Gifted – Finally Forgiven

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

For more information, visit Access.tv.

Well, we are in a series today, part two of a series called Gifted.

And last week I asked this question.

I said, what do you get a church that has everything?

What do you give the church that gives hundreds of thousands of dollars away?

What do you give a church that gives tens of thousands of dollars of food to people who were devastated by hurricanes?

What do you give to a church that serves some 25 to 30,000 man hours?

What do you give to a church that makes Santa Claus himself look greedy?

What do you give to that church?

And we answered it last week by saying you give them rest.

You find rest.

This is the path of Jesus.

Today I want to talk about another gift that you need.

The funny thing is, this is the gift that we have to give, and it's hard to give.

But I think for a lot of people it's actually harder to receive this gift.

A few weeks ago, I was out in my front yard throwing the football with my boys.

I gotta stay loose in case the cowboys ever call me up, and I was throwing, and I was out there throwing, and one of my neighbors who I don't really know, I just kind of recognize him, but I don't really know him.

He comes walking by with his dogs and he walked past me and he gave me the head nod, the what's up head nod.

And I said, What's up?

And I kept throwing the ball.

And he walked past and then he stopped.

And I noticed him stopping and he turned back around and goes, Um, I've got to apologize to you for something.

And I don't know who this guy is.

And he goes, I need to apologize to you.

He goes, um, I'm like, what's happening right now?

He goes, on July 4th, when you were doing your fireworks out in front of your house, I drove by and I rolled down my window and I said, Is that it?

And I drove off.

Now for July 4th, I've got young kids.

I buy like the$30 box at Target.

I'm not trying to blow up everything, right?

And he drives me, he goes, he goes, is that it?

And then I drove off.

And he said, I haven't been able to stop thinking about this.

And I'm gonna be honest, I don't even remember him doing it.

I kind of think it's funny myself.

And I felt like Jesus in this moment.

I said, Well, I forgive you.

Go in peace and sin no more.

What do you say in this moment to this guy?

And I kid you not.

The guy literally goes, He grabbed his knees.

I was like, bro, this is no big deal.

Just move on, right?

A couple weeks ago, I was at the office.

And someone said to me, Jason, what is what is like the weirdest, strangest thing you've had to deal with as a pastor?

And as a pastor, a lot of weird stuff comes across my desk.

But but there was no question.

I didn't have to think about it.

I didn't have to like search through the library of memories of my mind.

I just knew immediately what it was.

And this was one of the weirdest moments of my life, some 14 years ago.

Our church was meeting at the YMCA, and there was no platform or stage, and so I stood on the floor, and so I like I was literally eye to eye with everybody.

And as I was preaching, there was a man sitting on the second row, and his eyes were as big as the state of Texas.

He looked at me like a deer and the headlights, the whole message.

I don't think he blinked at all.

And I was like, What is what is happening right now?

As soon as the the service was over, he popped up and beelined it to me.

And he goes, Bro, bro, bro.

He goes, bro, okay, what?

He goes, I need to talk to you.

He goes, No, I need to talk to you.

He goes, I I need to uh I need to talk to you.

I was like, let's talk.

He goes, I can't talk right now.

It's like you came to me.

Well, that night, I think it was Super Bowl Sunday, and there was a Super Bowl party, and at halftime he beelined it to me and we went away, and he said, Um, I don't I don't know what to do right now.

He goes, I caught my dad on accident in a crazy ridiculous, audacious, terrible, atrocious kind of sin.

And he told me what had happened, and I was like, that's heavy.

And he was shocked.

He wasn't trying to catch his dad in the sin for the sake of protecting him and the family and the situation.

I can't tell you the details.

I just want to say it is the single most egregious thing that has come to me in my 15 years of pastoring.

And he said, I don't I don't know what to do.

And I said, Well, you probably have to confront your dad about it.

And he goes, Cool, will you go with me?

I thought to myself, I don't get paid enough for this.

Is that the true?

Sure, I'll go with you.

So we sit down with his dad and they make small talk, and his dad says, Why is why is Jason here?

And he goes, That's a funny story.

And he took the the hardest gulp.

And he told his dad, he caught his dad on accident in this terrible, egregious sin.

And this whole thing happens, and I'm feeling disgusting.

You ever have that moment when you feel like you're gonna throw up but you don't?

And it's just worse.

It's like worse than throwing up.

You have that feeling.

That's how I'm feeling in this moment.

And finally, it's over.

Finally, the dad he cries, he begs for forgiveness.

And in order to move on, he also needs to apologize now to his wife and tell his wife what he's done.

And he goes, Okay, we should tell her.

And I was like, Good, you guys have a great day.

I'll see you later.

And he goes, No, no, no, no, no.

Everybody needs to be here.

And again, I thought, I don't get paid enough for this.

And I sit in the room as he throws up all of this terrible, egregious sin on his wife.

It was a terrible, terrible, terrible situation.

Well, several weeks go by, and I have breakfast with the son who had to confront his father with the sin.

And we made small talk and we talked about football.

And after it was over, I said, How's your dad?

How's Pops?

And he goes, Not good.

Not good.

He says, every time I talk to him, he says phrases like this.

He says, I'll never forgive myself.

That this man was a man who was raised in a Christian home.

I believe he was a deacon in his church, and he said, There's no way that God could forgive me.

And then he said, I'm haunted by what I've done.

And I've never forgotten this conversation.

Because this word is such an interesting word.

He says, I am haunted.

Haunted.

Now, haunted is funny because haunted is not a Christmas word, is it?

Haunted is a Halloween word.

Haunted is a ghost word.

We're not haunted by Christmas unless it is the ghost of Christmas past.

This word haunted is an interesting word.

We tend to associate this word with ghost and goblins.

It's kind of a dark word.

But what's interesting is when you research this word, it's always connected to ghosts, and there's this ancient word also associated with ghost.

It's the word wraith.

We don't use this word very often.

In fact, the person who set up the slide said to me, Jason, I fixed your slides.

You said wraith.

I know you meant wrath, and I didn't mean wrath.

I meant wraith.

Wraith is an ancient word that literally means ghost.

Coincidentally, from this word wraith, we also get the word wrath.

And interestingly, we get the word wreath.

Now, this doesn't make any sense at all at a surface level.

It doesn't make sense that a ghost would somehow be connected to the green thing you've got hanging from your door unless you understand that there is an underlying correlation between the two.

A ghost haunts you.

They twist truth and they twist reality.

What is a wreath?

It is twisted greenery.

Here's what you need to understand.

So many of us live haunted lives.

Haunted by our past, haunted by our sin, haunted by our shame.

And it's the Christmas season.

It's supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year, and you find yourself waking up at three o'clock in the morning in a cold panic and a cold sweat, feeling like you're choking because of something you did that you can't seem to get over.

You can't forgive yourself and move on.

You can't receive the forgiveness that Jesus so freely offers.

And if that's you and you find yourself in any way, shape, or form, finding that you've been able to forgive other people and yet you've never been able to be set free yourself.

Today is a gift for you.

And Christmas and the Christmas story is a gift for you.

Some 750 years before Jesus lived, the prophet Isaiah was speaking for God.

He was prophesying what God would say.

And he says this in Isaiah chapter 1 on behalf of God.

Isaiah 1 · chapter mention

He says, Come now, settle this.

Like stop playing games.

Come now, let's settle this, says the Lord.

He says, Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow.

Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool.

And then there's a part that's our responsibility.

It's if you will only obey me.

At Christmas, we have a lot of songs that we sing.

One of my favorites that we'll never get to experience in Florida is White Christmas.

We sing I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas.

And in Polk County, all we'll ever get to do is dream about it, right?

In Polk County, when the weather gets below 60, we put salt on the road and chains on our tires just in case.

But what if this could be a white Christmas for your soul?

I think for many of us, the picture that comes to mind when we think about our hearts and we think about not receiving forgiveness is that it almost feels like a snow globe.

You know a snow globe, you see it, you look at it from the outside and you shake it up and you see the whiteness of the snow, but you can only see it from the outside.

And many of us, if we could just be honest, we've looked through the window of our life.

We've forgiven other people.

We've seen forgiveness happen.

We've seen other people receive forgiveness.

We've seen their countenance change.

We've seen them step into a new life with Jesus.

But the truth is it's like a snow globe for us that we feel like we'll never be able to tangibly experience for ourselves.

And the Lord Himself said through the prophet Isaiah, let's settle this.

Let's stop playing games.

Let's let this Christmas be different and let's let our hearts become new, made white as snow.

So here's the question: What do we do with our sin?

What do we do with our shame, our guilt, our condemnation?

What do we do with those things that haunt us, that twist our reality?

Here's what you need to know.

If our thoughts can be twisted, they can also be untwisted.

And if we're going to make things right, we have to identify what are the things that we do wrong when it comes to our sin.

The first thing we tend to do is we can we can bury it.

And we think that what I'll do is I'll just push it down.

It won't be that big of a deal.

And we say things like, well, time heals all wounds.

Listen to me, time doesn't heal all wounds, only Jesus heals all wounds.

All time tends to do is to push down the thing and to extend the time that we carry it and we carry the lack of forgiveness.

The book of Proverbs, Solomon, the wisest man to ever live, said it like this: Proverbs 28, 13.

He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces renounces them finds mercy.

This is one of the words we use to talk about God that I love so much that I think a lot of people have misunderstood.

We receive mercy.

Scripture teaches that God delights in giving us mercy.

A loose translation of it is your God in heaven who created and hung the sun, moon, and stars.

The God of the universe who spoke the world into existence, sees you in your worst moments, and it gives him joy to let you off of the hook.

This is the Christmas story.

We tend to bury it, we tend to push it down.

And if we're not careful, what tends to happen at some point in our life is something triggers us or trips us up and it comes erupting up out of us again, and we never knew it was in there to begin with.

So we bury it, we sweep it under the rug.

Another thing we tend to do with this is we can beat ourselves up over it, can't we?

I think about David, one of the greatest men to ever live, who it is attributed to him at the end of his life that David was a man after God's own heart.

And I love this about David, but David lives a jacked-up life.

He messes up in immeasurable kinds of ways.

And in one of his moments of transparency and honesty, Psalm chapter 38, he says this.

Psalms 38 · chapter mention

That's poetic and tragic at the same time.

I'm drowning in the flood of my sins.

They are a burden too heavy to bear because I have been foolish.

I'm utterly worn out and crushed.

My heart is troubled.

And we beat ourselves up, we hurt ourselves.

We think to ourselves, God is gonna punish me, so I'll beat him to the punch and I'll do it to myself.

Another thing we tend to do with our shame is we blame others.

And if you've ever shifted the blame because it makes you somehow feel better about yourself, if you've ever turned the spotlight of guilt, shame, and condemnation on anyone else because you feel like it somehow takes the spotlight off of you, I need you to know this.

That is hereditary.

From the very beginning of time, Genesis chapter 3, God places Adam and Eve in this perfect place, the Garden of Eden.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

The word Eden in Hebrew literally means pleasure and delight.

He places them in this place of beauty that is for their joy, and he says, You have permission to eat anything you want except for the fruit from this one tree.

Before God ever gives restrictions, he gives lots of permission.

And what happens?

Humanity is tricked, they sin, they eat the fruit.

God shows up and questions them about it, and what is their response?

Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

It wasn't me.

The serpent deceived me.

And I ate.

Wasn't me.

She made me do it.

The serpent made me do it.

Anybody else is responsible except for me.

It's not it's not me.

What we tend to do is we shift blame because it somehow takes the spotlight off of us and we temporarily feel better about ourselves.

Just for a moment.

But what should we do?

I want to give you a solution.

And the truth is, I I wrestled with how to word this solution.

I'm gonna give you a solution.

The truth is it's kind of Christianese.

It's language that Christians would say, and if if you find yourself like David, drowning in a sea of your own troubles, if you find yourself overwhelmed, feeling condemned, like you're living under the roof of shame.

This may just sound like a Christian answer.

I expected you to say that, but I want to explain it to you.

Here it is.

When it comes to our sin, we can choose to believe God.

We can believe God.

What does this mean?

Well, one of the things I love about Scripture is just how profoundly honest it is.

What I mean by that is if you took a cursory journey of Genesis all the way through the book of Revelation, if you started in the beginning and went all the way to the maps at the end of the Bible, if you read the whole thing once through.

And all you did was take a cursory journey, you would see all the highlights.

You'd see everyone's best moments, but you wouldn't see the reality of their life.

There is a man named Paul.

Paul writes two-thirds of the New Testament, and it is easy to attribute to him some greatness that maybe we miss the beauty of his story.

Paul is writing a letter to a pastor.

He's training this pastor in how to become better at what he does, and he says this to this guy, Timothy, in 1 Timothy chapter 1.

1 Timothy 1 · chapter mention

He says, Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.

Here's why.

That's how it always flows, is abundantly.

Along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

Here is a trustworthy saying.

Let me paraphrase this and say to you here's something you can believe, here's something you can hold on to, here's something you can found your life on, here's a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the worst.

If anybody could have a story flipped around and used for the good of God, if anyone would not be deserving of it, it is this guy Paul.

If you don't know his backstory, Paul at one point in his life went by the name Saul.

In his earlier years, Saul tormented Christian.

What we, in our modern language, we would call him a terrorist.

He abused, assaulted, imprisoned, and murdered followers of Jesus.

He has a dramatic encounter with Jesus, and everything changes.

What Paul is saying to Timothy is if anybody has a story that's not forgivable, if anybody has a reason to not feel worthy of receiving the love of God, it's me, but check this out.

But he did it for me.

And I want you to hear this for you.

If God did it for Saul, there is nothing he can't forgive you of.

Let me say it like this.

The most popular verse in the Bible is John 3.16.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.

I love it because there's this word that I love.

It's the word so.

It's for God so loved the world.

For God so loved you that he gave his only son.

That's unimaginable to me.

But the next verse isn't as popular, but in my opinion, it's just as powerful.

It goes on to say, for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that through him the world might be saved.

Okay, you ready for a new Jason version translation of it?

God didn't send Jesus into this world to make you feel worse, to beat you up, to condemn you, to make you feel like trash because of your sin.

But he saw you in the brokenness and said, I can do something about it, and because I so love you, you're invited in to relationship.

You're invited to change.

So maybe you're here and you're like, Cool, but you don't know.

Fine, but you don't know my story.

I'm haunted by my past.

Here's the question for you how then do I get past my past?

What do I do to stop living in the cycle of shame and guilt and condemnation?

How do I get past my past?

And it's so beautiful, so powerful, it's so profound.

Number one, write this down.

Stop trying to earn forgiveness.

Stop trying to earn it.

It is a gift to you.

One of my favorite verses in Scripture, the same guy that we talked about a moment ago, who had the radical transformation because of his encounter with Jesus.

In Ephesians chapter 2, he says this, for it is by what?

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

Grace.

I want you to pay attention to this.

It's not by your effort, it's not by how much you give, it's not by how much you serve, all of which are wonderful things.

It is by grace that you have been saved through faith.

And this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.

If you could save yourself, you wouldn't need God.

Let me paraphrase that.

If you could save yourself, you are God.

And you are not.

There is one.

And he sits on the throne of heaven.

You cannot save yourself.

And then I love the next verse.

We don't even have it in the slides, but it says, For we are God's masterpiece.

The word masterpiece in Greek is this beautiful word poema.

It literally translated to mean the highest form of divine poetry.

You are God's handiwork at work in this world.

So what you need to understand is God saved you not by your efforts, he saved you by his grace, and because he saved you, he wants to take that and he wants to use it to help and bless somebody else.

Okay, and so listen to me.

There is a reason you've walked through the story you have walked through.

God wants to take what you've walked through to redeem it to help somebody else.

And your story may feel broken, shattered, tattered, destroyed.

It may feel like it's not redeemable whatsoever, but I just want to say to you, there is no sin so great God's love can't forgive.

There is no situation so hopeless that his light can't shine through.

And if nothing else, this is the Christmas story personified.

The world was dark.

Four hundred years had passed in silence from God, and screaming through the darkness comes the love of God personified, and a little baby boy named Jesus.

This is the Christmas story.

What are you worth?

Whatever someone's willing to pay.

What was God willing to pay to give you forgiveness?

His son, you have such immeasurable worth to him.

So stop trying to do stuff to earn it and just receive it.

Tell this quick story a couple weeks ago.

I was eating lunch and um the waitress came in and he goes, All right, guys, you're all set.

Have a good day.

And this has been fun as our church has grown a lot.

I run into people everywhere, all over town that I know, and I also run into people who I haven't got the opportunity to meet yet.

And it was so fun.

I go to get this lunch, and someone pays for my lunch, and all I know is a person from the church.

So if it was you, thank you.

And I should have gotten dessert, uh, but thank you, right?

How stupid would it have been?

If when the waitress came and said, someone paid for your bill, have an awesome day.

If I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, and I pull cash out to pay.

How dumb would that be?

Because you can't pay for something that's already been paid for.

And some of us struggle with this.

What we do, what we don't understand that salvation and forgiveness is a gift freely given, and all we have to do is receive.

Stop trying to pay for what Jesus already paid for and receive his gift of salvation once and for all.

Forgiveness is a gift from God, just waiting to be received.

Number two is we can defeat every lie with truth.

Defeat every lie with truth.

I heard it said one time that what lies tend to do is lies tend to build a stronghold in our lives.

A stronghold is a kind of an ancient word that would be used in kingdoms.

A stronghold was an impenetrable wall.

It was the kind of wall that you would never be able to get up through or around.

You just couldn't get into it.

And lies tend to do this.

They tend to insulate and isolate our hearts.

So here's what you need to understand.

Every lie comes from the same place.

Jesus himself said it in the book of John, John chapter 8.

John 8 · chapter mention

He says, when he, talking about Satan, when he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

This is the picture from Jesus' mouth to our heart that when you hear a lie and when you've bought a lie, what tends to happen is you need to recognize where it comes from.

It comes from Satan himself.

And what we tend to do is we protect the lie, and the only way to ever tear down a stronghold is to replace false information with truth.

Well, where is truth from?

If every lie comes from Satan, if it is his native language, we need to understand that truth comes from above.

Jesus Himself is truth.

We have his word.

Let me say it to you like this.

You can't replace the lies with truth unless you know the truth.

You can't speak God's word and his promises over the lies in your life unless you know the promises of God for your life.

When you start to feel unforgivable, when you found your heart trapped in the tyranny, the prison of unforgiveness.

When you've let other people off of the hook, but you've bought into the lie that God, you can't forgive me.

I'm unforgivable, I'm haunted by my situations.

You need to replace that false information with truth, like this one from Paul in 1 Corinthians.

He says this.

He says, Christ has made us right with God.

He made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin.

This is the truth of God's word.

It's that no matter how far you feel like you've run from the love of God, you cannot outrun the love of God.

That this is the reason that all throughout scripture there are these beautiful metaphors, like how wide, how deep, how far, how high is the love of God.

It's inescapable, it's beautiful, it's overwhelming.

Maybe it's the reason that when we talk about the grace of God, the only adjective that feels appropriate is amazing.

It's amazing.

We can defeat lies with truth, but you can only replace it with truth if you know the truth of God.

Here's the third thing.

If you're struggling with unforgiveness, we have to allow God to turn it around for good.

And this is what I said earlier.

I don't do a lot of counseling these days.

I don't.

When our church was a lot smaller, I spent a lot of time with people walking through their issues.

But very often, here's how every counseling session would go: small talk, they would talk trash about my football team, I'll talk trash about theirs, maybe insult their mother as a result of it.

I don't know.

And then I would say, okay, what's going on?

And it's the same story every single time.

Deep breath, and then they throw up on me.

Here's what I'm going through.

Here's what I'm struggling with.

My marriage is hanging on by a thread.

I can't stop thinking about this or doing this.

Same thing over and over and over again.

And I have this weird tendency of listening and smiling.

And I've insulted people before.

Why are you smiling?

This is so hard.

This is so heavy on me.

Why are you smiling?

And I say the same thing every single time.

I say because I believe that there can be a moment someday when you're sitting on the other side of the table, and someone comes to you, and their marriage is in shambles, they're addicted to something they shouldn't be addicted to, they're walking through a dark, difficult season, and God can turn your difficult situation that you're walking through into something that he uses for his good and for his glory and for his renown.

Paul in the book of Romans says this.

He says, and we know.

This is important because this declares confidence in God.

It's not confidence in ourselves, it's confidence in him.

It's not self-confidence, it is holy confidence, righteous confidence.

We know that in all things.

Now I went back to the original language.

This was written in Greek.

You know what that phrase all things means?

All things.

In all of your best moments and all of your worst moments, in all of your highlight reels and all of the darkest moments of your life, at your mountaintops, and somehow at the Mariana trench of your life, at your best and your worst, in all things, God works for the good.

This is one of those verses that we could take hours going through.

Because when we're going through anything good or bad, God's at work.

When we rest, God is at work.

When we're trying, he's at work.

When we're still, he's at work.

He's always at work.

And here's what you need to know about his work it's for the good.

For the good of who?

For the good of those who love him.

This is the Christmas story.

That God saw you in your brokenness and he didn't sit on his hands and say, Ah, I hope they figure it out.

Ah, I hope they somehow get it.

They'll get it together.

They're smart.

No, no, no.

He's always working for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Okay, what would it look like if all of us made this decision to leave here different today?

Because we can receive God's forgiveness and realize that even when it doesn't make sense, he is at work for us.

Think about the end of the story of Joseph's life.

If you know the story of Joseph's life, it's really a story of houses.

He went from his father's house to a cistern, a house that he never wanted to live in.

Sold into slavery.

He was a slave in someone else's house, thrown into a prison, a prison house.

Miracle happens, and he's elevated to the right hand of Pharaoh, the king.

He's in the king's house.

And from the king's house, this incredible story unfolds cinematically, beautifully.

His brothers who tried to destroy him throw themselves at his feet, not knowing it's him.

And in Genesis chapter 50, he says this.

Genesis 50 · chapter mention

He says, You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

Let me tell you what your story can look like if you'll trust God.

We've all sinned.

Romans 5.8.

We've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

There is this moment when the Christmas story goes from being the songs we sing about to something that deeply, profoundly changes our lives.

We've sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

God sees us in our brokenness, sins a savior.

This is the Christmas story.

And if you'll make the decision to stop trying to earn forgiveness, if you'll stop striving to receive forgiveness, but if once and for all you'll allow yourself to receive the gift of forgiveness from the God who delights in showing mercy.

If you'll receive forgiveness once and for all, you can leave here set free and changed.

But why?

It's not just so that you can breathe a little easier and sleep a little better at night.

It's so that it can be redeemed and so that your story can be changed, so that God can take the story that made no sense to be a blessing to someone else.

So what if the gift of forgiveness from God isn't just a gift for you?

But what if the gift of forgiveness was actually a gift to be used by God to change the world?

What if you left here today and said, God, I don't understand why I had to walk through that?

I don't understand the pain.

I don't understand everything that I've walked through, but I just trust that if you've forgiven me, I can receive it.

And if you've let me off the hook, then I can maybe let myself off the hook once and for all.

And as a result of it, God, you want to turn it to bless someone else.

Let's end today with this.

All across this room, would you bow your head and close your eyes?

And just for this moment, no one's talking and no one's moving.

Would you just take 15 seconds and ask yourself, what is the thing that you've been holding on to that's holding you back?

What have you held on to that's held you back from the life God has for you?

What sin, what shame, what unforgiveness have you held on to?

How incredible would it be if this Christmas was different?

Because Christmas went from a story we've told to the story that changed our lives.

If this is you and you just want to receive the forgiveness of God once and for all, we're not gonna have some big moment today, but I just want to invite you to make the decision to follow Jesus.

It's following Jesus, it's believing that he's the Son of God, it's believing that the Christmas story is our story, that he came into this world, but he came for a purpose, which was to give his life for us.

It's in the sacrifice he made on the cross that we received the forgiveness of our sins.

All you have to do is receive it once and for all.

And I don't need you to raise your hand.

I don't need to have this big moment.

I just need you to have a moment with God.

If you haven't received the forgiveness of God once and for all, would you pray this with me?

Would you say, Jesus, today I make this decision?

I choose to follow you.

I invite you to be the Lord of my life, to take over my life, to forgive me once and for all of my sins.

Jesus, I believe it is because of your sacrifice on the cross that my sins can be forgiven.

And it's because you rose again from the dead that my life can be made new once and for all in you.

So, Jesus, would you change my life?

Make me new.

From this day on, I'll follow you.

Jesus, all across this room we thank you that you're a miracle worker, that your miracle doesn't stop in the moment we receive your forgiveness, but your miracle continues by redeeming the difficulties of our story to be used to make a difference for you.

So, Jesus, all across this room we make this decision today.

We receive your forgiveness.

We invite you to change our lives so that our lives can be used by you to make a difference.

We thank you, God, for that.

And it's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.