How did we end up here? | Pastor Brandon Beals | Venture Church

I want to welcome you to Venture Church this morning.

If I've never met you before, I'm Brandon. I am

the lead pastor of the church. I want to welcome

those that are watching online also for online campus.

But if you are here in person, I've never met

you before.

I'd love the opportunity to say hi, shake your hand,

give you a fist bump. You can make fun of

me about being a Raider fan. I'll be hanging out

in the lobby after the service. Please come up, introduce

yourself to me. Love to have the opportunity to meet you.

Back to church Sunday.

You did good.

You're here. You're going to love the kids area. It's amazing.

We have root beer floats, all these things that Morgan

talked about. But most of all, we are starting a

brand new series through Ezra and Nehemiah. This series called

Ruins to Revival is going to take us all the

way through the month of November. So you better buckle up,

better get ready. I do want to encourage you. If

you miss the service, every one of the messages will

stand on their own, but I do encourage you, go back,

catch the ones you missed.

I think you're going to like this.

All the messages will build and it will build and

it will build and it will tell the story. But

what I want to do today is I want to

allow the foundation and answer a question. And I have

wondered this. Have you ever looked at the situation where

you are, maybe good, maybe bad, and asked yourself this question,

how in the world did I end up here?

Like some of you, you're at church. In this service, and.

If someone would have told you five years ago you'd

be at church in this service, you'd have said, ah,

no way.

How did you end up here?

Have you ever asked yourself that question? Sometimes it's great,

and you're like, I am so thankful that I'm where

I am.

How did I end up here?

Sometimes you're in a situation that is a bummer. and

you're like, how in the world did I end up here?

Have you ever asked yourself that question before? It's not

by some random chance that you ended up where you are.

It's usually a series of choices, a series of events,

some good, some bad, that brought you to the moment

and place where you are. I think it's healthy to

ask yourself, different seasons of your life, how did I

end up here? If you ended up here because of

a series of good decisions, mark it down, remember, and

be thankful. If you ended up where you are because

of a series of bad decisions, take a moment, be

honest with yourself, reflect, say, Jesus, forgive me.

And learn from it.

What you are going to discover is that is the

question that the Israelites asked themselves at the time of

the beginning of the book of Ezra.

Because they were not where they thought they'd be.

And I always imagine that if I lived back then

and I was one of those people that had grown

up with all the stories, been told all the promises

given to the people of Israel, and I saw the

point where we were, the first thing I'd ask is,

how did we end up here? And there is a

verse that I want to cover this entire series. It

is a verse that I'm challenging you to memorize today.

It is 2 Peter 3 9. And Peter made this statement.

He said, the Lord is not slow in keeping his promise,

as some understand slowness. Instead, God is patient with you,

not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to

to repentance. I want to ask everyone to do me

a favor. I want you to bow your heads. I

want you to close your eyes. I want you to

repeat this prayer after me. Everyone say, dear Jesus, speak

to my heart, change my life in Jesus name. Amen.

I have probably, I don't know, 25 Bibles.

I have Bibles in every possible location where I could

end up. And in every one of my Bibles, I

have 2 Peter 3, 9 underlined. And I always write

in the margin this statement. I always write, begins with

God's promise to Abraham. You see, Peter wrote these words

several thousand years ago. after God made a promise to Abraham.

You see, in 2000 BC, God made a promise to

this guy named Abraham. I'm gonna make this a little

bit convenient for you. I want you to grab your phones.

I have a timeline and a series of maps that

I will refer to. And the test for our media

team is if they can keep up with me when

I go back and forth on these. so it'll be fun.

But I've made it convenient for you to have access

to these resources. So grab your phone and tap the

seat in front of you, and those maps will come

up on your phone. I don't know exactly how they work,

but I was told they're there. And the first thing

I want to highlight is this lovely timeline. This was

the best thing I could find online. Okay, I know it's.

Not pretty, but it hits the high points of what

I want to talk about.

And everything starts right here with Abraham in 2000 BC.

God made him a promise. Here's what happens. We read

about it in Genesis 12 verse one. God said, Abraham,

I want you to leave everything that's familiar, everything that

you know. And I want you to go to this

place that I'm calling you that you've never been before.

And I want you to trust me, Abraham. And Abraham, if.

You're willing to obey me, if you're willing to trust me,

I will bless you. And not only will I bless you,

but I will bless your descendants. In fact, God promises

him later on that if he's obedient, his descendants will

be as plentiful.

As the sand on a seashore. That is a lot

of them.

And he said, not only will I bless you, and

your family moving forward, but I'll make you into a

great nation. And this great nation will bless every other

nation afterwards. That is my promise to you. How did

they end up here? Because we're going to begin at

the time of Ezra right here. And I want to

tell you, this was not a straight line. This is

about 1500 years from that promise to Abraham to this

spot right here.

And at the time we pick up.

The story of Ezra, Israel is basically non-existent. It has

basically been wiped off the planet. The palace is in ruins.

The temple is in ruins. The walls are in ruins.

Israel has been destroyed. Anything of value in the nation

of Israel had been stripped from the country and taken

to other countries around the world. And the Jewish people,

They'd been spread throughout all of the other nations in

the world. And in fact, the small remnant that was

left was exiled in Babylon for 70 years. Yet God said,

I'm going to make you a great nation. I'm going

to bless every other nation because of you. There's a

couple verses here. from the words of Paul that you

need to understand as you evaluate everything we're gonna learn

in Ezra and Nehemiah. What you're gonna discover is that

a lot of what happens in Ezra and Nehemiah applies

to you and I today. And these verses apply to

us too. The first one is Galatians 6, 7. Paul said,

don't be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps...

What he sows, whoever sows to please their flesh from

the flesh will reap destruction. Whoever sows to please their

spirit from the spirit will reap eternal life. Okay, have

that as an understanding over your life. What does it mean?

It means you reap what you sow, even though God

forgives you. Even though God restores you, you still have

the just.

Consequences of the actions of your life.

When you make a bad decision that has bad.

Results, you still end up dealing with those bad results.

It's just the simple principle of reaping and sowing. Why

did it take 1,500 years and then basically the opposite

of what God promised is what they're living in? That

is the result of reaping and sowing. If you sow destruction,

you will reap it. For example, don't be surprised if

you're a parent And you are convinced, my six year old,

they're gonna be a professional football player. So you pay

for every possible extra training and all these special leagues

and camps and they have to miss church often because

they gotta go to these camps and they can't miss

this and they can't miss that. So you raise your

kid outside of church because you think they're gonna be

a professional football player. Then you all of a sudden

wake up, they're 25, not a professional football player, might

I add, And they also want nothing to do with

their faith. And you'll be like, wow, I was a Christian.

We didn't raise them in church. You reap what you sow.

God is still with you, but it's the natural result

of what happens. You're gonna discover that where you are

right now didn't happen by accident. You are where you

are as the result of a lot of reaping and sowing.

You sowed, some of you, lots of good decisions. And

you are living a blessed life at this moment because

you've reaped the blessing of all those good decisions. I

deal with people all the time that are struggling in

their marriage. And they cannot figure out why their marriage

is on the brink of divorce. And I look back

at them and I say, well, you didn't start your

relationship the right way. You didn't make the right decisions

living up to getting married, and now you're shocked that

marriage was tough?

Like this is reaping and sowing.

And honestly, whenever this happens to anybody, they always look

at me as the pastor and want me to explain

why God, this loving God, would ever let them be

in this situation. And so they throw their hands up

and they're like, God must not love me. There it is.

Does God even love me because of what I'm going through?

That is the second verse I want you to understand.

So the first principle is the principle of reaping and sowing.

You live that your whole life. Nothing exempts you from

the principle of reaping and sowing.

You're just stuck. It's life. But does God love you

even when you are reaping the result of some really

bad decisions? Yes. Well, here's the answer to that. That

is Romans 8.35. This is Paul again. Paul said, can

anything ever separate us from Christ's love?

Does it mean he no longer.

Loves us if we have trouble or calamity or are persecuted?

or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death.

You know how often I hear this from people? They're like,

I'm going through trouble. God, does he love me? There

is nothing that can separate you from his love. Paul

makes it clear. He says, no, despite all these things,

you're gonna deal with a bad economy. You're gonna have trouble.

Buying a house because interest rates are high and housing

prices are high and we have a tenuous job market

and we live in a region where there's lots of

political friction and all of these things are just part

of life, but because you're living in the middle of them,

does it mean.

God doesn't love you? Paul says, no, despite.

All these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ who

loves us. And then Paul makes this incredible statement. He said,

I am convinced. Now, when Paul tells you he's convinced,

you should listen because you think your life is a bummer.

Let me tell you about his. He was shipwrecked multiple times.

He got stoned. He got bit by a poisonous snake.

He was thrown in prison multiple times. Paul brags that

he was beaten with rods on three separate occasions. You

haven't been beaten with a rod once, even though you

probably deserved it. So Paul is saying, in spite of

all the crud I've dealt with, I am convinced that

nothing can separate me from God's love. Neither death nor

life neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today

nor our worries about tomorrow. Not even the powers of

hell can separate us from God's love. No power in

the sky above or in the earth below.

Indeed, nothing in all of creation.

Will ever be able to separate us from the love

of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

So in spite of what you're going through, God still

loves you.

You might be smack.

Dab in the middle of reaping the consequences of bad decisions,

but God still loves you.

His promises are still there for you.

Now, God is not slow in keeping his promise as

we understand slowness. God is instead patient with us because

he doesn't want anyone to perish, but he wants everyone

to receive eternal life. Now, you have the basic understanding

of the verses that will cover this entire series. God

made a promise to Abraham, but time after time again,

the people of Israel chose their own way. They sowed

their flesh and they reaped destruction over and over again.

It was not a straight line for them at all.

It veered back and forth. The whole time though, God's

promise is still true. God never left them. He never

forsook them ever. The Bible tells the story of the

creation of the world starting with the sin of Adam

and its consequences, to God's eventual plan of salvation for mankind.

You see, God's plan and his fulfillment of that promise

goes from Adam to Noah to Abraham to the nation

of Israel to Jesus to eventually the apostles and then

finally to us, the church. And to the eventual return

of Jesus. The Bible addresses all of these events in

an accurate historical way. But the Bible doesn't tell us

everything that was happening in the world. You see, while

all of these events are happening to the Jewish people,

there were other nations that were rising up on the

world stage. There were other incredibly significant events, powerful people,

things that were happening around the world. The Bible isn't

saying those events are not important.

The Bible isn't telling that story.

The Bible is telling the story of the salvation of

man through Jesus Christ, who was a Jewish man. So

it's telling us that story, but all these other events

around the world are taking place.

Scholars refer to the story.

Of the sin of man all the way to the

return of Christ as the golden thread. Starts with creation

all the way to Jesus. all the way to Jesus'

eventual return. All those other events that happened, the Bible

doesn't worry itself with those events. So a lot of

those events actually impact this timeline. And throughout this series,

we'll tell you things that were happening around the world

that the Bible doesn't address, but were happening historically during

that time. All right, is everybody with me? Okay, let's

dive in. God makes a promise to Abraham at about

2000 BC. Eventually, you read the book of Genesis. By

the end of Genesis, we read that there are now

about 70 Jewish people who are living in Egypt. That's

the end of Genesis. I did a series through the

book of Genesis a couple years ago, and I told

you this when I preached that sermon.

I said, 70 is not a nation.

I don't know what the people of Israel thought, the

Jewish people thought, but God promised them through Abraham that

they'd be a nation. And now there's 70 that are

living as strangers in Egypt, the end of Genesis.

By the end of Exodus.

These 70 have grown into over a million and are

now allowed to leave Egypt and enter into the promised land,

but they end up wandering in the wilderness. for 40 years.

That's how Exodus ends.

At the time of Joshua, by the way, we did

a series on Exodus 2. We also did a series

on Joshua where they finally enter into the promised land.

So they're beginning to see the fulfillment hundreds of years

after God made a promise to Abraham. Church, God is

not slow in keeping his promise as some understand slowness.

He is patient with you and I, not wanting anyone

to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. It wasn't

a straight line because people kept screwing up and they

would screw up and reap what they sowed and it

would look like God had abandoned them. In this time,

there would be times they would worship false gods and

God would warn them. He'd say, knock it off or

I'm gonna let your enemies conquer you. And they'd say,

you won't do it. So they keep worshiping false gods.

And then another nation would, the Hittites would come in

and destroy them. The Sumerians would, it just happened over

and over and over again. Reaping and sowing. But God

is always true to keep his promise. So eventually, they

enter into the promised land. Let it be the first map.

Pop up the first map. Let's see. We didn't do

the maps.

There we go.

This is The 12 tribes of Israel have finally entered

into the promised land.

Each one of the tribes has a leader.

For this season, they were governed by a leader of

a different tribe. They would come together, meet together, make

mutual decisions. They wanted to honor God with their lives.

But this is Israel at the time of the 12

tribes of Israel in the book of Joshua. Are you

with me? This goes on for 400 years. This is

known as the period of the judges. I have also done,

on two separate occasions, a sermon series through the book

of Judges. Now, the time of Judges, God was trying

to teach the people.

Of Israel, you're different.

Every other nation has a king, but I want to

be your king. I want you to trust me that

I'll provide for you. Trust me that I'll defend you.

I want you to put your trust and affection in me.

This is during the 400 year period of the judges. Well,

nations would rise up against Israel and what God would

do is he would raise up a judge and that

judge would lead. The Israelite armies would rally and unify

the 12 tribes and they would defend themselves against their enemy.

Story of Gideon, the story of Samson, the story of Deborah,

the story of Jephthah, these amazing biblical stories that you

are familiar with all happened in the period.

Of the judges.

And it ends 400 years in that period with Samuel

being the last judge. Now, I sometimes love to refer

to science The second law of thermodynamics says this, that

anything left to itself will tend to chaos. And that's

what happened over that 400 year period. People didn't have

a ruler. You know what it's like just in your

own faith, how you serve God and then you forget

about God back and forth.

And they frequently would forget about God.

The last verse in all of Judges, Judges 21, 25 says,

in those days, Israel had no king and everyone.

Did as they saw fit.

So the people of Israel, those 12 tribes, saw the

other nations around the world and were envious of those nations.

They were like, they have a king. We want a king.

We want a king with a crown. We want a

king who sits on a throne. We want a king

who lives in a palace. We wanted a king to

be our leader, to lead us into battle, to judge

our affairs. So the Israelites demanded a king. And for

a while, God kept saying, but I want to be

your king. You don't need a king. You don't need

to be like those other nations. And then they demanded,

give us a king. And that's how the book of

Samuel begins. First Samuel chapter eight, verse five, the elders

of the 12 tribes came to Samuel and they said, Samuel,

you're old, but your sons don't follow your ways. Samuel's

sons were terrible. And Samuel was the last judge. He says,

now appoint a king to lead us such as all

the other nations have. Years ago when I preached on this,

I told you, be careful what you wish for because

you just might get it. So go back to this.

Oh, you got it. Good job.

So this begins the United Kingdom of Israel. So remember

there were those 12 tribes. Now it's one kingdom united

under King Saul.

Let's see that map.

So this is Israel at the time of, next one,

next map. Israel at the time of Saul. I didn't

prep them on this. Let's see if they get it.

Should be the next map. Is that the only map

we have?

Oh, there it is. I told him to go into

AI and make it all the same color, but okay,

now I'm falling. Okay, so everything that's colored is the

kingdom of salt. So this was Israel for 40 years

under Saul. Eventually Saul dies and David becomes king. We

know about David. David is the king that Israel is

most proud of. He's the king they talk about the most.

The Bible says a lot about King David. In fact,

David is so popular today that they have hotels in

Israel named after David, streets named after David. But this

is Israel, so look at it this way, all the

colored part, this is Israel under the kingdom of David.

So it's same. So the green part, that is the

kingdom of Israel under David, the green part. Okay, eventually

David dies, passes the kingdom onto his son after 40 years,

his son Solomon. We did a series through Solomon at

the beginning of the year. You remember Solomon came in,

Israel was at its peak. Solomon becomes the wealthiest, most intelligent,

most influential, most militarily strong king in Israel's history. And

so Solomon grows Israel's influence to this. So it's even larger. Again,

it's the green area. So the green area is the

kingdom under Solomon. So Solomon expands it. The problem is

reaping and sowing. God kept coming to Solomon and saying, Solomon,

stop worshiping foreign gods. stop giving in to your flesh

and indulging your flesh. Solomon, if you don't knock it off,

I'm going to divide this nation. He said, but Solomon,

if you'll obey me, if you'll serve me, all of

your descendants, you will always have a king on the

throne of your descendants if you serve me. But we know,

Solomon would make some good choices and old habits die hard.

Solomon would go back into his thousand wives and concubine.

And Solomon lived like this extravagant. He indulged everything. Solomon

even tells us that he denied himself nothing his eyes desired.

He was a king.

Who lived in opulence and absolute indulgence. And as a result,

one year after his death, God divides the nation of Israel.

Solomon's son, Rehoboam, wanted to implement taxes against all of

the 12 tribes. The northern 10 tribes rebelled, made a

guy by the name of Jeroboam their king, and Rehoboam

was the king of the two southern tribes. So here

is the divided kingdom. So purple, the northern kingdom, southern kingdom, green.

Are you kind of seeing how this is evolving? And

the northern kingdom is known as Israel. The southern kingdom

is known as Judah. This begins the period of the

divided kingdom. Go back to the timeline. You are doing amazing,

whoever's up there. So right here, everything's divided.

Northern, southern. This lasts for 200 years.

200 years, the northern and southern kingdoms are divided. We

read about this in 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and

2 Samuel, the Chronicles. You know why those books are

so confusing? Because there's so many kings. You can't figure

out what is Judah, what is Israel, who's the king

of this and who's the king of that. Over these

200 years, the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom both

had 20 different kings. But the same thing happened over

and over again. Sometimes they had good kings and they

reaped what they sowed. But often they had bad kings

and they reaped what they sowed. And God kept saying,

you should have no other gods before me. If you

don't stop this behavior, I'm going to let your enemies

conquer you. And while this is going on, remember I

told you there were other things happening in the world.

And the rise of the Assyrian Empire takes place. We

know a little bit about the Assyrian Empire from the

book of Jonah.

I did a series through Jonah. You know the story

of Jonah.

God tells Jonah, go to Nineveh to spare the people

of Nineveh. Why didn't Jonah want to go to Nineveh?

Because.

The people in Nineveh were Assyrian and the Assyrians were

the powerful nation in the world that was conquering all

the smaller nations and Jonah wanted nothing to do with them.

So he ran, gets swallowed by a whale, eventually gets

vomited onto dry land. He goes to Nineveh and he

spares Nineveh and guess what happens next?

Eventually in 721 BC, so now we are.

About 1300 years since God made a promise to Abraham,

the Assyrians conquer the northern kingdom of Israel.

They conquer Israel.

They take all of the people of Israel and they

bring them back to all the countries around the world.

Go back to the map, but show the map of

the Assyrian empire. I want you to see how large

it was. Please let us have that one.

Do we have that one?

There it is. So here is, so this is like Israel,

Judah down here, all of this becomes the Assyrian empire.

So the Israelites get stripped from the Northern kingdom and

they get spread throughout all of this empire. And the

Assyrians had a strategy whenever they conquered a country, they

would grab the people and involve them fully in their culture.

They would encourage them to intermarry their people. So years

go by. In fact, about 50 years passes. They have

the Israelites who, by the way, this group of Israelites.

Is known as the lost tribe of Israel.

And that's because the Assyrians did such a good job

spreading them out around the world that they had become

acclimated into the.

Culture of that world.

Think of it this way. We have a Ukrainian service

in the afternoon. And our Ukrainian service, the whole service

is in Ukrainian. But one of the things they love

about the relationship they have with venture is that their

teenagers and their children get to be involved in our

youth and children's ministry. Because even though they migrated from

the Ukraine, their kids are very American. And by the

time their kids have kids, they are fully acclimated. into

the American culture. So think of that with Assyria. That

is what Assyria was trying to do to conquer all

of these different nations. Go back to the timeline. While

all this is going on, The southern tribe of Israel

is still at war with all their nations. God is

constantly warning them, stop serving false gods. You will reap

what you sow. They keep not listening. While all this

is going on, the Babylonian empire rises to world power.

Pop up the Babylonian empire. This is the Babylonian empire

at its peak. So the Babylonian empire basically is huge.

And in 612 BC, the Babylonians conquer the Assyrian capital

of Nineveh.

So now they are the world power. Go back to

the timeline.

Isn't this good? I dress this way today to put

on my official professor outfit. But about 612 BC, the

Babylonians conquer the Assyrians. And in 586 BC, under King Nebuchadnezzar,

The Babylonians begin the first of three sieges against the

southern kingdom of Judah. And they conquer all of Israel.

But the Babylonians had a different strategy than the Assyrians.

The Babylonians at first only took the leaders. They took

the sharpest young men and women. They took the most

affluent people. They took the most intelligent people and they

brought them back to Babylon and they trained them in

the ways of the Babylonians. We read in the book

of Daniel, which by the way, I've done.

A series on. Have you noticed I've taught you on

all of these things over the years?

That they were seduced with the wealth and opulence of

being near the palace in Babylon. to win over the

hearts of the leaders of the community. But there was

still a small remnant that lived in the southern part

of Judah. And the king of Judah kept being a

pain to Nebuchadnezzar. So Nebuchadnezzar finally thought, it's time to

wipe these people off the earth. So the third siege

we read about in 2 Kings 25 says, If you

have your Bible, go ahead and turn there. I'm going

to read this, then we're done. The next week, Di

gets to pick it up and take you all the

way to the beginning of Ezra. 2 Kings 25 verse

2 Kings 25:8

8 says, On the seventh day of the fifth month

in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, the

commander of the imperial guard and official of the king

of Babylon came to Jerusalem.

He set fire to the temple of the Lord.

Do you guys remember that Solomon series? Solomon spends all

that money on that temple. Billions in modern dollars on

that temple. The Babylonians came.

In, burned it to the ground. The royal palace.

We showed you pictures of what the palace looked like

under Solomon. He built a palace that was the envy

of every nation around the known world. The Babylonians made

it rubble. All the houses of Jerusalem, every important building,

Nebuchadnezzar burned to the ground. Every building of any sort

of importance in Jerusalem burned.

He destroyed, made it rubble.

The whole Babylonian army, under the commander of the imperial guard,

broke down the walls around Jerusalem. So the walls that

protected the city, just because they could, they destroyed every

one of those. Nebuchadnezzar, I can't pronounce that guy's name,

so I'm gonna skip it. The commander of the guard said,

carried into exile the people who remained in the city,

along with the rest of the populace, those who deserted

to the king of Babylon. So go back to the timeline.

This begins, so everyone that was left in Israel got

kidnapped and taken to Babylon. And they lived in Babylon

for 70 years. Bible tells us this, that the commander

left behind some of the poorest people of the land

to work the vineyards in the fields. The only people

that were left in Israel were the poorest, broken, beaten

down people simply there to take care of the farmland.

But God made a promise.

1500 years beforehand that if Abraham was obedient God would

make his descendants like the sands of the seashore. He

would make his descendants as numerous as the stars in

the sky, that he would make them.

A great nation. Is this a great nation?

There's an entire 10 tribes lost throughout the world, assimilated

into other countries of the world. The final remnant gets

drugged to Babylon and is there for 70 years.

The only people that are left are.

Some of the homeless people.

But God made a promise.

God is not slow in keeping his promises, as some

understand slowness. He's patient with you and I, not wanting

anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

God had a plan. I wonder, in the 70 years.

That they lived in Babylon, they probably had their grandparents

tell them stories.

Well, there was a promise that God made to Abraham.

And they're looking around, Grandpa, come on. If that's the case,

how did we end up here?

Man, their great-grandparents would tell them stories and they'd be like.

Grandma, does God even.

Notice us anymore?

Does God care?

Paul reminds us, there's nothing that can separate us from

the love of God. If God made a promise, he

will always fulfill his promise. Next week, Di's gonna pick

it up in Daniel chapter five, which tells the story

when all of this begins to change. And you get

reminded that God never leaves us, that he never forsakes us,

that even though we might be in the middle of

reaping what we're sowing, he still loves us.

He still has a plan for us.

And his promise for us, we can hold on to,

even in spite of ourselves. I wanna ask everybody, bow

your heads, close your eyes. If you're here today and

you don't know Jesus, you might be watching online, but

today you've heard the story of a God who keeps

his promise, a God that loves in spite of our mistakes,

and you were thinking, that is the Jesus that I

wanna serve. If you're here today and you wanna give

your life to Jesus, you wanna begin the journey of

serving him, I'm gonna count to three.

When I say three, I want you to raise your hand.

I also know that there are some of you You've

gone to church, you've prayed prayers, but if you were honest,

you'd have to admit you are far from God at

this moment. When you want to say, today, Brandon, I

want to make sure that I leave right with Jesus.

If that's you, when I say three, I want you

to raise your hand. So if you're here, you do

not know Jesus, but you want to. Or you're here,

you've fallen away, and you want to leave knowing you

are right with him.

When I say three, I want you to raise your hand.

Here I go.

One. Two. Three. Raise your hand now, three. Keep your

hands up, I see them. On the floor, I see

you in the balcony. You can all put your hands down,

thank you. Can I have everybody stand up on your feet?

I'm gonna invite everyone that's here, on the floor, in

the balcony, watching online, I'm gonna invite you to pray

a prayer. But I want everyone to pray this prayer,

but specifically for all of you that raised your hands,

there's probably 20 of you. If you pray this and

you mean this, you leave this place knowing you are

right with Jesus. So I wanna ask everybody to bow

your heads, close your eyes. Everybody that's here today, repeat

after me. Everyone say, dear Jesus, I stand before you today.

I admit I've made mistakes, but today I ask you

to forgive me I invite you to come into my

life and to change me. I choose from this day

forward to serve you with my life. Thank you for

forgiving me and for saving me. In Jesus' name, amen.