Our Faith And Spiritual Growth Are A Community Affair

Come on up, Brenda.

That would bug me all morning if I didn't do that.

Good morning.

Welcome.

Good morning.

Welcome.

There's your mic.

Welcome, welcome to Christ Community Church.

Since my uh wife has still not come home, I thought I'd get me a nice lady to sit by me and help me this morning.

And so I'm very glad, Brenda, that you agreed to do it.

Reluctantly, but you agreed to do it.

So yeah.

Happy that y'all are here with us today.

Bless you for being with us.

This is the fourth Sunday of Lent.

And I hope that you are taking seriously this season of opportunity to give a little extra focus and attention on what the Lord Jesus has done for us.

And equally important, what He is doing and gonna do in our lives, in each of our lives.

Let me pray for us.

Lord, we long for you to reveal yourself to us today, both as a family and a community, but also to each of us individually.

Dear Holy Spirit, we long for you to move in our midst in unexplainable and unforgettable and irresistible ways, and to touch us down deep in the deepest areas of our lives.

God, we long for you to shine your light in the darkness and to touch us with your healing hand and to give us hope and faith and joy and peace and wisdom and courage.

Please, Lord, have mercy on us today as we open and study your word.

Let it go forth in power.

God, let it be understandable and applicable.

Please help Brenda and I to speak the truth.

And I pray that it would go deep in our hearts and take root and grow and flourish and produce a mighty harvest.

Lord, that is absolutely impossible apart from your promise that all things are possible through you.

And we pray that it would be so in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Don't forget to sign up for our Saturday morning Easter fun day the day before Easter.

And you'll go online, go to our website, and it'll tell you what to do so you can do that.

And that would be very helpful as we prepare and plan for everything.

I'm going to tell you a story that I don't even think my mom knows.

You might know, but we've never talked about it, which is which says a lot.

When I oh, this has been probably a month ago.

I was driving my grandson home from school, and uh I asked him every day how was school, and you know, he's a little boy.

Little boys have one answer for that.

Fine.

It was fine.

And uh and I said, and I always ask him, I said, uh, anybody get in trouble today?

And he said, Yes.

And I forgot the little dude's name that got in trouble.

He said, but so and so got in trouble.

And so just, I don't even know why, but it flew out of my mouth, well, did Miss Benettone give him a whooping?

His eyes got that bigger and he said, lad, teachers don't give kids whoopings.

And I said, Well, that's terrible that they don't.

Uh number one, uh, shame on our society, but that's another, that's for another day.

Um, but I said, Well, you know, when your lad was a little boy, teachers and principals gave kids whoopings.

He said, Did you get a whooping?

And I said, I periodically I did.

And I told him this story.

I don't even know what grade I was in.

I guess maybe the fourth grade, give or take.

Yeah, about there.

One day, some friends of mine and I snuck up in the balcony of the building where we uh went to school.

And the balcony looked over the auditorium, and uh I don't know what we were doing up there, it was no good, whatever it was, and we were not supposed to be up there.

And somebody in the group said to me, Larry, I dare you to jump off the balcony.

Well, I wasn't much on turning down a dare.

And so I said, All right, but I said, if I do it, you've got to do it.

And they all, oh, we'll all do it.

And what I'll never forget, there was one little boy in our group named Ham, Ham Brankstone.

And he said these words, and this was in the fourth grade, but I'll never forget it.

He said, Larry, if you do it first, we'll all do it.

So I did it.

What I did realize is that the not my teacher, but the headmaster, Shannon Robinson, was had walked into the auditorium looking for us right as I hit the ground.

Needless to say, no one else did it.

But they said, Larry Ray, if you'll do it first, we'll do it.

The end of the story is he said, Come on with me, Mr.

Ray.

You know, all my loyal friends, they disappeared like Casper.

You know, they were gone.

And uh he said, Come on, Mr.

Ray.

And he went into the office and he said, You got two choices.

Either I'm gonna call your mom and dad and tell them what you did, or you can come to school a few minutes early every day for next week, and I'm gonna give you two licks every morning for a week.

I took the licks.

I said, I'll be there Monday.

And uh, I don't know whether I whether he ever called or whether I ever said it.

Uh I wasn't much on telling the details of what went on in my life.

Uh, but anyway, I'll never forget Ham, my friend, saying the words, if you go first, then we'll do it.

Um last Sunday, uh, well, it was just me last Sunday, wasn't it?

Last Sunday, uh I talked about uh remembering, and one of the things that I talked about in remembering, the importance of remembering, was remembering people in our lives that God used to impact us in significant ways, to show us the way, to teach us things, build character in our lives, give us opportunities that we would not have had apart from them, but how important that is.

And so my question for us today that I'd like us to think about is how can we?

It's good, it's important that we remember these people, but I want to take it up a notch.

How can we become one of those people?

How can you and how can I become a person that other people would one day remember?

You know, that person impacted my life for good.

That person, I'm a better person, a better man, a better woman, a better Christian, a better mom or dad or husband or whatever it is.

I'm a better person because of the impact of that, that one, that person in my life.

And so I just wanted to, and there's a lot of answers to that question, but I want to just talk about one specific way that I'm convinced, if we choose to embrace this, it will have that kind of life-changing impact in the lives of other people.

And I was um I'm reading through my Bible.

Actually, I'm doing two different journeys, and one gets way ahead of the other one for some reasons.

Uh, and I'm I'm just read through the book of Ruth.

Literally, I read it, I think yesterday.

And uh it just, as I I guess because I was thinking about this, I just was thinking about how it's a story of three people.

Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz, and how each one of them profoundly impacted the lives of the other two.

Naomi profoundly impacted the life of Ruth, clearly, or she wouldn't have said, where you go, I'm going.

If you go to a foreign land, or for me it's a foreign land, for you it's not, but if you go home, I'm going with you.

Whatever you do, I'm clearly as grumpy and negative and bitter and discouraged as Naomi was, she's still, through all that muck, Naomi's life impacted Ruth profoundly.

Clearly, Ruth impacted Naomi.

That's the whole point of the book.

This little Moabite woman literally changed the destiny of Naomi and Naomi's people.

And then Boaz.

Boaz clearly impacted with great good the lives of Naomi and Ruth.

And so it's this story of these three people, unlikely people.

Nobody would have thought that this would have happened, but how each of them had such a huge impact on the lives of the other two.

And the Bible, you could say in one way, is the story or the biography of countless people who God used to impact the lives of others.

And I'm going to focus on one way that God did this.

And you could see it in the life of Boaz, Ruth, and Naomi.

But you could see it in the lives of so many others throughout the Bible, and that is that these people had a profound impact upon others because they made the simple decision to do what they knew was right.

They knew what the right thing was to do.

And they made the simple decision to just do it.

No fanfare, no look at me, no, let's get a committee together, I'm gonna go and sit down with a counselor and talk about my options.

They made the simple decision, I'm gonna do what I know is good, I'm gonna do what I know is right, and by doing that, they had a huge impact, a life-changing impact upon those around them.

So, Miss Brenda, I want to ask you a question.

Okay.

So they can hear you, because you're gonna say good stuff.

Um they don't want to miss it.

Um can you think of someone in your life that would fit my description just by their simple decision to do what was right, that had a huge impact upon your life?

We've not rehearsed it, so I mean I'm just I know I'm putting you on the spot.

And I ask you not to.

Okay, can you there you go?

Yeah, he said he put me on the spot and I asked him not to.

Yeah, well.

I don't obey very well.

Clearly, I don't obey very well.

Yes, I can think of several people who give me one.

One person in particular, do you want the story or just the person?

No, no, you can tell them the story, please.

One person in particular uh um who's now deceased, her name is Norbell Harrison.

When I was uh 13 years old, going through teenage stuff, um, followed, I'm I'm sure, what God told her to do by taking in a teenager and raising her.

And so at 13 I went to live with Norbel.

Wow, and that changed the trajectory of my life for good.

Had it not been for God placing her in my life and me in her life, um, I I don't know.

And I I know that God knows because he had already ordered my steps, but she was in that path, and at that time I didn't know that she was in my path, but she followed his direction in taking on a teenager who she didn't know very much about, and raising her to um the rest of adulthood and being a great mentor in my life, and so I she's the first person that comes to mind when you ask that question.

So a lady knew about you, knew about your situation, your life.

Yes, she saw something that she knew to be good and right and true, and she just simply obeyed, and through that obedience of taking you in and loving on you, she changed your life.

I think so.

Okay.

Thank you.

Surely every one of us could think of people like that.

No big show, but good chance nobody in the world knows about it, but the you and the person.

I was just thinking about people in the Bible who made the simple choice to do right, to do good.

They knew what to do, and they chose to do it, and how that impacted other people in such profound ways.

I think of Joseph.

You know, in Exodus 34, Moses or God says to Moses, through Moses to God's people, he says, he talks about that the sins of people will impact God's people to the third and fourth generation.

But that the faithfulness of God's people will impact God's people for a thousand generations.

As Moses wrote that down, surely he was thinking about the impact of Abraham in a negative way on Isaac and on Jacob and on Joseph.

Surely Moses was thinking about Jacob and his impact upon, or Isaac's impact in a negative way upon Jacob and Joseph and his brothers.

Surely Moses was thinking about Jacob and his impact upon his wives and his children and grandchildren.

You see the words that God spoke to Moses in Exodus 34 literally being fulfilled or illustrated before God even told that to Moses through the lives of the patriarchs.

But then you see the fulfillment of what God said.

One person, Joseph, he knew what was right.

He knew what to do with in relationship to Miss Potiphar.

He didn't need a counselor or a committee or, you know, go, you know, pray.

He knew what was right.

He knew what was right in that jail.

He knew what was right once he was promoted.

He knew what was right when his brothers came down to buy grain.

Joseph knew what was right.

And literally, for a thousand generations, what he did impacted the people of God.

It never hit me until just this very moment that that thousands of generations, I see that and I think I should as vertical.

But it could also be horizontal, could it not?

That I don't know, I just never thought about that before.

I think of Deborah.

I asked daughter read about Deborah.

Um, what what what about that lady?

What did she do that was significant?

You remember?

I think the the main thing she did that was significant was uh that she followed God and she knew what her job was.

Her job was to um tell Barack what to do, and she did that, whether he uh listened or not.

And it's funny you talked about Ruth earlier.

There were also three people in that story.

It was Deborah and JL as well as Barack.

And so Deborah followed um what God had asked her to do by being a judge, being a righteous judge and a prophetess, and asking Barack to do what God asked him to do.

And isn't that funny that out of the three people, two the the two people that really obeyed well the women were the two women.

That's right.

Isn't that funny?

Isn't that funny that the lady that God entrusted the gospel to tragically, Chuck, that's he said that's normal, and tragically that is the case so often.

But again, I'd uh Shirley wrote t when she first wrote that and told it to me, because I'm her guinea pig trying this stuff out.

I forgot a year or two, maybe a couple of years ago, she read, and I'd never thought of that for a moment in time.

An hour, four hours, I don't know.

The gospel was entrusted to one little lady who had spent much of her life being possessed by demons.

You you think about that, um I don't know.

I think that I think the when I read that about, in fact, this lesson flowed out of when I read about Deborah, and there's a line in Deborah's poem in chapter 5 that says this.

In the days of the judges, the warriors would not fight until Deborah arose for battle.

Got all these mighty warriors.

They're standing around with their finger in their ear, or worse, won't fight until this little lady says, Come on, let's go to battle.

Oh, okay, let's go.

Because one person decided, there was no, there was no confusion, there was no lack of clarity, there was no um what you now what did God say?

What are we what is what are what are my options?

No, no, no.

They knew exactly what God had said, they knew what was good and right and true, but one person had to make the decision.

Let's do it.

I'm gonna do right, I'm gonna do what I'm supposed to do regardless, and then when other people saw that.

We'll go to.

I think of David's mighty men.

One of my favorite chapters in the entire Bible is that in 2 Samuel chapter 23, where it lists David's mighty men by name.

2 Samuel 23 · chapter mention

One of the, and when I tell you, these dudes were bad to the bone people.

These were the baddest warriors that ever lived.

But at one point it says this David and his men, and it says, David and his men.

This includes David.

The battle got so tough that everybody ran away.

I'm assuming that included David.

But one guy, and his name was Eliezer.

And it says, Eliezer stood his ground, and when he did, the other men came back.

One guy stood his ground, and because he did, the other men are running away, and they look back and they go, where's Eliezer?

He's not coming.

He's standing and fighting, and they go, Well, Dad coming?

If he'll stand and fight, I'll stand and fight too.

I think of Elijah, you know the story in 1 Kings 18.

It's one of the most famous stories in the Bible on Mount Carmel.

All of Israel, or at least a large representation of the people of God, are on this mountain, and you've got the false prophets of Baal over here, and you've got Elijah over here.

And Elijah makes this statement.

If Baal is God, follow him.

If Yahweh is God, follow him.

But the people said nothing.

And the rest of the story is Elisha, Elijah, sorry, Elijah stood his ground, stood up, and declared, and long story, but he did what God told him to do.

And the next thing, once he did, it says, then the people declared, Yahweh is God.

Yahweh is God.

Because one man made a decision to do what was right, what he knew to be true, what he knew to be good, the rest of the people, well, dad gummit.

If he's going to do it, we can too.

I think of Thomas, one of the disciples.

Let's jump to the New Testament real quickly in John 11.

It's this odd story, but Jesus and the disciples had been down in southern Israel, Judea, and it had gotten really tense, and the religious leaders were ready to kill him.

But it wasn't the time.

And so Jesus led the disciples up to northern Israel, Galilee, to lower the tension briefly.

And at that point, Jesus hears the message.

Lazarus, his friend, Lazarus is in need.

I don't know that he'd heard he's dead yet or not.

I don't know whether he did he know he was dead yet.

He knew that he needed to go down and help his friend.

And he says, Come on, boys, we need to go back down south.

Lazarus needs me.

And the other disciples said, Well, Lord Jesus, the last time we were down there, they were ready to kill you.

That's why we came up here.

And Thomas, the Bible says this.

I'm sorry, in John 11, it says, Jesus said to the 12, let's go help Lazarus.

But the 12 said, The last time we were there, they tried to kill you.

But Thomas said, Let's go die with him.

And then they all rose up and went.

Do you see this?

All the other ten disciples, or eleven disciples, if you will, well, Jesus, let's not go back down there.

We dang near got killed just the last time we were there.

Why would we go down there?

But Thomas said, if Jesus is going to go down there and die, let's go too.

We're going to follow him.

Whatever he does, I'm going to do.

And then it says, the rest of the disciples followed as well.

And then finally, my favorite example is Peter.

In Luke 22, here's what Jesus says to Peter.

And remember, anytime the Bible uses a name twice, that's significant.

Anytime that a name is used twice, you need to really perk up.

So Jesus says, Peter, Peter.

Satan is asked to sift all of you.

It says you in your Bible, but it's plural.

Satan is asked to sift all of you as wheat.

But I have prayed for you, and that you is singular.

But I've prayed for you, Peter, that your faith won't fail.

And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.

Isn't that a great passage?

Jesus is saying, Peter, I need you.

You're going to mess up, you're going to stump your toe, you're going to fall down, you're going to mess up.

But here's the deal.

When you've worked through that, and you come out on the other side, I've got a job for you.

And that is, I need you to let your obedience, your fresh faith, your fresh courage, I need you to let that spread over into the lives of the rest of the disciples.

I'm going to, I could give them the direct courage and restoration and faith that I'm giving you, but that's not the way I'm going to do it this time.

I'm going to give you something fresh, you something mighty, you something great, and I want to use that in you to impact others.

And in all of these examples, do you see how God used the faith of one, the strength of one, the courage of one, the surrender of one, the obedience of one to impact many others, to create in them what God had created in the one.

And I, just for the sake of time, I'm not going to go into all these, but there's so many verses in the New Testament, specifically the epistles, where God addresses this, where the writers of the gospel or the writers of the New Testament address this idea that I want you to live a certain way, because if you will, it will have a significant impact upon others.

Let me give you one example.

Okay?

Hebrews 10.

Paul says, Hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.

So don't give up meeting together as some have done, but encourage one another for the day is coming.

The return of Christ is coming.

And that little phrase there, spur one another on.

When you hear that phrase, what comes to your mind?

Encouragement.

How have people done that for you?

Has there been someone maybe in in in this stage of your life where they are pretty effective at doing that with you?

There are lots of people at this stage in my life who are encouragers for me.

And sometimes like Deborah, I uh know that it's the voice of God telling me to do something.

And often I stand like a deer in headlights, like, God, is this really what you want me to do?

And I think I called Larry several months ago, just boo-hoo crying about a situation that now I know without a shadow of a doubt that God has told me to do this.

I feel like it's impossible, but I know that he's a big God.

And if he's a big God, this is a big task, but I know that he can handle it.

And um I know Lara probably thought I was crazy because I was just crying and saying, I know he told me to do it, but I loved you for letting me in on it.

I had talked with someone after I gotten the assignment from God.

I talked to someone and they kind of discouraged me.

So I was like, oh, well, maybe then that's when my faith started to waver.

So I would just like to say to you that there are lots of people who encourage me and who spur me on in this stage of my life.

And as I look out, you know who you are.

There's lots even in this congregation who just encourages me and sometimes don't even know that they're encouraging me, but just encourage me to fight on.

So thank you.

Just the very word spur.

I'm not to be quite honest with you, I did not do a word study on that word, but the the picture that comes to my mind is a you know, a horse.

Cowboys on a horse, they're riding down the road.

They're just the horse is just sort of.

There's some John Wayne coming back.

Of course, of course.

Well, I'm a Christian.

So uh, you know, I'm the horse is just sort of meandering along, going along, just minding his own business, you know.

And at some point, the cowboy says, it's time to move on down the road.

Let's go.

And he spurs that horse, and through the act of that simple act of one, it has a profound impact upon another.

I want to read one more verse to you.

Paul says in Hebrews 12, he Paul quotes a passage from Isaiah, and Paul does this a lot.

He will take a big passage or a big story in the Old Testament, and he'll only give you a few words.

He's not summarizing something just for the sake of summarizing it.

He's warning you, he's expecting you to go back and read the whole story.

You understand that?

When the New Testament mentions something in the Old Testament, they normally mention it in an abbreviated form.

That's not just because that's all they want you to know.

There's all kinds of stuff they want you to know, but they mention it so that we'll go back to the Old Testament and get the whole picture.

Well, this is a great example.

In Hebrews 12, Paul says this strengthen the feeble arms, steady the weak knees, and make level paths for other people.

That's all that Paul quotes.

And I want to read to you what Isaiah says in Isaiah 35.

Strengthen feeble arms, steady weak knees, say to those with fearful hearts, be strong, don't fear, your God will come and make right all wrongs and save you.

And then the blind will see, and the deaf will hear, and the lame will leap like a deer, and the mute will shout for joy, and water will gush forth in the wilderness, and streams will flow in the desert.

Do you see how the impact of one?

We can do this.

Come on! One person spurs others on, and God begins to do a mighty work in the lives of a multitude.

Literally, he takes that which would be described physically or metaphorically, take your pick, as a desert, and it becomes a place flowing with streams.

Because that's the power of one doing what is right, what they know is good, and other people watching it, considering it, and then emulating it.

Now I want to give you just a couple of examples in my life.

Um the first one that came to my mind was my dad.

Y'all have heard me tell many stories about my dad.

He was a, to say the least, a colorful figure.

We lived in Whitehaven, and that was a very unique time in Whitehaven.

Everybody in Whitehaven knew each other.

It was a little, almost like a little town.

And everybody pretty much in that town knew my dad.

I was, I guess I was already married, and I don't know where we were living, Lynchburg or in Texas.

I forgot now, but I was gone, I was out.

And my dad gets saved.

He he comes to a place where he accepts Jesus Christ as his savior.

He'd gone to church and, you know, he he'd done the deal, but there came a moment in my dad's life where he realized that he did not have a personal relationship with Christ.

And he accepted Christ as his savior.

And he declared, I now belong to God, I'm his child.

But because my dad didn't know any better, nobody had the wisdom to tell my dad, keep that to yourself.

Religion and Christianity is a private matter.

Don't share that with people.

You know, just just keep it under the radar, start going to church, start reading your Bible, start acting like a nice person, but that that's that's good.

That's that's all you gotta do.

Well, my dad roars up to the White Evan Country Club and he starts telling all of his reprobate friends that God had come to live in his life and that Jesus was his savior, and now he belonged to God.

And over the next few years, I'm not exaggerating, you can ask my mom, I cannot tell you how many people, men in particular, came to accept.

I'm talking about doctors and lawyers and very prominent, successful businessmen and investment brokers.

I'm not I'm talking about, you know, you understand, but my dad did not know any better than to tell people what Jesus had done in his life.

And through my dad accepting Christ as his savior, there were countless other people who became Christians as well.

People that would come up to me for years and they'd go, well, they they called me Little Larry.

Little Larry, your daddy, when he accepted Christ, he started talking to me about that, and I got saved too.

And I'm telling you, there were countless people who were, they they became Christians because my dad knew that he needed a savior and accepted Christ personally.

Um I had a lady in our in a church that I used to pastor, and I'll tell you, I mean, it doesn't matter, her name was Juanita Thomas, and I don't even know if she's still alive or not, but as she lives in Florida, and her husband was, when you say a rocket scientist, her husband was a bona fide uh NASA rocket scientist.

That's what he did for a living, was send rocket ships up into the outer space.

And uh I love them and they loved me.

And they started coming to our church, and over a couple of years, one day she came up to me and she said, I'm tired of you nagging me about reading the Bible through.

I've never done it, and I'm tired of hearing it.

And I said, Well, I'm not gonna stop telling you.

And she said, Okay, then I'm gonna start, I'm gonna do it.

She said, I've gone to church my entire life.

I got saved as a little child, but I've never read the Bible through in a year, and I'm gonna do it.

What I didn't realize, oh, a couple of months later, she came up to me and she said, I'm right on, you know, I'm right where I'm supposed to be, I'm reading through the Bible, and guess what?

I've got a group of 20 ladies, and we were the wives of 20 NASA scientists.

We're all retired now, and we live all over the country, but every morning, all 20 of us, I told them all that we're gonna all read the Bible through together, and we get on the phone.

They had some kind of a way, now this is a long time ago, but they had some way of getting on the phone all together, and they would tell each other what they read in the Bible, what they got out of their reading.

One lady said, I know what's right, I know what's good, I know what I'm supposed to do, and because she decided to do it, I saw Miss Juanita ten years later.

She looked at me and she said, We're still doing it every day.

Me and all my little NASA scientist wives, we're all still reading through the Bible every day together.

Is that not amazing?

One person decides to do right.

And everybody else is standing around with their finger in there.

Well, I guess if they do it, I'll do it too.

In people's lives, get saved, get changed, get transformed.

I'm not trying to put you or, well, I am too.

I don't mind putting you and Alan on the spot.

But I'd like for you to raise your hand if you have not been influenced to help people in need because of the life of Alan and Brenda.

I'd like to meet the person in this room that has not been influenced to do more to help people in need.

They don't toot their horn, they don't make big banners, they don't make a big show.

They just go through their daily life helping people in need, and it convicts the fire out of me.

I have quadrupled up on helping people in need through the decision that the two of you made at some point in your lives, long before I met either one of you, just to do good, to do right, to reach out and impact the lives of others that have not been so blessed to do something about that.

That makes me, that has made me want to do more and to do better.

I've got a friend down in Texas.

We're taking a mission trip down to Mexico in August to build two houses, and uh he he I've been nagging him for years.

I said, dude, you need to come on one of these mission trips, Chris Irvin.

I said, you need to go, you're a pastor, dude.

You you you don't have no business not going on mission trips.

You need, oh well, I'm I'm I'm doing stuff here.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

I'm doing stuff here.

And I said, well, that ain't enough.

Well, you need to come with me.

So finally, I don't know how many years ago, I shamed him into going with me.

He went on a mission trip with me.

And uh, I pretty much the same thing happened with Tim right back there, but that's a whole nother story.

I could have picked you instead of Chris.

But uh Chris came on this mission trip.

Well, buddy, he went back to Haiko, Texas, where Billy the Kid was killed.

And uh, at least that's what they say, and um.

He's been taking his friends on mission trips ever since.

And in August, Chris is bringing nine of his buddies.

He just goes and said, We're going on a mission trip.

Come on.

And because Chris decided to do right, to do good, to do what he knew he was supposed to do, now he's got all these other dudes in his little town going with him.

And I could go on and on and on.

I'll give you one more example.

And again, Colin, I'm I'm going to just pick on you right now.

But I don't know, it's been a couple of months ago.

Colin and I, I don't know whether we were at my house or at a restaurant, but we were chatting, and he just looked me in the face and he said, Larry, there's some areas in my life where I've really been struggling, and I need to get healthy.

I've not been healthy.

And uh I want you to pray for me.

I wanted to tell somebody about this, this decision I'm making, and I'm going to tell you my plan to get healthy.

And he's been faithful since then.

What he didn't realize was that when he when I got in my car, and I don't even know where, if we were at my house or in the car, I don't know where we were.

But when he left me, man, God started speaking to me about a couple of areas in my life where I wasn't healthy and I'm still not healthy.

God used your decision to do what you knew was right to have a profound impact on me to begin a process of trying to get healthy as well.

That's the point that I'm making.

This is not hard.

This isn't complex.

This isn't, oh, this is only for the, you know, no, no, no.

This is the simplest thing that I believe God could ever say to us.

But it's the simple truth that so many of us, we're waiting on somebody.

We're waiting on somebody to just do right.

To forgive, to help, to read the Bible, to come to church, to be better to your mate, to, I don't, I'm not, it could be a thousand things, but we're waiting on somebody to take the first step, to make the first move.

And when we do it or they do it, when somebody does it, then others around go, oh, I'll do that too.

Now we don't say we were waiting on somebody else, but that's exactly what we were doing.

Oswald Chambers says this if we will only yield to God, then God will embrace and impact all of those around us and meet their needs through our surrender.

God wants to use the faith, the courage, the obedience, the compassion, the desire to get healthy, the desire to help, the desire to grow.

God wants to use that desire in you to have a significant impact upon your mate, your kids, your grandkids, your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers, your spiritual family.

They're waiting.

They don't know they're waiting, but they're waiting for somebody to show them, oh, oh, that can help.

That matters, that's important, that's good.

And if you'll do it, I guess I can do it too.

I want us to think about that today.

Okay.

Bless you.

Am I going to get a lecture after this?

Dang, I hate lectures.

Ugh.

So annoying.

Give me that right there.

There we go.

All right.

We're going to take the Lord's Supper.

You know one of the purposes of the Lord's Supper.

Not the only purpose.

I'm not even saying the best purpose or the most important purpose, but one of the purposes of the Lord's Supper is for those that know God.

They know that they know that they know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that He came to this earth, He lived and died and was buried and danged if three days later He didn't rise from the grave.

They know that to be true, and they are trusting in that as their means of forgiveness and adoption and eternal life.

And they are given the opportunity in a visible way to do what Christopher's saying just a minute ago.

I have decided to follow Jesus.

I belong to him and I'm going to follow him.

I won't, I'm not doing it for a show, but I'm not afraid to show that he is my Savior.

And by coming and eating and drinking the symbols of his life, his body, his blood, his death, his salvation that he offers, by eating those things, I'm declaring, I'm reminding myself, and I'm declaring to others that Jesus is my Savior.

That's one of the purposes.

Just doing right, doing good, doing what we know we're supposed to do.

And the impact, oh, the impact that that can have on those that are standing there going, you know, maybe I ought to do that too.

So, Chuck and Nancy, I'm gonna let y'all go right over yonder.

And uh Linda, I'm gonna get you and Terry.

Y'all come up here.

You can bring your blanket if you want.

Y'all come over here and do this right here for me.

Okay?

Yeah, come right up here sort of close, a little closer.

Thank you.

Let's see here.

Yeah, y'all grab that those two right there.

You can eat bread and drink little open containers of juice or wine, or we've got the covered ones in the bowl if you'd rather have that.

Um I want to ask you to do something just before you come.

For the last 2,000 years, Christians, not so much of our, well, of my tradition, my spiritual traditions, but in many, many spiritual traditions, Christians will at times pray what they call the Jesus prayer.

It's a simple prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me as sinner.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

And they'll they'll just pray it.

And let that let those words, let that truth, let that thought just touch them and work through their being.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Do you believe that?

Do you believe he's the Lord, Jesus Christ?

Do you believe he's the Son of God?

Do you want mercy?

Would you like to leave here today with a fresh bucket of mercy?

Why do I need mercy?

Because I'm a sinner.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.

For I'm a sinner.

I'm a sinner.

If that is your desire, and that is your belief, and that is your need, then I invite you to come and eat and drink and rejoice that you have a savior.

A Savior that is the Son of God.

And He does offer mercy.

And He offers it.

Do you know He only offers it to special people?

God does not offer mercy to everybody, He only offers mercy to special, to a special group.

That group has a name.

They're called sinners.

But if you're in that group, I've got good news for you.

God offers you mercy, and He offers me mercy.

So, you come when you're ready.