Unshakable – When Culture Changes

This podcast is presented to you by Pastor Jason and Liz Burns in Access Church in Lakeland and Bartow, Florida.

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Let's get to work, everybody.

Today, we are starting a series of messages, and I think it's going to be so important for us in this ever-changing culture.

The series is called Unshakable.

And here's the question I want you to wrestle to the ground this series is how do you stand up in a world that demands you bow down?

How do you stand up for what is true?

How do you stand up for the things of God in a culture that's going to demand compromise or cause you to live a life far less than what you were created to live?

Today, I want to wrestle with a really challenging question.

And honestly, this one is a really difficult one.

I'm going to get all up in your business today.

Here's the question.

How do you live a godly life when culture shifts?

How do you live a godly life when the world as we know it today can be different tomorrow?

How do you live a godly life when there could be a decision from our government, from our Supreme Court that changes everything for us?

How do you live a godly life when there could be a war on the other side of the world or something could happen here in our own backyard that radically changes our future and our life?

How do you live a godly life when culture shifts?

To get us started today, you ever had a moment when it felt like the bottom just fell out on you?

You ever had a moment when it felt like everything was fine and all of a sudden everything around you came crumbling down?

You ever had a moment when it felt like something exploded in your life?

And you could hear that high-pitched sound that you hear in movies when a bomb goes off.

I don't know if you've ever had this before.

Some years ago, it's probably been about 14 or 15 years ago.

I was on my way home from work and Liz called me and she goes, Hey, we're gonna have tacos tonight.

I said, girl talking dirty to me.

What do you mean?

And she goes, Um, but I need you to stop at the store on the way home.

I said, No problem.

So I stopped at Publix where shopping is a pleasure, and I ran in to get the few things that we needed.

Ran into the store, got the stuff, drove home, and when I got home, Liz came out to help grab the groceries, and she kind of quickly looked through him and she goes, Oh shoot, we didn't get cheese.

Would you go back for cheese?

And I said, No problem, because a taco is not a taco unless there is cheese all up in that thing.

And so turned my car back on and I put the car in reverse.

And as I'm backing out of my driveway, I feel my car go bump, and I hear Liz, I look at her, she's walking into the house, and she screams in the highest-pitched voice, the most blood-curdling scream I've ever heard.

She screamed, Gavin! And she looked.

And Gavin had snuck out of the house when I was sitting in my car.

I hadn't seen him, didn't know he was there.

And she ran into the house to call 911, and I had probably the most disorienting 10 seconds of my entire life.

I sat in my car.

I thought, did I just run over my son?

Did I just kill my son?

Certainly wasn't on purpose.

I didn't know he was there.

He had come out to just see his dad who adores him.

Did I kill my son?

I thought I felt a bump.

What happened?

I tried to get out of my car, but my car was still in reverse.

I didn't know if I should put it in park.

I didn't know if I should move.

I go to get out of my car and my seatbelt's on.

It was just a disorienting moment.

It's like that moment when you hear that high-pitched squeal when a bomb goes off.

And I get out of my car and I see my son, and he's laid on the ground, like bent over in a really weird way.

And I see him take a deep breath and then scream in pain.

And the first thought that hit me was at least he's alive.

Like we can fix anything if he's alive.

And I scoop him up, and he's got this huge egg-shaped bump on his head, and he's got tire track on his white t-shirt, and he's got road rash up his leg.

We don't exactly know what happened.

We just know he came out to see me.

I didn't see him.

This was before backup cameras existed.

And when I hit him, here's what I think happened.

I think he had come to see me, and when I cut the wheel to turn, I think it knocked him over.

I think it knocked his head into the car, which caused him to fall back into the grass.

And I believe that when I drove, I think I drove over his leg, and his leg was in the grass.

And so not all of the weight of the car was on his leg, but I definitely ran his leg over.

I was so grateful that he was alive.

We walked him inside.

The tacos didn't matter, cheese didn't matter in that moment, and I just held him so tight.

After he stopped crying, we got him a lollipop because that fixes everything.

And a few minutes later, he was walking around with this like really noticeable limp, and it was it was so sad, but it was so, so, so cute to see.

And and I within an hour we were calling him Speed Bump, you know, like it really turned the corner really fast for us.

Thankfully, he is alive and well.

And and here's the point.

For a moment, I thought my whole world might be different.

For a moment I thought it's possible that my son is dead.

For a moment I didn't know what the next season of my life would look like.

I don't know if you've ever had a moment like that, but if you have, if you've ever felt the bottom fall out, I want you to hold on to that emotion for just a moment.

Here's why.

If you understand that feeling, you understand the backdrop of the story of Daniel.

Daniel is a book in the Old Testament written by a guy named Daniel, and Daniel's whole world gets flipped upside down.

He's somewhere between 15 and 18 years old, and his country gets attacked and taken over by another nation.

Let me give you some backdrop to the story so you understand what we're gonna read.

The Old Testament was written over the span of about 4,000 years, from creation to Jesus coming, is about 4,000 years, give or take.

The story of Daniel happens about 600 years before Jesus is born.

And here's what you need to know about the Old Testament.

The Old Testament is all these books, but they're not written chronologically, they're written categorically.

That's the reason if you've ever read your Bible and you read about David and then David dies, and then the next book he's alive again.

It's not it's not chronological, it's categorical.

So what it means is like the Bible starts in the first five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, those are called the books of the law.

And then we get to these books that are books of history.

And then eventually you get to books that are books of poetry, like Psalms and Proverbs.

And once you get through those, you get to a section of scripture called the prophetic books.

And they book all these, they put all these prophetic books together, and those prophetic books are broken into two categories.

There's the major and the minor prophets.

It's not major and minor because like one is better than the other.

It's major means long books, and minor means short books, that's all it means.

Daniel is a long book.

It's called one of the major prophets.

In Daniel, it's interesting because the first half of the book, the first six chapters, are all historical.

The next six chapters are all prophetic about what would happen then, prophesying or foreshadowing what would happen to us in the end times.

Now, here's the reason I think this is interesting.

They easily could have made the decision to move Daniel into the historical books, the history, the stories section of scripture, but instead they put it in the prophetic section, and I don't think that was an accident.

I think that was the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Here's why.

Because in the first six chapters, there's lots of stories that if you grew up in church, maybe you heard stories like Daniel in the lion's den or Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego thrown into the fiery furnace.

But really, what is happening is it's foreshadowing some decisions that the people of Israel made that cost them dearly in the eyes of God and ultimately in the course of history.

And here's what I want you to understand: what's happening in that story has the potential to happen to you.

It has the potential to happen to me.

It could happen in our church, it could happen in our city, it could happen in our government, it could happen in our world.

And my hope as your pastor is I want your eyes to be open.

I want you to see what has happened so you can understand what might be happening, so when it happens in our culture, you're not surprised.

Really, the reason I want you to understand it is so that when it happens, you can have the courage to stand.

Unshakable, unflappable, standing firm in what you know to be true.

Daniel chapter 1 starts like this.

Daniel 1 · chapter mention

It says, In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, time out, one of the things you need to know is the people of Israel and Judah, they were ruled by kings, and sometimes they had good kings, and sometimes they had bad kings.

And Jehoiakim's dad was a guy named Josiah.

Josiah was a good king whose heart longed for the things of God, and God blessed the people.

But Jehoiakim, his son, comes along, and in one generation everything changes.

He turns the people away from God, and here's what God does: He doesn't punish them, he literally just goes, Okay.

You want to do things your way, that's fine.

You do things your way, and you're gonna get the results of doing things your way.

By the way, that's what God does to us.

If you want to live your life your way, God is not gonna force you to his way, but just know his hand is off at that point.

So Jehoiakim, this bad king of Judah, in the third year, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it.

Now, Babylon, if this was modern-day maps, Babylon would be modern-day Iraq.

So in your mind, try to picture Iraq to Israel.

Picture how far that is, and the people of Babylon go to Israel, Judah, and they completely overthrow it.

Just a few years later, they literally tear down Solomon's his beautiful, his beautiful temple that he built, that was one of the wonders of the ancient world.

All of this is an unbelievable attack, not just on the people, but really on the things of God.

And it goes on and it says this and the Lord delivered Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand, along with some of the articles from the temple of God.

So they took some of those things from the temple and they brought it back into their own churches or warehouses that served the false gods of Babylon.

He goes on.

These he carried off to the temple of his God in Babylonia and put in the treasure house of his God.

Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, this is an important guide, Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring into the king's service some of the Israelites from the royal family and nobility, young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, reminding you of any no, okay.

Um and qualified to serve in the king's palace.

Pause here for just a moment.

So they literally go into Judah.

They they arrest all these people and they force them into captivity or into slavery.

Like it's not enough that they're being pulled out of their homes, out of their homeland, the land where their forefathers lived and were buried.

He literally takes them and he does some stuff to them, and most of them he forces to work in slavery, in captivity, outdoors building things.

But he notices that there's some young people that showed some aptitude.

They were smart, they had wisdom, they had ability.

And so what he does is he brings those people into his palace, and for three years he's going to train them so he can use their giftings and talents to serve him.

It says he was to teach them the language and the literature of the Babylonians.

We're going to come back to this in just a moment, but you need to understand that culture will always try to teach you a different language.

And what I mean by that, it's going to soften what you know to be true in a way that's more appealing, but it doesn't actually lead to the things of God.

It goes on, it says, the king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king's table.

And that sounds good to me, but here's the problem.

The problem is Daniel and his friends that were ushered into the king's palace were good Jewish boys.

These were the kind of boys who knew that what you ate mattered because it mattered to God, and the food that the king was offering them was considered dirty and sinful because it had been offered to the idols and the gods of the Babylonian king.

It says they were to be trained.

Go back for me for one second.

They were to be trained for three years, and after that they were entered the king's service.

Among those who were chosen were some from Judah: Daniel, Hananiah, Meshael, and Azariah.

And I want you to notice something.

All of a sudden, for these four guys, their whole world flips over at night.

Their whole world gets turned upside down.

These boys were historically probably 15 to 18 years old.

I have a 16 and a 19-year-old son.

I can't imagine if their world was flipped upside down like this.

And all of a sudden, everything they knew to be true changed.

All of a sudden, their language changed, their literature changed, their diet changes.

Everything changes for them.

And here's the lesson you need to understand from them that it still applies today.

You ready?

Culture changes, God doesn't.

Culture changes.

Culture will try to feed you a lie and teach it to you as true, but God's word never changes.

Things in culture may change, but God never does.

Let me let me give you some examples of how culture changes.

I'm old enough to remember a day when you would watch TV and it was considered obscene.

It was considered crazy for them to show a married couple in their bedroom sleeping in separate twin-sized beds.

They can be sitting up in their bed talking to each other in full long-sleeve pajamas, and it was considered scandalous.

Now you can't even watch an NFL game, which I will do today.

You cannot even watch an NFL game without them showing a commercial of a couple ripping their clothes off and jumping into bed or into a shower together.

Culture changes.

What we accept to be okay, what we accept to be true changes.

But this is important.

God's word on all the subjects of scripture never changes.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Let's go on with the story.

Verse 7 says this.

A lot of us are funny because we're like, I don't want to go to a church where a woman preaches, but we'll take our theology from cartoon vegetables.

Make that make sense, okay?

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

And I want you to understand this.

For them, the whole world changed.

Not only are they learning a new language and learning new literature, they're getting new names.

And I want you to write this down when culture shifts, it will try to rename you.

It'll try to rename everything.

And we do this under the auspice of new language.

It's like what we're doing is we're taking something that's a difficult subject, like abortion, for example, and we're trying to put new language to it to make it feel softer, to make it feel like it's not that big of a deal.

No, no.

Culture will try to rename situations, and cultural will try to rename you.

Let me show it to you from the scripture.

It says Daniel, we meet Daniel.

Daniel's name means God is my judge.

Let's pause here for just a moment.

Everyone has a name that's given to them.

And I want you to hear this.

The only one who can name you is the one who created you.

My name given is William Jason Burns.

You may not know that by about me.

I go by my middle name.

I'm one of those weirdos who go by their middle name.

And what's funny is I had no say in the matter.

I didn't pick my name.

My name was given to me.

And here's something funny.

Names have this way of even being prophetic.

My middle name, the name that I go by, Jason, literally means healer.

Well, my whole life, I thought that's interesting.

I don't know how that applies to my life because I don't have this like healing ministry.

And then a couple years ago, I kind of woke up one day and I was like, whoa.

Because I've heard over and over and over for the 19 years of our church history, God has used access.

God has used what's happened here.

God has used messages and worship and community and all the things to bring healing to people's hearts.

People who came in with church hurt, church abuse, people that had come in from betrayal after betrayal come in, and God heals them.

And so Daniel has this name that's given to him, and his name means God is my judge.

Essentially, he means I'm living for an audience of one, and only God can judge me.

I'm living for him.

But he's given a Babylonian name.

The name is Beltashazzar, which means Lady Protect the King.

Now I want you to see this.

This isn't like one of those names that, like, you know, in English, sometimes we have some names that sometimes boys have it and sometimes girls have it.

It's not that.

It's not kind of a flexible name.

He's given a name that's not just effeminate, he's given a name that implies that he's not a man, that he is a woman.

Let me explain this.

In every culture, every kingdom, and every empire, most kingdoms and empires never really last more than 250 to 300 years.

And if you study the history and the chronology of the downfall of those kingdoms and empires, what you often find is before the actual decay of the empire came a sexual and a moral decay.

What happens is you study them, and at one time people who lived for God started living their own way.

God takes his hands off and they say, Well, we can do anything we want.

And so there's sexual confusion, sexual orientation confusion, gender confusion.

Does any of that sound like the culture you maybe have seen or experienced before?

And they give him this name.

Let me give you a fun little Bible nerd thing, because I like the Bible so much.

It's interesting that when the Bible was translated, the Old Testament was written in Hebrew.

So when it was translated from Hebrew to different languages, translators noticed something.

Whenever Daniel wrote his name in Hebrew, he spelled it correctly.

Like if it was English, he would spell D-A-N-I-E-L.

But when it came to writing his name Beltashazzar, it was always misspelled.

And for generations, people thought, well, he maybe maybe he messed up, or maybe the translators just had a little typo error, they didn't mean to do it like that.

And then in 1947, scholars found what's called the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And these Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest transcript and manuscripts we have of the Bible.

And every time Beltashazzar is written out, it's misspelled.

It's almost like what Daniel was saying is you can call me something, but I'm not gonna answer to that.

It's a little jab at them.

It's like that not the name I'm called, it's the name I answer to.

What is the name that you're called and what is the name you answer to?

Let me say this to you.

Like what is the name God has given you?

If the only one who can label you is the one who created you, what is the label he gave you?

Son and daughter of God.

That's who you are.

So don't you dare answer to the names given to you?

Don't you dare lower your life to the standard of people who called you worthless and dumb and unlovable.

Don't you dare live your life for a label other than the label God has for you.

Let's keep going.

We meet Daniel, then the next person we meet is Hananiah.

Hananiah's name in Yahweh or God has been so gracious.

God, you've been so good to me, but he's given a Babylonian name.

And his Babylonian name is Shadderak, which means I am fearful of God.

One means he's so good to me.

One means I don't want anything to do with him.

To Meshael, he gets the name who is what God is.

Like how great is our God.

But his Babylonian name is the name Meshach, which means I am despised, contemptible, and humiliated.

Think about this.

The third one is Azariah, and Azariah means Yahweh or God has helped.

Thus far, God has helped me, but his Babylonian name is Abednego.

Abednego means servant of Nebo.

Nebo was one of the false gods of the prophets of the kingdom of Babylon.

Think about this.

Their names that they are given are names that honor God, elicit God's love, his respect, and their their connection to Him.

All of their Babylonian names are anti-God, they're anti-the things of God.

Culture will always try to name you, and the names culture will give you will always push you away from the things of God.

That's why you have to know the name God has given you.

You are his son and his daughter.

Daniel chapter 1, verse 8.

Daniel 1:8

The story goes on and says this.

But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine.

And he asked, I love this.

He doesn't force, he asks the chief official for permission not to defile himself in this way.

He knew that eating this would break the promise he had made to God about what he was going to feed his body.

So he goes to Ashmenaz, the chief official, and he's like, Look, I know this is crazy, but can I can I do this a different way in a way that honors God?

And here's what I need you to understand when culture shifts and culture will shift, we must know who we are.

What are the things we're gonna stand for?

Here's why.

Culture will ask you to compromise your standards.

Culture will tell you it's not that big of a deal, it's just your sexuality, it's not that big of a deal, it's just your body, it's your choice, you do whatever you want to do with it.

It's not that big of a deal.

You can cut the corner, you can cheat, you can do whatever you want because it's not that big of a deal.

Look at me, it is that big of a deal.

The world is watching you, so why don't you stand up for the things of God instead of bowing to the pressure of culture?

Back to Daniel's story, Daniel 1, verse 9 says, Now God had caused the official to show favor and compassion to Daniel, but the official told Daniel, I'm afraid of my Lord the king, who has assigned your food and drink.

Daniel 1:9

Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age?

The king would then have my head because of you.

He's like, I want to help you, but if I do this, it's disobeying the king and he'll kill me.

And Daniel responds, he says, Please.

He said to the guard, whom the client, the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Michel, and Azariah.

Next slide, he said, Please test your servants for ten days.

Pause here for a moment.

Anytime you see the number 10 in the Bible, ten is associated with testing.

God gives the people of Israel ten commandments.

The test is, will you live to my standards?

God gives humanity the command to tithe, which is the first ten percent of anything you are given, you are to bring back to the Lord your God.

It's a test with your money.

And he says to these people, just test us for ten days.

Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink, then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.

So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days.

To jump ahead for the sake of time, after the ten days, Daniel and the three other men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, looked so much stronger and better than anyone else that it shined a spotlight on them.

God he blessed them for their obedience to what he had called them to.

So here's the question for you When it comes to culture that's going to pressure you to be something you were never intended to be, ready, how?

How do we respond?

I want to show you the two extremes that most Christians respond with when it comes to the pressure of culture.

The two extremes are grace and truth.

I want you to write these down.

Grace is God's favor, it's his love, it's his blessing, it's something you can't earn.

Grace is God's unmerited, undeserved favor.

If you could earn it, that would mean it comes from you.

It's God's unmerited favor towards you.

Truth is God's standard.

It's the standard to which he holds.

And I want you to understand this.

God's standard never changes.

Doesn't matter what cultures come and go, it doesn't matter how king kingdoms and empires will rise and fall, and God's word will stand the test of time because it is true.

I want you to see this.

Jesus modeled both of these.

John chapter 1 says this.

John 1 · chapter mention

The word, talking about Jesus, became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father.

Watch this, full of grace and truth.

Jesus embodied both of these, and if he embodied them, shouldn't we embody both of them as well?

He was full of grace and truth.

So so what I want to do is I want to show you one more example of this, then I'm going to tell you how to live it out.

John chapter 8, there's this famous story where Jesus is out one day, and some religious leaders bring a woman trembling to him, and they throw him at his feet.

John 8 · chapter mention

She's probably naked and covering her body with whatever she could grab before she was dragged out of bed from this adulterous affair she was having with someone she obviously wasn't married to.

They say to Jesus, This woman was caught in the act of adultery.

Now it's the Sabbath, but according to the law, she should be put to death for this sin, for this crime.

And then they said to Jesus, now, what do you say?

Now what do you say?

And this is the question culture will ask you.

Yeah, we see this and we know what the Bible says, but what do you say?

This is a trap that a lot of Christians get themselves trapped in because they'll say, Well, I know what the Bible says, but I think this.

I know what the Bible says about marriage, but I think this.

I know what the Bible says this, but the Bible's written like thousands of years ago, I think this.

We're a more progressive modern era of thinkers.

We we don't have to hold this to be entirely true.

They bring this lady to Jesus and they say, What do you say?

And instead of responding, Jesus does this thing that only he could do, which is he bent down and started writing in the sand with his his finger.

Verse goes on, it says, When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, Let any one of you who was without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.

And then it says again, he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

Now we don't we don't know exactly what he wrote.

Scholars have all different types of thoughts.

Some people think he wrote different words or sins or the names of the people.

I heard one person, I think this is so funny.

One person said, I think Jesus was writing in the sand the names of the mistresses of those who were there to throw a stone at the woman.

You know, he was like, Karen looked at him, and that guy was like, oh, dropped his stone and left, you know.

We don't know.

We don't know what happened.

It says that this, those who heard him began to go away one at a time, the older ones first.

Some people think the reason it was the older ones first is they had a lifetime full of sin.

It says they they begin to leave the older ones first until only Jesus was left.

With the woman still standing there, Jesus straightened up and he asked her, Woman, Where are they?

Has no one condemned you?

No one, sir, she said.

Watch Jesus' response.

Then neither do I condemn you.

Ready?

Grace.

Jesus declared, go now and leave your life of sin.

Truth.

Grace and truth.

A love that grace always precedes truth.

Because grace gives you the opportunity to speak truth in a way that can get heard.

Jesus says, Listen, where are they?

I don't condemn you either.

Grace.

But he says, truth.

I want you to leave your life of sin.

This moment should redefine the rest of your life.

Leave your life of sin and step into your tomorrow.

Here's the thing I need you to understand: truth alone will never save anybody.

But grace alone in the extreme can cause a person to miss out on the beauty of grace and truth because truth alone condemns someone, but grace alone causes a person to think, well, I never really have to change because God is so good that I can just kind of do whatever I want.

This summer my family took a vacation to New York City.

First time my kids really had been there.

We did all the fun sightseeing and all Times Square and Statue of Liberty.

We did all the stuff.

And one day we were shopping in an area and it was a really crowded area.

My wife was somewhere, and my boys were together in some other store, and it was just me and my then 11-year-old daughter Ella.

And we were walking in through this crowded area into an HM store.

And as we're walking into a store, I hear Ella scream and start to cry.

And I pull her into me to see what has happened.

And she goes, That man over there touched me and it was weird.

So what do you mean?

She goes, He handed me this, and he handed her a piece of paper.

It was this little man who was wearing like a Hawaiian tropical kind of shirt.

And he was just there on the corner trying to hand out these flyers that were condemning people to hell unless they turned to Jesus.

He said, You touched me.

I was so furious.

Like I don't I don't think street preachers are really all that effective, anyways, because it's really easy to yell, turn and burn.

But when has that ever really impacted your life?

I was so mad.

I got Ella's permission, but I was furious.

I went and got in that little man's face.

I pointed my finger at it and said, Don't you dare do this ever again.

Don't you dare touch a person that is not your own.

Don't you dare do this ever again.

And he goes, I'm just trying to share news of Jesus.

I said, I'm a pastor.

I lead people to Jesus all the time.

This is never going to work.

Stop.

Why?

Because truth without grace is mean.

But grace without truth is meaningless.

If everybody just gets into heaven, then why would we ever change?

But when we model Jesus of grace and truth, grace and truth together is medicine, it helps.

Grace invites us to be free.

But it's truth that sets us free.

So what do you do if you're in a difficult work environment?

What do you do if there's people in your life who are trying to get you to compromise?

What do you do in a world that pressures you to compromise in your life and your decisions in your sexuality and your voting and your morals?

What do you do with that?

You ready?

Grace and truth.

We hold high God's truth and we freely give God's grace.

How do you live an unshakable life?

How do you live the kind of life that in a culture that's gonna force you to compromise?

How do you live the life that stands up for Jesus without compromising?

But also blesses and shows the grace of God to the world around you.

You stand firm and you love well.

This is what we're called to do.

I don't ever want to hear a story of a person from access yelling, condemning people.

I don't ever want to hear that.

But I also don't want to be the kind of people who are just like, well, it doesn't really matter because God is so good.

You can do whatever you want.

All roads lead to heaven.

No, they don't.

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one gets to the Father except through him.

It's an incredibly narrow path to God.

But Jesus invites everyone to it.

Here's how I want to end today.

I'm gonna ask you to take your hands.

Just open them like this.

Nothing weird's happening.

I just I just want us, as I pray, that we'll be people of grace and truth, to hold both of those tensions in our hand.

I want us to understand the gravity of what we're doing.

We are called to be Jesus' ambassadors, witnesses to the world around us.

The only way to see a person really change is to be the kind of people who do what Jesus did: grace and truth.

So, God, in this place, give us courage.

Courage to stand up to a culture that wants us to compromise, courage to know who we are in a world that wants to rename us.

The kind of courage that says, Listen, Jesus, you're the one who gave me my name.

I'm a son or daughter of God.

Because of that, now I'm choosing to live for you.

No longer pressured by the weight of this world, no longer pressured to bow to a culture that wants us to bow.

May Access be the kind of church that embodies what Jesus was about, which is to be full of grace and full of truth.

May the world around us know our love because it reflects the heart of God.

But may we not buy into the lie that love means you get to free pass to do whatever you want.

No, there is always a standard, there's a truth that we call people to.

God, may we live in that balance, full of grace and full of truth.

And God, my prayer is this that as we do this, the world around us will see there's something different about us.

That as we live this way, the world around us will see that we live differently.

There must be something that has changed us, and we know that something is your love, your grace, your truth, your forgiveness.

God, may we model to the world what Jesus did for us, and may the world around us be changed because we're full of grace and truth.

With your head still bowed and eyes still closed at all of our locations.

Maybe you're here today and you don't even know if you're right with God.

Maybe this means you've never started following Jesus, or maybe it just feels like you've wandered so far away from God.

And today you just need to start over.

I want you to hear this.

Your God, who is full of grace and truth, has grace for you.

He welcomes you into his family.

All you have to do is confess that you need him to save you.

All you have to do is repent of your sin, and Jesus can change you.

With your head bowed and eyes closed, because this moment's for you and God.

If you're here at one of our locations today and you would say, Jason, I don't know if I'm right with God, but today I want to start or restart following Jesus.

Would you just raise your hand right now if this is you?

Thank you.

Thank you, thank you.

Wow.

So cool.

Thank you.

I love this.

Come on, at all locations, if this is you, this is a beautiful moment.

It's the most important moment of your life.

And if today you would like to start following Jesus in a moment, I'm gonna pray a prayer.

And I want you to have one more moment of courage.

I want you to repeat this prayer after me.

I want you to say it loud and say it proud, and I want you to know something.

You're not alone.

All the people who are sitting around you were there at one point in their life, and Jesus saved us and changed us.

We're excited for you.

In fact, we're gonna support you.

We're gonna lend our courage and our faith to you now.

We're all gonna pray this out loud together.

Come on, everybody at all of our locations, say it loud and say it proud.

Say, Jesus, I give you my life.

I confess I have sinned.

I confess that I can't fix it on my own.

I need you to save me, to forgive me, and to change my life.

Jesus, from this day forward, I make this decision.

Be my Lord and be my savior.

And from this day on, I choose to follow you.

Jesus, I love you, and I give you my life for the rest of my life.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Come on, church.

We just had lots of people pray to make that decision.