“Why Are We Here?”

The kids' connection.

If you guys want to make your way that way, why don't we pray?

Father God, this morning we ask that you would be our vision.

You would be our ruler over all.

And our personal lives and the life here at First Baptist Church in Pentwater, Father.

I pray that today you would move through this space.

We know you have a plan for today, and we pray your Holy Spirit would draw us near to you.

You'd help us to not be distracted.

But Father, we would keep the main thing, the main thing.

We keep our eyes on you.

We could truly say you are our vision and you are a ruler of all in our lives.

We thank you for this morning and what you're going to do.

And we're excited for what you have planned for this morning.

And all God's people said.

Amen.

I just want to say if anyone's struggling, I got thumbs up here.

I know it's going to be a hard service to get through.

It was interesting coming here this morning.

I could still smell chili all throughout the church.

It was quite the experience.

And if you miss it, don't worry.

There's going to be a lot more fun to be had here at our church.

We love building community, building relationships with one another, and just having a good time as a church.

And you're probably wondering why am I up here today?

You probably got your bulletin that says installation service.

This is the day where I'm supposed to be installed because, like I said earlier, we got 100% vote, and we're praising God for that.

And uh my father-in-law was going to come and speak.

But my father-in-law uh texted me 3:50 in the morning, uh Saturday morning, and said he got rushed to the ER.

He had some massive kidney stones he had to get removed, and it was really, he was really struggling.

And so they transferred him from the Zealand Hospital to Butterworth.

He got the surgery done, and he just said, I got stents in me, I can't really walk.

And so I said, Oh, this is gonna be interesting.

Are you still coming?

And he's like, No.

So here we are.

So uh, yeah, been up late trying to put a message together for this, and I started thinking, like, what could we talk about knowing that my father-in-law is not gonna be with us today?

And I thought to myself, well, if I do my own installation service, this is gonna get really awkward really quick.

Telling how fortunate you are to have me as your pastor and all that.

That's just a little strange, you know.

And so I'm thinking we're gonna punt the installation service.

Doesn't mean we haven't been voted in.

We have been 100% voted in, and so we got a cake for it, and we're gonna celebrate.

Yes, praise God.

Stay tuned.

I'm not sure when it's gonna happen, but I'm hoping that he will be healed by next Sunday.

We'll see what happens, though.

If not, we'll continue our Philippians series, but I'm hoping that he can come because he was really excited to share with us from God's word and give us a charge as a family and also to the church as well.

But it made me ask the question this morning: why are we here?

You know, it made me think, you know, could we go back in our Philippians series or could we talk about as a church, why are we here?

You think about that.

Why does First Baptist exist here in Pentwater?

Why are we here?

What are we trying to accomplish as a church?

What kind of church do we want to become?

If Pentwater Baptist left Pentwater, would anybody know?

Would surrounding communities know?

Why are we here?

It's a question because a church can be extremely busy.

I mean, we got chili cook-offs, trunk or treat, we have all these events that we try to do throughout the year.

But why are we ultimately here?

You gotta go back to that question, is why?

And like I said earlier, the enemy has only come to steal, kill, and destroy.

And as I've gotten to know the enemy, I've noticed he loves to distract us all.

Did you hear what Susie said?

Did you hear what George did?

Did you hear this and that?

And we get distracted from the mission, or we look at different things in life and we just think, okay, this is the main thing, and it's not even close to becoming the main thing.

The enemy wants to distract us.

He wants to divide us as a church.

We can have programs which are great.

We can have meetings, we can have music, we can have classes, events, and lots of food events, right?

We can have all those things, but miss the main reason of why we are here.

And so rather than beginning with my ideas, our ideas, I want us to begin with Jesus.

You see, in the book of Philippians, that whole book shouts one name, Jesus.

And seeing what Jesus had done for all of us, and how we are to take the example of what Jesus did for us as well.

And so I want us to open our Bibles if you have them to Matthew 22.

We're going to be kind of jumping around from Matthew 22 to Matthew 28 and just looking at these passages and hearing from the words of Jesus and what he has for us this morning.

But when the Pharisees, in verse 34, but when the Pharisees heard they had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.

Typical lawyer, amen.

They like to ask those questions, Phil.

Teacher, one of our lawyers, teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?

And he said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your mind.

This is the great and first commandment.

And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

So a lawyer, typical lawyer, like I said, they ask questions.

Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?

And I think he's trying to test him.

He's trying to test Jesus and seeing what he's going to do.

The religious leaders had spent enormous amounts of time discussing the commands of the Old Testament, of which carried the greatest weight.

And Jesus answers by quoting Deuteronomy 6, 5.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

And then he quotes Leviticus 19 and verse 18, you shall not take vengeance or bear grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

I am the Lord.

So he says, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

And Jesus says, on these two commandments depend all the law of the prophets.

In other words, if you want to summarize a life or a church that honors God, we gotta love people and love God.

You see, there's this vertical dimension.

The vertical dimension is from us to God.

We need to love God.

And he also says we need to love on a horizontal plane, we need to love people.

And then at the end of Matthew's gospel, Jesus tells his followers what they are supposed to do with that love.

In Matthew 28 and verse 18, and the great commission.

He says, And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you.

And behold, I am with you always, even to the ends of the age.

So Jesus, he's saying, All authority, everything has been given to me on earth and in heaven, go make disciples of all nations.

And so when we put these passages together, the mission becomes beautifully simple.

I'm a simple man.

Love God, love people, make disciples.

And so this morning I want to break apart this vision.

You see, a lot of you were not at the voting meeting, the congregation meeting that we had, but I explained a lot of my vision.

I thought this Sunday would be a really great time to explain to you what is the vision?

It's not my vision, it's God's vision.

What is the vision for Pentwater Baptists?

Why are we here?

And so I want to break this down.

And the first one you're taking notes is love God.

Love God.

A simple point.

In Matthew 22, 37 says, and he said to them, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

This is the great, and this is the first commandment.

Jesus says you gotta love him with all your heart, with all your soul, with all of your mind.

Notice where Jesus begins, not with activities, not with programs, not even with ministry or the church.

He begins with our relationship to God before anything.

The word translated love carries the idea of this devotion, this loyalty, this affection and commitment.

And when Jesus says heart, soul, and mind, he's emphasizing everything.

Everything.

Every aspect of our lives should be in love with him.

In other words, love God with all that you are.

We have to love him with all that we are.

And Jesus is quoting from the Shema in Deuteronomy 6 in verse 4 Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might.

And these words I commend you today shall be on your heart, always.

And immediately after that, you shall love the Lord your God.

God never meant to occupy one compartment of your life.

He takes it all.

He gets all of us.

Notice the order.

This is important.

God had already redeemed Israel.

He commanded them to love him.

And then the gospel works the same way.

We do not love God so that he will save us.

We love God because He already has saved us.

1 John 4.19 says, We love because He first loved us.

We love because He first loved us.

Christian obedience is a response to God's grace, and that changes everything.

Otherwise, we'd all be going around like, hey, did you see how many services I attend this year?

Perfect attendance.

Hey, did you see how much I served?

Oh man, I served at every single event.

Or, hey, did you see how much I gave this year?

It's amazing.

Did you know I didn't miss one day reading the Bible this year?

I'm pretty awesome.

That's what the Bible is trying to get away from.

It's not by our works, it's simply by God's grace.

And grace changes the language.

I get to know the God who loved me enough to send his son for me, and it was nothing in my own merit that was able to bring this.

You know, I thought about this with my marriage.

Imagine if I went home and said to my beautiful wife, I said, Hey, you know what?

I fulfilled my husband's duties.

I am good to go for this week.

I took out the garbage, I paid the bills, I completed several husband-related tasks.

I even got all the cravings you had for your cravings for this new baby coming.

Last night it was chocolate shakes, so I went to Dollar General.

I'm picking up ice cream for my wife, for her cravings with this little one.

I fulfilled it all, babe.

I'm good to go.

I completed my husband-related task.

So technically, our marriage is doing great, right?

That probably isn't going to go over very well if that's what it is, because marriage is not merely completing tasks.

There's a relationship in the center of it.

And sometimes we can do the same thing with God.

We say, oh God, I attended the service, you know, I sing, I serve, I give.

We know the Bible facts, and yet our hearts can solely drift from Jesus.

Once again, the enemy distracts us with good things a lot of times.

We know the obvious stuff, but he distracts us from good things.

And they have to ask this question this morning, you know, loving God, has God become ordinary to you?

Am I simply going to do these Christian routines and I become this religious person when it's not necessarily about religion?

It's all about this relationship.

It's that vertical dimension of where is my relationship with this holy God in my life.

And that's why the biblical preaching in this vision matters so much.

One of the things I believe should increasingly define First Baptist Church of why are we here?

Biblical preaching.

Preaching the word of God.

Because we can't love God if we refuse to listen to him.

We can't love a God, we refuse to listen to.

And how does God speak?

It's through his word.

The answers of what he wants us to do are in his word.

2 Timothy 3.16 says, All scripture, all scripture is God breathed, out of God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training, and righteousness.

It's all breathed by God.

God has spoken.

And so when we gather, we want to open his word and ask, what has God said?

I'm working on this vertical relationship.

What has God said?

But we cannot stop there.

James tells us to not merely be hearers of the word.

He says to be doers as well.

How should my life change because of what God has said?

The goal is not information.

There's so many churches guilty of this.

I got tons of information.

I've learned all these things.

This is great.

But it's not about just information, it's about transformation, becoming doers of the word.

So this is also why worship matters in our church.

The first Baptist has long been known for the singing church.

I love this about our church.

But we always have to remember the platform is not the point.

Jesus is the point.

Worship is not prayer merely about whether we sing my favorite song, it's about a people of God responding to the greatness of God.

So whether we're opening the Bible, where we're lifting our voices to God, we want to be a church that says, you know what, we truly love God.

In my personal relationship, and as a church, man, we can truthfully say we love God.

Number two, if you're taking notes, love people.

So the greatest commandment, love God.

Number two is love people.

In Matthew 22, verse 39, Jesus continues, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

Matthew 22:39

He's taking that from the context of Leviticus 19.

And when you read that chapter, love is incredibly practical.

It shows up honestly.

Justice, compassion, generosity, and forgiveness, care for the vulnerable.

And so biblical love is not merely saying, I care about people.

Love does something as yourself.

Notice that phrase, as yourself.

Love that person as yourself.

Jesus assumes that we naturally notice our own needs.

I think a lot of us do.

I'm hungry.

We notice, right?

I'm getting hangry, they would say, right?

I'm hungry.

I notice I need food.

And when we're hurting, we notice.

We know when someone has hurt us.

And when we are uncomfortable, we notice.

And Jesus says, learn to notice other people that same way.

The same way that you easily notice yourself, notice other people.

It's all throughout the book of Philippians and how we truly press on with joy in Philippians 2, 4, it says, let each of you not only look to your own interests, but also the interests of others.

And I have to tell you this morning, you're not perfect, and neither are others.

And they're going to really frustrate you.

I've had my frustrating moments, and I'm a pastor.

Yes, pastors get frustrated at times.

We're human, we make mistakes.

And Christian maturity begins with shifting the question from what do I want to how can I actually serve?

You think about the family table.

You know a lot of times the family table has become a storage place for everyone's backpacks and different things.

But back in the day, we used to sit around the table and have dinner together.

Imagine, think of this.

You can have a grandfather, you can have parents, you can have teenagers, you can have children, maybe even a toddler throwing food.

You might want to get rid of your rug underneath.

I've seen how my kids eat, and I know a lot of you saw last night how they eat.

Nobody looks around and says, Well, we really need to pick just one generation at the table.

Only one is welcome.

That would be silly.

They're a family, there's different ages, different needs, different levels of maturity, but one family, and that's my picture of a beautiful church.

It's multi-generations getting together.

It's not just one family or one generation.

When I say family ministry in this vision, I don't simply mean we want more young families.

I mean we want generations discipling generations.

It's a family atmosphere.

Psalm 145, 4 says, one generation shall commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts.

One generation shall declare your works to one another.

That's the biblical picture.

Older believers teaching younger believers, parents discipling their children and teenagers, and every generation helping carry the gospel forward to the older generation.

I want to say this clearly.

When we talk about reaching children and teenagers and families, I do not, I mean, I want you to hear your season is over.

I want you to hear we need you.

In my opinion, you guys are gold mines.

The things that you've been through, you you've seen God provide.

You've been in times where your faith has been tested to the extreme amount.

You've buried people you've loved, you've raised children, you've made mistakes and you've learned from them.

You've seen prayers answered, and you remain faithful in difficult seasons.

The younger generation, they need to see that.

A lot of times they're just jumping from church to church and trying to find the perfect church, and they're realizing there is no perfect church.

They need to see what long-term faithfulness looks like.

You're not done.

If you got breath in your lungs, God's still got a purpose for your life this morning.

And we need you at FBC.

You think about a relay race.

A runner does not carry the baton forever.

Eventually they gotta pass it on, but neither does he throw it down and say, you know what, my part's done.

Have fun.

That's not how it's done.

The goal is to carry it faithfully and place it securely into the hand to the next runner.

And church has been doing that for 2,000 years.

You think about the gospel handed to us, and now we have the responsibility to pass it on faithfully to the next generation.

Not change it, not water it down, not abandon truth, but faithfully pass the gospel to the next generation coming behind us.

I mean, the goal is not to become a younger church, the goal is to become a multi-generational church where every generation helps all of us follow Jesus around that kitchen table.

It's a beautiful picture.

And that's the picture I want to see here at FBC.

So if you're older, maybe your next ministry is not another committee.

Maybe it's a person, a younger believer that you could encourage or you could pray for, or maybe it could be just to take someone out for breakfast.

What teenager could you learn their name and just say, hey, you know what?

I notice you.

And I'm being honest.

I'm blessed to see this is already happening in our church.

I'm seeing the older generation starting to take notice of the younger people in this church and help them and encourage them.

That is what the passing of the baton looks like.

That's what it looks like.

We don't assume the older Christians have nothing to teach you, young people.

They do.

They've been tested and tried in so many different ways.

We need to learn to ask questions.

We need to learn to listen.

God gave us two ears and one mouth.

We should probably listen twice as much as we talk.

That's what my dad always told me.

And here I am talking more than I listen right now.

But we gotta listen.

We gotta learn.

We need one another.

We gotta love people.

Love God, love people, and then number three, make disciples.

I love that passage, the famous last words of Jesus.

And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go and therefore make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you, and behold, I am with you even to the end of the age.

I love this.

And Baptists get excited when we say, Baptizing them.

You know, we get really, really excited about that.

And before Jesus gives the command, notice what he says: all authority, all authority in heaven on earth has been given to me.

That matters.

The Great Commission does not begin with our own ability, it begins with Christ's authority.

And then Jesus says, Go therefore, make disciples.

The main command, the central command, is go and make disciples.

Going and baptizing and teaching them all to serve that mission.

And those who believe publicly identify with Christ through baptism.

We teach them to obey everything that Jesus has commanded.

And notice the wording, Jesus did not simply say, Teach them everything I have commanded.

He says, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

The goal is not merely no more, the goal is follow Jesus more.

A disciple is someone who learns from Jesus, who follows Jesus, obeys Jesus, and becomes more like Jesus in every aspect of their life.

You know, imagine I if anyone knows fishing, it's pent water.

You know, I got a little fishing pole here from Bruce, and uh this is the ice fishing pole.

But imagine I'm going to teach a class on fishing, and I say, okay, here is the reel, here is the rod, here is the hook, and this is how you hook a fish, and this is all the proper techniques of what you need to know and how to fish.

And I just give it to you and say, congratulations, you're now a fisherman.

How good do you think they're gonna do?

Probably not that great.

They're gonna eventually realize they they put the rod in the hand and they're like, I still don't really know what I'm doing.

I've never untangled a fishing knot before.

I've never experienced all the mess that goes with fishing and how to gut them and how to pull them off of the hook and all that stuff.

And eventually they need to have someone come with them and not just show them the rod, not tell them all the parts of the rod, but to say, you know what, this is actually how you fish.

This is how you get the tangles undone.

This is how you unhook a fish.

This is how you do it.

Come, follow me as I do this.

And we have to do the same thing.

Follow Jesus with me, let me help you, and then we gotta help someone else.

That means discipleship can't happen only from this platform right here.

Sunday morning matters tremendously, but Sunday morning alone will never fulfill the Great Commission.

Discipleship has to happen in one of the greatest ministry grounds that God has given all of us in our homes.

We have to disciple within our homes and disciple our grandkids and our kids and show them the way.

Not just tell them this is the rod, this is the real, but actually show them in their life.

Here's what it looks like to be a disciple of Jesus.

It happens with Bible studies and coffee shops and classrooms and hospital rooms.

We have to have this.

So here's a question for every one of us.

Who am I helping?

Who am I discipling in my life?

Jesus told us to do that.

It's his last words.

Who who should I discipling?

Who am I personally helping in my life?

Programs, I will say this morning, is not the answer.

Programs are tools.

Discipleship is ultimately the goal.

It's just a tool.

But we ultimately need discipleship in our lives.

This needs to become a part of our DNA as a church.

We can have a great program and still miss discipleship.

You can see, I mean, Ron Lewis has said 80% of teens are walking away from the faith.

There's so many stats of seeing teens walk away.

It's not the program that does this, it's us getting our hands dirty and teaching them.

Here's how you undo a knot, here's how you actually fish.

The discipleship in the kids' life.

Parents discipling children and children learning scripture and adults serving and showing the next generation.

So, how will we pursue this mission?

This is where the vision comes in.

The mission is love God, love people, make disciples in Pentwater and beyond, and we move forward.

I believe there's three areas where we'll be especially important.

It's what I call the three-legged stool.

We need biblical preaching.

We need family ministry.

That's the dining room table, and we need to worship the Lord.

I'll tell you, as a worship guy, there's something powerful.

When you see multi-generations, not just one, but multi-generations gathering underneath one roof, worshiping the Lord.

I look at a lot of times as a sailboat, and I think of all the storms the older generation has sailed through.

And when they go back to the hymn that got them through that storm, it's so important because it reminds them that God is faithful.

And there's some people on that boat, they've never even heard that song.

But we need to honor that music.

And same thing with the next generation.

There's songs that the older generation is like, I've never even heard about that.

But you know what?

I'm okay with that.

It's still biblical, it still encourages me to worship God.

And I'm going to be open to that because it's reminding that generation that God is faithful.

Sing to the Lord a new song and continue to reflect on his faithfulness.

These are not the mission, they are a support to the mission to love God, love people, make disciples in Pentwater and beyond.

And there's another culture within this church we desperately need to have.

And I'm loving, I'm already starting to see this happen as a raise and release culture.

In 2 Timothy 2, 2, it says, And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses and trust of faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

Notice this multiplication that's happening.

It goes from Paul to Timothy, the faithful people, and then others.

That is disciple multiplying.

I don't want ministry to revolve around me.

I don't want a handful of people where everything revolves around them.

I want Christianity not to be a spectator sport because it isn't.

I want us all involved and thinking, how am I loving God?

How am I loving people and how am I going and making disciples in Pentwater and beyond?

Because here's the thing: God has gifted you in a specific way.

And I believe that when you use that gift, you are a part of the body of Christ and we're able to carry on the mission of Jesus together.

And you are very important.

How good is a body without an eye?

You can't see where you're going.

And if you're an eye, you need to be the eye of the body of Christ.

And then it says in Pentwater and Beyond.

We're not just to be faithful with Pentwater, we're also to be faithful beyond pentwater.

In Acts 1.8, it says, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

It gives us another helpful picture.

Jesus says, You will be my witnesses.

Not just in Pentwater, which would be Jerusalem in this text.

Or in Judea or Samaria, it's the ends of the earth.

We go beyond Pentwater.

It's Pentwater and beyond.

Pentwater matters.

Our schools, our families in poundwater, they matter.

And people beyond, they matter as well.

The gospel moves outward.

We pray for missionaries.

We send money to them.

We support them.

We gave a rope analogy where some are holding the rope and making sure the missionary doesn't fall, and some are going down over the cliff with the missionaries.

Whatever God has called you to do, we need to be faithful, not just with Pentwater, but beyond as well.

What do I see when we think about the future of this church?

Why are we here?

When I think about the next chapter of our church, I don't dream about buildings.

I don't dream about attendance and numbers.

I dream about people.

Children growing up, knowing God's word.

Teenagers who still love Jesus when they become adults.

Young parents discipling their children.

Older believers pouring wisdom into younger believers.

Marriages strengthening.

I tell you what, the enemy has attacked marriages left and right.

Marriages getting stronger.

People coming to Christ.

Baptisms, because that's our thing with food, right?

Seeing baptisms in our church.

People discovering their gifts and like all their life, like, I didn't know I could do this in the church.

That's good.

We want you to try it out.

People discovering their gifts for the first time, leaders being raised up, who have been developed within this church, missionaries being supported from within this church and then sent out.

Disciples making disciples, taking serious the words of Jesus, to love God, love people, make disciples in Pentwater and beyond.

You know, I think of that baton being passed on from one generation to the next.

I come back to that relay race.

None of us gets to carry the baton forever.

That includes me.

Pastors come and they go.

Generations come and they go, programs come and then they go, but the gospel remains.

Our responsibility in the time God gives us is simple.

We got to receive it faithfully.

We got to live it faithfully.

We got to pass it on faithfully.

And that means every generation matters.

Every member in this church matters.

Every act of faithfulness matters.

And some of you are nine to ninety, wherever you are in that spectrum of age, it doesn't matter.

Whether you've attended FBC for 60 years or six weeks, you have a place in the mission.

Maybe the question we should leave with today is not, what is the church going to do?

The better question is, Jesus, what part are you calling me to play?

What part are you calling me to play?

Who can I love, God?

Who can I encourage?

Who can I disciple?

Who can I serve?

What gift has God given me?

Because it's not Pastor Matt's vision.

It's not my vision or mission.

This is not the elders' mission.

This is not even the staff's mission.

This is our mission.

And more importantly, this is Jesus' mission for all of us.

To love God, love people, make disciples in Pentwater and beyond.

So, church, let's honor the faithfulness that has brought us here.

You think of the saints who've gone before us, who, I know in that old building, who have dug that basement out with shovels.

You know, Kim and I were just the other day, we were going through some of the older files, and we were finding lots of pictures of people who have gone before us.

Some of you are in those pictures, and I'll tell you what, you guys age really well.

You don't look any different.

But looking at those pictures, I'm just like, wow, the faithfulness of people who have gone before us, who've laid the groundwork of this church and who have handed us the baton.

It's up to us to remain faithful and to give the gospel to the next generation and pass it on again.

That's why we're here.

We gotta love God, love people, make disciples in Pentwater and beyond.

And that's what we're going to do together.

We give it to the Lord loosely, but that's that's our goal.

To do what Jesus told us to do.

Father, thank you for this church.

I thank you for this Sunday because for some reason you wanted this to be what the service was all about today.

And I'm trusting your Holy Spirit in that because you definitely made me panic, Lord, last-minute Saturday putting this together.

But I thank you that your Holy Spirit worked in that.

I pray for my Father in law that you would heal him of these kidney stones, you would help him to heal very fast where we can do this installation service that you've put on his heart this next Sunday, Lord.

Whatever it is, we we hold our plans loosely before you, and knowing that we may have many plans, but Father, you determine our footsteps.

And so we bring these plans, this mission, everything, Father, to you.

And ask that you would bless it and you would help us to follow what it is you told us to do.

I thank you for every individual in this room.

And maybe there's someone here who has never received you as their savior.

Father, pray they would not leave this place without coming to know you as their Lord and Savior.

Father, if there is someone who has been a believer in you for 40 years or more, I pray that they would see that it's not too late.

You still got a plan in their life and that they can get involved and they can be a part of your mission and your vision for this church here in Pentwater.

Father, we thank you for everything you're doing and everything you're gonna do.

And we pray, Father, you continue to bless this place as we submit to you and as we serve you, Father, help us to love you.

Help us to make that a priority in all of our lives.

Help us to love others.

Help us, Father, to make disciples.

Discipleship is messy, but help us to be persistent in that and do that not only in Pentwater, but in Pentwater and beyond.

We thank you for everything you're gonna do and everything you are doing here, and just pray, Father, we continue to glorify you.

We pray all this in your name and all God's people said.

Amen.

Let's stand and let's worship.

Oh great.