Holy Confidence – The Cure for Insecurity

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.

Well, I'm really glad you came to church today.

We are in a two-part mini-series today and we're wrapping it up.

The series is entitled Holy Confidence.

Here's the question I want to answer for all of us.

It's where does my confidence come from?

Like where does it come from?

So last week we kicked off this series by dealing with the topic of courage.

Because if you are going to step into your moment of divine destiny from God, it's going to require something of you that maybe you don't come naturally equipped with.

Courage.

Today, I want to talk to you about something that I believe has the potential to derail and to mess up dreams and ambitions and hopes more than failure ever will.

To get us started today, um, at the end of the 1900s, I was a high school senior, that was a long time ago, and um and I went to a very small Christian school, very small private school.

My whole graduating class was 14 students, but your boy was valedictorian, everybody.

And uh, come on.

It's not saying much, but it's saying something.

And um, so I I love school, I had best friends, best time in high school, but because my school was a small school, it meant that if you tried out for a sport, you made the team, which is that's what I'm talking about.

And so I made the basketball team, and I I know what you thought when I walked up today.

That man was a baller, and that is partially true.

I did play basketball.

My team was honestly, though, not very good.

Like we were not the best of the best, and I'll never forget one of the funniest things that happened in my senior year high school season.

We played all these schools and we were we would lose so many games.

But there was one school we played twice every year that was a boarding school from the north side of our of our county.

And a boarding school, if you don't know, means that those students go to school but they live at school.

And so they these students would go to school.

It was an all-male boarding school, so all these boys would go to school together, and then they would go to practice for basketball, and then after practice, they had nothing to do, so they would play more basketball.

And so they were really, really good, really talented, and they had one kid on their team named JJ, who, in my opinion, was probably the best basketball player I have ever personally played against.

He went on to play Division I basketball, really, really great player.

And the first time we played their school, JJ dropped 47 points on us, which is not a big deal because our whole team scored 33 points, so it wasn't that big of a deal.

But he was good, like good, good, good.

And so um later in the season, we knew we had to face them again, and we didn't have the date circled on our calendar, we had it like X'd on our calendar.

We knew this was gonna be a sad day for us.

And so we get to the game, and no one on my team's excited, and we get to the locker room, and um, this was the kind of school where my basketball coach was actually a history teacher.

That's what he really was, not really much of a strategist, more of a history guy.

So he gathers this all together, Mr.

Murgory, and he's like, guys, listen, anybody remember the last time we played this school?

And we were like, we're seeing therapists because of the last time we played this school.

Of course, we remember.

And he goes, no, no, anybody remember that kid JJ?

He goes, I've got to play, and everybody lean in.

And he points to this guy on my team named Ryan.

He says, Ryan, you are starting tonight.

And my whole team was completely baffled in this moment.

You see, you make a team for different reasons.

You make a team because you've got talent, you can make a team because you have leadership capabilities.

Ryan didn't make it for either of those reasons.

He made it because everybody made the team.

Uh, this guy was like the class clown, he was always the jokester.

He said, Ryan, here's the plan for tonight.

You're starting, and when we're on defense, I want you to stay close to JJ.

I want you in his face, I want you so close you could tell me what he had for lunch.

I want you to smell his deodorant, tell me what brand he wears.

I want you close.

When we're on defense, you're in his face.

And when we're on offense, I want you in his face.

When they have the ball in his face, when we have the ball in his face.

And he goes, Well, what if they pass the ball to me?

He said, We will never pass the ball to you.

Stay in JJ's face.

Are you with me?

And so the game tipped off.

And I'm gonna be honest with you, this was one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life.

He starts the game and he's just like talking to him.

He's asking him every question he can think of.

He's like, What kind of deodorant do you wear?

Are you a serial man?

Are you a Frosted Flakes guy?

You seem like a Lucky Charms guy.

Do you save the marshmallows for the end?

What TV shows are you into?

What's your favorite movie?

What's your favorite drama?

Like he goes into every question you can imagine.

I remember later in the first quarter, he's like, All right, let's get a little personal.

Are you a boxer's man or a briefs man?

What kind of man are you?

Later, towards the beginning or the middle of the second quarter, he had run out of questions.

JJ was just getting so frustrated, and he said, You know what?

We've talked about everything I can think of.

Let's talk about your mom for a minute.

JJ got so frustrated that he literally shoved and threw a punch at Ryan, got ejected from the game, and we held him to three points, everybody.

Three points.

Now don't get too excited.

We still got blown out of the game.

But we brought JJ's scoring average from 47 down to 25 points per game.

And here's the question: how?

How did we do it?

It's really simple.

We got in his head, didn't we?

Isn't this the problem so many of us face?

You are fully designed by God, equipped by God, given all the tools you need to literally make a difference that's felt for generations to come.

The problem is things get in our head, and we all at times struggle with insecurity, don't we?

And I just want to say this to you insecurity will kill more dreams than failure ever will.

Insecurity is that voice in your mind that tells you, I'm not enough.

I'm not enough, I can't measure up.

And for some of us, it's more than that.

We think I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not strong enough, I'm not beautiful enough, I'm not enough.

Insecurity is the reason that supermodels feel ugly, it's the reason that earned PhDs feel dumb, it's the reason professional athletes feel unaccomplished, it's that somewhere along the way life has this way of getting in our head, and insecurity plants these roots that take hold, and we feel like we'll never measure up.

What insecurity really is, is nothing more than a fun house mirror.

Have you ever seen these before?

They give you a glimpse of truth, but it's always distorted and messed up.

And what funhouse mirrors do is it tends to exaggerate features of you.

That's what insecurity does.

It gives you a glimpse of the truth, but the truth is it's not the full picture of who you are.

It's always clouded and exaggerated, and it makes you think that you can never measure up.

All of us deal with insecurity.

We just do.

Insecurity is a part of the human experience.

It's the reason you walk into a room and you feel alone.

The room's full of people, but you feel alone.

If you struggle with tendencies like perfectionism, like I do, you will always struggle with insecurity.

If you had words spoken over you when you were a kid that you aren't good enough or you won't measure up, you will deal with insecurity.

If you feel like your whole life you're trying to live up to a standard that is unattainable, you will live with insecurity.

It is the constant companion of so many people.

I just know this.

All of us seem to at one point or another have a voice in our head, but how often is the voice building us up?

And how often is the voice tearing us down?

Today, what I'm gonna do is I want to take you to this interesting story in the book of Judges in the Bible.

It's kind of like a, it's not the most known kind of story in the Bible, maybe, maybe a second tier kind of story in the Bible.

And to understand the story, let me tell you what's going on with the people of Israel before we get to the story.

The people of Israel have had this wild history.

They are God's chosen people.

They find themselves in slavery and in captivity in Egypt for 400 years.

God uses a man named Moses to supernaturally lead them out of slavery towards this land called the promised land, the mil the land flowing with milk and honey.

And along the way, Moses dies.

Last week we told the story of his successor, Joshua, who comes along and he says, Listen, Joshua, you may not see this, but there is the ability in you to do what I've called you to do, so don't have fear, I'll be with you.

Joshua leads the people into the promised land, and then some time passes, and here's what happens the people of Israel are living in the promised land, but they're not living the promised life from God.

Here's what I mean.

They look around at all their neighboring countries and they see that they have kings and they have idols that they worship and they have things that they do that are sacrifices, and they start to want what all their neighbors have, and something happens.

At the end of the book of Judges, there's this interesting verse.

I I think it's a sobering verse for us.

Here's what it says about the people of Israel.

Judges 21, verse 25.

Judges 21:25

In those days, Israel had no king, everyone did as they saw fit.

Does this sound familiar to anybody else?

Hold on to that thought.

I'll come back to it in just a moment.

Let's go back 15 chapters to Judges chapter 6.

Judges 6 · chapter mention

We're gonna meet the person we're talking about today.

Judges chapter 6, verse 1.

Judges 6:1

It says the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites.

Just pause here for just a moment.

So here's what happens Israel does sin, they do evil, and God doesn't punish them, he just removes his hand of blessing from them.

He just like, I protected you, I took care of you, but if you want to do it your way, then you deal with the results of doing it your way.

So these Midianites are these evil, marauding kind of warriors.

A few verses down it says this.

It says the Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.

Literally, we know from the Bible and from history that they were literally coming in and murdering, killing, pillaging, and burning the food of all the Israelites.

It was this terrible, terrible time in the life cycle of Israel.

And if you study Israel, here was the cycle for Israel.

It's that they would sin, and the sin would cause them to live in the struggle.

Can I pause here for just a moment and step on your toes for a moment?

This is where America is right now, isn't it?

Like it, it's one thing, all of us have sin and sin issues in our lives, but we move from sinning being a personal thing that we're struggling with to being something that's celebrated as a country, issues of pride being celebrated, issues of like the murder of hundreds of thousands or millions of babies, and we celebrate it.

God removes his hand of blessing, and we're like, well, how did that happen?

A couple weeks ago, in one week, we had the murder of that girl on public transit, we had the shooting in Colorado, and the murder of Charlie Kirk in cold blood, and we're like, Well, how does this happen?

Sin leads to struggle.

And with struggle, you have an opportunity to do something.

You can either live in the struggle, which is what I pray we don't do, or we can do what the people of Israel often did, and cry out to God, repent of our sins, and turn for help, and then God offers salvation.

So here's the cycle.

And it goes back to the people of Israel.

So there's this moment.

Now the people of Israel don't have a king, they will have a king someday, and in this season they are ruled by what was called judges, and we're gonna meet the person we're talking about today, a man named Gideon.

A few verses down, Judges chapter 6, verse 11, says the angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abizarite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a wine press to keep it from the Midianites.

Judges 6:11

Let's just pause here for a moment.

Now remember what's happening.

Gideon's people, the Israelites, they're being uh invaded, murdered, all kinds of terrible things are happening.

And the first mention we have of this guy, Gideon, it says he's doing something that if you don't know what's happening, you'll read right over it and miss what's happening in his heart.

We meet Gideon and it says that he's threshing wheat, something you probably do on most Thursdays.

But here's what it was Git uh wheat is kind of made up of two parts.

There is the waste part, which is called the chaff, and then there is the food part, okay?

And what they would do in the time of Gideon is they would go to the highest point of a hill or a mountain where the breeze from the Mediterranean Sea would come through, and they would take this wheat and they'd throw it up, and the chaff, the trash part of it, was so light that the wind would carry it away, and then all the food would fall to the ground.

So we meet Gideon, and he's not at the highest point throwing the wheat, he's at the bottom where they press grapes to make wine.

Why is he there?

It's because he's scared.

It's because he's insecure, it's because he thinks he doesn't have what it takes to stand up for himself or to make a difference.

And then something happens.

Next verse, please.

It says, When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, quick side note, the the Hebrew language for this phrase, angel of the Lord, implies that this might have been Jesus himself.

Like before he comes at the Christmas story, he appears to Gideon and he said, The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.

To which Gideon must have been like, you see where I am, right?

Like I'm hiding because I'm scared and you're calling me mighty warrior.

Here's Gideon's language.

He's like, hold up, pardon me, my Lord Gideon replied, but how can I save Israel?

My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.

He's like, I think you got the wrong phone number, the wrong address.

I'm the weakest of the weak.

I'm from Plant City, everybody.

Like, I can't do nothing.

Can't do nothing.

Can't do nothing.

The Lord responded, I will be with you.

That's for somebody.

And you will strike down all the Midianites, leaving none alive.

And he's like, How is this possible?

So Gideon replied, If I have now found favor in your eyes, give me a sign that it is really you that is talking to me.

Please don't go away until I come back and bring my offering and set it before you.

So here's what's happened.

Like literally, an angel of the Lord, maybe it was Jesus himself, shows up and speaks to Gideon.

He's like, This is cool, but not quite enough.

Can you like give me a sign?

Because this is what we do.

It's like we get afraid to trust and afraid to step out in faith.

And so we ask God to give us a sign.

And so God obliges it, goes on and says this.

He says, Then the angel of the Lord touched the meat and the unleavened bread with the tip of his staff that was in his hand.

Fire flared from the rock, consuming the meat and the bread.

That would be enough for me.

I'd be like, all right, buddy, I'm in.

I got you whatever you need from me.

And then it says, And the angel of the Lord disappeared.

When Gideon realized it was the angel of the Lord, he exclaimed, Alas, sovereign Lord, I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face.

But the Lord said to him, Peace, do not be afraid, you are not going to die.

To which I would be like, I didn't know that was even a possibility right now.

So Gideon does this thing where he's like, if you're asking me to do it, I'll do it.

So he gathers up whatever band of army he can get, which is about 32,000 people.

And Gideon said to God, If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised, look, I will place a wolf leece on this threshing floor.

Here's what is going on.

He's saying to God, like, I know you gave me all these signs, but like I'm not sure that it's enough.

So here's what I'm gonna do.

You did the angel thing, that was cool.

You did the like touch the food with the stick, that was really cool, that was neat, but like I need another sign.

So he takes like a wool blanket and he sets it out on the floor and he's like, God, if this is really you, here's what I want.

I want tomorrow morning when I wake up, I want for the blanket to be wet, but the ground to be dry.

So he wakes up the next morning and it happens.

It's like that was cool.

Could have been a coincidence.

Let's try it one more time, but this time reverse it.

Tomorrow I want the ground to be wet, but I want the wool to be dry.

He wakes up and that happens.

It's like God is doing whatever he can to get his attention to say, this isn't about you, this is about me.

I'm doing this in my strength.

Gideon had a rightful reason to be worried.

His army was about 32,000 soldiers, but they were fighting against Midian, who had 120,000 soldiers.

Scripture illustratively says that Midian had so many camels that it was like a sea of camels farther than the eye could see.

I was trying to figure out how do I show you how many 120,000 people is.

The largest stadium in America is the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, which seats 107,600 people.

107,600 people show up to watch that miserable school every single week.

I don't actually care.

I don't care.

I'm a Dallas Cowboys fan, and everybody shows up to watch us lose.

Okay, whatever.

Okay, look at the next picture.

The next picture is all the fans.

That's a lot of people.

Now imagine the football field was also covered.

That would be the size of Midian's army, and they're facing off against 32,000 people in Israel.

It is literally like a four to one odds.

But then God says something crazy to Gideon.

It's like this wasn't enough.

God's going to show off his strength.

So the next verse down, it says, So the Lord said to Gideon, You have too many men.

To which I'd be like, are we looking at the same thing?

He says, I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, my own strength to save me.

God is setting us up for a miracle, and he wants you and me to know something, that if we can do something in our own strength, we'll be tempted to take the credit.

But when we do it in his strength, he's the one who gets the credit for it.

He goes on, he says, now here's what I want you to do.

Announce to the army anyone who trembles with fear may turn back and leave Mount Gilead.

And I would think this is a moment where the men will be men, and all 32,000 would say, No, no, Gideon, we are here for you.

We got your back.

Next verse.

So 22,000 men left, while 10,000 remained.

Bunch of wusses went home.

They were scared, right?

So they've gone from 32,000 to 10,000, and it goes on and it says, But the Lord said to Gideon, hold up, there's still too many men, take them down to the water, and I will thin them out for you there.

So God gives Gideon this test.

Like, depending on how the people drink the water, that'll show you who should fight.

And it goes on a couple verses later.

The Lord said to Gideon, With the what?

With the 300 men that lapped, I will save you and give the Midianites into your hands, let all the others go home.

To which I'd be like, God, look, I know you're able, but this just feels like a kamikaze kind of assignment.

Like, are you sending us in to die?

And I imagine that Gideon did what you and I do when asked something of the Lord, right?

He probably did the mental math with God.

He's like, God, before this whole thing started, the odds were four to one.

And then you did that weird thing where you told me to send some people home and the odds dropped to 12 to 1.

And then, like the water thing that was funny, I enjoyed watching it, but check this out.

The odds are now 400 to 1.

This doesn't make any sense.

The math doesn't make sense, which by the way, God's math doesn't always work the way your math does.

And it reveals something for him.

If God is going to come through, he's going to get credit because there is no way humanly possible that Gideon could have been smart enough to devise the plan to take on 120,000 people with 300 farmers.

That's who they are.

I want to show you some stuff about insecurity.

Write these down.

Number one, insecurity will always focus on what I am, what I am not.

I want you to notice something.

We meet Gideon and he's hiding, he's afraid, he's scared.

And notice what happens when the angel of the Lord shows up.

We read this a moment ago.

The angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon and he said, The Lord is with you.

Mighty warrior?

Gideon must have been like, Are you seeing the same thing?

Like maybe a mighty worrier, but not a warrior.

Do you see it?

And I think this is important for you to understand because you see your worst moment, God sees your potential.

I need you to see this.

The security that you want and the security that you need is not something you earn.

In fact, you need to understand that security is an inheritance, it's not earned.

It's given freely to you, it's not something that you can earn.

You get to walk in security, you don't have to fight for security.

It's a gift from God because you're a part of his family.

So I woke up real early this morning and I was kind of going over the notes one more time.

And I noticed something, so this isn't in your notes, this is bonus director's cut content.

But I want you to see, in the same verse, the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon and he said, The Lord is with you.

Like before he even declares his name or his new identity, he says, The Lord is with you.

Let me show you to you this way.

God's answer for insecurity is his presence.

One of the things that new parents know is there's some big transitions when you have little kids.

Like when you have a baby, sometimes they sleep in your room, and then you you grow them up a little bit, and they sleep in their own room but in a crib, and then eventually they make the big jump to a big boy bed or a big girl bed.

And I'll never forget that season of our life with one of our boys.

And there was this moment one night where my wife and I were asleep and we heard this screaming from upstairs.

One of my boys had just kind of gotten into the big boy bed phase, and I come in, and before I even reached the door, the smell was overwhelming.

He gotten sick in the middle of the night and decided to barf whatever mac and cheese he had up everywhere, all over himself, all over the bed, all over the wall.

You want to see a picture?

You want to see it?

I don't have a picture.

That's disgusting, okay?

I picked him up, it was like a war crime scene in there, it was gross.

He puked on me, okay?

That's disgusting, like chunks of mac and cheese.

So I just like shut the door and I Said, if I'm dealing with this now, Liz can deal with that tomorrow.

And anyways, I cleaned him up, but there was no chance of putting him back in the bed.

So upstairs we had his room and we had a little guest room.

And I took him, he was little, and I put him in the bed in the guest room.

And this would have been overwhelming.

He was so little.

This bed had no rails or anything to protect him.

And I put him in the bed, but he didn't understand.

And I go and I turn the light off and he starts screaming, No, no, no, no, no, no, Dad, no, no, no.

And I remember this is one of my favorite dad moments ever.

I crawled up in bed next to him because I was gonna sleep next to him, and I put my hand on his chest and I said, It's okay.

I'm here.

And he went, Oh.

And like three seconds later, I heard his deep breathing from sleeping.

There is something about the presence of your father that brings security.

Same is true with God.

Whatever you're walking through, whatever you need, his presence is where security is found.

Second thing you need to know is this confidence from anything temporary is just that.

It is temporary.

And we we tend to want God to show up in the immediate and in the temporary.

And so here's what we do: we look for God and we look for confidence in signs and comparison.

Don't we always want God to show us a sign?

Oh God, I'm so attracted to this girl.

If she loves me and if she is the one for me, may I hit three green lights in a row?

We hit two, but the third one, we're coming up and on its red, so we just slow down a little bit.

Green, it's a miracle, right?

That's what we're looking for.

Here's what sociologists call it moving goalpost syndrome.

What we want is we want God to show up and then God shows up, but it's never good enough for us, isn't it?

Like, look at Gideon's life.

He's like, God, I need you to prove this to me.

And it's like an angel's talking to you.

What else do you need?

The angel does a miracle, that's not quite enough.

What do you need?

It's like we're always looking for something else.

Here's some advice for you today.

What if instead of looking for signs, you built some altars?

Now, this is different.

Signs are things that are temporary and they change, they're circumstantial, but altars are intentional decisions.

Like as you read the Old Testament, altars were places people built so they could come back to it and remember the goodness and the faithfulness of God.

We didn't read this verse, we skipped it earlier, but in Judges chapter 6, verse 24, Josh Argideon has this moment where he builds an altar to the Lord and he called it the Lord is peace.

Judges 6:24

Why?

Because moments they always come and they go, they always change.

But an altar is a place you can come back to and remember God was good, so he is good.

And if he was good and he is good, that means he will be good.

He will be faithful.

That's what it means.

So I can say it like this insecurity wants proof, but God gives peace.

We we often look for God in signs, but we also we also look for God in comparison, don't we?

One of the things that I think, you ever grow up around a parent or a grandparent who says things like, in my day, we had to walk uphill in the snow, like that kind of stuff?

I I actually think the next generation has it harder than we did in the area of comparison, don't you?

Like we wake up every single day and we open our phone and we get a daily dose of discontentment that our life doesn't feel good enough, or we're not smart enough, or we're not beautiful enough, or we're not strong enough.

We just think that we're not enough.

What if instead you just made this decision?

I'm not looking for signs and I'm not looking for comparison.

I'm looking for the presence of God in my life, and I'm gonna build some altars to remind myself of God's faithfulness.

Here's another way to say it it's not about how much confidence you have.

So this isn't about you building some sort of muscle, it's about what you're confident in.

What would it look like if all of us just made this decision?

It's not like trying to get better or trying to get more self-confident.

This is about rooting my confidence in something that is unshakable, it is unchanging.

It is the goodness and the faithfulness of my God.

Last thought.

One of the challenges that we face, I said it a moment ago.

So we compare our worst moments to other people's best moments.

And we see it, it's all over social media.

Everybody's putting out their best pictures, their best moments, their vacation trips, and we're like, I don't feel like I measure up.

And what we do is we glorify our weaknesses.

I'm not good enough, I don't measure up, I'm not strong enough, I'm not smart enough.

And I want to give you a new way to frame your weaknesses.

What if instead of your weaknesses being the thing that holds you back from stepping into tomorrow with confidence?

What if you saw your weaknesses as God's opportunity?

What does it mean?

It means that in my weakness, it gives God room to show up and flex his strength.

So back to the story of Gideon.

Gideon's down to 300 men versus 120,000 soldiers.

God gives them this plan.

In fact, here it is in Judges chapter 7.

Judges 7 · chapter mention

They divided the 300 men into three companies.

Gideon placed trumpets and empty jars in the hands of all of them with torches inside.

Essentially, what he did is he gave them all of these three things, and they circled the army in the middle of the night, kind of up at a high place.

And in the middle of the night, when there was a sign from someone, all of a sudden they smashed the pots and they lit the torches and they blew the horns and all the men screamed.

And Gideon, I mean a Midian and all the people in this moment, all the Midianites, they wake up, they're disoriented, they're confused, and they turn on each other thinking they're being attacked.

And in the middle of the night, and in the middle of the darkness, the Midianites fought themselves, killed each other, and without even risking a life and without anyone even getting hurt, God comes through for the people of Israel.

God always comes through.

If we were to somehow go back in time and we were to get with Gideon, we're like, all right, look, there's 120,000 of them, and there's 300 of you.

I'm sure he wasn't sleeping at night.

I'm sure he thought this was the end of his story because he wasn't capable or strong enough or wise enough to come up with this on his own.

The same is true for you and me.

It's that insecurity, it always measures our capacity by our weakness, but not by God's strength.

I want to say to somebody today, you don't have to live this life in your own strength.

This is the beauty.

Instead of trying to hide your weaknesses, you can be like, I'm not very good, and look what God does with me.

The book of 2 Corinthians, Paul says this.

He says, that is why for Christ's sake I delight in weaknesses.

I'm not trying to hide it, I'm not trying to, I'm not fearful.

I delight in weaknesses and insults and hardships and in persecutions and in difficulties.

And here's why.

For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Like, what would it look like if all of us made this decision today to leave and walk out of our churches?

And we make this decision to say, I maybe walked in this way, feeling overwhelmed by the weight of this world and feeling unable to stand up under the weight and the pressure of it.

I feel weak, I feel insignificant, I feel insecure, but my strength isn't my strength, my confidence isn't my confidence, but I walk out with a holy sense of confidence.

My strength isn't mine, my strength comes from you, God.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes all across this place?

I want to pray for God to give us a supernatural dose of the strength and the courage we need.

The cure for the insecure is the physical, tangible presence of God.

The cure for the insecure is you not trying to do this in your own strength, but finding your strength in Him.

So, God, in this place, we turn our hearts to you and we ask you to do what only you can do, which is to be a miracle worker for us.

God, I pray for a supernatural dose of holy confidence to flood each and every one of our hearts.

May we realize that holy confidence isn't about our abilities or our strength, but it's rooted in your strength and your abilities.

God, I pray for those who walked in today feeling so insecure.

May there be a great trade.

May we trade our insecurity for your security.

May we trade our weaknesses for your strength.

May we trade our hopelessness for your hope.

And may we trade our sadness for your joy.

May we walk out of here different today because our confidence isn't found in our strength or our abilities, but they're found in you.

We thank you for that, God, in Jesus' name.

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

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

Maybe this means you've never prayed to start a relationship with God, or maybe you just feel like you've never started, maybe you feel like you walked away.

No matter where you are on that journey, if today you came and you know that you need to make things right with God and you need to make the decision to follow Jesus, would you have three seconds of confidence and raise your hand right now if this is you?

At all of our locations, if you need to start or restart with Jesus, raise your hand.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thank you.

If this is you, this moment's for you.

So many people.

And I'm gonna ask church family as we pray this prayer, let's not leave them alone in this.

Let's pray this together.

No one stands alone at Access.

If this is you and you need to start following Jesus, would you pray this with me and church family?

Let's all say it out loud together.

Say, Jesus today, come on, church family, Jesus today, I give you my life.

Would you save me?

Change me, make me new from the inside out.

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

I believe you gave your life in my place.

Because of your sacrifice, my life can be made new.

So, Jesus, save me, change me from this day forward.

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.

Come on, church man.

We had people all over the place.

Pray.