One Thing | Lisa Seaton

Well, good morning, City First fan band. You can give God praise if you're excited to be in church today. You are in the right place. Turn to your neighbor and say, I'm so glad I get to sit next to you. Okay, now turn to your other neighbor, your second choice, and say, but you're my favorite. You're my favorite. Well, I hope that everybody is having a great summer so far. I can't believe it's August. It feels like summer has flown by, and back to school is quickly approaching, which the good news is that means we're only 21 Sundays away from Christmas. You're either for me or against me right now, but just wanna say thank you to everybody who's given a backpack for our Backpack Initiative, where our goal as a church will cross all locations is to provide 2,700 backpacks for students in need, and we are getting close to hitting that goal. So if you haven't participated yet, maybe today is your day. Well, I wanna start off with a question. Okay, how many of you love when everything is in order? You love to have things in order. You load your dishwasher in a certain way, in a certain order. When a vacation is coming up, you are organized. Your suitcase is packed to the T in a specific way.

For those of you who are on your email all the time, inbox zero is your goal, right? You live for it. You're like, as for me and my house, there will be no crumbs in my car. That is Adam. I'm like, we got kids. He's like, but we got a vacuum, okay? No crumbs in our car. You love order, and then what happens? You end up marrying somebody who's a free spirit. You refill your gas tank when it has 3 1⁄4 of a tank left, and they get to empty, and they're like, let's see how long I can make it, right? You know what they say. Opposites attract until they attack, okay? I'm just saying, but what we see about God in the Bible is that God is actually a God of creativity, and he's a God of order. In the very beginning of the Bible, in Genesis 1-2, we see that the earth was empty, and it was void, and from the chaos of nothingness, God demonstrates form and function through his creation. All throughout creation, we see that God is a God of order and even of systems. I want you to think about it. We've got the solar system. We've got the eco system. We've got the circulatory system, the nervous system,

the respiratory system, the reproductive system. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 14-33, it says, for God is not a God of disorder, another version says, or chaos, but he is a God of peace, and yet maybe today, you came to church, and your life does not feel like it's in order, and peace actually feels very far away from you. Maybe you walked in, and it feels like your marriage is kind of hanging on by a thread. It feels like it's falling apart, or maybe it feels like in your finances, you just can't get it in order. You're working hard, you're working overtime, and yet it feels like you can't get ahead. Maybe it feels like the wrong things are getting all of your attention, like work is your main priority, or in your home, it feels crazy, like you have a kid-ran household instead of a parent-ran household. Maybe it feels like in a relationship, something feels out of order, or even maybe in your mind, it feels like your thoughts are out of control and out of order. Well, here's the good news. I believe that God has you here today on purpose. It is not an accident that you are a part of City First Church and that you are here today, and what I'm believing is that if we can just get one thing in order, everybody say one thing,

one thing in order, everything else will begin to come into place, and I know my overachievers in the room are like, but I wanna get everything in order right now, but today, we're just gonna talk about and we'll focus on one thing, and so I wanna take a moment and pray, and then we're gonna open up God's Word. So Heavenly Father, we thank you for who you are. We thank you for the opportunity that we have today to be gathered in your house and open up the living Word of God. This is not another Sunday. This is not just another thing that we do. God, we are here to encounter you. We wanna leave different than how we came, so God, I pray that every heart and every mind and every spirit would be alert and attentive to what you are doing. we're wanting to say, God, we invite you to have your way. I pray that you would help me to get out of the way so that you can have your way. And in your name we pray, everybody said, amen. Well, we're gonna be picking up in the New Testament portion of the Bible, and this is when Jesus walked the earth over 2,000 years ago, and we're gonna read a story that may be familiar to you. If it is, I'm praying that you would read it today like it's the first time, expectant,

that God's gonna speak to you through it, and this story centers around two siblings. Anybody in the place have siblings? You know that wherever there's siblings involved, there's a little bit of drama, right? Nothing's changed, even from 2,000 years ago, and this is what it says in Luke chapter 10, verse 38 through 42. Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house, and she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha, if it's in yellow, say it with me, okay? But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she went up to him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me alone? Tell her then to help me. But the Lord answered her, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken away from her. If you're taking notes, you can write down the title of today's message. If you're not taking notes, you can write down the title of today's message, and it's one thing, one thing. And I want us to look at the life of Martha here. What we see about Martha says that in the beginning of these verses,

it says that she welcomed Jesus into her home. She welcomed him in. And I believe if you're here today at City First Church joining us in Janesville or Cape Coral or online right here at Spring Creek, if you're here, then this resonates with you because you also are saying, I wanna welcome Jesus into my life. I want more of him in my life. I wouldn't be here otherwise. But although Martha welcomes Jesus in, what we see here is that Martha was quickly distracted. Okay, now 2,000 years ago, our girl Martha didn't even have the internet and she's still distracted, right? Like she didn't have social media. She didn't have a smartphone. She's not swiping on Tinder during the message. I've seen it done before. There's no mention of her having to chase around kids in the moment. She's not shopping on Amazon Prime. She's not trying to close a business deal. She's not having the Cubs play in the background. Lord, please help them win today. But still, 2,000 years ago, it says she was distracted and she was anxious and she was troubled by many things. And I think if we pause and we're honest today, all of us can relate to Martha, that it can be easy for us to be distracted,

anxious, and troubled. And sometimes we get so used to living distracted, living anxious, living bothered, that we just accept that as our normal. And yet God is saying there's a different way. And I want you to think about your own life. I'm gonna ask you these questions. Take a picture of it, write it down. But I want you to reflect on this as you go throughout your week. Right now in your life, take the time to discern what are you anxious about? What are you anxious about right now? What are you troubled by? What's bothering you? And what are you distracted with? Jesus identifies that all of these things were found in Martha, and they're probably all found in us too, if we really are gonna take a moment and reflect and think about it. But what I love is how Jesus leans into the situation with the siblings. What does Jesus say to Martha when she has all these things going on? He says, Martha, Martha. Can't you imagine him? Place yourself in the story. If you were there, he would be like, John, John, John, Lisa, Lisa.

He says, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and you are troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. I want you to hear the tone that Jesus is using here. Jesus is not condemning Martha for being distracted and anxious. He's not belittling her. He's not making her feel like less. And he's not even scolding her. Jesus isn't scolding Martha. What he's doing is he's inviting her to reorder her priorities. And I believe that Jesus extends that same invitation to you and to me today, that we would begin to reorder our priorities. See, Martha, all that she could see were the pressures and the demands that were being placed on her, that she was placing on herself. But Jesus could see a better way. In this moment, Martha probably felt like everything was orbiting or revolving around her. Can you imagine? She's at the house and she's like, Jesus is coming to my house and he's bringing all these people with me. I got a whole list of things to do. You people who love order, you make lists, don't you? And she probably had a list. She's like, I gotta clean the house.

I gotta cook. I gotta prepare this. I gotta return this call. I gotta make sure I have this figured out. I have all these things, all of these pressures were orbiting around her. And maybe today you feel like many things are orbiting around you in your life. You're going, I've got my business that's depending on me. I've got workers that I need to provide for. My family, they would be lost without me. They're orbiting around me. They need my help and direction. My children, the staffing things that you're trying to figure out and those solutions are resting on you like it all depends on you. Your community, your job, your marriage, that project, that thing. But what I want us to see here is Jesus is indicating that even though it feels like everything's orbiting around you, putting pressure on you, you are created to have your life orbit around Jesus. He's meant to be the center of your life and my life. Just how if the sun is not the center of the solar system, the earth will begin to drift away into the vast expanse of space. If Jesus is not at the center of our lives, we too will begin to drift into chaos and disorder and lack of fulfillment and purpose

and enjoyment of life that God has for us. If Jesus is not at the center of your orbit, everything gets off balance. And then we wonder, why are we anxious? Why are we worried? Why are we troubled? Why are we unfulfilled? Because there's an order that God created us to live in. Martha was pulled in every direction, but Mary found peace at the feet of Jesus because she put him at the center. And do you know that there's no, nothing in the Bible is written on accident. Not one word is wasted. And it says that Mary had chosen the good portion, which means spiritual nourishment. She was feeding her soul. And it says that it will not be taken away from her, which means that there's a spiritual permanence there, that the things that we invest to that are of eternal, they're not gonna be taken away. And it says that she was doing this, she was sitting at the feet of Jesus. Do you know that in first century Jewish culture, sitting at the feet of a teacher or of a rabbi was a technical term? It wasn't a casual term. It wasn't just descriptive of what you could see with your eyes. It was a technical term.

And it meant that that individual was learning from, becoming a disciple, a committed learner, a student or an apprentice from a teacher or a rabbi. It was a technical term that they were engaged in this learning, discipleship, apprentice process. So what the text is telling us is that Mary, by sitting at the feet of Jesus, is actually being discipled by Jesus, which is incredible. But what's even more incredible is that according to Jewish tradition, the only people that could be disciples of a rabbi or of a great teacher, it was an exclusive role only for men. And yet here we have Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus doing something that was not allowed in Jewish culture. But what does Jesus do? He acknowledges it and he even affirms it, that Mary's chosen the right thing. So what Jesus is doing here is shocking to the culture around him. I love what scholar N.T. Wright wrote about this. He said, Jesus is turning the world upside down. Mary's place at Jesus' feet shows that the kingdom reorders social expectations. God's way of doing thing reorders social and cultural expectations so if we're gonna live for Jesus we have to let him reorder some things in our lives and if we're gonna let him reorder some things in our lives it's gonna go against how the world does things it's gonna go against cultural expectations it's gonna go against social expectations following Jesus will require you and me to reorder some things in our lives and it won't always make sense to everybody

around us think about all throughout Scripture God's way of doing things that seems different than everyone else's what does God say says that we should have a Sabbath work six days rest the seventh to the world that might not make sense it's like you gotta work hard all the time because it all depends on you but when we have a Sabbath God is reminding us that yes we work hard but even while we're resting God is still working that seventh day of rest reminds us to slow down and let our bodies catch up to our soul for a second that we're not machines that were creations of God and we're meant to be in relationship with our Creator can you imagine when Chick-fil-a said we're only gonna be open six days we're gonna be closed on the seventh day the business world was probably like but you're missing opportunity and you're gonna be missing profit and yet they're the number one grossing fast-food chain in the nation come on somebody the Christian chicken right they said we're gonna do it God's way and God blessed that what else does God tell us to do that seems out of order to the world and the Bible tells us to tithe to give 10% back to God through the local church that seems crazy but when we do that every time that we give back to God we're reminded everything that I have is from you God if I have the skills to earn something that's because you gave me the skills to do it everything that I have is from you and everything that I have is for you and it reminds us to be givers not just to be getters in a world that's all about us it reminds us that God is our provider and our source the Bible says to avoid sexual immorality you mean you want me to wait to have SCX until after I married that's the way that God says to do it why because he cares about you and he doesn't want you to have to bring in baggage and harmful situations into your life he says do it my way because my way is the best way for you the Bible says to walk in humility in a world that's all about self-promotion that says take the low road right that the last will be first and the first will be last that God is the one to promote you the Bible says to forgive 77 times 7 but that person hurt me and I want to get them back but do you know what God says vengeance is mine says the Lord that he's more equipped to handle your hurts

than you are what I'm saying is that God's way is better than our way and your life will always be more blessed when you choose to live God's way versus the world's way always be more blessed and so our goal is the same as Martha's to move from the many things to the one thing the one thing what is the one thing it says in Matthew 6 33 but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness which means his way of doing things and everything else will be given to you as well what's everything else what is this verse talking about we're gonna go back and we're gonna read the verses leading up to Matthew 6 33 and what's interesting are the verses leading up to this verse that says seek God first all these verses are about worry and anxiety and the pressures that we feel to provide the needs that we have in our daily lives it's like God knew that there would be competition for us putting him first instead of putting him first we often want to put worry first or the needs of this world first and that's why God specifically addresses this in Matthew 6 and we're gonna read this together it says therefore I tell you stop being worried or anxious this isn't an amplified version perpetually uneasy and distracted about your life as to what you will eat or what you will drink nor about your body as to what you will wear is life not more than food and the body more than clothing look at the birds of the air, they neither sow seed, nor reap the harvest, nor gather the crops into barns, and yet your heavenly Father keeps feeding them. Are you not worth much more than they are? And who of you, by worrying, can add a single hour of length to their life? Therefore, do not worry or be anxious, perpetually uneasy and distracted, saying, what are we gonna eat? Or what are we gonna drink? Or what are we gonna wear?

For the pagan Gentiles eagerly seek all these things. But do not worry, for your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But first, and most importantly, seek, aim at, strive after His kingdom and His righteousness, His way of doing and being right, the attitude and character of God, and all these things will be given to you also. How incredible is this passage? Some of you might just need to go home and read this over and over and over again, and remember that though there are pressures and it feels like things are orbiting around you, though there's many opportunities to be distracted, we wanna do the one thing, we wanna put God first. And the Bible is saying here, instead of worrying, pray first. Instead of worrying, seek God first. How much of our life do we spend on worry? And what is worry really? Worry is when we focus on my fears, when you focus on your fears, instead of focusing in on God. Worry brings this mindset like, if it's meant to be, it's up to me. It's all on me, it's that pressure again, it's all on me. Really when we worry, we're placing our trust in ourselves and in our own limited resources. Because what happens when you worry? You're going, how am I gonna fix this?

How am I gonna find a solution for this? How am I gonna solve this? How am I gonna make ends meet? But when we choose to focus on God through prayer instead of worry, we realize that prayer is actually placing our trust in God, and in our God who is unlimited in his resource, unlimited in his solutions, unlimited in his provision. We have to remind ourself, worry is worthless. And worry is actually a form of control. Going, if I can just think about this, and if I meditate on this, then maybe I can fix this. It's a form of control, but prayer is productive. It's refocusing from ourselves back to God. Philippians 4, 6 says, don't worry about anything. Pray about everything. That thing, it seems so small, everything. It says to give God thanks in all circumstances. Gratitude is an attitude changer. It doesn't say to give God thanks for all circumstances, but in every circumstance, give God thanks. And what happens? You begin to experience the peace of God, which passes understanding. And it's different than the world's peace. God can give you peace right in the middle of a difficult situation. He can give you peace in the middle of a diagnosis. He can give you peace in the middle of a struggling marriage. He can give you peace

even though you can't see the answer yet. God can give you a peace that surpasses understanding. How much better is living in God's peace and living in anxiety and worry and the never-ending disruptedness? God has that for us, but we gotta start doing things God's way. Instead of just focusing on all of the many distractions, we're gonna do the one thing. When we do the one thing, we aren't as worried about the many things. So instead of worrying, we're gonna refocus and we're gonna put God first. We're gonna seek God first. And we're gonna do that together as a church family over the next 21 days. Today launches 21 days of prayer. We're kicking it off today. And we do this two times a year. We do 21 days of prayer and fasting in January, and we do 21 days of prayer in August. And somebody came up to me and they're like, so we do fasting in January, but not August. And I was like, well, you can fast anytime that you want. Really, when you're fasting, you're just removing something from your life so that you're giving God more of your attention. The Bible says breakthrough can happen through prayer and fasting. Sometimes we fast because we're just going,

God, we are so desperate for you. I was talking to somebody else and they were like, I know 21 days in January is prayer and fasting. And they're like, Pastor Lisa, we call August 21 days of prayer and feasting. I was like, well, the Bible says there's a time for fasting and there's a time for feasting. But today we're kicking off 21 days of prayer. And as we do that, I just wanna give you four tools, four handles that are gonna help you get everything that you can out of these 21 days. And there's four. points, I'll go quickly through them. They all start with the letter P, because how many of you know, things are more holy if there's good alliteration involved. And these all come from Pastor Chris Hodge's book called Pray First. And if you wanna know more, or just wanting to refresh your prayer life, or go deeper in your prayer life, this is a great resource to do that with. But the first P, and this all comes from Mark 1.35, where we see Jesus, it says he went up early, he got up early in the morning to pray, and they believe he went to a specific place to pray. So what we learn from Mark 1.35 about how Jesus prayed, is that we are to make a priority of prayer. A priority of prayer. I wanna encourage you, don't make prayer a last resort,

make it your first response. Instead of worrying first, instead of freaking out first, instead of posting about it on the internet first, we wanna be people who pray first. And what we found to be effective, is one of the best ways to do this, is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning, is spend time with God in prayer. I wanna encourage each and every one of us, the first 15 minutes, take 15 minutes in your morning. It might turn into 30, it might turn into 45, but would you commit to giving God 15 minutes every morning and saying, God, I'm gonna put you first this morning. Then I wanna ask you, what would you have to rearrange in order to make prayer a priority? Maybe you're putting it in your calendar, and you're saying the first appointment of my day is with God in prayer. What would you have to rearrange to make prayer a priority for you? I'll tell you, the person who gets the most out of every message is the person writing it. And I've been working in my own life about really making prayer a priority first thing in the morning. And I was asking myself the same question, what's distracting me from doing this? And you know what I found to be so distracting? Anybody else? And what I found, like many of you,

is that I use my phone for an alarm clock. So it sits next to my bed. And every night I go to set my alarm clock. And then what happens is I drift into reading text messages and emails and shopping on Amazon and random things. And then the first thing I do in the morning is when my alarm goes off, I pick up my phone, I turn off my alarm, and then I drift into emails and text messages and social media. And a couple months ago, I started to get really irritated. And I was like, why are the best moments of my evening and my morning being given to this phone? I wanna reclaim and reorder some priorities in my life. So I went on Amazon, I bought like a $10 alarm clock. Okay, I have got a photo of it, I put it next to my bed. And this is like the old school one where you have to like hold the button and then hit the other button. You're like four, five, six. If you don't know what I'm talking about, young people, you should buy one. This has been great. So I put this next to my bed, and then I moved my charger for my phone to the other side of our room on our dresser. So now in the evening, I put my phone on the dresser and I'm done with it. And as I go to sleep and I wake up, the phone's not part of my routine anymore. And what I found is as I'm falling asleep at night,

if something's on my mind, instead of like being numbed out by screens or whatever, I'm finding myself just talking to God, praying to Him. 1 Peter 5, 7 says, cast all your cares on God because He cares for you. You know, when you like cast a fishing rod, it requires action. When we cast our cares and worries, it requires some action. That action is prayer. So I find myself at night just going, God, I give this to you. And when I wake up in the morning, I'm gonna spend time with you. And when I wake up in the morning, I'm thinking about, I'm gonna meet with God today. And I'm thinking about coffee. I'm thinking about coffee and God when I wake up. I'm gonna get some coffee and I'm gonna meet with God today. And this is not because I'm super spiritual. It's not because I'm a pastor. It's because I am a creation of our creator. And God literally wired us up to long for, to desire, to be in relationship with Him. You are created hardwired to seek relationship with your heavenly Father, because He made you and He loves you. In the Old Testament, the original language is the Hebrew language. And the first dialect of the Hebrew language,

they didn't even have vowels. So the name of God. as we know it, in Hebrew, is the name Yahweh. But we added the vowels later in. So initially, it was just Y-H-W-H. And they had so much reverence for the name of God, the Hebrew people didn't even wanna speak the name out loud, they had so much reverence for the name of God. But when they would say Yahweh, no vowels, they didn't close their mouth while saying it, they barely used their tongue. So by saying Yahweh, it literally mirrors the act of breathing, like inhaling and exhaling. Yahweh, Yahweh. That's how it sounded when they would say the name of God. Yahweh. The first name on your lips when you enter this world through your mother's womb. Yahweh. Yahweh. The name of God. When you're tired and you're overwhelmed and you're stressed out and you take that deep breath. Yahweh. Calling on the name of God. The last name that'll be on your lips when you pass from this life into all of eternity. Yahweh. Every time that you breathe, we're reminded that the God of the universe

is as close as your breath. God desires relationship with us so badly that He hardwired us to be desperate for Him. As desperate as we are for the breath that He has given to us, we wanna be desperate for Him. And my prayers over these next 21 days, we will find that longing for God again, that desperation for God again. God, I wake up in the morning, you're more important than Instagram. God, I wake up in the morning, you're more important than my emails. God, you're more important than anything in this world. It's you. I'm gonna find priority with you. God longs for that. And what's gonna happen is you prioritize time with God. You're not gonna go into your day trying to parent, trying to lead out of an empty place. You're gonna be filled up because you're doing what you were designed to do. You're gonna be spending time with your creator. The second thing out of the P is right, so priority of prayer, then a place of prayer. This just helps so that you kind of have a rhythm and a routine. For me, I pray with God in the morning in our home office. It's kind of tucked away. I like the lighting, I like the chair,

and that's where I pray. But when I'm falling asleep the night before, I imagine when I get up, I can see myself where I'm gonna pray at, and know where I'm gonna go. It says in the Bible that Jesus went to a regular place to pray. The third P in our four is to have a plan of prayer. So you're gonna prioritize prayer. You know where you're gonna go. Well, then you get there and you might be like, I don't know how to pray. What do I say to the God of the universe? You don't have, he knows exactly what you need, so don't overcomplicate prayer. But we do wanna help you have a plan, and that's why we have prayer guides for everybody, either digital or physical. But this just has a daily prayer, daily scripture, so that you kind of have a starting place. And if you fly through that, in the back there's additional prayer models. I've got a note on my phone that I just put prayer. And when something's going on, a problem needs to be solved, somebody that said, hey, will you pray? I just put it on this list. So when I go to pray in the morning, if I run out of things to pray for, I'm not sure where I open that up. God, I'm praying for this.

I'm praying for our staff. I'm praying for my pastors. I'm praying for our congregation. I'm praying for our nation. I'm praying for our leaders. Have a plan of what you're gonna pray for. And the last thing is to remember that there is power in prayer, the power of prayer. Guys, prayer is not wishful thinking. Our youngest son, he'll pray like this. If it's before dinner, he's like, thank you, God, for this day. Our friends, our family, I hope this food is good. I'm like, what does that mean? Or like, if he's praying the night before, he'll be like, thank you for this day. Thank you for our friends and family. I hope tomorrow goes okay. I'm like, buddy. And Adam's like, prayer is not wishful thinking, honey. Prayer, you're praying to the God of the universe. You're praying to the God that parted the Red Sea. You're praying to the God that brings dead things back to life. You're praying to the God that heals minds, restores bodies, renews marriages. The God who turns things around, that's who you're praying to. So when you pray to God in the morning, would you remember who you're praying to?

The God where nothing is impossible with him. Would you go ahead and would you stand to your feet all across this room and at every location if you're able. As we prioritize prayer over these next 21 days, I pray that you get everything out of it that you possibly can. You can have as much of Jesus as you want. I pray that you lean in and I'm believing that you're gonna see things shift in your life and in your marriage and in your mind and that as you allow God to reorder some things, you're gonna experience more of God's blessing as you begin to do it His way instead of your way. I'm believing that as a church family, as we come together as a faith community and we're all praying together over the next 21 days, what is God gonna do? Things are gonna begin to shift. You're gonna show up next Sunday and our faith level's gonna go through the roof. What could God do if He had your focus and your attention over these next 21 days? But maybe you're here and you've never made the decision to follow Jesus. That's the most important thing you can do to put God in the right place first and foremost. So if that's you, everybody go ahead and close your eyes and bow your heads. If you wanna make that decision today, would you just lift up your hand to say,

I wanna make Jesus a leader and forgiver of my life? Hands up all over, I believe at every location. If everybody would repeat this prayer after me. Heavenly Father, thank you for your son Jesus that He died for me, forgives my sins and gives me a new start. And in your name, amen. Amen, best decision that you will ever make. And now we're gonna take a moment and we're just gonna declare that our trust is in God, that we seek Him first and that we believe that He is the answer. Let's go ahead and worship. ♪ My Savior, the one who will never fail ♪ ♪ He will never fail, say I trust, I trust in God ♪ ♪ My Savior, the one who will never fail ♪ ♪ He will never fail, say I trust in God ♪ ♪ My Savior, the one who will never fail ♪ ♪ He will never fail, say I sought the Lord, I sought the Lord ♪ ♪ I sought the Lord and He heard and He answered ♪ ♪ I sought the Lord and He heard and He answered ♪ ♪ I sought the Lord and He heard and He answered ♪ ♪ That's why I'm trusting, seeing God's sorrow ♪ ♪ I sought the Lord and He heard and He answered ♪ ♪ I sought the Lord and He heard and He answered ♪ ♪ I sought the Lord and He heard and He answered ♪ ♪ That's why I'm trusting, that's why I trust in God ♪ Well, what an incredible, incredible message, Pastor Lisa. Hopefully it was encouraging to you to keep that one thing the main thing.

And so we hope it was a blessing to you. And if you played that prayer to make Jesus the leader and the forgiver of your life, congratulations. That is the best prayer, the best decision that you will ever make. And so maybe you prayed the prayer and you're going, well, what do I do now? Like, what's next? Well, there's a couple of things that we would encourage you to do. Number one is this, is to let somebody know. Do you have a family member, a friend, a coworker, someone you can share with? If you want to, you can drop it in the chat. We have pastors that would love to come alongside this journey of faith with you. The second thing you can do is this, scan the QR code that is on your screen for a resource called New Beginning. It's just gonna answer some simple, basic questions like where do I start reading in the Bible? How do I pray? Different things like that that are gonna help you out on this journey of faith. And Dakota has another one that's gonna help you out as well. That's right, another great next step. I talked about it before service, but it's GrowthTrack. And GrowthTrack is designed for you to discover your God-given.

and talents, and really how to use those to grow closer to him, to help build his kingdom. And so if you wanna participate in GrowthTrack online, you can do it at your own pace. You can go to the app and sign up, or you can go to cityfirst.church forward slash GrowthTrack to do that today. Absolutely, and you know, life gets busy, life happens, and so maybe you're walking through something right now that you would just go, you know what, I have a prayer request and I'd love for someone to pray with us. You can do that on the app, just drop that prayer request in there, we have teams that are praying all throughout the week, and we'd love to just join our faith with yours and agree with what you're believing for. And if you have an answer to prayer, share that, because we know that man, God is doing some incredible things, and maybe he's answered a prayer for you, would you share that with us so we can share it with people and just encourage their faith? And then lastly here is, man, if this message was an encouragement to you, share it with somebody. Send that link, send an invite, and say hey, maybe you wanna check this out, this might be an encouraging word for you, and so we just want you to be able to do that as well. That's right, and really the best thing

that you can do is just keep coming back to church. We would love to see you back here next Sunday. It's gonna be Superhero Sunday, so we can't wait to celebrate our champions and illuminators, but we love you guys, we're so grateful that you tuned in today. We hope you have an amazing week.