Through His Eyes | Coach Chad Prewett
We have an awesome message for you today. I know you're absolutely gonna love it, so make sure to leave a like on the video and comment down below anything you get from it or if you need prayer for anything. Enjoy. - What's up, 11 o'clock? - We're gonna enter you today, I hear you. All the real spiritual people here at 11, I guess, right? (audience laughing) Hey, thank you for having me, Pastor. And the Pastor who's not here, the two pastor, Stephanie and Tim, thank you for having us. We visited this church, Josh and I did, several months ago, and man, we left there and I said, "Josh, I wanna go back." So, I'm back. (audience applauding) I love what God's doing in this church and God has already done miraculous things in the first two services. So get ready, buckle up. Guys, God's something in store for you. And I wanna start by talking for a second about Unite. We are having Unite South Alabama on Tuesday in Mobile, Alabama. (audience applauding) So if you know any college students anywhere close to there or if someone here didn't wanna drive over at the Mitchell Center at 730 Tuesday night,
we have now been on 33 college campuses across the country in the last three years. We've seen almost 190,000 students gather. And we sang about the one today. We did, we sang about the one. So we know that the angels in heaven rejoice when one comes to him. But we've seen over 26,000 college students give their lives to Christ, yes. (audience applauding) And we are just excited to continue to see what God is doing and what I love about this, my wife's not here, but I'm gonna honor her like she was here. This started from the prayer of a 50 year old mama. At 50 years old, the girls had left the house and I'm coaching basketball at Auburn. I'm living in my dream. And she's saying, God, are you done with me? My girls, all she wanted to be was a mama, the best mama I've ever seen. She loves so hard. And at 50 years old, she was leading a small group of girls on the campus of Auburn University and just blown away by what these girls look perfect on Instagram and Facebook and inside they were dying. And remember she come home one night and she got emotional and we don't cry a lot in our family. So I knew something was going on and she slammed her fist on the desk
and she said, no more, not on my watch. She's what she said. We had just found out that one of our really good friends, daughter had been taking advantage of on a college campus. She was saving herself for marriage. It was devastating too. And that was about the seventh or eighth thing that we had heard in a short period of time. And my wife said, I'm gonna do. Everything I can to bring hope to a hopeless generation. So I was coaching basketball during the day and she was walking the campus of Auburn and saying, God do something on the campus of Auburn University. (audience applauding) And so September the 12th, 2023, God gave her a vision before that, but we had the event on September 12th, 2023. In the vision, she just saw thousands of young people worshiping together in our basketball arena. And so we have this event. We invited passion music and we had Jonathan precluded and Jenny Allen. We were excited to keep saying, well, how many people are coming? We was like, we got no idea. We didn't sell tickets, have online registration, nothing. And so I said, I have no idea. I was showing almost 6,000 young people showed up that night. (audience applauding)
At the end of the night, God moves in a mighty way and a young girl comes down and she said, I wanna get baptized. I gotta get baptized tonight. I wanna show the world that I'm living a new life for Jesus. And so Jenny says, hey, where are we doing baptisms? We had not thought about baptisms. And so there was, if you've been to Auburn there's a red barn in the front of the red barn there's a pond. It's got really dirty water in it. And we said, meet us at the red barn. We're gonna stand with Susie as she gets baptized. And it took Tonya and I hosted the event. So it took us 30, 45 minutes to get down there. And we got down there. You saw a little bit, I cannot believe what I saw. About 3,000 students around this pond. There was six pickup trucks on the back with the light shining into the water. We got six pastors, baptized, and we baptized almost 300 students that night, yes. (audience cheering) The next two night, I was on a Tuesday night on Wednesday night and Thursday night, God wakes Tonya up at 3 a.m. and says this to her. Get a team together and do it quickly. Get a team together and do it quickly. She hits me in the middle of the night. She says, God's telling me to get a team together, do it quickly.
I say, can we talk about it in the morning? I did not say that. We didn't know what it meant, but within a week, we had 10 to 12 universities reaching out saying, would you please bring what we saw at Auburn University to our campus and the best? (audience applauding) And I know so many people are prayin'. So I came here to tell you to get involved. Get in the game, get off the sidelines. It's not just for somebody else. God wants to have revival in every area of this world. And so today you have, he's speaking to some of you. I'm telling you, he sent me with a message. Some of you, God has asked you to do something. You hadn't done it yet. It may not be leader revival on college campuses. It may be going across the street in prisons to your neighbor. Uh oh, now I'm down in here where y'all at. You know, I don't know what he's speaking to you but he's speaking to you. And so allow him to come in. I'm gonna talk today on the subject of through his eyes, through his eyes. Before I do I want to show real quickly a picture of my family. This is my beautiful family. You see Tanya in the yellow dress, beautiful right there. Mary Michael to her right, Mallory.
And this is Maddie. And then that little baby is Hosanna Rose. Hosanna Rose is the queen in our family. And I'm thankful for Grant because we needed a male in that picture other than me. Lot of estrogen in that picture as you can tell. But God has, anytime you think about it, I would appreciate you praying for unite us and to prove it family. As we continue to go, God's blessed to be on measure and we didn't deserve it. I'm just telling you, we don't deserve it. But God has given us a platform to continue to share Jesus to the world. And so please continue to pray with us. We will be especially on Tuesday night, be praying for unites out the back. We believe in thousands are gonna come forward and give our life to Christ. Thousands is what we're praying for. So please join us in prayer for that. I'm gonna talk about through his eyes. What would the world look like? What would Pensacola look like? What would this area look like if we quit looking at ourselves and looked at people through the eyes of Christ? We're focused on ourselves, right? How can we get more and do this and do that? Meanwhile, we have a world just dying. There's a song by Josiah, Queen,
call things that matter. You may have heard of it. I want you to listen to this verse. When did I start missing things that matter? Help me see the world through your eyes till what breaks your heart is breaking mine. Slow me down. You hear that? Slow me down. This world is moving faster, but I don't wanna miss the things that matter. Let's pray. God, we just thank you and I just asked you for these next few moments that you speak through me. I pray Holy Spirit, you do what only you can do. God challenge us to go all in with you and to see the world through your eyes. In Jesus' name, amen. What if we saw the world through the eyes of Christ? When Jesus was on this earth, those last three years of his life, from 30 to 33, he simply did this. He went from village to village, meeting the needs of the people. What if today, Pensacola, Gulf Breeze, Momentum Church, we walked out of these doors and we saw through the eyes of Christ. We didn't pass by the homeless without a prayer or help, or maybe somebody on the side of the road, or your neighbor who needs some help with some trees in there.
I don't know what it is, but what if we saw the world through his eyes? At Auburn, we always took our team on a mission trip and last year we took them to Honduras and we had been to Honduras many, many times, one of the poorest countries in the world. And we're there for five days and we stay on an orphan issue. We get to play with the orphans during the day and we have a blast. We also do food ministry. We take rice and beans to people that if we don't take them food, they don't eat that day. And then we were able to talk to them about Jesus. So many times you've got to supply the need before you can tell them about Jesus. Some of you want to tell everybody about Jesus, but they got needs in their lives that you might could help. So we were there for five days on the last day. We always go with the guys to play paintball and I decided to stay back and I'd love to say it was some great spiritual idea I had. I was just tired. I stayed back with four or five guys and we sent everybody else on and we're sitting there, honestly tired and exhausted. And one of the guys said, "Hey, we got time to go to one house. "Let's put some rice and beans in our backpack
"and go find one house." I said, "Let's do it." So we start walking down this dirt road. We're in the middle of Honduras and the rural part of Honduras and we're actually walking down the village road and there's cows passing us. And Carlos, the translators walking beside me and we had already, him and I together had already led some people to Christ that week. So I loved Carlos, the Carlos, man. Let's pray that God sends us to the house. Not just a house, we can only go to one. Let's go to the house. And so we prayed and he said, So we walk up to this house, and on the front porch, there's a big old guy sitting there on the porch, and he's got no shirt on, and it's hat on backwards. I said, God, are you sure this is where you wanna, it gotta be a better house over here somewhere. There's two daughters he has sitting, I think it's his daughter sitting on the front porch with him, and I said, hey, my name is Coach Pruitt Chad Pruitt, I came all the way from Alabama to tell you how much I love Jesus, and I wanna introduce you to that Jesus who saved my life. I start talking to all these, what I think, really great stories and scriptures. I said, I noticed that one of the daughters was locked in on me, and I said, would you like to pray
and ask this Jesus to come into your heart? And she nodded her head. I said, are you kidding me? God, you led us to this house, and this girl's gonna give her life to cry, I was getting excited, and I looked at the other girl beside, I said, your sister's about to say a prayer, would you like to join in with your sister, and your name's gonna be written in the Lamb's book of life, you wanna join in, and she nodded. And then I had to get to the dad with a shirt off. I said, dad, your two daughters are about to pray and ask Jesus to come into their heart, would you like to join them in this prayer? And it seemed like five minutes, he didn't say a word, it was probably 10 seconds, but he finally nodded. I said, this is unbelievable, so I get ready to start praying, and one of the guys from the back said, coach, coach, hold up. The brother heard what you were saying, and he doesn't wanna miss out on the prayer. (congregation applauding) Now, I would like to say it was because I shared some great stories, and I quoted all these scriptures. It had nothing to do with me. Other than this, I simply was looking through the eyes of Christ. What opportunities do you have every day to bring people closer to Jesus that we miss? My prayer is that God put some things in your heart. You can see this picture, I did make him put his shirt on
for the picture. But this guy, I said, look, when we left there, I said, you know what, I probably won't see you again, but I'll see you in heaven. So guys wanna put us on mission today, church, on mission. It's not about you, it's not about just your family. There's a whole world that's dying and need you to see through the eyes of Christ. We had a divine appointment that day, but guess what? You have a divine appointment as well. Two questions always ask myself, God, what do you want me to know today? And God, what do you want me to do today? I challenge you, I dare you tomorrow. You start your day and say, God, if there's a divine appointment, don't let me miss it. What do you wanna do in me today? Let's see what God wants to do through you as we look through his eyes. There's two prerequisites that I wanna talk about if we're gonna see through the eyes of Christ. I wanna share with these real quickly before we get to the action steps. Number one, until I have a right view of the way God sees me, I can never have a right view of the way God sees them. In other words, I gotta see me right before I can see them right. Many of us in here and especially outside of these doors, we live in our false self.
You say, coach, what is the false self? It's the fear to guilt the shame that we've all had to deal with. Some of you are dealing with this right now. You're thinking about God, you can't use me because of and fill in a blank. Maybe you did something to somebody or somebody did something to you and you can't get past it. That's the false self. That's the enemy lying to you. God wants to introduce you today to your true self, your true identity. In Isaiah 43 verse one and two, he says, "Fear not for ever deemed you. I have called you by name." So that means he's got a name for every single person in here. And my name is not the same as your name. And it's not the same as your name. He intricately formed you exactly the way he wanted you to be. Stop comparing yourself to everybody else. (congregation applauding) There's eight billion people plus in this world. None of us have the same thumbprint. You're one of one. You're God's masterpiece. He wants to use you. And he gave you talents and gifts that he didn't give me. I had a player who played for me years ago,
her name was Sheely White. I coached girls basketball before I got into college. And Sheely was one of my favorite basketball players and she was five feet tall. Five feet tall in basketball, it usually doesn't go together. But she was five feet tall. The toughest girl player that I've ever coached to that point. And she was one of those, the ball was rolling on the ground and covering your knees and elbows. She's diving on the ball. She's gonna get the ball. One day in practice, the point guard's coming down the court and Sheely White's in a defensive stance like she has been so many times. The girl crossed over and Sheely White's in a defensive stance. I've seen her steal the ball a million times. She took one dribble and she kicked it out of bounds. And I remember saying something I'm not super proud of, but I'm going to share it with you because I'm sure you all won't tell anybody. But I grabbed the ball and I dropped kicked it across the gym. And I said something that I'm pretty sure she doesn't have this quote hanging on her refrigerator today. I said, "Shealy White, never, ever dribble the basketball again the rest of your life." So encouraging, Coach, yes.
I said, "We can't even celebrate what you do so well because you're trying to do something you weren't created to do." Most of our frustration in life come when we try to do things outside of the strengths, the gifts, and the talents that he's given us to do. And God wants me to remind you today to just operate in the name that he's called you and the gifts that he's called you and the identity that he's given you. You are enough. You are who God wants you to be. We've got to see ourselves right. The second thing, the second prerequisite is this. This is a reminder that God does not call the qualified. He qualifies those he calls. And you may say, "Well, Coach, that's easy for you. You're a coach. You have a stage. You have a platform, et cetera." He's talking to you today, sir. He's reminding you, if you feel unqualified today, guess what? You're in a perfect place for God to use you. He loves to take the ordinary and do extraordinary things. So if you feel ordinary today, you feel unqualified today, you're in a perfect place for God to use you. A couple of people in the Bible that felt very ordinary. In Exodus, God says to Moses, "I want you to deliver my people." And Moses says, "But I can't even speak.
Choose somebody else." God, you're no way you're talking to me. Maybe you feel like Moses today. Or maybe David, when Samuel got ready to anoint the new king, he lines up all the sons of Jesse. He says, "It's got to be this one, nope, or this one, nope." Because God doesn't look at the height or the appearance or the strength. He said, "Do you have another one? You have another son?" "Yeah, but he's out there playing with the sheep. Can't be him." He'd anointed David as the next king of Israel. Or maybe Gideon. You remember in Gideon, God calls Gideon a mighty warrior. He's saying, "What, a mighty warrior? I'm the weakest in my family. And we have the smallest and weakest clan of all of them. God doesn't measure like the world measures. Quit looking around you and comparing yourself to everybody else he wants to use you. And today, if you feel unqualified, get ready. Because God wants to use you. Feeling unqualified is often the exact qualification God is looking for. 1 Corinthians 1, 27 says this, "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong." I'm going to ask you today, momentum church. What is God speaking for you to do today?
What has he been stirring in your spirit? Or what does he ask you to do? You know there's people that I can't reach this in your world and your pastors can't reach? That may will never step foot in a church. That God's got them in your sphere of influence. They're not there by happenstance. And you have a job to do the creator of this universe is asking you to share the good news of Jesus Christ. So there's four quick things I want to talk about today. Four action steps. Number one, abide in him. If we're going to see through the eyes of Christ, we've got to abide in him. John 15 says abide in me as I in you. What does that mean? It means to live in me, to make a home in me, to have a life union with me. This is Jesus talking. These are read letters in the book of John. And this is the end of Jesus' life. If you don't think they're important, think about the timing that they're sitting around the last supper when Jesus is sharing these to his disciples. Much like a branch has to stay connected to the vine, Jesus is the vine. Guess what we are? We're the branch. Quit trying to be the vine or something else. He's called you to be the branch.
And your only job is to stay connected to the vine. Some of you are trying to bear fruit on your own. And you're striving really hard. I don't know how many branches you've seen on your tree that's doing this. I hadn't seen any. Because all they have to do is stay connected. And so what he's asking you to do, Continuous flowing relationship is what abiding means. That doesn't mean I do a devotion or say a quick prayer. It means I talk to him and he talks to me. I walk with him and he walks with me. Guess what? You can know him just like that. You don't have to lean on somebody in your family's relationship with him or your pastor's relationship with him. You can have your very own relationship with him. Fruit is the visible evidence of an invisible connection. You want to bear fruit, stay connected to the vine. The second step is practice unending forgiveness. This was no fun. Practice unending forgiveness. Matthew 614 says, "For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. Some of you are holding unforgiveness in your heart. And you're wondering why you feel distant from God. There's people that you need to release." In my prayer today, especially for this day, was that there's people in your life that you hold unforgiveness, that you
must deal with that. It's blocking the blessings that God has for you. See, forgiving flips the script. It pulls you out of resentment and into compassion. You want to talk about seeing through the eyes of Christ? God was moved with compassion. Just like Jesus did for us on the cross. I love when Peter asked Jesus to say, how many times should we forgive? Seven? Jesus, no. How about 70 times seven? Every single day. In other words, unlimited forgiveness, unending forgiveness. Was it Auburn in 2019 when we made the final four? And Bryce Brown was one of our best players. If you followed us that year, you know that he was one of the best shooters in the country. In fact, to this day, second all-time leading three-point shooter in SEC history was Bryce Brown. After the final four, he graduated. Later that year, he comes and knocks on my door in my office one day. For whatever reason, all the other coaches were gone. It was late in the evening. He said, Coach, can I come in? I want to catch up with you. I said, Bryce, come on. I loved Bryce. Bryce had had a tough upbringing.
And some of our early years were Bryce were not great. Bryce, after a few minutes of some conversation, he leans forward in the chair and I look over and he's got a big old tear inside of his eye. Bryce doesn't cry, by the way. He didn't cry. I saw it run down his face and I looked and there's another big tear in the other. He asked me a question. He says, Coach, why did you not give up on me? He said, Coach, why did you not give up on me so many times you should have kicked me off the team. Why did you not give up on me? It brought me back to the countless times that I would say-- we would say something to Bryce. Or Bryce would say something to us and he'd walk off the court. Coach Pearl would say, if you walk off that court, don't come back. And at the same time, he would give me a head nod to go get him to not let him walk off the court. Because Bryce was one of our best players. And so I would do the same thing every time. I would go over to Bryce and I'd put my arm around Bryce. I didn't cuss out of him. I didn't yell at him. I didn't preach to him. I simply put my arm around him. And I said, Bryce, you said some things you didn't mean. And we probably said some things we didn't mean. Just come on back.
There's people in your life that you need to go put your arm around. You know why? Because God put his arm around you when you were doing your own thing. And when you were running from him, he pursued you, sir, and he's asking you today. And there's probably somebody that God's putting in your mind right now that you need to make sure that you're in a right relationship with and you need to forgive. Practice unending forgiveness. So we got to abide in him. We got to practice unending forgiveness. The third step is this to live in obedience. We complicate this, but obedience is simply this. Simply hearing God and then do what he says. I mean, what does the word say? I wrote this down this morning. I feel like God gave it to me to remind you that partial obedience is also disobedience. Some of you got one foot in and one foot out. It don't work real good. He wants today for you to go all in with him. Obedience is listening and then responding. Today you're going to listen to the word. Are you going to respond? In John 21, the chapter doesn't start real good. Jesus had died and crucified and had died. And it says that Peter and some of his disciples
Do what a lot of us do. we go back to our old way of life. So the Bible says they went fishing. They fished all night long and they caught nothing. In the morning, there's a man standing on the beach and he says, "Hey, how's that fishing going?" They didn't know it was Jesus. Have y'all caught any fish? Not caught any fish. He said, "Well, why don't you throw the net on the other side of the boat?" Now, I just got a picture of this. They're all, these are professional fishermen. Like these are real, it's like me and you doing this. It's like real people that know what they're doing. And so you gotta say, are you telling me there's fish right here, but there's not fish right here? But I don't see any of that in the scriptures. I simply know this. They said, okay, they put the net on the other side of the boat and the Bible says there was so many fish that couldn't contain them all. So my question to you, Momentum Church, is what is on the other side of your obedience? - That's right. - What is God waiting to bless you with if you'll just throw the net on the other side of the boat? Some of you are just saying, no, I'm gonna do it this way. And God's saying, I got a whole 'nother plan if you'll stay connected with me.
I'll show you the plan. I can imagine the disciples that day, when they figured out it was Jesus. Looking, later in that chapter in John 21,8, he says this, then the disciple who Jesus loved. Now John wrote the book, he is the disciple of Jesus love. He's saying this about himself, which always thinks funny, but he says, then the disciple who Jesus loved, now I don't know why he said it, but he did. Said to Peter, it is the Lord. And as soon as Simon Peter heard him say it is the Lord, he wrapped his outer garment around him for he'd taken it off and he jumped into the water. When Peter realized that's Jesus, my savior, the same guy saw, raised Lazarus from the dead. The same guy that I just denied three days ago, I don't think he tip-toed out of the boat. I think he dove out of the boat. I think he jumped into the water. My last step is you gotta get out of the boat. If you wanna see through the eyes of Christ, you can't stay in your comfort zone. Some of you are saying, but God won't use me and you're staying in your house and you gonna move. There's needs all around us. And God's saying, well, you get out of the boat today. I think when he saw when Peter said it was Jesus, and if you read the rest of the scripture you see that Jesus asked him, do you love me? He was restoring Peter.
He is so intentional. Our God is so intentional today. You're not here by accident. God wanted to remind you of some things, but many of you here, you came in with a great relationship with Jesus, but you got both feet in the boat. We're not supposed to live this life in a safe boat. This world, this area, this city needs us to get out of the boat today. Will you bow your heads and close your eyes today? Holy Spirit, I just pray you do what only you can do in the next few moments. I think there's people who came in here today that are not in a right relationship with him. Maybe you've never prayed that prayer or maybe you've prayed that prayer and you're saying, Coach, I just don't feel like I'm connected. I'm not abiding in him. I'm not in that right relationship with him. Maybe you've gone your own way. I'm reminded of the prodigal son this morning because of that song, and I think about the father who every day went on that porch, every day. And he looked out to say, is this the day my son's gonna come home? And every day he went out there and he didn't see anybody, but one day. But one day he saw what looked like his son. And when he realized it was his son, the Bible says the father ran toward his son.
He didn't go to his son and say, how dare you do those things. He simply wrapped his arms around him. He kissed him and he said, welcome home. And some of you've been beat up because of things that you've done that you can't get total freedom from and God wants to remind you today to come on home. Just come on home. It doesn't have to look a certain way So fast you today. I want you to simply step up your hand all across this place. If you're not in the right relationship with Him and you'd like to be, I want you to slip up your hand today. Yes, I see you. Anyone else, as believers are praying across this place, is there anyone else in here who came in here and you're not in the right relationship with Him and you want to be? You want to spin eternity with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords? Is there anyone else that wants to be included in this prayer? Yes, I see you. Yes, I'm glad we waited for you. God sees you. Anyone else. Yes, I see you, ma'am. God sees you too. Yes, I see you, sir. Yes, I see you, ma'am. Anyone else, you're worth waiting for. Is there anyone else that says, "Coach, I'm not in the right relationship with Him, but I want to make sure before I walk out of the doors today, sir, I see you in the back."
Yes, thank you. You can know that you know that you know that you're going to spin eternity with Jesus. Anyone else, before we pray? I'm going to ask that we all say this prayer together, this prayer out loud together. Heavenly Father, we come to you as sinner. We ask you to cleanse us. We ask you to come into our life. We believe you came to earth, lived a sinless life, died, and was resurrected for me. And I ask you to come into my heart in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Can we give Jesus a hand clap of praise when we close this? He reminds me. It reminds me often, as we see hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people give our life to Christ on a weekly basis, that God came for the One. So sir, ma'am, those of you who responded to the gospel today, let me tell you something. God sees you, God wants to restore you, He wants to forgive you. I love that He said He would throw those sins as far as the East is from the West to remember our sins no more. We can start over from this day forward. You're a new creation in Christ, but I can't end the service without saying this because I know that He spoke this to me. There's some of you in here that God's given an assignment to. I don't know what the assignment is, only you do. But in just a moment when they start playing, when the band starts playing, if God has asked you to do something and you want to get out of the boat, you want to step out of the boat, I believe God's going to meet you right here. And my prayer is that God uses you in ways that you never thought was possible. Well, I really hope you enjoyed that message today. If you did, make sure to leave a like on the video, comment down below anything you got
from it. You can even share it with a friend to make sure they see it as well. And you can subscribe to our YouTube page that way you can stay up to date with everything that is going on at Momentum and Church. You can also give by clicking on a link down below or you can go to our website Momentum Church dot or to support the mission. Have a great day.
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