Full Send – Invest & Invite

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

For more information, visit Access.tv.

We're in a new series today.

I'm super excited about a new series called Full Send, and I'll explain that in just a moment.

Usually, if you've been a part of our church, I like to start with some sort of a fun story or something like anecdotal to get us laughing.

Today I want to do something different.

Today I'd like to start with a question.

It's a challenging question, and here it is.

If Jesus himself were to show up to you today, and if Jesus were to say to you, I have one favor to ask, one question to ask.

If you just want I need one thing from you, would you do it?

As a Christian, I hope the answer would be yes.

If you're a follower of Jesus, it feels like it should be an easy yes, right?

But here's the funny thing.

Jesus did this.

Right before he left, he he said to his followers, and it's really a message for all of us in Mark chapter 16, verse 15.

Mark 16:15

He said to them, Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.

Now there's the emphasis on just one word here.

It's simply this word, he says, go.

And Jesus says this.

He said, Here's your job.

If you're a follower of Jesus, you have one responsibility to go everywhere and to preach the gospel.

This word gospel is an interesting word.

It literally just means the good news of Jesus.

So you're to go everywhere and tell everyone about the good news of who Jesus is.

And he says this to his followers and he says it to us.

And I just, it's funny because we hear this and we know this.

And if you're a church person, you've heard this your whole life.

If you're new to church, you need to know this is what Jesus said.

And the funny thing to me as a pastor is my observation is so many people hear this and they say, Cool, cool, cool.

What else do you got, Jesus?

And Jesus is like, that.

We'll start with that.

Great, great, great, great, yeah, I got it, I got it.

What's next?

Should I serve somebody?

And Jesus is like, that's great.

But but this.

And what about giving?

Jesus, I can be a giver.

I give.

I'm a lover, not a fighter.

Come on, I can give, I can do something.

Jesus is like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it's this.

But what about love?

Like, aren't you the guy that's like all about love?

Shouldn't I love my neighbor as myself?

Yes, do that.

But this, this is it.

And so many Christians, they they want to do more stuff, but they don't do the first thing.

In fact, I would say it like this: so many Christians are way more educated than they are obedient.

And today I want to challenge you to be obedient to the thing that it seems like Jesus wants us to do the most.

We're calling this little two-part series full send.

And this phrase full send literally means I'm gonna go hard, green light, all gas, no breaks, I'm gonna go, and I'm not worried about the consequences.

And so many of us, we know what Jesus has asked us to do.

He says, go.

In fact, if you go back to middle school English, the implied subject of the sentence is you.

You go and make a difference with your life.

You go and tell others about the good news of who Jesus is.

It's you, it's always you, it's always been you, it's always about you.

You need to go and you need to do something.

Full send, all gas, no breaks, go.

And so many Christians they say, what about all these other things?

And Jesus is like, those are important, but it starts with you sharing what has changed your life.

So how incredible would it be if we became people who did this?

If we became a church who all we really cared about is the stuff that breaks the heart of God.

And I just want to say to you, what breaks the heart of God is all of his children who are far from him, all of his children who he loves that are lost and separated from him.

And we're gonna be a church that cares about it.

So for these next couple weeks, as we approach the Easter season, we want to full send, all out, go after what God tends to care about.

A couple weeks ago, had an interesting conversation with a pastor friend of mine.

And he pastors up in the Northwest and a great guy.

And he said, Jason, he goes, I followed you for your whole journey.

We've been friends for a long time.

And he goes, Um, I know you started Access a long time ago.

I was 25 years old when we started our church.

Little side note.

No one should ever start a church when they're 25 years old.

Like you don't know enough about anything to start a church when you're 25.

I guess you just have a lot of confidence and hope for the best, but that's what we did.

And he asked me this question.

He said, I've been watching for all these years, and he asked this question.

He said, Why did Access grow?

Kind of an interesting question.

Why did Access grow?

And the truth is, we have grown a lot.

In fact, I was up here a few minutes ago, kind of in that moment after worship, and as I'm up here speaking, they opened the doors and someone wheeled in a whole nother stack of chairs.

Like, look around.

Like we're growing, we're reaching a lot of people.

It's super fun.

It's amazing.

Um what's interesting to me is like in this post-COVID season for churches, most churches in America have like 50 or 60 percent of people coming back.

We're one of the only churches I know of in America that has more people coming now than we did pre-COVID.

And I'm not bragging about that.

I'm grateful for that.

I'm thankful for that.

But he asked the question why did Access grow and how did Access grow?

And my guess is if we were to pass around a notepad, we were to say, write down the reason you think Access grew, we'd get a hundred different answers.

Some of you might say things like, Well, my kids love it.

I love that my kids love coming to Access Kids, or I love that my students love going to Access Youth, or my college and 20-something year old kids.

I love that they love going to Access Young Adults, and that's great.

In fact, my kids love it.

I want I wanted to create a church that my kids would love going to church.

I got a message last night from a guy in our church, and he said, Um, he goes, I want to tell you something awesome.

He goes, anytime I'm on South Florida Avenue, anywhere near the church, he goes, My little two-year-old son starts screaming, I want to go to church.

I want to go to church because he loves it.

And how many of us, that was our experience as a kid?

Like for a lot of people, they felt dragged to church.

And I just want you to know, we wanted to create a church where your kids would love.

Maybe that's part of the reason.

Why did Axis grow?

Maybe for you, it's the reason you came is like you just you felt so loved.

You felt seen and noticed, and like you mattered.

And you made friends here.

I saw a meme one time that was so funny.

It said, often Jesus' greatest miracle is overlooked.

It wasn't the walking on the water or the turning water into wine or the healing of the sick.

It was the fact that he was in his 30s and he had 12 close friends.

Isn't that funny?

Like you go to college and everyone's your friend, and you like grow up, and it's hard to make friends.

And it's hard to meet people, and like, where do you meet good quality people who are gonna build you up and not tear you down?

And church is a place for some people, and that and maybe that's why you think Axis grew, because people are friendly and you got connected in a group, and people love you and serve you, and you love them and you serve them.

And maybe that's a part of it.

Maybe you think a reason that Axis grew is the worship music is so good.

And let me say this: it is always so good.

Those guys are so talented that I'm gonna be honest, I hate them just a little bit because I when God was handing out talents, he was like, worship, music, music, skip Jason, worship, music, like nothing.

I can't even clap on beat anymore.

I'm just terrible.

And so, so like maybe that's the reason.

Maybe you love it, maybe that's the reason you came, or maybe that's the reason you stayed.

But but why did Axis grow?

Maybe you're like, it's that adorable preacher, Jason.

I just can't get enough of him.

He's so cute.

Thank you.

And uh if nobody's got my back, my baby got my back.

And uh, and um one time I did that and my mom cheered, and it was like the worst moment of my life, but she's not here, anyways.

I don't know why you came, I don't know why you stayed, I don't know why this church grew, but I do think that it's none of those things that we just said.

All those things are wonderful, all of them are important, but I do think the reason our church grew is simply this.

Someone invited you.

Someone invited you, someone told you about this place, you heard about it, it was an invitation on social media, someone told you about it at the gym.

You just you heard about it, and someone invited you.

And this is really the secret sauce here.

This is the reason our church grows, this is the reason anything grows, is because someone talked about it.

Can I tell you something?

You talk about the things you love, you talk about the things that matter, you talk about the stuff that changes your life.

And so someone invited you.

I had a pastor friend say this this week, and I thought it was funny.

He said, you know, when you start a church, you have no idea the difference it'll make in people's lives.

You start it, and the early days are so hard.

But he goes, We've been at this for a few years, and people have met at our church, gotten married because of our church, and have had babies because of our church.

He goes, There's literally humans alive on this planet because of our church.

Well, all that stuff happens because somebody invited you, because someone had the courage to say something, to extend an invitation, to welcome you when you came.

It all happens because someone invites.

And we want to be the kind of church that you feel comfortable inviting your friends.

Comfortable if your friends were to show up on a Sunday that they're gonna be loved and it's not gonna be weird and they're gonna hear about God in a way that they'll understand.

This was always our intention some 15 or 18 years ago, before we started our church.

My wife and I had some job opportunities around the country at some different places.

And there was this really great church here in Florida.

It was growing, explosively growing.

And we had this opportunity to go and to be their college and young adult pastor.

And I thought that'd be awesome.

So we had some phone interviews, it went great.

We were looking at homes online, it was exciting.

And then we went there on Sunday morning, and the service was so different than what I expected.

It was church, but like church just for church people.

Very, very churchy.

And I remember the whole service just feeling like it's a good church, and I'm not making fun of it.

It just didn't feel like a fit for me.

And I leaned over to Liz and I was like, I don't know.

I don't know about this.

And then after lunch, we were like, this doesn't feel like a fit for us.

Well, that night, they had already planned a gathering for us to come and they wanted us to meet the young adults in the church.

Now, to this point, the church didn't have a young adult ministry or service at all, so we'd be starting it, and they just threw an announcement out.

Hey, if you're 18 to 20 something, come, we'd like to just have a gathering, a hangout, and they wanted us to meet them.

We show up that night and there's like a hundred there.

They'd never even had a service for them, over a hundred people at this thing.

And now my heart was conflicted.

On one hand, I was like, I don't know if this church feels like a fit for us, but on the other hand, how amazing would it be to start with all of these incredible young people?

It'd be amazing.

And then I had this weird moment.

My college roommate Matt was there, he attends church there, and Matt comes up to me and he goes, Isn't this awesome?

I said, It's amazing, man.

So let me ask you a question.

Said, in the last year, how many people have you invited to come to this church?

And he goes, Um honestly, probably none.

Probably none.

And I was like, Thank you so much.

And I told Liz, it's gonna be a no from us.

Like, it's gonna be a no, because I wanna be a part of a church where people feel like they can invite their friends, they can invite their neighbors, and they can invite their school teachers and all that.

I want people to feel like they can invite people into church.

Now, let me say this to you.

I want to preach a message about that simple idea today.

And let me be honest, as I talk about this, if you're feeling conflicted, feel like that feels like an incomplete message, it's only half of a message.

Come back next Sunday, we'll kind of tie a bow on this, but it's only half of a message.

But I want to talk to you about how you can partner with your church to make a difference in the lives of the people that God has placed in your sphere of influence.

Now, some years ago, we kind of had this realization that the truth is that there's things that we're good at, and there's things that you're good at.

We're good at creating churches where people love, they feel love, and they feel welcome.

We're good at creating churches where people meet Jesus every single Sunday.

People meet Jesus here.

And you're good at being friends with the people that we have no connection to whatsoever.

So some years ago we came up with this phrase, a little three-word phrase, and it was this we want our church to be a church that invests and invites.

We invest and we invite.

What does that mean?

It means when you have friends, your responsibility is to invest relationally in the friendships.

You you are to invest in them, be their friend, care about them, show up for birthday parties, give gifts, listen to them, be the one to offer them a hug or a high five, pay attention to things that matter to them, be a good friend to them.

In a world where there's like friendship shortages, it feels like, be a good friend.

And when you do that, you're investing in the relationship.

And every once in a while, in the same way that when you invest money, you withdraw, relationally, when you invest in people, there's gonna be a moment when you kind of you kind of ask for a return on that investment.

A lot of us don't understand this.

A lot of us, we we feel like what we have to do is we have to have like a perfect sermon, we have to know all the things to say to them.

You don't have to know everything about Jesus in order to invite someone to come and see or to come and experience.

You just have to be an incredible friend and then say, what has Jesus done in your life and invite them to experience what you have already experienced.

Now, to give you some idea, this wasn't just our idea.

This whole idea is found all throughout scripture, but particularly in the life of Jesus.

And I love it in the life of Jesus.

In the book of John, chapter one, there's this interesting moment.

John is one of the most beautiful poetics, John chapter one is one of the most beautiful, poetic, alliterative chapters uh about who Jesus is.

And what's interesting is in the book of John, there's kind of two different Johns.

There's John the author, who goes by John the Apostle, and then there's another John, it's the cousin of Jesus, John the Baptist.

And when we say John the Baptist, we don't mean that he went to like first Baptist Church of Jerusalem.

We we mean that he was literally like a baptizer.

So we got John the Baptizer baptizing people, and then John the Apostle.

So here's what John the Apostle, the writer, writes about this encounter that John the Baptist has with Jesus, John 1, verse 29.

John 1:29

The next day John saw Jesus coming towards him, and he said, Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Now pause here for a moment.

When you think of that phrase, Lamb of God, what picture comes to your mind?

If you grew up in church, this is the phrase that gets thrown around sometimes.

It's obviously straight from the Bible, but it doesn't make a lot of sense in our day and age.

The church I grew up in had these weird banners that hung up on the walls.

Did anybody grow up in a church with weird banners?

And there was one I'll never forget it.

It was on the on the right hand side of the stage, and it literally was this picture of a cross, but the cross was going through a lamb, and out of the lamb was blood that was dripping over the earth.

I was like, how big is that lamb?

Like it was just a weird, weird picture, you know.

And if you don't know what it means, it's honestly gonna haunt your dreams as a child.

Like, why is the lamb bleeding all over Florida?

What it doesn't make any sense at all, right?

But if you were in Jesus' day, this was startling.

This was confounding.

What is the lamb of God?

Well, in Jesus' day, if you had sin in your life, you had to receive forgiveness.

The only way to receive forgiveness, though, was to sacrifice an animal.

And lambs would often be used as the sacrificial animal.

And so John is saying to these people, he's out doing his thing, baptizing people, and he goes, Oh, look, there's Jesus.

He's the one who has come to be sacrificed, so that you no longer have to give sacrifices for your sins.

He's the one that's been prophesied about.

He's the one who's coming to pay the price for the sins of the world.

Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and everyone would have been confounded.

Skip down to six verses to verse 35.

It says this.

The next day, John was there again with two of his disciples.

Now, pause here for a moment.

The Bible's fun to me.

Like, I want you to pay attention to this.

At this point, Jesus is just starting his public ministry.

It hasn't even started yet, and he has no one following him, no disciples, but John the Baptist has two.

So John was there with two of his disciples.

It was two to zero John.

And when he saw Jesus passing by, he said, Look, the Lamb of God, he says it again.

And I love the next verse.

It says, When the two disciples heard him say this, they straight up left John the Baptist in the dust and they followed Jesus.

So the score went from two John, zero Jesus, to two Jesus zero John.

Turning around, Jesus saw them and he asked them this question.

They're like, What?

What?

What?

What do you want?

They said, Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying?

Pause here for just a moment.

Now look, I'm not your dad, but if I were your dad, I would say this to you.

Let me dad you for one moment.

If you are here and um two men that you don't know start following you, and they ask you a question, where are you staying?

The appropriate response is 911.

It is it don't answer the question like that, right?

And they say to Jesus, where are you staying?

And I want you to see how Jesus responds.

Come, he replied, and you will see.

I want you to notice something.

Jesus doesn't go into theology, he doesn't explain why God sent him to this earth.

He doesn't even tell them that he's here to be the sacrificial lamb of God, to die on the cross to pay the sins of the world.

None of that.

He just says, Come and see.

So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent the day with him.

It was about four in the afternoon.

Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who had heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus.

The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, We have found the Messiah that is the Christ.

Now pause here.

He meets Jesus, he follows Jesus on a simple command.

Just come and see.

And as a result, he goes and he finds his brother and he invites him to follow as well.

And I want you to see what he does.

It's so simple.

He invites him, and the next verse says, and he brought him to Jesus.

Simple.

No explanation, no book of verses to read.

He didn't have like a bracelet that says this color means this, this color means this.

He didn't have any of that stuff that Christians feel like they have to have.

He just brings him to Jesus.

Well, the next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee.

Just quick pause here for a moment.

Where Jesus was was about 60 miles south of Galilee.

They were on foot or on donkey.

They literally had to walk this long ways.

To give you context, if you were to leave the front door of our church and go up the Polk Parkway to I-4 and walk, you would land at 60 miles literally at the Orlando airport.

According to Google Maps, it would take 23 and a half hours of straight walking to make it there.

So Jesus is going to go on this long, 23 and a half hour long journey on foot.

And they decided to leave for Galilee.

And I want you to see this.

Finding Philip, he says to him, Hey, Philip, I want you to follow me.

No explanation, no long diatribe about what he was there for, just a simple two-word.

Hey, follow me, is what he says.

Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Betheda.

Philip found Nathaniel and he told him.

So he's like, he's he's been encountering Jesus, he finds him, and he says, We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law, and the one about whom the prophets also wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

So he tells his friend about Jesus, the son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, and look how the friend responds.

Nazareth?

Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?

It's like mulberry.

Anything good come from mulberry?

You know what I'm saying?

Please, did you come from Mulberry?

One person good came from Mulberry.

We got one, all right.

Can anything good come from there?

Nathaniel asks.

And I want you to see something.

He confronts him with the problem.

He challenges what his friend has just said, and I want you to see how Philip responds.

Three words.

Come and see.

I don't have all the answers.

You can just come and see.

Now, all throughout scripture, what's interesting is there's all these people who don't even fully understand who Jesus is and why he's there.

They don't understand his mission.

They don't understand that he's sent from God to die on the cross to pay for the sins of the world.

They just know that they've encountered something that has changed their life.

And because they've encountered Jesus, the only response is you share the things you love.

You share the things you love.

You don't hold on to them.

You just invite others to come and experience that which you have experienced.

Now, now, some years later, people put a word on this.

We have to create terms for this.

And the term we came up with is this term evangelism.

It's based out of a Greek word, evangelion, which literally in Jesus' day wasn't like a sharing about Jesus.

It was literally in the Old Testament a person who was there in war and they would be sent by the king as a spy to see what was happening, and when there was good news to report, they'd come running back and tell the king the good news of what they've experienced out in the battlefields.

Well, sometime later this word got changed, and evangelism usually kind of creates for us a mental picture.

We have this picture of what evangelists are, but it just literally means to spread good news.

Like this is all it is.

And you are called by God to be an evangelist, to spread the good news of who Jesus is.

And what's funny is all of us have had weird encounters with this, haven't we?

We've all seen someone on the side of a street corner with a speaker sticking up out the back of their old broke-down Toyota Camry, right?

And they're they're yelling at people, you're going to hell.

Some years ago, my wife and I were in New York City with some friends, and we were walking down the street, and we had this amazing trip, and as we're walking down the street, I feel this like hand like hit me in the gut.

I was like, what in the world?

And I look over, and there's a little lady, and she's like hunched over, she's got some sort of a shawl kind of covering her head, and she hit me in the stomach, but in her hand was a little booklet.

It's called a tract.

It was a little booklet about Jesus.

And I just think to myself, like, is this doing any good?

Like hitting people in the stomach after they've just crushed a whole New York pizza by themselves, not proud is what it is.

Like, is it doing any good?

It's really not.

But really, a good evangelist understands that it's just spreading the good news of who Jesus is.

Another good definition of evangelism is simply this it's being an enthusiastic advocate.

Now, the funny thing is, we share the things we love.

In fact, you don't defend the things you love, you just share them, and you invite others to enjoy what you've experienced.

Like I don't defend the things I love, I don't defend my vacation pictures, I don't defend my love for my kids.

I I don't defend like taking trips with my wife.

I don't, I just I just do things that I love and I invite others to celebrate with me.

That's that's all you're invited to do.

To kind of make it make sense, like a few weeks ago, it was a Saturday morning, and um, my son Gavin is a part of an access group here at our church for middle schoolers.

And so on this one particular day, they weren't doing a Bible study or something.

They were gonna meet at a place on the north side of Lakeland called Defy.

Have you heard of this place?

It's an indoor trampoline park, and I want you to listen to me describe it.

It's got trampolines, it's got pits with uh foam blocks, and you can jump into it.

It's pretty cool.

But if I were just to explain it to you, like you'll never fully get it.

Here's a picture of it.

And I took my son, I dropped him off, I picked him up like an hour later.

My dude is drenched in sweat, and when I Pick him up.

It's like he is on some sort of, you know, cocaine, crack, methamphetamine, caffeine.

He's like, Dad, that was the greatest moment of my whole life.

It was amazing.

I had so much fun.

I'm so sweaty.

I'm so tired.

And he passed out in the car when we left.

You know, it was the best.

And I could try to explain it, but until you experience it, it doesn't make sense.

There's this restaurant that I love.

There's one in Tampa and one in Orlando.

It's this incredible place.

I think God had it in mind when He created the world.

It's this place called Texas de Brazil.

Have you been to Texas de Brazil?

If you love steak like I do, this place is like heaven on earth.

It's not just steak, it's good steak, but it is a Brazilian steakhouse, which means there are these waiters.

They're called gauchos and they they bring food to you.

They bring you meat on skewers.

It looks like this.

And it's all you can eat and it's all good.

And there's this little circular card on your table, right?

And it's on one side it's red, and on one side it's green.

And when you leave it on green, the gauchos bring you all this food, and every piece of it is amazing.

They've got this salad bar, which you just skip.

You just look at it and you're like, ah, not for me.

I can have salad tomorrow.

Um I want to eat what is eating the salad bar.

That's what I want to eat.

And they bring you, and it's all good, and it's amazing, and every bite is crazy good, and it's so much fun.

Well, I could tell you about it, but like a couple days ago, a guy from our staff texted me and he goes, he goes, I am going to Texas Day Brazil tonight.

And he goes, I'm going to make you proud.

And I wrote him back, I said, Go in the power of the Lord.

Like, do some damage there.

Well, I talked about it at church one time, and then it was funny because we had these people on staff at our church, and we decided to go to dinner with them, and we decided to take them to Texas Day Brazil.

So I explained it to the guy before we got there, and we went and I said, Here's what you need to know.

As long as the card is green, they're gonna bring you meat.

And there's gonna be a moment when you start to feel full.

But listen to me, this is a pro.

If you'll just push through that, you catch a second wind, and it's like there's space in there you didn't even know about.

But I need to listen to me.

There's a moment when you know you should stop, and here's the moment when your back starts to hurt.

That's when you stop.

And so my man eats, he eats past the point of his back hurting.

We're literally like driving in the car on the way home, and he can't like find a spot to sit where he's comfortable because everything hurts.

I'm like, you're gonna have the meat sweats tonight.

And he's like, What's that?

Oh, meat sweats is too far for you.

What's that?

It's when like your sweat smells like meat, but it's a wonderful thing, you know, it's like a it's manly, it's masculine, it's awesome.

And no matter how much I try to describe it, it's fun, but you'll never understand it until you experience it.

Here's one more fun one.

A couple years ago, I decided to not drink anything for a whole year except for water.

I was gonna be healthy that year, no soda, no sweet tea, just water for a whole year.

And so to help me and to encourage me, I bought this big cup that I could keep ice in for a long time.

It's called a yeti.

Have you seen these before?

And yay, one person, and uh yeti.

Now, these are common now.

There's all kinds of knockoffs now, but when this first came out, it was like magical.

For some reason, the yeti was double insulated, it could keep your ice solid for hours, for days even.

And I got one, and I can't explain it to you, but it just was amazing, changed my whole life.

I kept it full of ice and water all the time.

And I loved it so much.

So then for Father's Day, I bought my dad one, and my dad was so amazed by how long it was keeping ice frozen that he would text me during the day.

He'd be like, Jason, it's been six hours, and I still have ice.

Checking in, nine hours, twelve hours, thirty-six hours.

At one point, he's like, We should build a big one of these and send it to the North Pole and stop global warming.

It's like, it's just amazing.

Well, then there was a day in the middle of summer, I had my yeti, it was full of ice and water, and a guy from my team named Dave jumped in the car with me, and we drove to a meeting in Tampa.

And my car sat outside in the heat of the day in June or July, whenever it was.

We went into a meeting inside for like eight hours.

We come back to my car, and in my car center console is my yeti full of ice and water, and it had sat in the I mean, my car probably was over a hundred degrees inside the car, and the yeti still had ice.

And my guy was so impressed with the fact that it still had ice that he pulled his phone out and ordered one right then and right there in the moment.

Why?

Because it doesn't matter how much you explain some things, they have to be experienced.

Okay, here's the whole point of today Jesus needs to be experienced, not explained.

And a lot of us get so tripped up over this.

We make all kinds of excuses.

Well, I'm not a pastor.

Jason, you got a doctorate in ministry, you studied all this stuff, I don't know any Greek words at all.

Can I just tell you something?

The only ability God is looking for is your availability.

He's not looking for you to have all the answers.

He's not looking for you to have like a thesis on why these things happen.

He's not looking for you to know the answers to the questions that nobody knows, like why do bad things happen to good people?

Why is there suffering and starvation in the world?

He's not asking you to have an answer to any of those questions.

He's just asking you to invite people to experience what you've experienced.

So many of us would get so tripped up on explaining it that we forget and we mess up altogether.

So here's my challenge What would it look like if all of us just made this decision?

If Jesus has changed your life, and I believe he has, that we're gonna invite our friends, our coworkers, our neighbors, the people in our life to experience what we've experienced.

Let me try to make this personal for you, okay?

A couple years ago, Lakeland Electric put out some interesting surveys.

They said, you know, the city of Lakeland, the city limits, is about 120-ish, thousand people, but if you include everyone that has Lakeland in their address, this would be anyone with a 338 blank blank zip code, there's over 275,000 people that live in the 338 zip code.

If every church in our city, there's roughly 250 churches kind of in our city, if every one of those 250 churches had 200 people in it, that would be 50,000 people in church.

Well, the funny thing is, churches like Access have way more than 200 people, but the overwhelming majority of churches have less than 80 people in it.

So this is being generous.

But if all those churches had 200 people in it, we'd be reaching 50,000 people.

Statistically, 19.7% of our city goes to church.

This is based on the latest research.

Here's what that means.

In our city alone, people with Lakeland in their address, there's over 200,000 not going to church.

Over 200,000.

If you were to zoom out just a little bit, we have people that drive from all over our county.

I've met people from all the surrounding cities just today alone.

If you were to kind of zoom out just a little bit, Polk County, according to July 2021 statistics, says 753,520 people.

If you were to apply the same metrics to that, it means there's over 605,000 people in our backyard who have no connection to God.

And what that means is it means that if they were to come face to face with Jesus today, because they were to take their last breath on this side of eternity, they would be sent away from God to pay for their sins for the rest of their life in a literal place called hell.

Now, here's the thing the thing is sometimes we see that.

We think there's nothing I can do about that.

I don't even know 605 people, much less 605,000.

I don't have the influence, I don't know everybody, and so instead of doing something, we do nothing.

Let me show you another number that matters, maybe even more than this.

And here's the number one.

Because each one of those numbers represents someone.

It's your neighbor, it is your kid's teacher, it's that barista who knows your drink order when you walk in every single day.

It's your kid's soccer coach, it's the coworker that annoys you.

It's it's that it's that guy that you run into all over town.

He's got this really weird laugh, and you make fun of him behind his back, but you you know him.

Run into each other all the time, you see him, you know him.

It's the one.

Let me ask you this do you know your neighbor?

Like, do you do you know your neighbor's name?

Do you actually do you know them?

It's funny if you study the history of garages in our country.

Garages are kind of a newer phenomenon.

Just even 40, 50 years ago, houses weren't really built with garages.

They they might have a carport or you just park in the driveway.

And most people would spend their life and do their life on the front porch of their house.

But then, just this interesting phenomena in the last 50 years, builders started building houses with a separate house for your car.

So you could literally drive into your neighborhood, drive into the house for your car, shut the door behind you, and get out of your car and not have to act interact with anybody.

Think about what it does.

And all of us know somebody.

All of us have a friend, a relationship, a parent, a student, a friend of ours, a coworker who we know is far from God.

Funny thing is, a couple years ago, I had this realization that I didn't anymore.

Our church was growing, and so my whole day was spent with church people.

Then I'd go home and be with my family, but I had no relationships outside of the church whatsoever, and I had to do something about it.

In fact, uh, this is one of the main reasons I joined this gym that I'm a part of, and what I love is it has opened my eyes.

It has been exhilarating spiritually for me to get back around people who are far from God and just to love them, just to listen, just to hear their stories, just to be active in their lives, just to buy them birthday gifts, just to just cheer them on at the gym, just to be a friend, to be a listening ear when they need someone to listen to them.

This is the whole point.

And my hope is that all of us have at least one person that we know, one person far from God.

And let me say this to you: there will be a day when you stand before God and you're going to be responsible, accountable for the people in your life that you knew that have no connection to God whatsoever.

I started with the question, and I want to end kind of with the same question.

If Jesus were to show up to you today, and if he were to say, I've got one thing for you to do, will you do it?

All of us will say, Yes.

Okay, now go.

Full send.

Go after the one, reach the one, share your faith with the one, invest your life in their life.

And then there comes a moment when you invite them to experience.

You don't have all the answers, you just invite them to experience what you've experienced.

So I started with a question, and I want to end with the question.

Here's the question.

Do you care?

Like, does it matter to you that you have family and friends?

Does it matter to you that you have neighbors and co-workers that are far from God that will literally go to hell tomorrow if they were to die?

Does it matter to you?

Let me say this to you it breaks the heart of God.

Luke chapter 15, over and over and over again, Jesus tells stories about the one separated from him that he cares about.

Luke 15 · chapter mention

If God cares about it, you should care about it.

If God cares about it, I better care about it.

We need to care about the people in our life.

Let me be honest.

I know this is an incomplete message.

I know there's so much more to evangelism than inviting people to church.

I know that.

We'll talk about that next week.

On this week, I want you to understand something.

You're a part of a church that cares about the one.

You're a part of a church that's not all about keeping Christians happy, and I love you, and I want you to be happy.

Our goal isn't to keep your schedule full of more things to do.

Our goal is to partner with you to reach people who are far from God.

So let me give you one example.

Easter's coming up in three Sundays.

Three weeks from today is Easter Sunday.

And this is the Sunday people say yes to coming to church.

This is the weekend they'll say yes and they'll actually show up.

So for the last few weeks, we've talked about it.

We've got all kinds of things happening.

On Good Friday, we have a special online service.

But beyond that, on Saturday and Sunday, six services.

I'll probably blow my voice out that weekend, doing everything I can to partner with you, to reach people for God.

This is the point.

Full sin.

Go into all the world.

That means tell your neighbors.

Go into all the world.

That means tell your family members.

Go into all the world.

That means the relationships that are within your sphere of influence.

Go into all the world and tell the good news.

What's the good news of how Jesus has changed your life?

And you don't have to have all the answers, but you do get to invite them to come and see, to come and experience what you've experienced.

Jesus can't be explained, but it can be experienced.

So how incredible would it be if all of us just made this decision?

Full send all gas, no breaks.

I don't care what it costs me because a full send attitude doesn't care about the consequences.

I care about doing what God cares about.

Let me end with this.

If you will find what breaks the heart of God, and if you will give your life to meeting that need, God will bless you in ways you can't even begin to imagine.

That is the story of our church.

That is the story of all the people sitting around you.

This church has grown because someone invited you.

It would be the biggest travesty of your life to live your life and to not invite someone to experience what you've experienced.

You don't defend the things you love, you invite others to celebrate it with you.

So here's my challenge to you for Easter.

I want, I'll be stronger.

I expect every single person that's a part of this church to not come alone.

Bring someone.

They'll say yes, bring someone.

I'm gonna talk about what it means that because Jesus lives, we can live.

I want to see people, hundreds of people that we can make a decision to follow Jesus.

So let's do what Jesus said and let's go full send.

Let's make a difference with our lives.

Would you bow your head and close your eyes for just a moment?

So, God, in this moment, I ask you to break our hearts for what breaks yours.

God, some of us, candidly, we we've so isolated ourselves from the world that we don't even know anyone far from you.

Break our heart for what breaks yours.

God, for others of us, we've allowed fear, fear of criticism, and fear of judgment to stop us from sharing our faith.

God, may we not get to heaven.

May we not stand before you and give an account that we we only cared about ourselves.

God, work selfishness out of our hearts and may we care about the people you care about.

So, God, my prayer is that you'll open doors of divine opportunity these next three weeks.

Open windows, these moments where we can share our faith and where we can invite people to experience all that we've experienced.

God, forgive us when we've had excuses.

Forgive us for feeling like I don't know enough, so therefore I'll do nothing.

But may we do what we discovered over and over with Jesus, those first followers.

May we invite people to just come and see.

May they experience what we've experienced.

And God, may revival break out through our church because hundreds of new people make a decision to follow you.

We love you, God.

We care about what you care about, and we say all of this is in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Look up at me.

How amazing would it be if you got on fire in a way that people saw you and they said, I want whatever you have.

Let's be that church.