Love Is Blind: Love Before First Sight 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.

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

I'm the lead pastor here, and today we're jumping into a brand new series that we're calling Love is Blind.

Now, before we really get into this, uh I think we need to kind of almost uh divide into two groups.

And really it's just good to know where everyone is at sometimes.

There's an issue in our culture uh that has become incredibly divisive.

There's really no one in the middle.

It's like they're all for it or they stand completely against it.

They either absolutely love it or they absolutely hate it.

And I'm talking, of course, about reality television.

Some of you guys, it's all you do.

You can't get enough of it.

And if that's you, right now in the chat, I want to know.

Favorite reality television show, throw it in there.

Some of you like the competitions, the America's Got Talents, the American Idols.

Some of you like like the survivor or the big brother.

And some of you, let's keep it real, you just like the trashy television.

It makes you feel a little bit better about your own insane life, and you want to keep up with it all.

Now, the other half of you, you hate it.

Like you have no room for it.

You think it's ridiculous.

It's called reality television, but it's not even real.

The whole thing is scripted.

It's a complete waste of time and a way to turn your brain off.

And if that's you, just show your disdain for reality television.

Let's throw a thumbs down emoji, a face palm emoji, an eye roll emoji right in the chat right now.

We can start the battle.

Don't get too heated, but the subject is reality television.

And I'll be honest, my experience is a little bit limited.

We loved American Idol the first seven or eight seasons, and my family was pretty religious about watching Survivor up to a certain point.

I had a friend group that I would go to sometimes, and they would actually watch The Bachelor mainly just to kind of make fun of how over the top and insane it was.

But that's it.

And really, for the last 10 years or so, I've been kind of void of reality television.

I don't keep up with the Kardashians.

I didn't GTO with the Jersey Shore.

I don't know what a Vanderpump is or what any of the rules guiding it happened to be.

I'm really lost on reality television.

However, my sister started really uh like pushing this show on us, and she was telling us all about it, and man, she made it sound really cool, and it was more of like an experiment than real reality TV, and we just had to check it out.

Many of you have seen it.

It's a Netflix show called Love is Blind.

Now, first, let me just say, as your pastor, I am officially not recommending for you to watch this show.

This is in no way my seal of approval of Love is Blind.

But if you haven't seen it, I'll kind of lay out how it works.

There is a group of men and a group of women, and they both live full-time in these hubs, and while they're there, they are dating each other.

And if you make a connection with someone, then you date them more and more often.

Now there's a way out of the hub, but in order to leave, you have to be engaged.

And once you get engaged, you go on the vacation of a lifetime, and when it's over, you go back to real life, and in real life, you start to plan your marriage.

It's supposed to be an experiment.

And here's the controlling factor, here's the kicker, here's the thing that sets the show apart and makes it so crazy.

This group of men and women who are dating for just a matter of weeks, and some of them less than that.

These men and women who are proposing to each other so that they can go on this vacation.

The whole time they're dating, the whole time they're in the hub, there's a wall between them.

That's right.

That means that they propose to each other without ever having laid eyes on each other.

It's an experiment to see whether or not love is truly blind.

And quite a few people got engaged.

Quite a few people proposed.

And there was some motivation to do that.

Who wouldn't want to go on an all-exclusive, all expense paid vacation?

And I'm not gonna give huge spoilers, but I will say it turns out about exactly like you would think.

Quite a few proposals, people going on the trip, getting back to reality, and very, very few couples working out.

The question that the show sought to answer is this Is love really blind?

The message that I have for us today is called Love Before First Sight.

Love before first sight.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we love you, and uh we thank you.

God, we thank you for this time to come together.

And in this series, I believe you have a word for us.

That through your gospel, the good news of Jesus that you're going to begin drawing people to yourself.

So, God, I pray that we would have open minds and open hearts.

We'd be ready for whatever you have to say to us, whatever you have to show us, whatever you have to challenge us on, that we would be ready.

We'd be receptive.

We love you, and we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Love before first sight.

Because we we've all heard of love at first sight, love at first sight.

It's like I saw you and I just knew that you were the one.

This show took that away.

It has to be love before first sight.

And I want to see an example of this in scripture today.

We're gonna be in John's Gospel.

John was a guy who walked and talked and led and learned with Jesus for three years.

And after Jesus had died and risen and ascended back to heaven, he wrote down his experiences, and we have it in the Christian scriptures.

We call it the Gospel of John.

In John chapter 9, verse 1, it says, As Jesus was passing by, he saw a man who was blind from birth.

John 9:1

Jesus and the disciples are in Jerusalem.

And it doesn't tell us exactly where this blind man is, but we can say with quite a bit of certainty that the blind man would have been as close in proximity to the temple as possible.

The reason we know this is because that is where the people who were marginalized and ostracized, the people who were uh disabled or handicapped, they hung out as close to the temple as they could get, and there they would beg for money.

It was a strategic positioning because they were hoping that the self-righteous men who were leaving the temple would throw them a few coins just to display their piety to everyone around them.

I don't know if uh this is because I'm weird, um, but all throughout my life I have thought from time to time about what it would be like the actual experience of being blind.

It's a very difficult thing to think through.

And there are some people who go blind, they have some objective measures.

They've seen a sunset and a sunrise, they've seen the stars, they know what it looks like for a loved one to smile at them, they know the variations of color, and now that they've gone blind, maybe it is fading from memory, but at one point they have some way of making sense of the world.

What's even crazier to think about is being born blind.

How do you even begin to imagine what color is and all of the variations of colors that exist?

How do you even begin to imagine seeing the majesty of mountains or the awe-inspiring endless oceans, the sunrises and sunsets, the look of compassion and love on your family's faces?

And there are some brothers and sisters that are a part of our movement here at MetaCurch who don't have to imagine this, they live it.

They are blind, they've lived with this, but for most of us, we have no idea, no idea what that world would be like.

Now, in our society today, we have progressed to a point where we see people who are born in less than normal circumstances or who are living with some kind of disability, and and we know instinctively they have equal worth as a human being.

We know that they are valued and that it is our job to try and make the world as friendly a place as possible for them.

But that was not always the case.

And we can see it in the very next verse.

In verse 2, his disciples asked Jesus, Rabbi, who sinned?

This man, or was it his parents that he was born blind?

And this question displays the attitude towards people who were marginalized, ostracized, kicked to the side, seen as less than in that society.

You see, it was common knowledge that if someone went blind, if they were born able to see, but eventually went blind, it was obvious that they had sin in their own life and God was punishing them.

This is how this Jewish culture thought at the time.

The more difficult question is, what about someone who is born blind?

A baby can't sin in the wound, so is it his sin?

Did God just know the sin was coming and punish him proactively?

Or was it the sin of the parents?

And this was a big question, and people wrestled through this and they didn't really know how to answer it.

What about babies who are born with handicaps and disabilities?

Is that the sin of the parent?

And it was a little bit confusing because in the Jewish scripture, what we call the Old Testament, there are passages about this, about how the sin of the father is not passed on to the next generation.

They didn't know how to wrap their mind around it.

And what they couldn't see is that they were starting with a faulty premise.

They started with the assumption that if something is wrong in your life, if you have something that you're dealing with, if you have a sickness, a disease, a handicap, if you live in poverty, if you're just a different member of society and aren't able to enmesh in the norms of culture, if there's anything that sets you apart from how people expect your life to look, that you are cursed.

You are being punished by God who sinned.

And this man has lived with this stigma his whole life.

And most mornings he would probably get up before dawn.

And dawn doesn't matter much to a man blind from birth.

It's always dark.

He would get up before anyone else because they're fighting for a spot, the best seat closest to the temple.

The closer you are to the steps of the temple, the more likely you are to be the recipient of some self-righteous, pious person's pity money.

And every day he would sit, and every day he would beg.

And maybe, just maybe, he'd get enough for a loaf of bread, and maybe just maybe he'd get enough for a few fruits.

And he would sit and he would listen.

And maybe you know this, but when someone loses one of their senses, their others are often heightened, and so he can't see, but surely he can hear, and he can hear the ridicule, and he can hear people trying to figure out man, why is this guy like this?

What did his parents do?

Why is God judging him so harshly?

He probably heard pity from some people, patronizing from others, ridicule from children.

He was an outcast, he was cursed.

I have to wonder if he would sometimes sit close enough to the temple, a temple that he was never able to see, the beauty and the majesty of the one-of-a-kind architecture.

He would sit so close and he couldn't see it, but maybe he could hear, he could hear the religious discussions inside about a God who loves us all and who were made in his image, maybe most people, but surely not the cursed.

And so here's the scene.

Jesus is in Jerusalem, and he's walking by the temple.

Jesus, who is God incarnate, God in human flesh, is walking next to the temple that was built to worship the God that He is.

Jesus is walking next to His temple.

Inside, the people are making their sacrifices and they're doing their outlandish, long public prayers, and they're promoting themselves and out dressing each other and out blessing each other and out singing each other, out religioning each other.

All the while there are people right at the bottom of the steps of the temple who are so desperately in need of someone who will love them.

And Jesus walks by the very religious leaders who at this point in Jesus' life hate him, despise him, they already want to kill him, they want to get rid of him because he keeps doing these crazy things that chip away at their power.

And really, where we're at today in a society where we try to uplift people who find themselves broken down, where we try to give abilities to people who, by no fault of their own, have some disabilities.

In a world where the expected response is empathy, we can trace all of that back to a moment just like this.

You see how Jesus responds in this moment?

We'll begin to shift the tide of all of human history.

And all of human history, if you are less than, if you are poor, if you are diseased, if you are unloved, if you are abandoned, if you are divorced, if you are forgotten, it sucks to be you.

It sucks to be cursed.

It's just the way it is.

God has not smiled upon your life, you have not found favor.

And if Jesus continues in that tradition, there will be nothing in human history to turn the tide towards where we are today.

If the disciples said, Jesus, who sinned?

This guy or his parents?

And Jesus was like, Who knows?

Sucks to be blind.

Let's get out of here before this fool starts asking for more money.

Today we would still, this is a radical thought, but today we would still be treating the people who are less fortunate in our society exactly how they were treated back then.

Jesus stands against the entire grain of human history.

And he responds in verse 3.

He says, Neither this man nor his parents sinned.

This came about, so that God's works might be displayed in him.

And this is news to the blind man.

It is such an accepted thought that this disability is a curse from his sin.

It's such an accepted thought that even he probably believed it as true.

And I wonder how many nights he sat and thought, what might my parents have done?

What is it that I could have done?

What if I just was cursed from the beginning?

Doomed from the womb.

Blind, beggar, poor, cursed.

This is revolutionary to the blind man, and it is new revelation to the disciples.

Now let me be clear: there are two kinds of suffering in life.

And one kind is brought about on ourselves through our own sin, our own poor decisions, our own relationships, our own ways that we all continually go against God, and we bring suffering upon ourselves.

And today Jesus is really speaking to the second kind because we all know that there is unmerited suffering.

There is suffering that comes upon you that you have not earned, that you have not deserved, you did not do it to yourself, but others or the world, nature itself did it to you.

And this raises the biggest question that people have been asking for thousands of years.

If God is good, why would he allow bad to happen?

The way that the Jews answered it at this time is that God is good and God is just, and so if someone is cursed and punished, they must have done something wrong.

And Jesus completely contradicts that line of thought.

Who sinned?

No one.

And in the middle of this opposition, what Jesus is showing them is that there is opportunity.

That perhaps this man, who by no fault of his own has lived with this disability his entire life.

Perhaps it is so that the power and the holiness of God can be displayed for all to see.

And some of you are suffering mightily right now.

Unmerited suffering.

You didn't ask for it, you didn't deserve it.

It's not a consequence of your actions, you didn't bring it upon yourself, you didn't ask for a pandemic, you didn't ask to be furloughed or lose your job completely.

You didn't ask for your savings to be drained, for all of your stocks to drop.

You are suffering, and it is undeserved.

And you weren't a perfect spouse, but you were a good spouse, and you didn't ask for the divorce, you didn't ask for the kids to rebel, you didn't ask for loss of opportunity.

But suffering comes.

And what if, even in our suffering, God is wanting to use it?

Why would a good God let bad things happen?

And it's a little bit of a complicated answer, but I think I can make it simple.

One of the greatest gifts that God has given us is the gift of freedom.

We had to be free so we could actually love.

Love requires freedom, and God created us to love, to love each other, and more specifically to love Him.

And love requires freedom, so we had to be free, but in our freedom we rebel.

We go against God, it's called sin, and sin introduces suffering.

Some of it we deserve through our own sin, some of it is undeserved.

Nobody asked for it.

It's just a part of living in a broken world.

God does not cause suffering, but he does use it.

And he can find purpose in the middle of your pain if you are just willing to give it to him.

Who sinned?

Maybe you've thought this.

Maybe your life is so far off track and you're so hurt right now.

You're so far away from the life you thought you'd be living.

You at one time were at such a high, and now you are at such a low.

Or maybe you've been at a low the whole time.

You wish for a mountaintop experience because you've only ever seen the valley.

Maybe you've even thought.

I'm cursed.

I must be cursed.

Nobody else lives like this.

My siblings get opportunity, my friends get opportunity, the people I graduated with are successful and happy and married, and here I am.

Maybe I'm cursed.

And maybe the God who did not cause your suffering is right here.

Maybe he is waiting and calling you and ready, prepared to find purpose in your pain, significance in your suffering, and so that he can use where you're at to display his love, his power, and his glory in your life.

Neither this man or his parents sinned, Jesus said, This came about so that God's works might be displayed in him.

And what could be more significant for your life, your life that is off track, your life that is filled with heartache right now?

What could be more significant than for the world to see God in you?

In verse 6, after Jesus said these things, he spit on the ground and he made some mud from the saliva, and he spread the mud on the blind man's eyes.

Go, he told him.

Wash in the pool of Siloam.

And let's be honest, there are a few ways to look at this.

And here's what hurts us sometimes when we're reading the Bible is we know the story.

We know what's gonna happen.

You are, even if you don't know the Bible, you know this fool's about to get healed.

Like you're like, here we go again, another miracle story.

He's blind, and now he's gonna see.

We all know that's how it goes.

That's what it says in Amazing Grace.

I once was blind, but now I see.

We know the end of the story.

We know that he dies and he comes back to life, and you may not believe that, but you know the story, and he ascends back to heaven and he starts this church that we're still a part of today, blah, blah, blah.

He's coming back.

We know the whole thing.

And so we go so quickly, and we don't realize that in this moment, this man who has lived as a curse to society his whole entire life has a decision to make.

And I'm gonna tell you if it's not Jesus, I don't want your spit in my face.

I'm just gonna let you know right now, I don't want any of your spit in my face.

If you're not Jesus, that's nasty.

And some of you are close talkers, and I don't like it.

I don't, I don't wanna be in the splash zone.

You know what I'm saying?

I don't want that.

You keep your spit in you, and I will stay over here.

And if he's not Jesus, then now he's just blind and broke and cursed and the pariah of society, and now he's got some mud on his face.

And there's another way that this could go.

Thanks a lot, bro.

Really appreciate it.

I get it, I'm the blind guy, and now I've got some dirt on my face.

Thanks a lot, guy that's a carpenter from Nazarene.

It's like he doesn't have to believe, he's not compelled.

Maybe he's heard of this Jesus guy, maybe he even heard that he could heal people, and as a matter of fact, there have been other blind people that Jesus just spoke and they were healed.

Why can't you just say something?

Just say the magic words and let me get back my sight.

Why do you have to cover me in your spit?

It's an obstacle.

We know that it's the source of his healing, but to him, somebody just spit in the mud and put it on his face.

There's another obstacle because Jesus says, go.

He tells him to leave.

And he's asking him to leave his spot where he begs.

This is the only job he has.

It's his only source of income.

And whatever spot he has, if he gets up, there's no seat check, no savesies.

Someone's gonna take his spot and get that much closer to the money.

And day after day, morning after morning, they would wake up in the darkness, still of the morning, and grope their way to get their lucky spot as close to the temple as they could, because it's their only way to make money.

If they don't make money, they don't eat, and if they don't eat, they die.

This is life and death.

He begs to stay alive, and Jesus says, leave.

Leave your resource, leave your supply, leave your provision.

We hear go and we know who Jesus is.

We know he's the Son of God.

We know that he is God in human flesh.

We know he's gonna die and rise again.

He doesn't know this.

He's still in the middle of the story.

He's the blind man, he's the cursed.

Now he's got mud on his face, and a guy that's telling him to leave his only source of income.

There's another problem.

He tells him to go and to wash in the pool of Siloam.

Now, this is happening right during something that the Jews call the festival of the tents.

And in the festivals of the tents, what they do is they have a ritual where they use blessed water that comes from, you guessed it, the pool of Siloam.

And so, first off, there's fear.

He has to go across in the middle of the day, highest traffic area, completely blind and walk to the other side of the city.

This is a difficult task for someone who cannot see what's coming their way.

There is fear holding him back.

Now, what is gonna happen when he gets to the blessed water and shows up as a cursed man?

The people who are there dipping out the holy water, I'm just gonna take a stab in the dark.

So they're not gonna be super pumped about a blind beggar sticking his dirty mug in their holy waters.

He's risking the danger of going across town, the danger of leaving his money behind, the danger of being shamed and ran out of the pool.

And there is one decision that you have to make in your life.

Everyone has to decide what they believe about what comes after this life.

You cannot live this life without faith.

We all require faith and we all put our faith in all kinds of things.

And when it comes to Jesus, there are so many things in this world that will hold us back from exercising our faith.

And whether or not the blind man was willing to be okay with somebody's spit up in his eyes, with someone telling him to leave behind his resources, with someone telling him to risk his health and safety walking across town in the middle of the day, risk the embarrassment when he is already such a curse in his culture.

All comes down to who does he really think Jesus is?

And some of you have not believed that Jesus is who he says he is, and that he has done what he says that he's done.

You just can't see it.

And perhaps God is trying to move in your life, but it's not quite the way that you had planned for your life to move.

The blind man didn't wake up that day hoping someone would smear some mud in his eyeballs.

That's not what he wanted.

And sometimes God wants to use us in ways to get us to our true purpose, but we're not ready to get messy.

We're not ready for the mess of confronting who we really are at the deepest, darkest part part of ourself.

Some of you need counseling, some of you need to talk to someone, some of you need to call a pastor, some of you need to confess to a friend, some of you need to let somebody know about the sin or the grudge.

Gosh, that's so messy.

And man, what if your miracle, the thing that you really want, the life you actually want to live?

What if it's on the other side of your willingness to let Jesus get your life a little bit messy?

For some of you, you're you're putting your faith in what you have: your career, your wealth, your money, your stocks.

He had to leave where he begged to go and get his blessing.

It's the only way it would work.

He had to walk in obedience.

And what if your provision is keeping you back from your purpose?

What if the things that you're trying to hold on to are keeping you from opening your arms and accepting the life that Jesus has for you?

And some of you are afraid.

And some of you are being called to do things that seem dangerous to you.

Some of you are being asked to walk into foreign opportunities, into things that you didn't see for your life, not the way you planned it.

The blind man had to go.

He had to walk, face the fear.

For some of you, it'd just be too embarrassing.

For you to show up and all of a sudden be a Christian and all of a sudden have faith.

Man, all of a sudden, man, you're gonna get shamed by your coworkers, your parents aren't gonna understand, your friend group's gonna think you lost your mind.

There are a million things holding us back from exercising our faith.

There are countless reasons for us to continue trusting in ourselves.

You will put your faith in something.

The question is, what?

In verse 6, after he said these things, he spit on the ground and he made some mud from his own saliva and he spread the mud on his eyes.

Go, he told him, wash in the pool of Siloam.

And so he left.

And he washed.

And he came back seeing.

He got his miracle.

And the same way I can't imagine being blind, and I certainly can't imagine being blind from birth.

I definitely can't imagine being blind from birth and my eyes being opened.

And sometimes on my Facebook, a uh a video will pop up of someone who is colorblind.

They're not, you know, blind where they can't see, they just have never seen colors, which are like, well, whatever, there's worse, you know, handicaps.

But man, color is what makes things beautiful.

It's like it it gives this flavor to life and the world around us.

And there's videos where they have these glasses and they're very expensive, and so most people don't have them, but they put them on, and you can see color for the first time, and people just weep.

Even now they're beginning to do things with science where there are certain conditions where people are pretty much legally blind and they're able to start seeing some for the first time.

Those videos always get me, make me emotional.

And I always think about this man, I always think about when he came out of that water.

And it's not a direct comparison, but I wonder sometimes if it's almost an earthly representation of what it's gonna be like for all of us when we stand before God someday.

That it will be so wonderful and so beautiful and so overwhelming and so awe-inspiring that we couldn't even imagine it.

This man has his life back.

And to kind of quickly tell the rest of the story, he he heads back to town.

And the religious leaders, the Pharisees who hate Jesus and they want him dead, they see in this man an opportunity, so they pull him into the temple and he sees the glory and majesty of the temple for the very first time, no longer sitting outside of it, but now admitted in.

And they begin to question him about Jesus.

Who he is, what he did.

They want to trap him.

They want to use this guy.

And if they can get this guy to turn on Jesus, then maybe they can make a case.

Maybe they can show you his healing on the Sabbath, and on the Sabbath you're not allowed to work, and he's breaking the Jewish law.

Maybe this is what'll turn the people against Jesus.

And it's a lot of pressure because this guy has been an outcast, cursed.

And now he is with the most influential people in the culture.

The leaders of the religion, the leaders of the society.

They're offering him an in-road to influence, popularity, power, prestige.

All he's gotta do is turn on this Jesus guy.

But something happens when we really have seen Jesus.

This blind man goes toe to toe with the Pharisees, and he knows what it means that on his first day, his first day, with his eyes open, where he can become a normal part of society, be welcomed into the temple, his first day he knows he will now be kicked out.

He won't turn on Jesus, he's banished from the temple.

Once again, the closest he can get is the bottom of the stairs.

Once again, he's an outcast from society.

Once again, he will not worship with them inside.

Once again, he is cursed.

Jesus comes and finds him, and we learned something that's so critical, and I need you to get it today.

We learn that while Jesus loved him and cared to heal him from his blindness, that paled in comparison to how much he cared about his spiritual blindness.

And Jesus asked the man, Do you believe in who I am?

And the blind man said, Lord, I believe, and he worshiped him.

He worshiped Jesus, God in human flesh.

And Jesus said something that we should all pay attention to in verse 39.

Jesus said, I came into this world for judgment in order that those who do not see will see, and those who do see will become blind.

Chances are you are not physically blind.

However, if you have never put your faith in Jesus, you are living as spiritually blind.

And we all put our faith in something, and maybe your faith is in your wealth, and maybe your faith is in your relationships, and maybe your faith is in your status, and maybe your faith is in your future and your ability to make it happen, and maybe your faith is in your addictions, and maybe you're going, I don't know what my faith is in.

Where are you putting your hope?

What in this world is holding the weight of your hope?

What if it was taken from your life?

Do you feel like you could no longer live without?

For some of you, maybe it's become an addiction.

And if someone took drinking out of your life, smoking, shooting up out of your life, you don't think you could live any longer.

That is where your faith is.

And what Jesus is teaching us through the story of the blind man is that oftentimes the suffering that comes upon us in this world, it's not because of our sin.

In our suffering, Jesus is showing us an opportunity to actually live an even more significant life.

But it requires us to shift our faith from the things of this world and put our faith solely in Him.

Whose fault is physical blindness?

Whose sin caused it?

And Jesus says, no one's.

And who caused our spiritual blindness?

And Jesus says, it's us.

That we can begin to put our faith and our hope in the things of this world at such a high level that we actually close off our eyes and our ability to see the offer that Jesus is extending to us day after day, moment after moment, second after second, the Pharisees couldn't see it, the religious leaders couldn't see it.

They put all of their faith in their own works, their own piety, their own position, their own practice of the law.

They had blinded themselves, and Jesus said, those who do not see, those who have been blinded by this world spiritually, the gospel will come, the good news of Jesus.

And the Bible says that the gospel is the power of God for our salvation.

Today you are hearing the good news, and maybe life has been so rough that you identify with the cursed blind man.

In Galatians chapter 3, it says that Christ, that's Jesus, redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

Galatians 3 · chapter mention

Because it is written, cursed is everyone who hung on a tree.

You see, it wasn't just that the blind man would no longer be seen as cursed.

Jesus actually came to take our curse upon him.

He ascended to heaven to intercede with the Father for you.

Someday He is coming back.

And everyone who has been able to open their spiritual eyes to the reality of who Jesus is, when he comes back, he will get.

And when you put your faith in Jesus, your spiritual eyes will be open, your eternity will be secured, your life will forever be changed.

You don't have to live under the curse of sin and suffering.

Jesus came and he took that curse for you.

And if you will follow after him, even the suffering in your life will do nothing but lead you deeper into the significance that he created you for.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we love you, and I thank you for every person listening to this.

And I pray that right now they will begin to truly think about whether or not they have ever put their faith in you.

I want to talk to those of you who are listening, and you know there has never been a moment in your life where you have believed in Jesus.

Believe that he is who he says that he is, God who came in human flesh to this earth, and that he's done what he says that he's done.

That he died on a cross to pay the price of the sin in your life that separated you from God.

That he was buried and rose again three days later, showing us that he has defeated everything, even death itself, that he ascended to heaven and is coming back for us.

If you simply believe that Jesus is who he says he is, that he has done what he says he's done, then right where you are, wherever you're watching this from, whatever you're doing, wherever you're at, I want to help you acknowledge that belief with a very simple prayer.

You can say these words out loud, or you can even say them in your head where God hears your thoughts.

Something like this Jesus, today I choose to believe in you.

I believe that you are God.

And I believe that you have saved me.

And I thank you for a new, eternal life.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Let me pray for you.

For all of those who just prayed that prayer, God, we celebrate with all the angels in heaven over another lost child coming home, over spiritually blinded eyes being opened today and eternities being changed.

We thank you.

We ask that you continue to use MetaCurch in a powerful way.

This movement of your people, we love you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Listen, some of you just made the most important decision, and I mean that, the single most important decision you'll ever make in your life.

The one decision that not only can change your life today, but will change your life in eternity.

And so we want to know that and we want to celebrate that with you.

And we're very excited because we have a way to celebrate that coming up on Sunday, September 27th from 5 to 7 p.m.

We're gonna do drive-by baptisms right here at the 151 saloon.

You can find out all about that, and you can get signed up at the link that we're gonna put in the live stream right now.

You can also get signed up by going to our website, clicking on connect, and then clicking clicking on baptisms.

Now, some of you are already believers, but you have little children, and because of the pandemic, you haven't had an opportunity to dedicate them and dedicate yourself to raising them up in the ways of the Lord.

And so that same evening, September 27th, from 5 to 7 p.m., we're gonna do drive-by baby dedications.

You guys can get signed up at the same link for that.

We wanna celebrate that with you.

And listen, the pandemic has pumped the brakes on a lot of things.

You guys know we're still not meeting in our venues, but this coronavirus cannot stop this movement.

We will still meet digitally, we will stream together and serve together, we will still baptize and we will still dedicate some babies.

Nothing can stop the movement of Jesus.

As always, keep up with us on social media.

You can find out what we're doing and how you can get involved.

And please, please, if you believe in this movement, help us fund it.

You can give online at metachurch.tv or by downloading the MetaCurch app.

I thank you guys for being with us today.

I love you and continue to be the movement.

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.