Shadows – The Shadow of Doubt

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.

We are in part two today of a four-part series called Shadows.

And if you missed last week, my wife kicked us off with a beautiful message.

I, if you came last week, I hope you wore your big boy pants to church, everybody.

She stepped all up on your toes, got all up in your business, and preached the message on the shadow that follows us around.

The shadow of pride is a really strong, amazing message.

Today, I wanted to find shadows for us this way.

Shadows are the dark parts of our lives that just follow us around.

It's the stuff from our past, it's the things we can't shake, it's just the dark parts of our lives that follow us around.

One of my favorite books ever was a book called The Emotionally Healthy Leader, written by a man named Peter Schizero, and he said this about our shadows.

He said, Your shadow is the accumulation of the untamed emotions, less than pure motives, and the thoughts that, while largely unconscious, strongly influence and shape your behaviors.

It is the damaged but mostly hidden version of who you are.

And all of us have some shadows.

Today I want to talk to you about one that follows us around.

If I could be honest with you for just a moment, it's one that churches largely don't talk about because it's uncomfortable to get into.

But my prayer is that somebody, and by somebody I mean lots of somebody's leave today, feeling a different kind of freedom than when you felt when you came in today.

To get us started, have you ever um you ever had a moment where someone put you on the spot and asks you a question that you just didn't have an answer for?

You ever have this before?

Several years ago, I got invited into this amazing group of pastors, just about 15 of us, and we're a small group, we've stayed together for years, and um we the first time we got together, I knew maybe four or five of the 15 guys.

They become like this band of brothers to me.

I love them all so much.

First time we got together, we met for dinner the first night at this restaurant in Sarasota, and they reserved a private room for us, and they set up a big square table.

So we're all sitting around the big square, and to my left was the host of the event, this pastor who I just love so much.

And we we start with you know the drinks and we get all the drinks out, and then he goes, before the food comes, let's all do this.

Let's let's get to know each other.

And he says, Um, let's do this.

Uh, what are some icebreaker questions?

He goes, Um, what is a big dream you have for your life?

You go first, Jason.

I was like, I wasn't ready for this.

I didn't know.

And I don't know where it came from, but literally, like out of my mouth came, I want to personally give$10 million through my local church.

Not from the church, I want to give$10 million personally through my local church to change the world.

And I don't know where that came from, but I believe God's gonna get to do that through me, and I'll give him all the credit for it.

And I said it, and some of the guys around the table started laughing.

Oh, you can do that, yeah, right.

Or you can give it at my church, and I'm just like, well, we'll see.

We'll show you.

That's how I felt in that moment.

And we went around the table and everybody shared their big audacious dream.

Then he goes, All right, uh, question two.

And you could tell he hadn't prepared for this.

He was just kind of flying off the seat of his pants.

He goes, hmm, question number two, what is the worst moment of your life?

Jason.

I said, What?

Okay, here we go.

And um, I didn't have to think about that one.

Like I knew the worst moment of my life immediately.

And we've walked through some hard moments, but the worst moment of my life happened 12, 13 years ago at this point.

And here's what happened.

And if you know me, I like to start with a fun story or a funny story, usually, not today, everybody, is a hard one.

Um, I'll never forget how this happened.

My wife and I, in this season, we had our two boys, Joey and Gavin, and they were so much fun, loved them so much, and life was good.

And um, one of the weird things about being a parent is you never really know when to be done having children.

And so we had two, and life felt good.

We were like, should we try for more?

Should we try to have more kids?

What do we do?

And I don't know what happened, but my wife couldn't keep her hands to herself, and we unexpectedly got pregnant, and um, that was fun.

And so we got pregnant, and at first we were like shell-shocks like we didn't we didn't know.

Like, did we want to be pregnant?

Well, at this point, we were pregnant, and so we were kind of scared, a little shocked, and then as time went on, we got a little excited.

And then uh about 20 weeks in or so, we found out that this baby was a little girl, and we were so excited.

My heart and my credit cards melted.

I was so excited.

I was so excited about this, and we we named her.

We were getting ready to transform one of the rooms into a pink nursery.

It was it was gonna be amazing, and everything was good, and then 23, 24 weeks in, one day my wife goes, I don't something feels weird.

Like it just feels off.

I can't explain it.

Went to the doctor that next week, and the hardest day of my life was our sweet doctor saying, I am so sorry.

There's no heartbeat.

I tried to hold it together as the husband.

I tried to be strong for my wife, and she's devastated and she's crying.

Internally, I my heart is dissolved into a trillion little pieces, but I'm trying to hold it together and I put my arm around her and we get the instructions about what we're gonna have to do and stillbirth and all of the stuff that comes with that.

But in that moment, we walked out to our car devastated.

We get in the car, and I'm like, we I guess I guess we gotta call people and like let our families know.

So I called my hero.

I called my dad, and I was like, I started crying so hard.

I was driving, I had to pull off the side of the road.

I remember where it was when I drive past it.

I think of this moment.

I pulled off to the side of the road and so overwhelmed, crying so hard.

I called my dad.

My dad had been a children's pastor for the last 25 years.

It's like if anybody would know what to say to a person who's in this moment, certainly it was him.

And I called him, and as soon as I tell him, he starts like crying.

And I said, What do I do?

And he said, I don't I don't know.

I don't I don't have an answer.

Honestly, I'm hurt and I'm angry and I have a question for God.

You ever uh had questions for God that you knew you wouldn't get the answer to?

You ever have anxiety or doubts and you just can't seem to get an answer to them?

Like all of us have had doubts in life, haven't we?

Like right now, you can't watch the news without doubting the government or the economy or finances, or if you're a football fan like me, I doubt my football team every single Sunday.

Like, you can't escape this life without walking through some doubts, but what do you do when your doubts are pointed towards God?

What do you what do you do with that?

And like, where do our doubts come from?

Let me let me show you a few reasons or places our doubts come from.

It it could be from questions that you just can't seem to get the answer to.

We've been there.

It could be from situations that just seem so unfair.

Or how about this one?

How about hurts that you can't resolve?

You trusted someone and they walked out on you.

You you're serving God and doing your best with everything you can, but then you walk through a situation like what we walked through, or a marriage falls apart on you.

And all of us have these doubts, and all of us have these moments that we look at God and we're like, God, where are you?

And if we can just be honest, have you ever thought to yourself, God, are you there?

And if you're there, are you awake?

If you're awake, do you care?

God, where are you?

Did you fall asleep at the wheel?

Like, where are you?

If you came to church and that's true for you, I want you to hear this because this is so important.

Doubt is a common characteristic of God's children.

It just is.

And you can walk through this life holding on to faith, but also holding on to doubt because it is a part of a Christian's journey.

None of us get to escape it.

And I want to set somebody free today with this thought.

Just because you doubt doesn't mean we're out with God.

Just because we doubt, just because you have questions, just because there's some situations that haven't been resolved, doesn't mean you're out with God.

In fact, if anybody should should understand this, it should be church people.

Because we should be the kind of place that people can come to with their doubts.

We should be the kind of people that church people can come to.

If you're if you're wrestling with something, you don't have answers to something, this should be the kind of place you could come to.

A few years ago, there was a study done, and I think this is so cool.

It was by Barna Research, and the the question they asked was this why are young people leaving the church?

Now, this was several years ago.

Before I tell you this, can I tell you what miracles happened?

In the last six months, there has been a revival specifically in Gen Z.

I read yesterday that in the last six months, Bible sales alone are up over 41% over the previous year.

Like God's doing a miracle.

And Gen Z, you probably feel young, but I want you to hear this.

You're leading the charge.

Like, get up front, worship with everything you've got.

We need you.

You are doing it.

I love it, I love it, I love it.

Okay?

Now, but before this, this question is like, why are young people leaving the church?

And there were six answers that were the top six answers.

One of the six was this.

The answer was, churches are unfriendly to those who doubt.

And it's like, if any place should be a safe place, shouldn't it be the church?

Then they quantified it with these statistics.

They said 35% said Christians were too confident in their answers.

25% said the church demonizes everything outside the church, and 36% said they could not ask their most pressing questions.

I think the church should be the most safe place to ask your questions.

I think it should be the place where we bring our questions to God and we wrestle with it.

I'll never forget some 20 or 25 years ago, I was working at a church as a graphic designer.

I was, and I was designing like the bulletin, which, if you're not a church person, it's like the newsletter for church people.

And so I was designing it.

And whatever 20 or 25 years ago, there was a sermon series that I designed it, and they said, um, we don't have time, can you help us?

Can you write like a caption?

Write like a little thought that'll entice people to want to come to church to hear this message series.

So I wrote something like, Come journey with us as we tried to discover something, right?

And I submitted it to the pastor.

He goes, No, no, no, no, no, that's that's not what no, no, we can't do that.

People come to us for the answers.

They said, change it to this.

Come discover the answer to this question.

And I was like, Okay, I changed it.

But all these years later, I don't understand that.

And here's the reason your faith is a journey, not a destination.

It's not, there's not some finish line that you cross and you're like, well, I'm good, I've got it all together, because the moment you do that, the whole bottom can fall out on your life, which causes you to fall back into a cycle of doubt and questioning your faith.

Your faith is a journey, it's not always a destination.

Now, with that in mind, I want to take you to the Bible because it's really easy for us to have our doubts and to think we're alone in our doubts.

But if there was anybody who should have not had doubts, it was this guy.

His name was John the Baptist.

If you don't know who this is, this was the cousin of Jesus.

His birth was actually prophesied about 750 years before Jesus in the book of Isaiah.

He was born as kind of a miracle baby to these really old parents.

And he grows up as the cousin of Jesus, and he gets this nickname, the Baptist, not because he was Baptist, like not even a Southern Baptist.

This wasn't a title of like what denomination he was a part of.

It wasn't like John the Baptist and Luke the Lutheran and Calvin the Catholic.

I don't know, just making those up, but like it wasn't that.

A better translation actually would be in modern English, John the Baptizer, because he was this wild man.

He was the kind of man who like lived in the wilderness, preached in the wilderness.

He wore camel skin, he ate locusts and honey, he was this preacher of all preachers, a man's man.

And there's a moment early in his ministry where he's baptizing people in the Jordan River, and his cousin Jesus comes by and he says, Hey John, would you baptize me?

John's like, I'm not even worthy to do that.

You baptize me.

And Jesus convinces John, and John baptizes him.

Now, before I tell you what happens in that moment, have you ever thought to yourself, if God would just show up, I would never doubt him again.

Like if I could see Jesus, if I could experience a miracle, I'll never doubt again.

John has this moment where he's going to baptize Jesus.

And this is one of just a couple places in the Bible where we see all three parts of the Trinity in the same moment.

You've got Jesus, the Son of God, getting baptized.

As he's baptized, the Bible says the heavens open and the Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove.

That's the second part of the Trinity.

Then we hear the voice of God the Father saying, This is my son, whom I love.

In him I am well pleased.

Look, if I'm John the Baptist, I'm like, I'm good.

No more doubts.

I just saw it all in like 30 seconds, I'm good.

Okay.

But some time passes from that moment, and in Matthew chapter 4, John gets a healthy dose of doubt.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

It says this about John.

When Jesus heard that John had been put in what?

Prison, he withdrew to Galilee.

Just pause here for a moment.

So John gets arrested, presumably for what he believes in the way he's teaching.

And Jesus hears about it.

And if anyone can do something, it's his cousin.

You would think that like cousins stick together, blood is thicker than water.

Jesus is gonna come through.

And John's in prison, Jesus hears about it, and instead of going, he withdrew to Galilee.

How do you think that feels?

Jesus could do something, but he doesn't do anything.

Okay.

Seven chapters later, I don't know if this is like a few weeks, I don't know if this is a few months, I don't know how long this is, but seven chapters later, it says this.

When John, who was still in prison, when John heard about the deeds of the Messiah, this is Jesus, he sent his disciples, his followers, to ask Jesus, Are you the one who is to come?

Or should we expect someone else?

Pause here for just a moment.

Literally, just days, weeks, or months earlier, he was like, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

This is Jesus.

This is the one that has been prophesied about for over 750 years since Isaiah.

He's the one.

And now he's in prison and he's like, Hey, not sure about this because you could have done something.

Are you the one?

So he sends this letter to Jesus, and Jesus gets it, and it says that he replied, next verse.

Go back and report to John what you hear and see.

Now I want you to pay attention to this language because it's important.

Because the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear and the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.

Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.

So he sends that letter back to John who's in prison.

To which I'd be like, Jesus, this is like a yes or no question.

Can you get me out of here, circle one, yes or no?

And Jesus says all these things that he is going to do.

And then it says, as John's disciples were leaving, so they're like already gone, going back to John.

Jesus talks about John.

He began to speak to the crowd about John, and he said, This truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist, yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

So he gives John this massive compliment, but John never gets it.

All John gets is this really confusing list of all the things that Jesus claims he's going to do.

He's going to heal blind eyes, open deaf ears, and all the list of the things that he promises to do.

Now, if anyone would have a reason to doubt in this moment, it's John.

Can you relate to this?

You ever prayed and you feel like your prayers don't get past the ceiling?

Have you ever asked God to step into a moment and you get no response at all?

Let me say this to somebody.

When following Jesus isn't what we expect, we start to doubt.

John's in prison, and here's the question he asks of Jesus.

Four words.

Are you the are you the one?

Are you able?

If you're able, are you willing?

Like certainly you can do something.

I've seen the miracles.

Are you the one?

And he asks Jesus this question Are you the one?

I want to remind you what Jesus responds with.

Here's verse five.

Jesus says the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed.

The deaf hear, the dead are raised, the good news is proclaimed to the poor.

And what Jesus was doing here, and this is the way the Bible is so beautiful, it's so interconnected, it's so, it is so unbelievably intricately connected.

And Jesus, if you just read this, you miss it.

Jesus wasn't just saying, hey, here's a list of things I'm doing.

Jesus reaches all the way back some seven to eight hundred years earlier to the prophet Isaiah, and he quotes the prophet Isaiah.

And as I read you this list of things that the prophet prophesied, I want you to notice what is missing at the end.

Are you ready?

Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah.

Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped.

Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy.

A few verses later, he says, The spirit of the sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom from the captives and to release the darkness for the prisoners.

When Jesus quotes all these verses, what does he not say to John who's in prison?

He skips this line to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.

What is Jesus subtly saying to John, who would have known these verses from Isaiah inside and out?

He's saying, Yes, I am the one who is to come.

And yes, I am the one who's going to do all of those things, except for the one thing you're asking me to do right now.

If anyone has a reason to doubt, it's certainly John.

Give your message notes out.

I want you to pull those out because I want you to write these four things down.

What do we do with the shadow of doubt?

What do we do?

How do we put doubt back in its rightful place?

Write these down.

Number one, the first thing we do is you need to understand that doubt is not the opposite of faith.

And a lot of us we live with this guilt.

We're like, I know I'm a believer.

I believe in Jesus.

I believe he changed my life, I believe he saved me, but I'm living, carrying this doubt.

And I need you to hear this.

These are not opposites of each other.

The opposite of faith is actually unbelief, not doubt.

It is entirely possible to be a believer, someone who Jesus has revolutionized and changed your life from the inside out, and to, with the other hand, carry doubt in seasons of your life.

Here's why.

What we want is certainty.

We want the answers to our questions.

I have thought to myself, someday when I get to heaven, I'm going to ask God, why would you let us walk through the loss of that baby?

We want certainty.

Can I tell you what God offers?

Sovereignty.

We want answers to our question.

God's like, I've got this.

The word sovereignty means he is fully in control.

It is his way, his will, not mine.

It's whatever he says goes.

Okay, let's have a fun moment.

Have you ever prayed for something and you didn't get the answer to what you wanted?

And then years go by and you see what you were praying for, and you were like, oh God, thank you that you didn't answer my prayer.

Okay, this usually happens with ex-boyfriends and girlfriends.

Come on, somebody.

We can get real in church.

You ever prayed that God would get her attention, that she would fall in love with you, and she doesn't, and then 10 or 15 years later you run into her and you're like, oh, you are so good to me, God, thank you.

That would have been a train wreck.

Have you ever had this happen to you?

It's funny because we get trapped in the moment, and in the moment we want certainty.

We don't want questions, we want certainty, but what we need to lean into is the sovereignty of God.

Here's another way to say it faith isn't the absence of questions, it's the decision to trust in the middle of them.

So you're going to have questions.

Why?

Because this life is hard, but what I choose to do is I choose to trust in the middle of them.

One of the hardest moments of my pastoring ever.

Early on in the history of our church, this lady who was a regular, such a faithful attender of our church, she came to me so angry at God.

So what's going on?

Her mom, who was her hero, had died in a tragic accident.

She was T-boned, unexpectedly died.

Within just a few days, her dad, who had been battling cancer for a long time, also died.

She lost her parents in moments.

She was so angry at God.

And I would watch in amazement as she would show up to church.

She would still lift her hands and choose to worship.

She was so angry.

She certainly, her heart had to be clouded with doubt, and she chose the faith to walk through these moments.

Second thing we need to do with our doubt is this is we need to bring our doubts to Jesus, not away from him.

This is important because a lot of us we walk through difficult days, difficult seasons, and it causes us to pull away from God, but Jesus invites us to bring our doubts to him.

It's all through scripture.

In the book of Psalm, David writes like a bunch of the Psalms.

Four times in the book of Psalm, David uses this phrase: How long, O Lord?

How long are you gonna make me wait?

How long am I gonna walk through pain?

How long will there be uncertainty?

How long, O Lord?

You ever had that moment?

I think about this other guy, Thomas.

Thomas was one of Jesus' 12 disciples, and he got this really bad nickname, doubting Thomas.

How terrible would it be if for like 2,000 years people called you doubting, whatever your name is?

And he was with Jesus and he actually had some heroic moments where he's like, let me follow Jesus, and if I die, I die.

But he's known as doubting Thomas.

Why?

Because Jesus dies, he rises again from the dead.

Word is circulating through their group, and he's like, I don't believe it.

I'll believe it when I see it, because in my world, when people die, they stay dead.

That's how it works for me.

So, like when I see it, like when I can touch the wounds in his hands, then I'll believe.

A few chapters later, Jesus shows up to Thomas, and what does Jesus do?

He doesn't say, You moron, like of course I was gonna rise again.

I told you.

That's not what he does.

He goes, Here, just like touch it.

Put your hands in the side where they pierced me.

Like, touch this and know that I am who I am.

Like our doubt shouldn't lead us away, it should draw us closer to Jesus.

Why does this matter?

Because doubt should cause you to ask questions, and questions should cause you to seek truth.

Truth is found in the person of Jesus.

It is who he is.

One of my personal frustrations in the last like five years of Christianity is there's been this movement of what people call deconstructing their faith.

And I don't have a problem with that.

Deconstructing your faith in its truest form should be stripping away all the stuff that you know, going to the Bible and really discovering God for who he is with the full intention of building your faith back up from the ground up that's rock solid, a bulletproof kind of faith.

Well, here's the problem: a whole generation of people took their faith, deconstructed it, and then never took the time to go back and reconstruct from the ground up what is true.

It'd be like you saying, you know, I don't really like this house, so I'm gonna tear it down.

Then you tear it down and then you get frustrated because you're living without a roof over your head.

So you gotta build it back up.

Third thing you need to remember is this when it comes to doubts and faith, you need to remember what you've already seen.

What is the greatest indicator of what God is going to do tomorrow?

What he's always done.

God can't help himself.

One of the nature and characteristics of God is that God is a God of faithfulness.

He will always do what he's always done because it's a part of his character, it's a part of his nature.

And as followers of Jesus, what we have the opportunity to do is to rest in his faithfulness.

This is the reason that so often I will talk about the power of building an altar.

What is an altar in the Bible?

It's places of remembrance that God was good.

It's a place that I can come back to and remember that God was faithful to me now, and when I walk through a difficult day, when I walk through a valley of the shadow of doubt, I can come back to this place and remember God's faithfulness to me.

This is the reason that when you walk through some really good days, when you walk through some moments where God has shown up and proven to be faithful, you should write them down.

Because the shortest pencil has a longer memory than the greatest mind ever.

Write down the stuff that God has said to you.

Write down those moments that you remember so that when you walk through the difficult dark days, you have something to come back to.

This is the reason I'm so excited.

It's Baptism Sunday.

This is the reason if you haven't been baptized, you need to be baptized.

Why?

Because baptism serves as an altar that we build in our hearts.

It's a moment that we can remember that God saved me.

He changed me, he made me new from the inside out.

If you've never been baptized, you need a baptism moment so you have a date, so you can say it was October 19th, 2025, when Jesus changed me, made my life new, and I can come back and remember that when I don't understand, I can trust him.

Fourth thing you need to write down is this when it comes to doubt, don't let what you don't understand cancel what you do know.

Don't let what you don't understand.

And the truth is, you will walk through some stuff that you and I don't understand, but don't let it cancel out what you actually know.

What do you know?

What you've experienced.

What God said.

Who he is.

Back to the story.

John's in prison.

And Jesus replies to John's disciples, and he says, Go back and report to John what you hear and see.

What do you hear and see?

This is an important thing for you to remember.

In the book of Romans, Paul writes, and this is just within like 20 or 30 years of when this verse would have been written.

Paul writes, and he says, Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.

Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

How does our faith grow?

It's by hearing the word of God, seeing it with our own eyes, living it out in our own lives.

This is what happens.

A lot of us think.

Here's why.

The strongest faith isn't a faith that never doubts.

The strongest faith is a faith that grows through your doubts.

I think about David in Psalm 23.

He says, Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

What is the path forward with your doubts?

It's not that you cut and run when things don't make sense, it's that you trust the sovereignty of God and you continue walking through your doubts.

What if on the other side of your doubts is a stronger relationship with God than you've ever experienced?

What if on the other side of your doubts God wants to use you and to use your doubts to help someone else who is so disoriented and so nearsighted by the fact that they are walking through a shadow of doubt of their own?

What if you could say to someone, oh, girl, I've been there.

I've walked through that before.

Oh, I know that pain.

Oh, I remember those sleepless nights.

And what if God can use your doubt to draw you closer to Him?

Doubts just lead to questions.

And questions lead you to truth.

Truth will always be found in the person of Jesus.

So, what would it look like if all of us just made this decision today that I'm walking through my doubts to experience the faith that comes on the other side?

Can I get a good amen from anybody here?

Would you bow your head and close your eyes at all of our locations today?

Let me pray for you.

God, I want to take a moment to pray for my brothers and sisters today who may be carried in some doubt, some questions we don't have answers to, some moments that don't make sense.

God, for those of us who walked in carrying doubt, may we be reminded that we're not alone in our doubt.

And that you invite us to seek you in the moments of our doubt.

God, I pray for moments of courage and clarity.

God, may we have the courage to trust you and to walk our faith out by walking directly through our doubts.

And God, on the other side of it, would you just continue to reveal your goodness and your strength and your love and your grace and your mercy over and over and over again.

God, we know that we'll never have a season in our life when we don't walk through doubt.

But would you use our doubts to draw us closer to you in Jesus' name?

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

If you came to church today, you don't know if you're right with God, but today you need to start following Jesus.

Maybe this means you've never started a relationship with God, or maybe you just feel like you've just walked away and today you need to restart with Him.

Would you have three seconds of courage and raise your hand right now and say, Jason, I need to start or restart following Jesus.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Yep, thank you at the back.

Yep, thank you.

Several people in this room, no matter where you are, if this is you, would you pray this with me?

And I want you to hear this praying of prayer changes everything when you mean it with your heart.

I want to invite you to say these words out loud.

And I want everyone to say it.

Like nobody stands alone and nobody prays alone and acts us.

Would you say this with me today?

Would you say, Jesus, I give you my life?

Would you be my Lord and my Savior?

Change me from the inside out.

Make my life new.

Jesus, I believe you're the Son of God.

I believe you gave your life for me.

And because of your sacrifice, my life can be made new.

So, Jesus, I love you.

I give you my life for the rest of my life, and I choose to follow you in Jesus' name.

Come on, somebody say amen, amen.

We had a lot of people praying.

Let's celebrate that together, everybody.