The Life You're Chasing | Shan Moyers

All right, church.

It is good to see all of you here at the Gilbert campus.

Great to have everybody at our other campuses.

And uh also good to have everyone online.

If you're a guest today, man, you came on a cool Sunday.

You walked in the door and uh you saw a bunch of pictures of kids that are in the lobby.

Those kids are in Kenya in Mittingoni on the coast, many of them, all of them up down in that coast area where our school is.

And uh today is a sponsorship Sunday.

Now, some of you uh walked in today and I had somebody come in at the eight o'clock service, brought a friend, and they were like, hey, today's a little bit different Sunday.

It's sponsorship Sunday, gonna be awesome, super cool, but not really a message.

No, guys, we got a message today.

Like, I'm gonna get after it, and uh, you're gonna get to Genesis 12 in just a second.

Um, but we do have an opportunity.

We've been working with Mission to Hope International, and we've got 638 kids that have been on a waiting list, and now they have the opportunity to jump into the school that we uh gave toward and put a new um wing on our school, three more floors, and 638 kids that get to start in January, and we want to sponsor those kids.

And I'll tell you a little bit more about that at the end of the service, but across all of our campuses.

Yeah, you can clap for that.

But the cool thing is, is we've we've got to get all 638 of those, which should be easy with five campuses across this valley.

So we got to get that done.

But then the neat thing is we've got over 3,000 names of kids there on the coast that are still waiting uh to get the opportunity.

Again, we'll talk about that.

Now, I did have a question um from somebody, a couple emails, because three years ago we jumped in with World Vision, and many of you sponsored kids through World Vision, and that's been great.

In Malawi, in a different part of Africa, um, a very remote portion, we sponsored 1,500 kids.

And so if you're a person who still sponsors, we have about a thousand kids still sponsored.

If you're doing that, man, thank you.

And we're still doing that.

I want to encourage you to continue.

Don't stop, keep continuing sponsoring for these children.

But one of the things we're doing moving forward is with Missions of Hope International, there in Kenya, what we have the opportunity to do is when we sponsor a child, you have the opportunity to actually go and see that child.

Malawi, we don't have that opportunity.

It's so remote, and there's we're continuing that sponsorship connection.

But from now on, what we're doing is we're jumping into a place, because I just believe this, I believe this with all my heart, is that we want to be in a place where there is ongoing connection and relationship, which means not only do you get to sponsor a child, send letters, have them send letters back, you actually get to go see a kid.

And so this last weekend, my my wife and I, we with our kids drove out to California.

We were going to a wedding, and on the way out, we were given a link kind of ahead of time of for us at our school, Mitt and Goney, um, to be able to sponsor some kids there.

And so we gave our sons opportunity to pick the kids.

And so we're driving out, and it's funny how you know, teenagers pick.

Like they, you know, it's either like names or how the kids look or whatever, different things.

And my boys picked these two boys by their names.

So we have we have Meeshak is one.

I was looking for like Shadrach and Abendigo, you know, the Old Testament names, but they didn't have those.

So Meeshach, and then we got one named Jake picked one named Jobon, and he was super excited about that.

But here's what happens is I get to go see them in October.

And then my boys, the plan is that they will go over with us and they will get to see them.

We will see their homes, we will work with them.

And we think about sponsorship and the idea if we get to help them, guys.

I'm telling you, that's why we say they help us, they challenge us as much or more than we get to help them because you go over on a trip and you see that and you see their joy and you see what they live amongst, the poverty, but still the relationship with God.

And what happens is you come home on a mission.

And so I want to encourage you, let's do that.

Let's get these kids sponsored.

And then you may have the opportunity, if you choose, to go with us to Kenya and to actually go on a trip and see those kids.

All right?

So let's jump in.

Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

We've been in a series.

It's called The Life You're Chasing.

We talked constantly about this idea that we're all chasing something.

But when it comes down to our life and our relationship with God, I think we're chasing something there too.

Like every single one of us would say, in our relationship with God, we just want something that is deeper, that feels more connected with Him.

Like I think when you hit your knees and you pray, and sometimes you pray in like dire circumstances, difficult circumstances, you want this feeling that you feel like God is hearing your prayers and they're not just bouncing off the ceiling.

Would you agree?

Like you wanna feel like when you read the Bible, that you begin to understand that the Spirit of God begins to do something in you, not just facts on a page, but begins to transform your life through what you're reading.

You want to feel like you have a sense of purpose that's about more than just your everyday life.

Like I think every single one of us, and we've gone through this series talking about this idea that if you're gonna find the life you're chasing, not just life in general, but your relationship with God, it comes from not being a church member, it comes from being a disciple, a person who follows closely after Jesus.

And we've just defined in this series what that looks like.

Three values that we have: Jesus first, people always made for more.

We've defined them.

And if you haven't been here before, you just kind of started coming.

I would encourage you to go back and watch these messages online because we've defined what those things mean.

And I sincerely believe with all of my heart, if you live more of those values and you live them sincerely toward God, you will find more of the connection you're looking for.

You will find more of the transformation that you're looking for.

You will find the life like Jesus describes in the Gospels, the abundant life in Christ.

Here's the tension.

I think every one of us would look at those values, and there's nothing that I've said over the last five weeks where you would go, I disagree with that.

Like I think most of you would say, Yeah, I agree with those values.

Jesus first.

We got to put Jesus first in our life.

People always, we need to love people like Jesus loves people, whether we agree with them, whether they're different than we are, we love people as Jesus loves people.

And we just want this belief that we are made for more than just our everyday existence.

The tension is you agree.

I think Christians all across America agree, and they would still say, many of you would still look at me and say, but Pastor, I'm not, I don't feel like I'm experiencing what I'm really chasing after and looking for in my relationship with God.

The peace that I'm after, the understanding that I'm after, the purpose that I'm after, the feeling of forgiveness or connection with God, something seems to be missing.

So what's the problem?

Let me just say it.

The problem's not God.

It's not God.

The problem is usually with us, I think, in as Christians in a Western culture, in a capitalistic society, where everything is kind of at the end of our fingertips, and many of you say, well, it's not the end of my fingertips, it's the end of somebody else's.

Well, if you looked at those pictures as you walked in the door, it's way better off for you here than it is for those kids.

You got just about everything in it, no matter what your economic situation is, it's different than 95% of the world.

But but what we would say is you look at this capitalistic Western mindset where there's no persecution that we really face compared to the rest of the world, we've bought into an underdeveloped idea and understanding of Christianity.

Oh, you can almost say it this way: almost a childish way of looking at our faith.

I mentioned I've got those two boys, 17 and 15.

They are learning at this part of stage of life the lessons you and I learned when we were younger.

Right?

Jake got his driver's license last year, and all of a sudden he believes he has freedom, right?

Got my driver's license, I can go anywhere I want, anytime I want.

No, no.

No, it's you know, it's helpful.

You get to go to the grocery store for us, you get to run your brother around, you do that.

That's really helpful.

But what you learn when you just get a little older and more mature in life is freedom, freedom is earned, right?

It's not just handed to you.

It is something that you earn, and I'm really grateful for that kid.

He's done a really good job with his freedom.

But it's earned over time where you show up, do what you say you're gonna do, and you develop trust.

It's the same thing with friendship.

When we're younger, we just have this idea that our friends are the people who are fun.

Right?

They're the ones who are fun and the ones who do what we want to do.

And then you grow up and you learn that real friends are the ones that show up in the difficult times, the ones that tell you the hard things even when it hurts.

And you realize that friendship is about what you give, not what you get.

That's the path to deeper understanding and a deeper payoff.

Same with pain.

What do we say?

No pain, no gain, right?

Kids, what do they do?

They avoid any.

My kids, when they were young, they would do anything and everything to avoid any kind of pain.

And that's why we got a value around this, this our house that is mowyers do hard things.

Because anything good in life, anything successful that they're gonna do in life, anything that has a bigger payoff in life has a little bit of pain or a lot of pain and discomfort associated with it.

Would you not agree?

Same thing with our faith.

In this culture that we live in, where everything's right at the end of our fingertips, where it's almost like we have developed, we have this underdeveloped, childish way of looking at faith, and that kind of faith doesn't have a payoff.

What kind of faith am I talking about?

Man, you could define, I think Christians in our country, in our culture, have bought into this idea of consumer Christianity.

Like that's how you could describe our faith.

And it is an underdeveloped way of looking at faith.

Consumer Christianity would be this: an approach to faith that treats church, worship, belief.

I would say a relationship with God the way a person treats a marketplace, shopping for what serves personal needs and preferences rather than submitting to something bigger than themselves or someone bigger than themselves.

See, consumer Christianity takes our faith and makes it, turns it into this way of trying to get anything and everything we can to get we can get from God to make our lives feel better.

Our prayers become a way.

If we pray more, if we read more, if we show up more, if we serve more, it's a way to say maybe God will bless me and I'll get what I am looking for.

You can tell a consumer Christian in three different characteristics.

Number one would be faith is organized around personal benefit.

The defining question, and I think all of us have, myself included, all of us have this to a degree.

The defining question for our lives would be, what am I getting out of this?

What am I getting out of the sermon?

What am I getting out of the worship?

What am I getting out of out of the kid?

My kids getting out of the kids program.

What am I getting out of this?

Instead of asking the question, God, what do you want from me?

Like what God, what are you asking of me as a follower of you?

What does love require?

What does a relationship with you require of me with other people?

The second thing would be this is church becomes a product.

Now, this is true.

This is interesting.

Church becomes a product.

People chop a shop for church.

We call it church shopping and church hopping, right?

People shop for churches the way they shop for a gym or a restaurant, and they leave reviews.

They do.

Just like you know, you may leave a review.

I mean, we get reviews and we got tons of five-star reviews out there on Google and stuff, but I did have a little fun, checked out some of our reviews.

I'll give you a few.

Somebody said, way too much singing.

Thought I was going to a church, not a concert.

And it was great, because it coupled down from that, it was like got rid of the traditional choir.

And I mean, I was like way, way back.

You can't get rid of these reviews, right?

I was like, so this one person says, way too much singing, the other says, not enough of my kind of singing, right?

How about this one?

If your members' driving is any reflection of your beliefs as a church, I would never want to go there.

If you got one of those bumper stickers, be careful, right?

Now, this one, some of you may not get because we used to do like a 4th of July deal way back, you know, do some fireworks, and a lot of people love that.

And then we um we haven't done that in a few years.

It says, actually, I've never been to your church, so I don't have an opinion.

But so I have no opinion, but I do have an opinion, right?

That's what they're saying.

But I really don't appreciate the random fireworks you shoot off for no apparent reason.

It freaks my dog out and it irritates my family.

Guys, we laugh, but it's a reality.

And what happens?

Consumer church.

You know, we start church shopping and hopping because as soon as the church doesn't meet my needs, what do we do?

We go look for another place that will meet my needs.

How many times have you met people where you say, Which church are you going to?

And they'll tell you the four churches they've been to in the last two years.

Man, where do we make this about more than just us?

Where do we make this about the Jesus who started the church and we are connected and we realize that a church, why are we all here?

Because we're imperfect people.

This church, every church, we're imperfect people that are about a perfect God who gave his life for us, and we're supposed to be serving him, and it's in the deeper payoff as when this doesn't be come just about you, it becomes about Jesus and how he wants us to relate to other people.

And the last one would be this comfort over cost.

Luke 9, 23, Jesus says, if anyone wants to be my disciple, they must deny themselves, pick up their cross daily, and follow me, which means that we give generously, which means that we serve, which means that we forgive our enemies because we have been forgiven.

And all that has this tendency in our culture to get edited out for a version of the gospel that affirms the life we already want to live.

And here's what I'm just saying today.

Man, my big concern is that kind of life has zero payoff for you, and it has zero impact in this valley.

God has placed you, and God wants to bless you, and he wants to give to you, and he wants to care for you, and he wants to give you better relationships, and he wants to give you the abundant life that he's promised, but he also wants you to be a part of something greater than yourself.

And if all we do is we come to a place like this and we we come just consuming, man, you're gonna be deeply disappointed because you're not gonna get what you're looking for, and nobody else will get what they're looking for because of you.

Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

We're going all the way back, not to the very beginning with Adam and creation and all of that.

We're going back to Abram, a guy who gets his name changed from Abram to Abraham.

God usually does that.

A lot of times you see in Old Testament or New Testament is when God calls someone to a new mission, he changes their name.

Well, in Genesis 12, this is the beginning.

Like, this is the beginning of you.

This is the beginning of all of us.

Like, meaning it goes all the way back to where God called a man named Abram, gave him a new name, Abraham, and gave him a mission to help God start a new people.

His people.

Abram was 75 years old, he had no children, he was married.

His only goal in life at the time was just to keep the family name going.

Just like consider, just continue, like living there with family.

And God calls him to leave and go to a place that God doesn't even tell him where it is.

Here's what it says.

Verse 1 The Lord said to Abram, Go from your country, your people, and your father's household to a land that I will show you.

I will make you into a great nation, and I will what?

Bless you.

I will make your name great, and you will be a what?

A blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

Very interesting.

God calls him.

Abraham is called in the Old Testament, he is called the father of our faith.

Why?

Because as I said, the people who would eventually become God's people were the Israelites.

It was a nation.

The nation started with a family, started with Abraham's family.

God calls him out, he and his wife Sarah calls them out.

They go to another place, and God begins this family.

Abraham and Sarah have Isaac.

Isaac has Jacob.

Jacob has the 12, has 12 sons who become the 12 tribes of Israel.

And then the line just keeps on going.

It goes on to Moses, and then it goes on to David, and then it goes through the prophets, and then it goes on eventually to Joseph from Nazareth, to Jesus, the Messiah.

To then all of you.

God shows up and he looks at Abraham and he says, Abraham, you're you're I'm gonna bless you.

And God does.

Like he blesses him, and it's not just with a family, he blesses them with possessions, he blesses, but then he goes on and he says, Abraham, then you are going to be a blessing.

And then all people on earth will be blessed through your line, which will lead to the Messiah, who will go to a cross, who will save people from their sins and create this thing, the church that will carry that message on.

Here's the problem with consumer Christians.

What we do is we read that passage and we stop with the top line.

We stop with the top line.

And what's the top line?

Top line right there is Genesis 12, 2.

It says, I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you.

And every one of us wants to hear that.

We're like, yeah, God, bring on the blessings.

Like, super grateful.

Thank you for salvation and thank you for grace and thank you for mercy.

And would you please answer my prayers?

And would you please provide for me?

And would you please take care of my family?

Would you bless, bless, bless, bless, bless?

And it's like we stop there and we never fully understand, get a deeper understanding of the bottom line of faith.

The bottom line of faith, like meaning the foundation of our faith.

If you want to find the life you're looking for faith-wise, it's right here.

You go on to the next part of the passage.

It says, I will make your name great, and you will be what?

A blessing.

And then you go on and you see, I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

Here's the problem with consumer Christianity.

What we think Christianity is, is if you could imagine right here, sitting on stage, right here, a five-gallon bucket.

This is the way most Christians live.

Five-gallon bucket, and we ask God, would you bless us?

And it's like God takes another five-gallon bucket, and what he does is he dumps that five gallons of water into that five-gallon bucket.

How much can a five-gallon bucket hold?

Man, you guys are good.

Five gallons, right?

Five gallons.

Can it hold any more?

If I take another five-gallon bucket, God takes another five-gallon of bucket bucket of blessing and tries to pour it in.

What happens?

It just overflows.

Okay, now, or you could say, well, overflowing blessing, that's good.

It overflows through me.

Hey, what you're basically saying, you got five gallons of blessing right there.

God can't put any more in.

It's just gonna hit you and spill all over the place, but it's he can't put any more inside of you.

And what God is saying is, He's saying, no, the bottom line of your faith is that you are blessed to be a blessing.

Meaning, you're not a five-gallon bucket that's just supposed to receive all the blessing of God, but never give anything out.

You're not supposed to be a bucket, you're supposed to be like a pipeline.

Well, you and I are supposed to be like a pipeline.

You take a pipeline, you put a hose in there, you put a fire hose in there, you put as much water, it'll take as much water as and as much blessing as you'll give it as long as it just keeps the flow going.

The bucket, what happens?

You take a five-gallon bucket and you leave it sitting there for two weeks, what happens?

It starts growing stuff in it.

That's the way a lot of Christians are, is what we get is we got this consumer Christianity.

God bless me, bless me, bless me.

And I pray when I need God's blessing, when I need something, not for a relationship with God.

I I go to church or read the Bible because I want something more from God, not just I want a relationship with Him and I want to be a part of what He's doing.

What happens is when you're that kind of Christian, a whole lot of things grow in your life like judgment and like legalism and like fear and like anxiety.

But God says if you will see your life like Abraham saw his life to be blessed, to be a blessing.

Abraham was not the Destination of the blessing.

He was the delivery system.

And that's the problem with most of us, is all we see is this faith thing, is that we are the destination of the blessing.

No, the greater payoff in life is when you and I realize that we join God in what He's doing.

He blesses us with salvation, with mercy and grace, but then all of a sudden we become this pipeline to the world where you are positioned in a neighborhood, in a family, in a workplace, in a school, in a church, in a in a gym, in any of those places, you become this pipeline of God's blessing through you to go to other people.

And it's not just in the book of Genesis.

Like you go all throughout the Old Testament and you see the same principle that you are blessed to be a blessing.

You are not blessed to accumulate, you are not blessed to consume, you are blessed to contribute to what God is actually doing.

You are blessed to be a blessing.

You go to Jesus, Mark chapter 10, verse 45.

Mark 10:45

Here's what it says.

He says, For even the Son of Man, like the one the prophecy was all about, Abraham, you will be a blessing to all people because your line will bring about the Messiah.

The Messiah gets here, and what does he say?

He says, For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to what?

Serve and to give.

To give his life as a ransom for many.

Man, my deep concern is this.

My deep concern is that we live in a we live in a culture that has its entire economy built around the assumption that everything exists for my consumption.

Everything exists for my benefit, and we've gotten so good at it, we've got so comfortable with it that we have taken that idea and we've infused our faith with it.

And Jesus says, no, no, no.

If you're gonna find your life, you gotta lose your life.

You gotta lose your life for my sake if you want to actually find it.

And what that takes is us to realize that yes, we have been blessed, but we have been blessed to be a blessing for someone else.

Thought for us.

Two questions.

I want to give you two questions just to make it practical, as you go out of here today, and and we'll get to some sponsorship stuff in a moment, but uh two questions.

The first question would be this is how am I blessed to be a blessing?

Like, how has God actually blessed you, and how should you be a blessing on his behalf to someone else?

Like, here's what rearranges our thinking.

Like when we start thinking this way, we start looking at our time as different.

Right now, we just live in a world where like, I don't have any time.

You are in control of your time.

And every single one of us has the opportunity to choose how we spend our time.

So that means if you have time that you give time to other people, how many of you are mentoring?

How many of you are volunteering?

How many of you are being there?

How many of you are doing that inside of our church?

And how many of you are consuming, which not trying to put anybody down, but trying to invite you to a deeper understanding of faith?

Same thing with our resources.

If you've been given resources, and again, you are, if you live in the United States of America, you are richer, you are wealthier than 95% of the world.

No matter what you make.

If you've been given to, God says that you honor him with your resources to place your trust in him, to trust in him, but you also give for the sake of other people that they could find the gospel.

Are you giving?

It's the same thing with forgiveness.

We've given given forgiveness, and we should give forgiveness to other people.

If we've been given salvation, it means we should share our faith.

But here's what we get.

First responders will say this.

There's this thing called the nine one, or there's this thing called the bystander effect.

They'll say, Man, people will not make it to the hospital in time.

People don't get the care that they need because somebody's standing there going, Well, somebody else should do it.

It's almost an epidemic of our faith.

Somebody else should do it.

Man, who has God blessed you to be a blessing to?

Second question would be this is who is waiting on the other side of what God has already blessed you with?

2021, my daughters and I went over to Kenya.

We got to go and see many of the places that you uh we've been talking about.

And and uh we have a school over on the coast in Mittangoni.

The school that my former church um supported was in the slums of Kenya.

It was of Nairobi, it was called uh Madoya.

And you can see pictures of my girls.

We had a blast uh going over there and and seeing these kids, and so that's Grace with her group and of kids, and and then you can see Maddie with uh another group of kids, and just super fun, super fun.

Grace and I got to be a part of the VBS.

Maddie was on like the Bible teaching team.

Grace and I were the recreation people, and we just had a blast.

And and we we got to be in the downstairs of this school, it was on the ground level where kids would come in and out every day of school, and we just got to play games, and we're like Dug Doug Goose and Dodgeball, and we're just having a blast, and they would go to their Bible times.

And but what was interesting is we would walk through these communities, and guys, it it's crazy.

I mean, the they they have so much joy there, but there's so much poverty.

I mean, these kids literally play in the streets in their sewage running in the streets, and it's it's terrible.

But what they do is is we have the opportunity we bring these kids into the school, and you see that they, through sponsorship and through what we get to do, they get an education, they get two meals a day, they get um economic empowerment, not just for them, but for their families.

They get health, not just for our medicine, not just for them, but for their families.

And literally, you're watching these families just rise up out of the poverty because of what Mohi's doing is incredible.

We're down there playing these games, and there are these bars, there's this fence that's across the bottom.

The whole bottom open room is open to the street, and there's these bars, a gate that opens where the kids can come in.

And we're having a blast with like 40 kids a class.

And I look down at this one standpoint and see this.

You can see that little girl does not have, she didn't have a green sweater on, the Mohi the kids, the uniform is a green sweater.

That little girl and about 10 other kids sat there just like this for three and a half hours the entire day, watching, looking through those those gates, going, I wish I was on the other side.

And here's the thing, Grace and I saw that the whole, and we just we're like, How do we get every kid out there in here?

Like, how do we, because we've been blessed, how do we get every kid out there on the other side of those walls, those gates, to be inside of here?

Guys, that's the whole idea of if you just think about our Christianity and our faith, God's placed you, and I want to challenge you this week.

I want to challenge you where you live, where you are in your neighborhood, where you are in your schools, where all I want to challenge you to be realize that you are blessed to be a blessing.

Who is it that God wants you to bless?

How do we start living our Christianity and our faith in this culture where we sacrifice for the sake of what God's doing, and that's where you find the payoff.

But I also want to just encourage you that what we've got out there in those lobbies right now, 638 kids that are on the outside of those walls going, how do I get on the inside?

And it's not just 638, that's the kids that we've opened up for the area in Mittangoni, but around that area, there's 3,000 names out there.

3,000 names of kids for$40 a month.

You know what$40 a month is?

It's like two and a half Starbucks, right?

I mean, it's that's how much coffee is.

That that's two movies and or like a you know, two movie tickets and a popcorn.

That that you do that all the time.

Some of you stop by and you get the same Starbucks every single morning.

Just sacrifice a few of those and you're fine.

How do we have the opportunity to go outside of ourselves and say, you know what?

We have the opportunity to help these kids experience a better life, know Jesus, experience eternity with him, but also transform their communities.

I want you to see just some video of our team over in Kenya working with these kids.

Check it out.

And all they need is an opportunity.

And what's really interesting is you go over to Kenya and you hang out with these kids and you walk into classrooms and you hear teachers talking to them, and they'll say, Hey, what do you guys want to be when you grow up?

And you know what these kids in Kenya and Mohi say?

Man, we want to be doctors, we want to be teachers, we want to be professors, we want to be, we want to be people that work, nurses that work in hospitals, that we want to be government officials.

They got big dreams because we work with a group of people, Mohi, that tell them, God, God has created you special.

You're his handiwork, and you've been given gifts, and there is nothing that you can't do for God.

And what we have the opportunity is help make those things happen.

That last little piece of the video, you saw the lady, it's actually Kaylin.

Kaylin is on our outreach team.

She she works with our outreach ministry, and then she uh actually works with me.

And Kaylin's awesome, and she sponsored a bunch of kids over there, and she got to go over and actually see it.

That was her little girl, and her little girl's name is Precious.

Isn't that awesome?

It's precious.

And all these kids are precious.

But what's really cool is you don't have to fly.

We'd love for you to fly, but you don't have to go all the way over to Nairobi and then on to McMintoni to sponsor a child.

You can do that right here.

And you can do that through out in the lobby, they'll help you do it.

And then there's a Mohi app, and you can actually see conversations right now.

You can see a picture of conversations that that Kaylin's had.

And if you look down at the bottom one, I love it.

Precious says to Kaylin, she says, I can't believe you came to Kenya just to see me.

Man, you just help a child feel special.

You help a child see what God could do in their life, and not only help that child, you help that child's family.

And so, in just a minute, here's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna send you all out to the lobby at whatever campus you're at.

I want, man, I'm just asking you, begging you, let's get all 638 of those kids sponsored, plus as many of those 3,000 as we can.

And then you sign up for a trip and go with us to go see these kids and let's see what God can do.

Because the dream is, is that what happens is 20 years from now, we look back and we see kids who are leading those schools, who are leading in the local government, who are doctors in hospitals, who are in the police departments, who are in the local government, who are teachers in the school, are kids that we sponsored, that it's changing, literally changing the economics and the spirituality of an area.

That's the goal.

I want to invite Wallace Kamal.

Wallace uh flew back from overseas.

If you give uh Wallace all of our campuses a hand.

Wallace and Mary, they lead uh Missions of Hope.

They're the ones that started it, and it is an incredible story.

Wallace, that first class of kids way back in the early 2000s, how many was how many kids was it?

Uh 50.

It was 50.

Guys of 32,000 kids across Kenya and then moving to Ethiopia and then moving to other countries.

It's incredible what God's doing, and it's incredible what these guys are doing and helping churches do to change the lives and change the area for Christ.

And I'm gonna ask Wallace to pray, and I'm telling you, you will catch the heart of Missions of Hope International uh by just hearing this guy pray.

And so I want to ask all of our campuses to bow our heads and Wallace, would you just pray for these kids and pray for us?

But pray for us that we would have the passion for prayer and spirituality that we see there uh through Mohi and what you guys have.

Thank you, thank you.

Let's pray.

The Lord our God, we thank you.

We thank you, Lord God Almighty, because of your love for us, oh God, and the blessings, oh God almighty, Father, that you have given to each and every one of us, oh God.

Thank you for the opportunity that we have, oh God Almighty, to be a blessing to the children in Meetangoni and other communities, our God and our Savior, that we can make a difference in the lives of these children.

We pray, our God and our savior, that even as we reach out to these communities, our God, that you use us as your feet and your hands, oh God Almighty.

Lord God of glory, that we will make a big, big difference in these lives, oh God, that these children may have the opportunity to have an education and to know you, our God.

And through these children, that we may be able to impact their families and their communities for the glory and honor of your holy name.

We I thank you, King of all glory, uh, because of uh Pastor Sean and the leadership of this church.

And I pray in the name of Jesus Christ that you give them wisdom, and Lord God Almighty, you will enable them, our God and our savior, even to feed this flock, our God.

And Lord God Almighty, Father, help them, oh God, even to be the people that you want them to be, oh God.

I thank you because of every family.

Thank you, Lord God Almighty, because of every member of this congregation, our God.

And I pray in the name of Jesus Christ that you help them to be uh fruitful, dear Lord, in everything that they do, our God, that they'll continue to be your light, oh God Almighty Father, to the world, allow them, our God, and even to be the salt of the earth.

And I pray in the name of Jesus Christ for them, oh God, for Lord God Almighty Father, you know their needs.

And I pray in the name of Jesus Christ that you will bless them, and Lord God, you meet them at the very point of their needs, according to the riches in glory in Christ Jesus our God.

I pray by your Holy Spirit, but Lord God Almighty, you will make them the people that you want them to be, oh God.

And they are going to be a blessing to many.

We thank you and we praise you, Lord God Almighty, because you always do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond what we are able to ask or even to imagine according to your power that is the Twak in us.

We thank you and we praise you.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.