Imposter Syndrome – Made New

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.

Last week, Pastor Jason kicked off week one of Imposter Syndrome, which is on the book of Ephesians.

So you were given homework.

I hope you did it.

He said, listen, this is a short book, six chapters every day.

Why don't you go through and read a chapter of Ephesians?

And I'm just excited that as a church, and that's across cities, across online, right?

We're all doing this together.

So I feel like if you run into somebody in a coffee shop, they've got an access shirt on.

You could be like, hey, you're reading Ephesians?

You're doing, you're doing your thing?

And so we'll know, and we'll get to celebrate that.

Last week, Pastor Jason talked about Ephesians.

I want to remind you the beginning, the kind of framework of Ephesians.

Ephesians is written by Paul.

It's about 60 years after Jesus had come and lived on earth.

And the first three books of Ephesians kind of talk about sort of what uh God expects, what he did, what he is, who he is, his character, his nature, so that in chapters four through six, it goes through and says, now what do we do with that?

Last week in Imposter Syndrome, Pastor Jason kicked off beautifully a discussion of Ephesians 1.

And today I get the privilege of talking about Ephesians 2, which is so chock full of amazing things, by the way, that I had to kind of cherry pick.

So that is why it's important that you're reading it on your own, because there is truly so much good in there for you.

All right, you ready to get to work?

Can we jump into this?

You ready?

Let's do it.

Okay.

I want to start by telling you guys that you are my family.

So because of that, I feel like this is a safe place.

And I feel like we can have a little bit of group confessional.

You know, some people say the term like church friends.

No, y'all, we're family, right?

If one day when we believe in Christ, when we've accepted in our heart, we're all gonna spend eternity together.

So we may as well get a little bit comfortable.

So I'm gonna do a little group confessional this morning, and I want to start out by asking you if you, like me, have ever fallen prey to buying something online that promised to make your life better.

Hands, bunch of liars.

Yellow bunch of liars.

I know some of you are like, okay.

Pastor Jason, he's one of the worst.

We have something that sous V's meat in a bag.

I don't know what that means, but it's great, apparently.

Okay, so I have done this.

I have been victim to doom scrolling, as they call it.

Um, I have found it is very bad to buy something after 10 p.m., by the way, because usually your mind is like half asleep, and you're like, I do need that.

But you're you don't even remember in the morning, and then it shows up.

You're like, oh my gosh.

Okay.

So I have bought a bunch of things on the premise that they would make me over, make me better, um, make me new.

And the first one is this.

So, yes, so before your imaginations go wild, okay.

This is called Heatless Curls.

Anybody know Heatless Curls?

Y'all know what this is?

Okay.

Men and women who have jobs and aren't chronically online like me.

Okay, this is Heatless Curls.

You, I'm not putting it on my head because I absolutely know all you, and that this would show up.

Yeah, you have your phone ready.

No, I'm not putting this on my head.

But essentially, what this is supposed to do is uh you wear it and you sleep in it.

You you curl your hair sort of in it, and you're supposed to wake up and like, oh my gosh, the girl in the ad, like her hair was phenomenal.

Like she flipped that hair and it felt like magical.

And so I saw a girl in the ad wear this on a plane.

Like she was like, you get off your flight and your hair looks perfect.

And I was like, Well, I need that.

So I bought this.

Um, I slept.

First of all, I wish you could see Jason's face when I came to bed wearing this.

He was like, I'm sleeping with an octopus.

I don't know.

Okay, so I bought this, and you know what I woke up with?

A stiff neck and hair that looked worse than it had the night before.

Like, come to find out.

The girls in those ads looked good already.

They are not using this to look better.

They already had great hair.

It is not for those of us who are, you know, need real help, okay?

So that's one thing.

Bought it, never gonna use it again.

Fun for a costume, maybe under the sea.

I don't know.

Okay.

This is the second thing, and I actually want to give a shout out to our North Lakeland location pastor, Isaiah Board, because he kind of influenced me to buy this.

Do you know what this is?

This is an eyeball massager, okay?

Now, you get massages for all your body parts that you overuse.

What do you use more than your eyeballs?

I'm telling you.

So I get headaches every once in a while, and I was like, this could be like really amazing.

I could put it on, and maybe it just feels like so good.

I've bought like the um the ice things and stuff.

If you're migraine people, you know.

So I bought this and I've got a headache one day, and I was like, here we go.

Like, here's my time.

So I put it on, and the only problem is that it sounds like a freight train.

So now not only do you have a headache, but you're laying with this on, and sure, it's moving your eyeballs around, but also there's a loud freight train in your ear, which is basically the last thing you want when you have a headache.

So, Pastor Isaiah, I hope yours worked better than mine because this is a no.

All these things have been dust collectors up until this point.

Oh, and this one.

This one.

Okay.

This is a stair stepper.

Some of you said, go ahead and demonstrate it.

No.

So this stair stepper I saw online, and how it sold me was because it said if you put on an hour TV program and you do this for the hour of the TV program, like you're getting your workout, but you don't have to leave the house.

And it's kind of like, I was like, I could do that.

So I bought this, was excited to try it.

Oh, it also has like the arm things.

So you essentially do like, it's a little, it's kind of like it's a little bit of this.

Thank you.

Um, I don't know.

So we we bought this and I was like, awesome.

And so I put in our show on, I pulled it out to the living room, and I was like, let's go.

I'm about to be like fit.

Okay.

I put this on, and after a minute, I was like, dang, this really works.

Like, this is incredible.

I really do feel it.

After two minutes, I was like, At three minutes in, I started crying and I fell off the machine.

And I was like, who's doing this for an hour?

Like, who has the like what is this?

Like Michael Phelps?

Like, who is on this?

That is like, you have to be already a pretty good athlete, I think, if you're able to look how hard this is to push down.

No.

I'll be 43 on Wednesday.

Like, this is not for me.

Um, and so now what it is is something I stub my toe on in the middle of the night when I'm getting up for water, essentially.

This is a no.

And if you could do this for an hour, I'd like to shake your very strong hand.

Okay.

Um, that's my group confessional.

Um, I think we've all kind of fallen for that line of like, I need a makeover, I want to be made new, and I want to do it fast and easy, right?

Like heatless girls.

I'm like, oh, I don't want to spend the time actually sitting there with a thing.

I want to do something fast.

A lot of us have fallen for that.

And today, one of the main points of Ephesians 2 as we're talking about imposter syndrome is actually living a life that is made new in Christ.

So let's let's jump in.

I want to start with the what, the what of this message.

And I want to start at the very top of Ephesians 2.

If you have it, get your word out.

If not, we're gonna read it on the screen together.

But we start with a big bold statement.

Paul is not playing around here in Ephesians 2.

He says, As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.

Let's stop there.

Okay, we're starting bold here, right?

As for you, you were dead in your sins and transgressions.

We need to make note of a few things immediately.

Number one, this is not a light topic, right?

Paul is actually saying, this should be major.

This should be a big deal.

We're not talking about like self-improvement, we're not talking about like uh, you know, the 75 hard.

We're talking about you were dead, and through Christ you're now made new.

This is a big deal.

He's saying this should be a big deal because you were dead.

Let's go, let's keep going.

Ephesians 2, the next verse he says, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

All of us lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh.

We're gonna come back to this word here, and following its desires and thoughts, like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.

Okay.

So it says this, it says uh that word, flesh.

I want to go back to that.

We know the New Testament was written in Greek, right?

In Greek, this is the word what it looks like, and it essentially means carnal.

You're carnally minded, you're fleshly.

What does that mean?

It's saying you used to be dead because you were a slave to your flesh.

And I want to stop here and say, I feel it's so funny sometimes when people say, I can't be a Christian because it's a lot of rules, and I don't want to be chained up to something that gives me a lot of rules and regulations.

Can I offer that if you aren't living for Christ, you're still bound and chained to something.

You're bound to your desires, your flesh, those sins, those things that you want to do.

You're gonna be bound either way.

The question is, will you be bound to your flesh or bound to the spirit of God?

And so basically, what Paul is saying is that living according to the flesh leads to death, right?

We're not pulling any punches.

What an encouraging message.

Who's glad they came to church today?

No, we're gonna get better, we're gonna go through it.

But Christ is just saying, before Christ, you were also bound to something.

You were just bound to your fleshly desires.

Can anyone relate to that?

And anybody remember sort of trying to live for pleasure.

You've lived for the weekend, you want to get through the week to get to the weekend.

You think if I could just get to five o'clock, if I could do this, if I can just get on a date, if I could do this and do that.

And nothing ever really pans out the way you think it will.

Those desires never really lead to fulfillment.

In a moment, it's all you can see, and then after that you leave completely unfulfilled.

It's kind of like this.

Uh, it's okay because this is also Paul, but we're gonna jump and just do a quick little trot into Romans, and that's okay even in our Ephesians study.

But he says this: he says, I do not understand what I do.

For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do.

And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.

As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.

For I know that good itself does not dwell in me.

That is in my sinful nature.

For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.

For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing.

Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

Do do do do do do do do.

If I had a dollar for every do in there, right?

Okay.

So what is he basically saying?

He's saying what we just said.

Before Christ, we're dead in our sin.

And we want to do good things, but you wind up doing the bad things anyway.

Why?

Well, because you're bound to your flesh.

So you can have good intentions.

You could say, I want to not live a sinful life, I want to live a good life.

I I even prayed a prayer to be a Christian.

But if you're not completely made new, you're gonna keep on doing the things you don't want to do.

And Paul has set up a very interesting problem here for us.

He's saying there's a problem, and we could call it spirit versus flesh.

Spirit versus flesh.

Doing what you know is right versus doing maybe what your simple heart desires, even though you don't really want to do it.

So that that's kind of Paul establishing this problem for us.

There's a problem.

So now let's talk about the how.

How in the world do we do this?

I think a lot of us as Christians, we struggle in tension.

So I just said spirit versus flesh, right?

I think a lot of us have prayed a prayer, we believe we are saved, but we still sort of have this idea where we have not really been transformed, not made new.

You prayed a prayer, you go to church, maybe you've even done next steps, but nothing really in your life has changed.

I think of it like this you feel the tension because you've become a Christian, or at least you come to church on Sundays, but you have one foot here in the spirit, living with God, trying to do good, but you still got one foot over here, doing what your past did.

You didn't really change your ways, you just kind of added on.

Does that make sense?

It's like us ladies when we're like, I can't afford a new dress, but I got new shoes, I'm gonna hope that redoes the whole thing.

Yeah?

So this is like that.

You're still living with one foot bound to the sinful things you used to do.

But because you became a Christian, you go, why is this so tense?

Why do I, why do I feel this pull?

I want to do good things, but also I still wind up doing those things I don't want to do.

So a lot of us feel this intention, this tension.

Speaking of being an imposter, that probably nothing makes you feel and notice that imposter syndrome more than when you say one thing, you come to church on Sunday, right?

For me, it was always like immediately after church.

It's like you leave on a high, you just responded to the altar time, you're so excited, you're like life change, and somebody cuts you off in the parking lot, and you're like, boop, out the window.

Just out the window.

There is no new, it's the same.

This is just my own.

I'm just confessing.

This is this is it.

I want to point out like this though, um, tension, I think, in Christians is something we have run from.

And I think we have been taught, and this is sort of a problem all across the board.

I think we feel like when something's uncomfortable, we should run from it.

And yet I read this amazing uh quote this week from Stephen Furtick.

He said, Your tolerance for tension is gonna determine your potential for growth.

I'm gonna say that again because somebody didn't get it.

Your tolerance for tension, feeling uncomfortable, is gonna determine your potential for growth.

See, I say it like this.

Um, sometimes we avoid things that hurt us, right?

I years ago, I quit going to the gym because I was like, I'll do it at home.

Sure, well, there's only one problem with that.

At home, when it starts to hurt, I stop.

Yes?

Anybody else?

In class, when I was at Club Pilates, there'd be a girl that would come in twice my age.

And I'm like, there is no way Linda's beating me.

There is no way.

So I'm doing things with muscles I don't have, frankly.

And I'm just like, but I'm not going down like that.

I'm not a sucker, you know.

So I'm like, and then you can't walk as you're leaving, but you're like, I'm not.

Why?

Because there's a pressure.

I just did a 5K with somebody that might be in here.

She's when we run together, we run a lot faster than when I run by myself.

We were doing a 5K, and I was like, we started, and I was sort of like, I hope she's not gonna run the whole thing because I can't run the whole thing.

So I was like looking at her, but I wasn't gonna be the first one to bow out, right?

Because she's next to me.

She's sort of challenging me.

And then eventually we sort of looked at each other and we're like, just a little break, yes.

Oh God.

So we did, you know, we took a break.

But what is that?

That's because tension, or like in a workout, you're not really gonna gain muscle.

You're not gonna get fit if you only do it to the point you can do it, right?

You'll just stay the same.

In order to grow, you have to face that tension and then you have to go through it.

And it's funny because we love tension in movies, in books, and TV shows, right?

Have you ever given up watching a movie or a TV show because you go, nothing happened?

Like, I literally was watching a series recently, and I was like, this is terrible.

Nothing happens in this show.

Like, we want that tension in our movies, in our entertainment.

We don't want it in our lives.

When we're writing the story of our life, we expect tension free.

And I want to challenge you today.

Tension may not be the enemy.

It may, in fact, be what God is using right now to draw you into growth, to draw you into your next level.

I would say it like this: stop, stop praying for a tension-free life.

Start praying for purpose in the tension.

What do I mean?

I mean, tension is there, it's gonna come, it's how we grow.

So instead of every time you feel the littlest bit of discomfort, God, take this away, God, I'm uncomfortable.

Instead of saying, God, what are you doing?

And how can this grow me as a believer, right?

In Ephesians 2, let's keep going.

How do we do this?

Verse 12 and 13, he says, Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.

But now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

The how is that you've been brought near by the blood of Jesus Christ.

Let me say that again.

How we made new is because we have been made brought close by the blood of Jesus Christ.

It is in his person that we are able to do all of these things, not through our effort, not through me trying to live as a better Christian, trying to get it all right.

No, through him.

So let me talk then about that who is Jesus.

Let's talk about his person, who he is.

This verse right here is gonna be a word for somebody today, Ephesians 2.14.

It just says for he himself is our peace.

He himself is our peace.

Maybe somebody today needs a little bit of peace.

And it says that he himself, the person of Jesus Christ, is our peace.

So would it not stand to reason then that when you are trying to find peace in other persons, in that relationship, in that friendship, everybody's great, but no one is meant to bring you peace.

Jesus died so you could have peace.

Don't be surprised when your best friend, your spouse, whoever can't cut that, right?

Before I am anything else, I am his, I am chosen.

He is our peace.

I feel like sometimes uh we're looking around, wondering why we lack peace.

But friend, we're still impostering.

We haven't been made new.

We just wanted to add Christianity, Christianity on to the things we're already doing.

We sprinkle a little bit.

I went to church on Sunday, I went to growth track, maybe I even let a group.

I haven't been made new because I haven't died to my old self.

And he is waiting.

He says, I'm your peace.

Listen to this.

Consequently, it says, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household.

What does that mean?

That means that it would make sense to not be able to do this without Jesus, but you're not separated from him anymore.

He has chosen you to be a citizen with him.

The who of this being made new is Jesus.

He did it all so that you could be made new.

As a side note, this is just a freebie, but I always think adoption is so beautiful in this same way.

Like a child who is adopted, you're able to say to them, like, we didn't biologically have you, we chose you.

And isn't that what Christ says to you?

You weren't mine, you were separated from me.

I died so I could choose you, so you could be in my person.

And now that who.

So for the rest of this time, let's camp out here.

How are we gonna do this?

It's nice to say, let's be made new, but it would be remiss to go out and not say, Well, then how are we made new?

Okay.

The first one is this you have to die to the old.

So remember in verse one, he says, You were dead in your flesh, you were dead in your sins and transgressions, but you're now alive and new in Christ.

This won't be possible until we actually actively surrender.

We take both feet firmly over here, right?

Think about this.

How many times in your week do you see a cross?

I wear like a cross necklace pretty often.

How many times have you seen somebody wearing a cross and then their mouth is like and you're like speaking of imposter syndrome, right?

But the cross isn't meant to just be a shape, a piece of jewelry.

Every time you see a cross this week, think about this.

Jesus died so that you could be made new.

I want to say that again, because guys, that's kind of radical.

Jesus died so you could be made new.

So you don't have to live chained to your past, chained to your flesh.

He died once and for all so that it could be done.

He's a reminder of what that death to new life means and can be.

So because of that, we have to number two stop just trying to be better.

Stop trying to be better.

I want to say this loud and clear because this is a word for you and for me.

But Jesus died.

So stop trying to kill yourself at being better because you'll never be able to do it.

He already died, so you don't have to die trying to earn his love, trying to be a better version of yourself.

He already did the death part.

Now he's offering you new life.

We're not called to be better.

We're called to be new.

We're not called to just try little improvements, a little bit of sprinkles on a cupcake.

Right?

This is radical.

This is death to the old ways and new life in Christ.

Any recovering uh strivers and achievement addicted people here, that's me all the way.

Sometimes I sit down and I go, what could I even add to the sacrifice of the blood of Jesus that I would think would even be a measly offering at the foot of the cross?

When I look at the cross, when I look at what he's done, striving has to go because he has done enough.

When I strive, I look in his face and say, You did great, but let me show you what I can do.

We wouldn't say that, but we do it with our actions, right?

No, he's enough.

He is more than enough.

We're not called to be better.

We're called to be new.

Jesus died.

Now stop trying to kill yourself, being better.

You know, it's it made me think of this um verse in Matthew.

It's uh it's it's not here on the screen, but I'll just kind of read it for you.

Uh actually, it is on the screen.

Look at that.

It's magical.

Thank you.

Um but it kind of talks about this idea of new and old.

It says, no one sows a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, making the tear worse.

Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins.

If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out, and the wineskins will be ruined.

No, they pour new wine into new wineskins and both are preserved.

What does this mean?

Somebody said happy hour.

No.

That is not what we're talking about.

Okay.

What he's saying is if you have something new, why would you put it in something old?

If you have a new wine, you don't put it in an old wineskin, right?

And yet we are doing that in our faith all the time.

You have been made new, but you haven't let go of the old.

You haven't died to the flesh.

So all you've done is add little bits of new into something very old.

Your old ways of trying, your old ways of living, your old unhealthy habits.

You're trying to do that and sort of fit Jesus into it like an accessory.

It's not an accessory.

He is the whole thing.

Sometimes you meet people and they're like, what do you do for hobbies?

Oh, I do this, I do that, I go to church.

Church is not my hobby, friends.

Before I am a mother, a wife, before I am a pastor, before I do anything in my life, I am a Christian.

It is my whole identity.

It is not part or something I do.

I am his and his alone.

Nothing else I could ever paint would ever add and just makes me an imposter.

We have to stop trying to be better.

Um, I am.

Here's more group confession.

I feel like I confess a lot of things that you're probably like, she should do better.

But I like Coke Zero.

Does anybody in the room enjoy a Coke Zero?

Good.

Miss Me with the Diet Coke.

Okay?

If I'm at your restaurant and I say, Do you have Coke Zero?

and you say no, we have Diet Coke, I'm like, okay, bye.

So, all right.

I like Coke Zero.

If one of you even emails me this week about how it's bad for me, just let me live.

Let me live.

You have your life, I have mine, okay?

So I love Coke Zero.

I like love it with a slice of pizza particularly, but Coke Zero keeps doing this thing where we're like, new flavor of Coke Zero.

Coke Zero Orange.

And you're like, okay.

But it's not really a new flavor.

It's Coke Zero with orange, okay?

It's not a brand new thing.

It's just adding something to the old thing, which I'm fine with the old thing, right?

That's what we're doing in our lives, in our Christianity, friends.

We're like, I've been made new.

Now I go to the 10:30 service at Access on Sundays.

Leave completely the same person you were before Christ.

That's not being made new, friend.

That's taking an accessory.

Your faith.

What Jesus did for you, that's not an accessory.

That changes the whole person.

That changes everything.

That's not adding a little bit more, that's becoming brand new.

So the point's not more rules, more striving.

The point is to let what Jesus did make us new.

And the third thing is just this.

So now you have to live new.

Well, what does that mean?

What does that look like?

Maybe you've kind of understand, like struggled with understanding Christianity.

And I want to offer that that may be because you've had one foot here and one foot here.

Maybe you've done things, little improvements.

You started going to church.

Maybe you don't cuss as much, right?

Maybe you don't watch the same movies you used to, little behavioral changes.

You haven't been made new.

You haven't been changed from the inside out.

You're still straddling the line, the tension of living to the flesh, but trying to live in the spirit.

That's not living new.

Becoming new is radical.

It means starting over.

Becoming new is changing everything.

It's not, you know, changing it when the right people are looking.

Oops.

I say this to myself.

Sunday mornings in ministry used to be my most sinful hour from like 8 to 9 a.m.

getting the kids to church.

Truly.

Like everyone went insane.

No one could find shoes.

I was like, get in the car.

And then we'd pull up and I'm like, good morning.

Girl, yes.

Blessings.

Bless your heart.

Becoming new is radical.

I think so many of us have been majoring on the minors.

What do I mean by that?

I mean you're talking about behaviors.

You're talking about, oh, I cussed again, or oh, I didn't read my Bible today.

Okay.

Those are good things, right?

But I'm talking about your soul being made new.

Dying to the old and going all in with Jesus.

All in.

You know, uh, there's a story in scripture.

We don't we don't say this around the church too much anymore, but have you ever heard of a born-again Christian?

Born again.

We used to say that more.

Are you have you been born again?

You know?

And and that phrase comes from a passage in in uh John 3.

Jesus is talking and he says, Unless you're born again, you can't see the kingdom.

And this poor man, Nicodemus, poor dumb, dumb Nicodemus, bless him.

He goes, Well, how am I gonna be born again?

What am I supposed to do?

Go back into my mother.

And like, I've I was Nicodemus' friends, you know you're like, oh my God, like this guy.

But it's kind of an honest question when you think about it, right?

How are you born again?

And Jesus is like, No, I'm not saying go back into your mother.

I'm saying you need to be born again into a life in the spirit where the flesh dies and you go all the way.

And you could say, I am a born-again Christian, I am made new.

If you've ever been here on a baptism Sunday, you know what our shirts say in the baptism?

They say, made new.

Why?

Because baptism is such a beautiful example that when we dunk the person, they go down and we say, You are dying to your old sinful life, that is gone.

And when you come up, you're new.

God has made you new because of the sacrifice of Jesus.

You are made new, you were born again.

And that's kind of radical.

What we're talking about today is a little bit radical because I am gonna say that there's people who maybe have believed for a long time that you were living for the Lord, that maybe you haven't really been made new.

Maybe you want to have both the flesh and the spirit, and it's not gonna work out.

So today I'm gonna ask something kind of radical.

If you'd bow your head and close your eyes.

No one's looking because this is kind of a deep moment of vulnerability.

But I do believe God is speaking this word today because there's some in the room who would say, Wow, that's me.

I have been sort of doing the Christian things, trying to add that into my pre-existing life, but I haven't really been made new.

I haven't really been born again, as Jesus would say.

And I want to start today, not through my striving, but through the blood of Jesus.

While every head is bowed and every eye is closed, with no one looking.

If you would say, I think that's me, I think I want to go all in with Jesus today.

I think I want to be made new.

Would you raise your hand?

If that's you today, yeah, yeah, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

Thank you, Jesus.

Yeah, yeah.

You could put your hand down.

Lord, thank you.

Thank you, God.

Pray this with me.

If that was you who raised your hand, pray this in your heart as I pray it audibly.

God, thank you for sending your son Jesus to die so I don't have to kill myself trying to be good enough.

Thank you for the blood of your son Jesus.

Thank you that I can be born again.

That I've been majoring on the minor things, trying to correct my behaviors when really my heart and my mind were one foot in, one foot out.

Today, God, I want to go all in.

I want radical transformation.

I want to be made new.

I want to be different because of the sacrifice of your son.

He is the person of our peace.

He is the one that drew us close.

I'm tired of living as an imposter, and today I say, truly make me new.

We thank you, God, that it is because of your sacrifice that this is even possible.

And we'll give you honor and praise for this sacrifice for the rest of our days.

In your Son's mighty name we pray.

Amen.

Friends, today in this room, so many people just decided to go all in with Jesus.

Let's celebrate that in Jesus' name.

Woo!