Make Room Part 1: Identity | Pastor Bryan Jarrett | Northplace Church

Good morning, North Place Church. Come on, can we stand to our feet? We're gonna worship the King this morning. Come on, it's so good to see you. Let's stand and worship together. Y'all know that's all I'm saying. ♪ Christ is my firm foundation ♪ ♪ The rock on which I stand ♪ ♪ When everything around me is shaking ♪ ♪ I've never been more glad that I put my faith in Jesus ♪ ♪ Cause He's never let me down ♪ ♪ He's faithful through generations ♪ ♪ So why would He fail now ♪ ♪ He won't, He won't, He won't let me down ♪ ♪ Oh and I've still got joy in chaos ♪ ♪ I've got peace that makes no sense ♪ ♪ So I won't be going under no ♪ ♪ I'm not ill by my own strength ♪ ♪ Cause I've built my life on Jesus ♪ ♪ And he's never let me down ♪ ♪ He's faithful in every season so why ♪ ♪ So why would he fail now ♪ ♪ He won't, he won't, he won't fail, he won't fail ♪ ♪ He won't, he won't, he won't fail, he won't fail ♪ ♪ Christ is my firm foundation ♪ ♪ The rock on which I stand, the rock on which I stand ♪ ♪ Everything around me is shaking ♪ ♪ I've never been more glad, I've never been more glad ♪ ♪ That I put my faith in Jesus ♪ ♪ He's never let me down, he's faithful through generations ♪

♪ So why would he fail now, he won't, he won't, he won't fail, he won't fail, he won't fail, he won't fail, he won't fail ♪ ♪ Family and friends, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no no ♪ ♪ He's faithful through generations, family and friends, family and friends ♪ ♪ He's not moving anyone, it's not moving anyone, it's not moving anyone, it's not moving anyone ♪ ♪ Blue, but my house was built on you, and I'm safe with you, I'm gonna make it through no matter what the pain may be ♪ ♪ Blue, but my house was built on you, and I'm safe with you, I'm gonna make it through no matter what the pain may be ♪ ♪ Blue, I'm gonna make it through, I'm gonna make it through, I'm standing strong on you, I'm gonna make it through the winter's gone, blue, my house was built on you ♪ ♪ I'm gonna make it through, and I'm standing strong on you, I'm gonna make it through the winter's gone, my house it's built on you, Christ is my but a foundation. ♪ I wish I'd stand when everything around me's shaking, I've never been more glad that I put my faith in Jesus, He's never let me down, faithful through generations ♪ So I would give it now, He won't, He won't, He won't, He won't let me down ♪ In Him alone ♪ I hope you let that be more than a song to you. You let that be a promise that reminds you of the immutable, unchanging, faithful nature of your God. He will not fail you. Hold on to that promise. Today, we get to do something really special. We get to celebrate life change through water baptism. Across our campus family today, we're gonna be baptizing over 30 people who are going public with their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I want you to do that right there when every one of them are baptized. Don't let it lag. By the time we get to the end, we are welcoming new members, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters into the family. This is a family celebration. They've gone public with their faith

and let's make sure heaven's applauding. Let's join the applause of heaven today as we welcome them into God's family, our family. To set the background for that as they're going public with their faith and to set the tone for this new series, our worship team has written a new song they're gonna introduce to you. That's gonna be our anthem over the next several weeks. It's just about making more space in our life for God because every time we clear out the clutter and we intentionally make space, He always fills the space we create. And that's what we're gonna be doing over the next few weeks. That's what these people have done in their life. They've created room. They have made Him Lord. They have crowned Him as King. They made space. He filled it. He's transformed their life and they're here to let the whole world know. So let's make space, celebrate them for going public with their faith. Lord Jesus, would You just crown this moment with Your presence. We're here today on a Sunday, on the Sabbath to make space in our life for You. Would You fill this service,

this moment with Your presence? And would You teach us how to declutter all the other idols of our heart so You can take more territory in our hearts today? In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. We want more of You. We want more of You, Jesus. You chose the cross, paid the debt for me. The lamb that was slain was my covering. With sin separated now has no hold on me. You tore the veil just to be with me. Making the space, built a bridge between. I'll run to Your throne room, I'll worship by Your feet. I'll run to Your throne room, I'll worship by Your feet. Clear away the idols, there's nothing I want more than to be with You. Clear away distractions, there's nothing I want more than to be with You. You.

I will make space for it, come and fill. And I will make space for it, come and fill. So I pray today, I will make space for it, come and fill. I will make space for it, come and fill. I will make space for it, come and fill. It's a simple desire to be where You are. You tore the veil just to be with me. Making the space, built a bridge between. I'll run to Your throne room, I'll worship by Your feet. I'll run to Your throne room, I'll worship by Your feet. ♪ Me, I will make space, Lord come and fill it ♪ ♪ You are not distant, you are never far ♪ ♪ It's not about status, performance, perfection ♪ ♪ Simple desire to be where you are ♪ ♪ So I will make space, Lord come and fill it ♪ ♪ You are not distant, you are never far ♪ ♪ It's not about status, performance, perfection ♪ ♪ Simple desire to be where you are ♪ ♪ Oh, I just wanna be where you are ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ ♪ There's nothing that I'd be willing to keep ♪ ♪ That would take your place ♪ ♪ I'm making the room, would you come and take over ♪ ♪ Your rightful place ♪ ♪ There's nothing that I'd be willing to keep ♪ ♪ That would take your place ♪ ♪ I'm making the room, would you come and take over ♪ ♪ Your rightful place ♪ ♪ There's nothing that I'd be willing to keep ♪ ♪ That would take your place ♪

♪ I'm making the room, would you come and take over ♪ ♪ Your rightful place ♪ ♪ There's nothing that I'd be willing to keep ♪ ♪ That would take your place ♪ ♪ I'm making the room, would you come and take over ♪ ♪ Your rightful place ♪ ♪ Hands hanging high, my heart surrendered ♪ ♪ Jesus, let me find ♪ ♪ If you're all I want, come and take over ♪ ♪ Come and take over, come and take over ♪ ♪ Come and take over, come and take over ♪ ♪ Come and take, come and take over ♪ ♪ Oh, come and take over, Jesus ♪ ♪ So I will make space for it, come and fill it ♪ ♪ You are not this and you are never far ♪ ♪ It's not about status, performance, perfection ♪ ♪ It's a simple desire to be where you are ♪ ♪ I will make space, Lord, come and fill it ♪ ♪ I will make space, Lord, come and fill it ♪ ♪ Come and fill it, Jesus ♪ ♪ This all we want is more of you, come and fill it ♪ ♪ We're making space for you, we're making space for you ♪ ♪ I start to forget all of the great things you did ♪ ♪ When did I throw away faith for the impossible ♪ ♪ And how did I start to believe ♪ ♪ That you weren't sufficient for me ♪ ♪ Do I talk myself out of seeing miracles ♪ ♪ You are more than able ♪ ♪ You are more than able ♪ ♪ More than able, oh Jesus ♪

♪ You are more than able ♪ ♪ You are more than able, who am I to deny ♪ ♪ Who am I to deny what the Lord can't do, oh ♪ ♪ Oh Jesus, now I see all that I have ♪ ♪ Oh I've got my confidence back ♪ ♪ I've put my trust and love on You still ♪ ♪ There's miracles, You do miracles ♪ ♪ You are more than able, oh Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus ♪ ♪ You are more than able, oh Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus ♪ ♪ You've seen the world mountain, You are more than able ♪ ♪ You are more than able, who am I to deny ♪ ♪ What the Lord can't do, oh Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus ♪ ♪ What the Lord can't do, what the Lord can't do ♪ ♪ It's gonna happen just the way You make it through ♪ ♪ He's gonna move, He's gonna move ♪ ♪ Can you imagine with all of the faith in the room ♪ ♪ What the Lord can't do, what the Lord can't do ♪ ♪ It's gonna happen just the way You make it through ♪ ♪ He's gonna move, He's gonna move, oh ♪ ♪ Can you imagine with all of the faith in the room ♪ ♪ What the Lord can't do, what the Lord can't do ♪ ♪ It's gonna happen just the way You make it through ♪ ♪ He's gonna move, He's gonna move ♪ ♪ Anything is possible, oh anything, anything is possible ♪ ♪ Anything is possible, oh imagine tonight ♪ ♪ What the Lord can't do, anything is possible, oh anything ♪ ♪ Anything is possible, anything is possible, oh anything ♪ ♪ Who am I to deny what the Lord can't do ♪ ♪ Who am I to deny what the Lord can't do ♪ ♪ Who am I to deny what the Lord can't do ♪

♪ Oh, He's faithful, God is great, He's great ♪ ♪ You are more than able ♪ ♪ You are more than able, yes He is Jesus of Nazareth ♪ ♪ You are more than able, hallelujah, yes He is God ♪ ♪ You are more than able, who am I to deny what the Lord can do ♪ My heart is so full of anticipation over the journey we're taking for the next eight weeks as a family where we're gonna be looking at what it means to make room and open heaven for an honoring heart. According to scripture, one of the greatest ways you can make more room in your life for God and more room in your life for the people that you know to encounter God is through the principle of honor. I'm convinced if we get this in our heart, it's gonna be life-altering, it's gonna be culture-shaping, it's gonna change us in remarkable ways in the next eight weeks. I'm gonna get into the material in just a moment, but I wanna challenge you. I wanna challenge you to take this journey with us, commit to it. Commit three things to get the most out of the next eight weeks. First, commit to attend the series. I know in our modern world, people's church attendance is bouncy and sporadic, but I challenge you to start 2026 off by committing to show up every week

during this spiritual emphasis moment in our church. Second, get a guide. The first two weeks starts today, this week and next week are personal study. They're devotional. The next six weeks are devotional as well, but they're created to be done in a group environment. All eight weeks are in the guide. They're available in the lobby. They cost us $15 to produce. We're making them available to you for that at cost. But if you don't have the money, just tell us. You're in a bind right now. We wanna give you the guide because we want everybody on this journey with us. Attend the series, get a guide, and finally join a group. Something supernatural happens when people gather in smaller groups and align their hearts around the word of God. It's been proven scientifically to be more transformational when we do it that way. Research has proven that when churches collectively focus on one topic during a concentrated period of time, it drives the theme deeper in individual hearts and into the group as a whole. We experienced that in the fall when we did this in what was our Seeds series. That's why we're gonna study for all eight weeks. We're gonna focus on this in our kids' ministry, youth ministry, young adult ministry,

our adult gatherings, and in our small groups. But the main reason we're doing it this way is because this is the way it was done in Scripture. The New Testament church met weekly for corporate worship and daily in smaller groups in each other's homes for prayer and study and fellowship. So we're gonna have a group connect next weekend in the lobby of all of our campuses for you to find a group and get plucked in and take this biblical journey of growing together. But let me say this. There may be people in your life where you live or where you work with or in your family that are more connected to you than they are the church. Be the bridge. Lead a group for them. I've created conversation starters each week that will go along with the small group material. They're five to seven minutes that help get the conversation started. All that stuff's gonna be available online. These resources, northplacechurch.com forward slash make room. Challenge those people in your life, whether at work or wherever, hey, I know you don't normally come to church, but for the next several weeks, attend the series with me. Get a guide and commit to do this group with us. It's not the group. It's not the guide. It's not my sermons that are gonna change people's lives.

It's the power of God's word being applied to people's hearts through the work of the Holy Spirit. So turn with me in your Bible to Genesis chapter one, and we're gonna be in the beginning today because over the next eight weeks, you're gonna see that this principle of honor is woven all through scripture. But before I get to that passage at the end of Genesis one, let me give you the heart behind this whole series. Almost 25 years ago, as I was beginning my graduate studies, I happened to be placed in a cohort with a Guatemalan pastor, and he said something in one of our meetings that was profound. He said, do you know why God moves so powerfully with signs and wonders among the poor in Guatemala while the American church is begging God for miracles with little to no results? He said, it's because in America, you can find God to your funnel. He's big at the top of your funnel, in your sermons and your songs and your conferences, in your weekend worship. But when it comes down to the bottom of the funnel, your everyday life, you limit him. And then he said, God is an unlimited God. If you wanna see him move here the way he moves in other places in our world, you're gonna have to enlarge the bottom of your funnel.

You're gonna have to increase your capacity for God. You're gonna have to let him be as big in your Monday morning work environment as he was in your Sunday morning worship experience. His challenge to us was enlarge the bottom of your funnel and increase your capacity for God. That's the core idea behind this whole make room conversation. Most of us have made God small, not theologically. We'd never say God is small. We sing about his greatness. We preach about his power, but in our actual lives, in the Monday through Saturday rhythms of work and parenting and conflict and decision-making, we limit him. It's like the pastor's funnel imagery. At the top, we have all of these grand ideas about God, His sovereignty, His love, His power, but at the bottom of that funnel where He actually flows into our daily existence, the bottom is pinched, it's narrowed, it's constricted. So God ends up being big in our favorite songs, but small in our stress. Big in our sermons, but small in our conflicts. Big in our doctrine, but small in our decisions. To make room means to increase our capacity for Him, to let God be as big in the reality of our everyday lives as He is in what we say we believe about Him. And learning how to live with an honoring heart is one of the ways to enlarge the funnel,

to increase the capacity. It's how we make more room for God and people in our life. Honor creates space, dishonor constricts it. When we live with dishonor toward God or toward people, we shrink the available space in our life for God to move. But when we live with radical biblical honor, we're creating space in our life for heaven to invade earth. That's the heart behind this make room conversation. And today we're starting with the foundation, the foundation of honor is identity. You can't honor what you don't understand. And most of us, if we were honest, I don't think we really understand what it means to truly be human, because we've let our culture define the value of life instead of letting scripture define it. Since the 1980s, the third Sunday of January in many churches has been called this Sunday, has been called Sanctity of Life Sunday, and it's primarily been focused on protecting the life of the unborn. And that fight has to continue with more passion than ever before. But the church has been far too narrow in what it fights for when it talks about the sanctity of life. The biblical vision of life sanctity includes the unborn, yes, but also the orphan and the widow and the poor and the prisoner and the immigrant and the refugee

and the elderly and the disabled. All life is sacred. And these truths are more important right now for us than ever before. We're living in a deeply divided cultural moment where we're watching our nation fracture over fault lines of fear and ideology and rage, where violence is erupting and we're hearing language that dehumanizes people and we witness people made in the image of God reduced to threats or problems to be eliminated or obstacles in the way of whatever you perceive the preferred future to be. And in moments like this, the most important question for followers of Jesus is not what side are you on, but what kind of people are you becoming? How is this moment forming and shaping our hearts? How is it shaping the way we see people? And here's what's most troubling. Many of us as followers of Jesus are participating in the devaluing of human life without even realizing it. We're scrolling past images of the suffering and we feel nothing. And we justify it if it's the suffering of people that don't align with our ideology. We reduce complex human beings to their worst moment or to their political affiliation or to their failures. We mock, we dismiss, and we justify cruelty

if it's aimed at the right people. And the biggest danger, if God's image in a person can be defaced or minimized by their choices, their background, their beliefs, then we excuse ourself for treating them poorly. And when that happens, we're no longer operating with a biblical understanding of what it means to be human. This Make Room Conversation is gonna teach us how to expand our capacity for God by learning how to honor, honor Him, and honor people that bear His image. Now look at that passage I pointed you to at the end of Genesis 1. This is where it all begins. Genesis 1, verse 26. Then God said, let us make man or human beings in our image to be like us. So God created human beings in His own image. In the image of God, He created them. The Bible teaches us that all humanity, all, uniquely bears the image of God. The Hebrew word for image here is tselem, and it means representation. statue, embodied presence. In the ancient world, when a king would overtake a new territory, he would place an image of himself there, a statue, an icon of some kind that represented his authority

and his presence in that place. That's what the God of the universe did when he created humanity. We are his image bearers placed on this earth to represent him. We're not just creatures among other creatures. We are the living image of God. And there are multiple ways we reflect his image in us. Here are just two. We reflect his image in our being, in the ability that we have to reason and create our moral awareness, our capacity to love and relate to people, our ability to think and choose. They are all reflections of God's image. We also reflect God's image in the way we relate to people, in our relationships. Notice the text says, let us make human beings in our image, referring to the Trinitarian nature of God, highlighting that God's image is communal. God exists in eternal relationship, father, son, spirit, and we're made to reflect that relational nature. Over and over again, the Bible teaches that how we relate to people reveals that we either honor the image of God or we disparage the image of God in people, which means honoring others is an optional. It is my relational obedience as an image bearer

to other image bearers. Here's what you have to understand. Honor is about more than being kind or polite. This is far more than a conversation about manners or social etiquette. Honor is the correct response to the image of God in another person. To dishonor another person is to dishonor God himself. Here's something I've seen people get confused about. You often hear people teach that when sin came into the world, it tainted the image of God in us. That's wrong. They've actually confused two concepts that are very similar. The scripture makes an important distinction between God's image and God's likeness, and we were created in both, God's image and God's likeness. But watch this. Bearing God's image speaks to our identity. Bearing God's likeness speaks to our life's direction and maturity. Sin can damage the likeness of God in you, but it can never erase the image of God in you. Notice what the Bible says in Genesis 9. This is after the fall, after violence and corruption have come into the world. This is after the human race has revealed its depths of depravity.

God says in Genesis 9, for God made human beings in his own image. We are still marked by his image even when we are not acting like him. Listen to what James says in James 3. With the tongue, we praise the Lord our Father, and with it, we curse human beings who have been made in the likeness of God. James is rebuking that behavior because we're all made in his likeness. Realize what the depth of what scripture is trying to teach us here. People may be fallen, but they're never worthless. They may be broken, but they're never disposable. They may be sinful, but they're still sacred. They may have lessened the likeness of God in them, but they can't remove his image from them. This means that dishonor isn't just rude. It's a theological contradiction. You can't bless God and curse his image bearers. That would be spiritual schizophrenia. It just doesn't make sense. Truly understanding this is gonna immensely impact how we live in this moment. Because if the image of God can be erased by sin, then we can justify mistreating bad people. We can dismiss the homeless as less than. We can disregard the life of a political opponent as worthless, and we can scroll past that refugee child

without feeling anything. But if the image of God survives our sinfulness and survives our brokenness and survives our corruption, it means it can't be erased, which means every person matters. No matter what they've done, no matter how damaged they are, no matter how far they've fallen, no matter how much you dislike them, they still carry the sacredness. of God's image. Here's where this confronts our cultural moment. Our culture has a very different definition of human value than the kingdom of God does. There is a kingdom identity and there is a cultural identity and they are very different. The culture says, you are what you produce. Your value comes from your achievements, your resume, your net worth, your following. You are whatever you can do for me. But the kingdom of God declares you are who God created you to be. Your value and your identity is bestowed upon you by God. It is not achieved, which means it is fixed. It doesn't fluctuate and it has nothing to do with what you produce or who you impress. Culture says your image is curated. Like you craft your identity. You make it up, you manage it, you create it, you determine it, you produce and perform

your way to significance. The kingdom declares the opposite, that your image is conferred, that God stamps his image on you before you do a single thing. You can't earn it, you can't lose it, you don't determine it, it is given. Here's what I've learned. Our inability to honor the image of God in other people often stems from our own struggle to believe that we are honorable. Our dishonor toward others often flows from identity amnesia. We forget who we are, we forget whose we are, and when we forget that, we start treating ourselves and others as if the image of God is negotiable. So how do we learn to see people the way God sees people? You just watch Jesus. Listen to what Paul says about him in Colossians 1 verse 15. Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. And listen to how the book of Hebrews opens. The sun is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being. Jesus shows us what an undistorted image bearer looks like, and then in the way he lives his life, he turns around and shows us how to honor God's image in other people. We have to see Jesus's radical redefinition of honor. If you wanna know how God sees people, watch Jesus. He touches lepers, he raised the value of women,

he dignified women in a culture that treated them as less, he restored the possessed, he called sinners to the table to eat with him, which was not the case in religious circles of that day. And notice, Jesus never denied somebody's dignity even when he confronted their sin. So here's the principle to us. You can be compassionate while confrontational, and you can remain compassionate in your pursuit of justice if you value the image of God in those that you feel have wronged you or society. Jesus did, and that's why he could say to the woman caught in adultery, go and sin no more, but that came after he refused to let the mob stone her. That's why he could overturn tables in the temple in his righteous anger, but he never dehumanized the money changers that were causing the problem. There was a weightiness to how Jesus treated people. The Hebrew word for glory is kabod, and it literally means weight or heaviness. To honor someone is to recognize their weight, to treat them as if they were significant or substantial. And to dishonor someone is to treat them as light, disposable, insignificant, or worthless. Jesus treated every single person he encountered as weighty, especially the ones the culture dismissed and even his enemies. The Romans were his political enemies, the Pharisees were his religious enemies, and yet he healed the centurion servant,

and he prayed for his Pharisaical executioners. Everybody was weighty to Jesus. In Luke 8, a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years, she'd been bankrupted from the doctors, she had nothing left. She was isolated from society because of her physical, she was shamed because of her physical condition. She reached out in desperation to touch the hem of Jesus's garment, and when she was healed, Jesus did not let her slip away anonymously because there was a deeper healing that needed to happen in her heart. He stopped, he called her forward, he called her daughter, and he gave her her name back, he gave her her dignity back, and he gave her her place in the community back. That's how Jesus honored people. This is how he made room for the kingdom of God to break in, not by dismissing people. sinfulness or overlooking their brokenness, but refusing to let it define their value and worth. Now let's make this really personal. The easy part today is to agree with this in theory. The hard part is practicing it with the people that God has actually placed in your life, especially the ones that are hard to honor. So here's the question, who's hard to honor in your life? Who are you having a hard time honoring? Is it the family member that betrayed you, the coworker that undermines you, the neighbor whose politics makes your blood boil,

or that person on social media whose posts fill you with rage? Is it the pen handler that you pass every day at that intersection on your way to work? Is it the immigrant whose presence unsettles you? Is it the person whose lifestyle you find offensive? Honor isn't natural for us. It is not instinctive. Our default mode is to rank people, to assign value to them based on what they can do for society, or what they can do for us, or how much they agree with us, or how comfortable they make us feel. And when I'm operating that way, I'm making God small because I'm treating his image bearers as if they're only valuable when they meet my criteria. And here's the truth. The image of God in someone may be buried, but it's never gone. You may have to dig through the layers of pain and sin and brokenness and dysfunction to find it, but it's there always. And when you treat someone right that doesn't deserve it, you're not blessing what's wrong with them. You're honoring God by honoring his image upon them. Dallas Willard said it this way. Every person you meet is an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God's great universe. C.S. Lewis wrote, there are no ordinary people.

You have never talked to a mere mortal. Every single person has an eternal soul and every single person bears the image of God. Do you live every day with that kind of holy awareness? Do you walk in the grocery store or sit in traffic or scroll through social media with the recognition that every person you're gonna encounter today carries the weight of eternity? Or have you learned to make people small? That's what our culture does. Teaches us to treat people as small, light, disposable and insignificant. Let me give you something practical, something concrete that you can do this week to make more room for the kingdom of God to invade your life. Practice honor as a spiritual discipline this week by committing to pay real attention to people. This week in every interaction, pause and ask yourself, what would it look like to see this person as God sees them? The barista who gets your order wrong, the driver who cuts you off, the person on the other end of the customer service line, the child having a meltdown in the checkout lane, the teenager that rolls their eyes at you, the spouse who disappoints you. Look at them, pause and ask, what would change if I treated this person as if they bear the image of God? What would change if I saw the way I treat this person as the way I was treating God?

Because here's the reality, when you start practicing honor, you widen the bottom of the funnel, you make room, you increase your capacity for God, you're creating space for him to move in your life. You can't bless God and curse his image in others. You can't worship on Sunday and dehumanize on Monday. You can't sing about God's greatness today and treat his image bearers as disposable tomorrow. Honor reveals what we really believe about God. And dishonor? Dishonor is functional atheism. It's living as if God is not present in the person right in front of you. I began a moment ago by naming the cultural moment that we're in, I lament it. To lament is a biblical term. There's a whole book in the Bible called Lamentations. It's bigger than grief. It is a soulless grief. I grieve that we have learned to mock death and celebrate harm and treat other humans as if they are expendable. But I have a vision, a vision of what could be if the people of God, if we, this church, learned to live with radical biblical honor. What if we became known as the people who see and value his image in others? People who pause, pay attention,

and refuse to treat anybody. as insignificant. What if we became the community where the overlooked are seen, the dismissed are dignified, and the hard to love are loved anyway? What if the people that encountered us walked away from those encounters thinking, something's different about those people. They treat me like I matter. I know they probably don't agree with me, but I can sense they still believe I matter. Just imagine how it would change marriages if we chose to see the image of God in the spouse we were arguing with, or parenting if we chose to see the image of God in the difficult child, or any relational friction if we saw the image of God in the other people. That's the vision. That's what it looks like to make room. And that's what happens when we take the image of God seriously and we honor it in people. In Matthew 25, Jesus is talking about the final, listen to this closely. He's talking about the final judgment and he separates people based on one criterion. How did you treat the image of God in the least of these? Says in Matthew 25, verse 40,

Jesus says, I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these, you were doing it to me. Jesus says, treat people as if you see me in them. And how you treat people created in God's image is how you're treating God himself. So stand by your friends, serve your neighbors, encourage the disheartened, support the weak, rescue the downtrodden, give to those in need and show kindness and compassion to your adversaries. Not because it's easy, not because they deserve it, but because they bear the image of the God we claim to worship. We can't make room for God while making people small. So let's widen the funnel and honor God by honoring his image in others. And I gotta be clear today, because it would be easy for somebody to assume I'm saying something that I am not. And I wanna be extremely clear today so there's no confusion. Every one of us, every person bears the imago Dei, the image of God, but we are not all Christians. We are all his creation, but we are not all his children. There is a phrase floats around in culture, we are all God's children. That gives us the warm fuzzies, but according to scripture, it's not true. Listen to what the Bible says in John 1, 12. But to all who believed him and accepted him,

he gave the right to become the children of God. That title belongs to those who believe in him and who accept him. We're all created in his image and we're all valuable because of the fact we are his creation in his image. But we don't become sons and daughters until we bow our knee, confess our sin and declare that Jesus Christ is Lord. We have to believe in him and accept him. And if you've never done that, today's a really good day to become the sons and daughters of God. We didn't plan it this way, like this series to launch on what has been known as Sanctity of Life Sunday. We didn't plan it to launch on Martin Luther King Jr. The day before we honor his life and legacy, but it's perfect. Because tomorrow's a really good day for you to start practicing these principles on a day that has been set aside to honor the legacy of a man who changed the world by this message. Every body matters to God. Tomorrow's a really good day to start living this way. I want you to stand with me all over this room, if you will, today at all of our campuses, if you would, prayer teams, if you would make yourself available today. I have a closing prayer for us in this moment to consecrate our heart to this today. But as our prayer team comes, look,

I want you to know this. I know this is not what I preached on today, but there's something happening. There are miracles. I just had one told to me this morning in the last service from a miracle that happened. 20 years of pain that was gone. It's just, I don't have time to go into it this morning, but it's just been miracle after miracle. What I'm saying is in this season of fasting, I don't know, there's an open heaven right now. I don't want you to miss. I want you to just come to church, hear me talk and not experience the supernatural power of God. Let us, James 5, pray together and let the elders of the church pray and God moves mountains. He does miracles. So if you need a miracle in your life, don't miss this moment. And the greatest miracle would be, I wanna give my life to Jesus today. I wanna believe in him. I wanna accept him. This team would be honored to pray with you about that. Now here's a prayer. It's gonna be on your screens. Make this a prayer of surrender, a response. It's a prayer for an honoring heart.

God of mercy and truth. We come to you aware of how easily we forget who we are and who others are in your eyes. Restore our sight, heal our identity. Teach us to see your image everywhere we look. Make room in us for more of you by enlarging our hearts for people. We choose the way of Christ. We choose honor. We choose the sanctity of life. Increase our capacity for you by giving us an honoring heart. And Lord, I pray today you'll bless them and keep them, that you'll make your face shine down on them, that you'll be gracious to them, that you'll turn your countenance their direction today, and you'll grant them peace. In Jesus' name, amen. Now, go give honor and add value, amen. God bless you.