An Invitation For Fasting

Well, good morning, Antioch family. It's good to see each and every one of you, particularly would love to get acquainted with our guests that are here today. And particularly if you've been attending Antioch this year, if you started attending Antioch in 2000 and 26, we may not have met one another. I went on sabbatical. My name is Vincent Carpenter. I serve as the director of pastoral care here at the church and serve as one of our elders. And December of last year, I went on sabbatical and I came back from that in June. And then right after that, I had back surgery. So I was out for another short period of time. So I've been back around the church for the last few months getting reacquainted with many of our church members. And if I have not had the opportunity to meet you yet, I will certainly hope that we get an opportunity to do that here in the near future. This year has been a great one for myself and my family for several reasons, one because of the sabbatical. Very thankful and grateful for the time the church. It's allotted me to do that. This is my 21st year of serving here at the church. And so I was very, very grateful to get that opportunity to go. (audience applauding) Also then following right after that, I had served. Many of you who know, know I've had some back issues

for many, many years. And oftentimes I've been standing here preaching in my legs because of a disc issue, my legs would go numb. And then they start to burn, but I've had surgery. And so I'm standing here and I feel great. And so I sound really grateful for that. (audience applauding) Very thankful for support of my family. They had to do a lot of things to help me during the recovery period, picking up chores and responsibilities that I normally do around the house myself. And especially my wife, Tanya, she made the most sacrifices, particularly one area she really enjoys. Me, when we're together, she really enjoys me driving her around. She is a self-described passenger princess. And so, but during my recovery period, she willingly stepped down from that role and she allowed me to be the passenger prince, okay? So here I am on my throne. (audience applauding) But that was short lived after the doctor released me. I had to step down from that role. And so she's back on the throne of that passenger side of our vehicle, but that's all, that's all great. 2026 was a great year, sabbatical surgery went well. And also for another reason, in May of this year, our youngest daughter, Emma Grace, graduated from college. Here she is here, proud alumni of Dallas Baptist University.

She moved back from Dallas to Waco and she is trying to discern with God is leading her to, along with her older sister, Faith. They are at home with us. Faith started out at Baylor University. She changed her major and then went to MCC and graduated in 2024. And so the two of them are in the process of discerning what God has for them. And we are grateful for Tony and I to be able to walk with them in that journey. Now, I'm also excited for them, them and a couple of their older siblings are finished college. And many of them finished college debt free. So I just, a word to parents, going to college and then owing thousands and thousands of dollars. You know, you know, that can actually not be a thing. You know, so we were thankful to God for that Gracie poured out in our family in that way. And I share all that because our kids graduated from college, especially immigrates the very last one for Tony and I, that was the culmination of a promise from God to us. Okay, so to understand what I'm saying, I gotta go back to the year 2000. Okay, so in the year 2000, I had actually finished graduate school at Baylor and I had moved into a new position at the university. That was my 10th year there. And I actually had planned on my career being in higher education. I actually did not think that I would be working here

and Antioch here 21 years later. But at the time, I had finished school, started this new job. I remember very clearly it was January of 2000. I had moved into my office. It was the end of the day and I sat down. And so I had just kind of thought through my life. And so I have an education, I have a career path. And then because I worked at the university, my kids could get tuition remission. And so I have five children and we thought, hey, they will get a free college education. So I thought it this way. I actually thought this thought. I didn't say it out loud, but I said in my heart, I was sitting in my office that day in January that I am set for life. I got a plan, I got a career, everything's in place. My life is wonderful. I often talk about this experience I have that I call the unction, okay, which is just a prompting from the Holy Spirit, a guidance from God, an opportunity, an invitation from him to follow him in a certain way. And after I thought in my mind, I was set for life, I had one of these unctions. And the unction came in the form of this very strong thought that just kind of came out of nowhere. And the thought was Vincent, Baylor is not your security blanket. Okay, now hearing from God should be exciting,

hearing from God should be encouraging. I did not feel excited, I did not feel encouraged to hear this unction, because I already had my life planned out. I already had my goals in place. I thought I had everything worked out and this unction really just turned that all upside down. 'Cause in my mind, that immediately felt, I think I'm leaving here. I planned on being here for the rest of my life. Lots of people work at Baylor for 40 years, 50 years. I thought that was gonna be me. And I'm like, this really, so it was very unsettling. It was very alarming to me. And so I kind of wrestled with God a little bit. But I said, okay, I'm gonna trust you with my life. I'm gonna trust you. At that time, I really was thinking a lot about my kid's education. And so now here, 26 years later, Tanya and I have seen a series of miracles, all five of those kids, money and mailbox. Scholarships we got, we didn't apply for. Money's showing up, I don't know, all kind of thing, year after year after year, for 26 years of experiencing God miraculously, showing up in our life and miraculously lighting up the room, all these kinds of things. (audience laughing) And so God, we saw that. (audience laughing)

And then over those years, as well, we saw the Lord open all kinds of doors for us. And we experienced God's presence in our lives, repeatedly and consistently. Basically, these things happen in God, let us in ways we never could have done on our own. We never could have thought of on our own. And so I look back on that. At one time, I saw the year 2000 as a career transition for me, a job change. But when I look back on it now, I see the year 2000 as an invitation. I feel like God invited me into something. I feel like He said, "Hey, come follow me." And I'm thankful to God that Tanya and I had the grace to follow Him because we've experienced Him in ways we never would have done or never would have thought of on our own. I share that because God consistently invites all of us into journeys with Him. We see it throughout scripture. God invited Moses to lead the people of Israel out of bondage. God invited David to be king over the people of Israel. God came to a woman named Esther and invited her to risk her life to see this people Israel not be destroyed by a foreign power. And God has invited all of us into various journeys and on tomorrow. That has already encouraged us tomorrow, Tuesday and Wednesday. We are experiencing a movement-wide church prayer and fast.

And I hope that I pray that you realize and see that this is another one of those invitations from God. Okay? Now, if you put the QR code back up there, if you didn't have an opportunity to sign up, we want to encourage you to jump into this invitation to receive those prayer points, receive encouragement, reminders of where those prayer places are because this is an invitation that God is extending to us. The prayer and fast is an invitation to experience God. And we want to do that as a corporate people, not just the Antioch movement, but all 55 Antiochs across our nation, the 100 mission works around the world. We're going to set aside these three days to seek the face of God for our city and for our nation and for the nation of the earth. And here it is, this invitation is before us. The prayer and fast is an invitation to experience more of God. Would you say that with me? The prayer and fast is an invitation to experience God. Now, I want to show you what that's supposed to look like. How are we going to experience God? What is that going to look like over the next two days? And I want to use a past description to help us do this. So we're going to look at Jesus when He prayed and fasted in the desert here in Matthew chapter four. And I'm going to read this to us. It's going to be verses one through 11 of Matthew chapter four. It says, verse one says,

"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after He had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, He then became hungry. "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread." But the answer is said, "It is written, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." Then the devil took him into the holy city and had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down for it is written, he will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up so that you will not strike your foot against the stone." Jesus said to him, "On the other hand, it is written, you should not put the Lord your God to the test." Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdom of the world and their glory. And he said to him, "All these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me." Then Jesus said to him, "Go Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only." Then the devil left him and behold the angels came and began to minister to him. Okay, so this passage is telling us several things that I want to draw our attention to. And the first thing that this passage is communicating to us is that the prayer in fast is an invitation

to know God more personally. All right, let's say that all together. The prayer in fast is an invitation to know God more personally. Okay, let's go back and read just a couple of verses of this again. Let's read just verses three and four and what that's communicating to us. Verse three says, "And the tempter came and said to him, 'If you are the son of God, command that these stones become bread.'" But the answer then said, "It is written, man shall not live on bread alone, but every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." Okay, so Satan is tempted in this. What's his verse saying? Satan is tempting Jesus with bread, but he's not really talking to Jesus about food. Okay, Satan wants to tempt Jesus to take care of himself, to take care of his own needs, which the implication of that is because God is not taking care of you, because God is not going to meet your need, because God won't be available to you. Okay, see, Satan wants to tempt us, but his temptation really is not about sin. We often think that we got to fight against sin. That's not really the devil's main focus. That's not his goal. Really what he wants to do is to misrepresent or distort the character of God in our lives. And once that happens, then sin is a foregone conclusion. So his real deal is to really make us misunderstand who God is,

because your freedom, your success, your family's capacity to thrive, everything it is you hope and dream for in God, is tied to the character of God, the goodness of God, the favor of God, the grace of God that we've been talking about over the last six or eight weeks. Consequently, all the challenges that we see in the world, war and injustice and relational strife and all the different difficulties, financial life, all these things stem from it. You trace them, go back to a misunderstanding of the character of God. And so Satan is faithful to try to lie to us, to distort God's character to us. And one of the ways he does that is a thought like this. Many times he wants us to believe that God doesn't care about us. Okay? Now, if you've been in church a while, you probably wouldn't say God doesn't care about you, but many times we think thoughts such as the people around me don't care. The people I love, the most don't care. The people in my job, whoever is in proximity to us, we often think that people don't care. And what we're really saying in our heart is, we don't believe that God cares. And sometimes it seems that way, but it actually couldn't be further from the truth. Psalms 8.4 is a passage that God spoke to me while I was on my sabbatical. It's become very, very one of my favorite scriptures.

And it says here in Psalms 8.4, "What is man that you take thought of him? And the son of man that you care for him?" You see, the enemy wants to tempt us that God does not care, but that couldn't be any further from the truth. Matter of fact, it's just the opposite. God cares for you more than you care even for yourself. When I left in December, if you were here, you might remember I had communicated a little bit of an awkward feeling about the sabbatical. I was kind of feeling like, well, the average church member, all of you, y'all don't get six months off. To be honest, I felt a little guilty. But over the sabbatical, as I had time with God, as I was able to sit with him, it became so clear why the sabbatical was needed. Why was it important? Matter of fact, I became ambitious. I said, "Man, I wish everybody could get time away." And even if you can't do that, I certainly encourage you to find places and spaces in your life where you pull away from the routines because this is what happened for me. As I sat with God and as he sat with me, he began to show me more of himself. For example, kind of what I did, my sons, they're grown now. And so their room kind of became my little office. And so I was sitting there, and I would pray, and I would read, and I would take time.

And as I sat there, it became so obvious to me that God was listening to me. That I may be very simple to you. That may sound very basic to you. But it was profound to me as I sat before God. I became more and more convinced that he was listening to me. Like for example, Psalms 116 says, "Because he inclines his ear to me, I will call out to him." I began to know at a greater and greater measure that God was listening to me. For example, since the sabbatical one day, I was out in my yard, and y'all know we've had all these 100 degree days, and most of our yards looked terrible. So I was in my yard, and I just thought in my mind, I said, "You know, I ought to start praying for rain." The thought just crossed my mind. It was another one of those functions. The next day, it started to rain. So then a few weeks later, I coordinate this city prayer gathering. We call it last Thursday's prayer. The last Thursday, every month, different people from all over the cityway go gather in various churches, and we just pray for the city of Waco. We pray for the local churches. We pray for students. And in August, we were at a particular church that Wednesday before, I wrote the prayer guide, and I wrote in the prayer guide. Let's pray for rain. It was just one of many prayer points.

The next morning, I get up to go to the prayer minute, and it's raining outside. And so I'm just thinking these thoughts. I'm not even asking. Matthew 6 says, "Before he knows what you need before you even ask it." It was just clear to me that God was listening to me, that he was attending to me. So I had another situation, Tanya and I had a financial obligation that was due in January of 2027. Pretty sizable sum of money, and we don't have the ability to meet that need. And so Labor Day weekend, or sometime early September, again, I was just thinking, I ought to start praying for that so that God can provide that. I didn't even pray about it. I just said, I ought to start praying for that. Well, that weekend, close rain came by and visited us for Labor Day and stayed, spent the day with us. And they got ready to leave. And when they got ready to leave, they said, I had this business deal earlier this year. I made a lot of money, but I feel like I'm not supposed to keep it. So I've been praying about it. And I feel like I'm supposed to give it to you. And it was the amount of money that we were supposed to pay in January. I mean, I have all these things. I haven't even prayed for these things.

I haven't even asked for these things. And God's attending to them. Now, I can also say, there is a list of things I've been thinking about and praying about. And God has not responded to. And maybe I'll bet somebody else in the audience can say, hey, man, I do too, too. And so what about that then? Well, God led me to another passage to help me there. This is 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verses 3-5, say this. It says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Father of mercies and the God of our comfort, who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. Basically, what God has shown is that even when he doesn't meet the need or respond in the way I think he ought to, he still meets me with his presence and with his comfort. For example, I had a situation. I had to have a very difficult conversation with someone. And I am not a conflicting-- I don't like conflict. And so I was very much dreading this situation and having to have this hard conversation. And so I'm praying and lamenting this in my mind. And I don't know where a friend of mine just showed up at my office. I mean, this person-- I mean, hardly ever, if rarely,

if ever has come by my office. But while I'm in this moment of dread wishing this situation would go away, this person just shows up just to check on me and see how I'm doing. And so I share the situation we pray. God didn't change the circumstances. Still had to have a hard conversation. Still had to go through it. But the person showing up was an affirmation to me I'm attending to you, even if I don't change your circumstance, I'm there with you. You see, Satan's goal is to distort God's character. He wants us to believe he doesn't care. He wants us to believe he's not concerned, but we serve a God who cares. We serve a God who is concerned. We serve a God who is more than willing to show up in the situations and circumstances of our lives. And that is why he is inviting us into this time of praying fast. And he said, "I want you to pull away because I want you to see me more clearly. I want you to realize my character more greatly. I want you to understand how much I care, how much I'm concerned, how much I'm willing to show up in your lives." So I hope and pray that we all respond to this invitation. So if we respond to this invitation, we get to know God more personally, which then also produces another effect. The second point I want to talk to us about this morning is that knowing a God in this way through prayer and fasting, the prayer and the fast will help us know our own identity more clearly. Let's say that together. The prayer and fast is an invitation to know your identity.

Okay. So why is that important? Why do I need to know my identity, okay? Your identity in Christ creates what I call access. Everybody say access. Your identity in Christ creates access. The more you know God, the more you know yourself, the more access you have to God and His kingdom. Okay. Practical example. I've been talking a lot about my kids this morning. My oldest son Michael went to college with a Mary Heart and Baylor many, many years ago. This freshman year, we dropped him off and get him in his dorm and we set him in with enough money for the fall semester. We had no clue how we were going to pay for the next three, not the next four years, not even the next semester. We didn't have a clue how we were going to do it, okay? But we dropped him off and I literally remember thinking, okay, I might be a little embarrassed, but maybe we might have to bring him home in the spring. So I was just kind of, maybe God will do a miracle and maybe we'll just have to bring him home. That's kind of how I left. I was really a man of faith at that time. But I pray though, every day, after we dropped him off, I prayed every day, God, what are we going to do? The spring semester is coming and most days didn't hear anything. Some days he said, wait, some days he said, be patient, most days I didn't hear anything. So I'm going to pray and I figured I got till January 15th of that coming spring semester. Well Michael called me December 15th. He said, hey Dad, financial settlement is this Friday. So we got to pay for my spring semester.

So I didn't know that that's how it worked and I was like, oh my goodness. So now I say, okay, I need the passenger princess in on this. So I go get Tanya, we pray, we're like, what are we going to do? I mean, we owe the money this Friday. And she says she remembered, God reminded her that we had a close friend of ours who worked at the university and she felt like the God said, we'll call so and so. So we call this friend, we plan a situation. He says, oh well, call so and so in the financial aid department. So we call that person and they found some scholarship money for him, okay. So just one of a whole long series of things that he finally did graduate from the university. But the point I'm trying to get at is God creates access. My relationship with him creates a relationship with my son and all of us as sons and daughters of Christ, we all are sons and daughters of kings. So we all have access to the kingdom. Your identity in Christ gives you access. That's why identity. That's why knowing who you are in Christ is so important because that's how you gain access. But the enemy will love to do anything except give you that access. And as a matter of fact, he loves to distort God's character in your mind so he can distort who you are so he can deny your access. But let's go back to the passage and see how Jesus wants us to respond to this. Go back to Matthew 4 verses 5 through 7. It says here, "Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple. And he said to him, 'If you're the son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written, he will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up so that you are not striking your foot against the stone.' Jesus said to him, 'On the other hand it is written, 'You should not put the Lord your God to the test.'" Okay?

So here, the Satan tempts Jesus again, and he tempts Jesus to make a spectacle. So this is really what he's trying to say and this is why it's important for us. He's trying to say to Jesus, right now, Jesus, you're really a nobody. But if you do something great, you do something big, you'll become a somebody. Everybody will know who you are. Everybody will know yourself. Do something great. The good news is Jesus already knew that he was somebody. He already knew he didn't have to do anything great because he had already done something great. He's already connected to his Heavenly Father. That is a word for you and I. The enemy wants to distort who we are. He wants us to make weak, make us think we have to do something to be somebody when we already are somebody in Christ Jesus. Another passage that the Lord really spoke to me and really was instrumental during my sabbatical time with Psalms 139. But in fact, I studied this passage every day since the sabbatical and I'm only going to read verses 13 and 14 to us this morning. It says here in Psalms 139, verse 13 says, "For you formed my inward parts. You wove me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful all your works and my soul knows it very well." He says we are woven together in our mother's womb, some versions say we were knit together. And I want you to think about how something is knitted or how something is woven. It's a very intricate act to knit something, to sew it together, to weave it together. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of effort. It creates a lot of beauty. That is how God has formed and made each and every one of you.

He took a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of intricate detail and thought. Each and every one of you, you are uniquely and especially made. During my sabbatical, I was reading this and I felt like God spoke to me, "You are my unique creation." And that was very helpful and I try to walk in that day by day by day. I don't need to be like someone else, I don't need to do something great. I'm uniquely made by God. I am unique in Him. And that's a word to each and every one of us. You are a unique creation of God, especially made. He took tremendous amounts of time, tremendous amounts of effort to form and make you just the way that you are. My mother-in-law sews quilts for her family. I want to show you a picture of one she made for Tonya. And you can see it's green and gold in the outline. And she made this when Tonya was in the sixth grade having no idea she was coming to Baylor. But if you look at that, think about how many strokes it took her to weave that together. And she did that first. She has eight children, she did one for each child, she has 19 grandchildren, she's done that for everybody. Think of the hours of time, energy and effort, stroke after stroke after stroke after stroke. Think about God toiling over your life like that. God stroke after stroke to make your hair, stroke after stroke to make your eyes, stroke after stroke to create your personality, stroke after stroke to make. That part of you that actually made some people might think it's funny or quirky or whatever. God put great detail into making you and he wants you to understand that so that you have confidence to walk out and that what he's called you to. If the enemy can convince you that you're nobody, that you're unimportant, that you're insignificant, you won't have the confidence to walk out and that what God has called you to.

I was sharing this message with a Christian Ibarra who's on our staff, Christian works and serves on our star staff. And here he is with his new recent bride, Malia, they got married earlier this year. Christian shared a story he let me share with you because it speaks to this issue of knowing who you are. So Christian and Malia, they're on their honeymoon and they're seeking God after God. What do you have for us? What direction do you want to go once we come back and start our life together? And one of the things that they felt God was speaking to them was to be an integral part of the young adult ministry. And so the next big event that the young adult ministry was doing is they're having a movement-wide retreat that was this past September and so they said hey, where God's called us to be a part of this, we need to be at this retreat, but there's a challenge they don't have the money to go. And so they don't know how they're going to make this happen but they said we know God's call us today. We're supposed to be apart and so we're just going to go. and our father's gonna take care of us. So they make the determination, money or no money, we're signing up, we're going and God's gonna meet us. 30 minutes later, they get a text from somebody saying there was a business owner in town that needed to do a promotional advertisement and they needed some models. They needed some people to post or some pictures and say, hey, we can pay you if you will be willing to be a part of this promotional. And they said, well, that's funny, we were just praying about going to this retreat for the young adult ministry and we didn't have the money. And then when he heard about this retreat,

the person said, well, not only will our sponsor y'all to go, our sponsor 10 young adults to go to this retreat. So 10 people got their way paid. But I hope you realize that they knew who they were in Christ. They knew what they were called to do. So they had confidence to step in faith and God met them at their place of need. And so God is inviting us to come to this praying fast because I want you to know who you are in a greater way to give you greater confidence to step in everything that I have for you, okay? So God's called us to know him more personally. God has called us to know our identity. And one last thing I want to encourage us with is that the praying fast is also a way for us to know God's plan and purpose. Let's say that together. The praying fast is an invitation to know God's plan and purpose, okay? Let's read our passage. One last time, let's read the last two verses, eight, routine, last three. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, all these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, go Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only. Okay, now, I said before that it's not Satan's goal

to get you into sin, right? And so here he is, he's tempting Jesus again and he don't tempt Jesus with sin. Matter of fact, he tempts Jesus with a purpose. I mean, he offers Jesus something very positive to do, something very powerful, something very proud. He gives him a kingdom to rule over. Can't you imagine a devil saying, hey Jesus here, look at this kingdom. You can rule over all these people, you can teach them, you can do miracles, you can raise it, you can do all these great things. It looks like something positive he would want to do. The problem is this temptation, this kingdom that he's offering him is an alternative to what God actually has for him. And that's what's important for you and I to understand. As I say before, the devil's goal is not always to get you to do something wicked, to get you to do something evil. What he wants to do is he wants to distort the character of God. He wants you to distort your identity so therefore now he can offer you an alternative. Something that looks good sounds good but might not be what God actually has for you. Now, what would an alternative actually look like? Let's go back to what he tempted Jesus with. First it was bread, food. Then it was like throw yourself down

and let the angels catch you. I'll call that safety. And then he says, I'll give you a kingdom rule of a control. I was talking about this message with Carl Gully and he shared something with me that I just want to pass on that thought it was so profound. He says, when I hear you say that, it makes me think that the devil wants to offer us anything in God's will that don't involve suffering. Okay, cheat you on that thought a second. The enemy would love for you to do everything in the will of God except anything that involves suffering. Now, why, why, why, what does the suffering have to do with it? Think about what was Jesus' primary purpose in coming. His passion, he suffered and bled on a cross to create salvation for the entire world. And he said, if we would suffer with him, we would be raised with him. Now, I know that's not an exciting word, that's not encouraging maybe, but the reality is he is inviting us to partner with him. And sometimes that might involve suffering, but that suffering is going to lead to something far, far greater that what you could ever do on your own, what you could ever accomplish if you keep yourself safe, what you could ever accomplish if you only pursue comfort, if you only pursue something that you can control yourself, you can get something of the kingdom and alternative to what God has, but there's a fullness that he wants us all to walk into.

So the goal of all of this is release our own control, get out of our own heads. One of the things that the Lord spoke to me during my sabbatical, he challenged me. I often think in my mind, I often said that I really want to serve this church will. I want to pastor people will. When I meet people for counseling or lead out in ministries, I'm thinking about did I serve the people will? Did I serve everyone will? And the Lord challenged me during the sabbatical. I was like, you think a lot about yourself. Always evaluate me if you did a good job or not really is kind of self centered. I really want you to be more others centered. And so this invitation to God to me is really to think more about others more than I think about myself, okay. Darrell and Julie Hilton are two members of our church long time faithful folks and they have a beautiful testimony that they allowed me to share in their marriage. And basically they learned how not to think about themselves, how not to look at each other's thoughts. But they learned to focus on God and serving each other and God did great things through their marriage. I was sharing with them this past week and they allowed me to share a little bit of their story.

But basically many years ago early on in their marriage, they had a lot of conflict. And basically the way it would play out, they would just literally, they had this pattern of just going days and days without speaking to each other. And a lot of times the conflict had to do with financial issues. And they had family members that they would often help and they would disagree about that. 'Cause sometimes they all want to help and Julie felt like that was too much or vice versa. So they kept conflicting about money. And then they were those days and days without speaking. And so this grew so intense that at one point, Julie thought that she was fearful that their marriage wasn't gonna make it. And so she thought, man, I gotta do something. And she read this book called The Power of a Praying Wife. Okay, and so she began to pray for Darryl, she began to pray for their marriage. And she quoted one of the part of the book to me. I thought it was just really, really powerful. It speaks to this issue of God wants us to think of others more than ourselves. She wrote here, she quoted from the book saying, "It's impossible to truly give yourself in prayer "without examining your own heart. "The most effective tool in transforming your spouse "may be your own transformation."

And Julie said she felt like at a time of prayer, one of her times of prayer, she felt like the Lord said to her, "No, let go." And to her that meant stop contending with Darryl about issues, stop trying to control the situation. And she did that. And then Darryl responded, like, her life changed so much, I couldn't help but change. It was like, I changed, but I didn't even try to change. Her transformation was so impactful, I couldn't help but transform along with her. And he began to stop focusing on her and focusing on the Lord. And God did a great work in their marriage and in their relationship to the point now, they mentor other couples, they serve in various minishes in our church, they're having a long-term impact for the kingdom of God. But they did that by not thinking about them but by willing to think about the other. And so I think that message speaks to us. God is wanting us to turn the corner. He says, "I want you to know me that I care for you, "that I'm concerned for you. "I want you to understand, you're my sons and daughters, "you have identity in me. "You don't have to worry about yourself, "I'm gonna worry about you,

"so now you can now give yourself to the needs of others. "You can give yourself to the needs of this city, "you can give yourself to the needs of our nation, "you can give yourself to the need of the nations "because you know I got you covered." And so God's inviting us today, God's inviting us over the next three days to know Him in a greater way, to gain more identity as sons and daughters of Christ, so that we can then participate in His plan and His purpose for the world that we live in. Let's all stand together. I want to invite our prayer team to come and I want to give a couple more invitations. First invitation is for anyone that's here there and you have not decided whether or not you want to surrender your life to Jesus. He says if you have not given your life to Him, today is the day of salvation, as Scripture says, you have an open invitation to surrender your life to Jesus. And then maybe you're here today and maybe you identify with thinking you identify with this understanding that maybe the enemy may be caused you to have a false understanding of God's care for you. And if that's you, we would love to pray with you. We'd love to help you get affirmed and God's love for you. Maybe you are here and you identify with this understanding of, hey, my own identity is a little fuzzy.

I need to know who I am in God, so I have more confidence to step out and find the things that He has for me, and we'd love to pray with you about that. Well, maybe you're here and there's some other need. Maybe you walked in today with the financial aid. Maybe you walked in today with the help aid. Maybe you walked in with a relationship. Whatever it might be, God cares. God is here, and God is ready and able to show up in your circumstances. So if you would, we want to invite you