covenant that he made with Abraham, Jesus takes on the full weight of the new covenant that he makes with us.

When you put your faith in Jesus, you're forever sealed by the promise that whoever believes in him will not die, but will live forever with him.

You're not taking Jesus for granted.

At least, not how we mean it when we say it most of the time.

It's not like you're pulling a fast one on Jesus, not like you're taking advantage of him.

Instead, Jesus gives us a gift so that we can take advantage of it.

We're not taking him for granted, we're taking Jesus as granted.

Once you understand this, you'll be able to live in the freedom that Christ has for you, and you'll have assurance that faith-based salvation offers.

You'll be able to extend grace and forgiveness because you understand what it means to be forgiven with no strings attached.

You'll be able to live a life that's filled with actual purpose, an actual assurance of your eternity.

That's what happened for me.

Once I understand what Jesus did for me, I was finally able to start to get a hold on the sin in my life.

Now, we'll keep it like transparent all the time.

Sometimes I do really great at this, and sometimes I do really terrible at this.

But no matter where I am and my struggle with my sin, I am always sure of my relationship with God.

I always know where I'm headed for eternity.

My desire to get a hold of my sin isn't out of a fear of going to hell, it's out of a great admiration and love for Christ.

There's so many in this room who've placed their faith in Jesus and yet have no assurance of that salvation.

And when you don't have that assurance, it's hard to live in the freedom that Christ has provided for you.

It's like you're living in the freedom of the penalty of your sin, but you're living in bondage of your actual sin.

It's my deepest desire that everyone would find and cling to the freedom that Christ actually has for you in this life.

For too long, too long, I looked at my salvation as something I had to earn.

I looked at it as something that I could actually lose.

And as crazy as it sounds, at some level, I looked at my salvation as an ice cream cone after Sunday evening church.

I knew if I didn't act right, there's no ice cream in my future.

And it may seem silly to say, but I'm just gonna say it anyway.

Metachurch, your eternal life is not an ice cream cone.

Here's what I missed all that time.

Sure, if I didn't obey my dad, I may miss out on the reward of the ice cream cone because how we live matters and there's consequences to our action.

But no matter how badly I miss a mark, no matter how many times I disobeyed or how many times I may have suffered the consequences of my actions as a kid, my dad was always gonna be my dad.

I might lose an ice cream cone, but I wasn't gonna be losing my relationship with him.

That's what we miss in this whole salvation conversation.

When you believe in Jesus, you become an adopted son or daughter of God.

And the salvation that we want and cling to, it belongs to him, not us.

It isn't ours to earn and it's not ours to lose.

And when you believe in Jesus, you now belong to the Father, and no one, and that includes yourself, can remove you from his hands.

Here's what Jesus says in John 10, verse 27.

John 10:27

He says, My sheep listen to my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.

That's us hearing him and going after him, believing what he has said about himself.

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

That's the promise we have.

And no one will snatch them out of my hand.

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

And Paul also echoes his truth.

In fact, he goes several layers deep.

In Romans 8, he says, I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Mediterrace, if you've placed your faith in Jesus, then you can have assurance in your eternal standing with God.

If you continue to live a life that is focused on a works-based salvation, you will be living a very selfish life, a life that is always looking to save yourself.

But if you can move into a faith-based salvation, you're gonna understand that your eternal security is set and you can focus on the people around you and sharing the love of Jesus with everyone that you come into contact with.

It is how you run smack, dab into the middle of the purpose that we're always telling you that you were created with and that you were created for.

Would you pray with me?

Heavenly Father, I am grateful for everything.

Salvation is such an amazing gift, and we certainly uh didn't do anything to earn it, God.

The fact that we can have eternal life says nothing about who we are, God.

It says everything about who you are, a perfect, holy creator that longs to be with his children.

So, God, I thank you for the truth that when we believe in your son, that we can enter into a relationship with you.

And Father, it's my deepest desire that everyone in this room would walk away knowing that they are secure in their relationship with you and can leave this place and start being active agents of redemption for the hurting and broken world around them.

Jesus, we thank you for that sacrifice that you made that made everything possible for us, all the many gifts that we receive possible.

We love you.

We thank you, and we pray it in your name, 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.