Transforming Love

All right, well, good morning, good morning. My name's Dave. If we haven't had the chance to meet, I'm one of the pastors here. My direct responsibility is director of Care Ministries. And I wanna say hello to my friends that are at the Grants Trail, at Fenton, at Mid Rivers. And those of you who are in the hub today, and those of you joining us online, thank you so much for being here. And thank you for being here. Everybody ready to go? You got your Christmas clothes on? You got it, ready to go? We're gonna go fast and hard right away. Let's jump right in. Ephesians chapter three says this, for this reason, I kneel before the Father. For this reason, what is this reason? Well, Paul is the writer of this. He's in prison right now. He's under house arrest in Rome. And for this reason is because the first couple of chapters before he gets to this place, he is telling the story of Jesus as Savior. It's exactly the same story that we taught the last four weeks. Emmanuel, God with us, that Jesus came in a humble form, lived the perfect life, died the death that we deserved, rose from the grave, resurrected

so that we can have forgiveness of our sins and eternal life with him. That's the good news. Paul is saying, for that reason, I pray these things. And what are these things? We're gonna talk about those things. And spoiler alert, it is God's love. Paul wants you to understand that you are loved by God specifically. So let me pray. Father God, as I speak those words that you love us, I know that there are those in this room that are skeptical about you even existing, but God, I pray right now, we invite you into this space. Pray that you would awaken our hearts, you'd give us ears to hear and eyes to see what you want us to see through this message today. God, that it would speak specifically to the individual where they need to be met and you would meet us here and you'd meet me here as well, Lord. So we invite your presence here. We ask now that you would transform us through your love in Jesus' name, amen. When I think of love, I think of it not as an emotion. I think that there's lots of proclamation of love, but I think of it as a demonstration as well. And as we demonstrate love in our world, there's one way that is publicly proclaimed and then demonstrated, and that's at a wedding, right? Have you been to a wedding before?

Yeah, you've been to a wedding? And I'm always interested, when I go to a wedding, one of the things that I want to know about is what song did that couple pick for their first dance? Because I have a story. But in the spirit of the end of 2025, let's do the countdown. The top five first dance wedding songs, can you name them? So this is their chance to talk to your neighbor. What are the top five first dance wedding songs of 2025? Can you name them? ♪ Ooh ooh ooh ooh hoo ♪ ♪ Ooh ooh ooh ooh hoo hoo hoo hoo ooh ooh ooh ooh hoo hoo hoo ooh ♪ ♪ Ooh ooh, ooh ooh, ooh ooh ooh hoo hoo hoo, ooh ooh ooh, ooh ooh ♪ ♪ Ooh ooh, ooh ooh, ooh ooh ooh hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo, ooh ooh, ooh ooh, ooh ooh, ooh ooh ♪ ♪ Ooh ooh, ooh ooh, ooh ooh, ooh ooh, ooh ooh, ooh ooh, ooh ooh, ooh, ooh ooh ♪ All right, you got them, top five. Now, last service, because it's the end of the year and we have a surplus of points left over and we're trying to get rid of all of our points this year, so last service, I gave 10,000 per right answer, you guys, because you're here second service, and it's the last service of the year, you get 25,000 points per right answer, okay? Don't spend them all on the same place. You can't spend them all at the bookstore, okay? Spread them out, Target, Walmart, all those kind of places. Take your points with you. All right, for 25,000 points, did you pick Perfect by Ed Sher-shir-shir-shir-shir-

I don't even, how do you say that? Got it, 25,000 points. Did you pick At Last by Etta James? Yeah. Excellent, good point. All of me, all of me. John Lennon, you got all of me, yeah? All right, until I found you. Oh, the crowd goes quiet. Nobody got that one, until I found, I have no idea. And then Chris Stapleton, joy of my life. Oh, that's nice. Honestly, you can look up top five wedding songs and you'll get a plethora of answers. So these are the ones that I chose, right? Go find your own list, all right? Here's what I want to tell you, though, is I'm intrigued with this because years ago, I went to my best friend's sister's wedding. And their first dance song was "'What's Love Got to Do With It' by Tina Turner." Now, Tina Turner, she's a rock icon, okay? She's saying, I mean, it was 1984, "'What's Love Got to Do With It'," and maybe you're thinking, if you've never heard the song before, you're thinking, oh, what's love got to do with it? And then it turns mushy, like the title is like a hook and then it gets really mushy. It doesn't, okay?

There's no mushiness to it at all. Matter of fact, the course is this, oh, oh, oh, and you have pastors that sing here. I am not one of those, okay? Oh, oh, what's love got to do, got to do with it? What's love but a secondhand emotion? What's love got to do with it, got to do with it? Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken? This is your first dance song. I've never, I've never ever run into that since then, right? It's like, like usually they have something to do with love. Explainsong.com says it this way, that this is a cynical, guarded way of expressing love, questioning the very nature and necessity of love. Love itself might be little more than a secondhand emotion, a concept that brings more pain than pleasure. And so here's the point. When I said God loves you, your response might've been, what's love got to do with it? Love really is more pain than pleasure. Specifically, as I look at God's love, because it's been demonstrated to me on this earth by people who claim to know God's love and have not been loving at all. They've hurt me, they've abused me. Maybe it's this season through this holidays, you're like, if family is supposed to be love and I see all these movies about love,

but my family is not loving. You may have a more intellectual or academic view of love that it's like Paris, it exists, but I've never been there. All different spectrums. When I say God loves you, you bring in your own story into this. But the question is, what's love got to do with it? I'm telling you right now, love has everything to do with it. That was what the Christmas sessions was all about, that God loves us, that he sent his son, Jesus. And the message before that, Angela talked on Thanksgiving weekend about waiting for God. It was God meets us in the waiting. And the message before that, and the message before that, and the message before that. If you look back through all of our messages we've ever taught here at the crossing, they're all rooted and established in this fact that one, there is a God and that he loves you. And I know for some of you, that's a stretch. Thank you for being here. Just ask that maybe you would just lean a little bit and see maybe if this is true. But this is why Paul pens this verse or this prayer. He's in prison. Again, he's under house arrest, he's in Rome. And because of the great love of Jesus Christ and who he is, he prays these things that I pray that we would be rooted and established in love, that we may have power together

with all of God's holy people to grasp how wide, how long, how high, how deep is the love of Christ. And to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of the fullness of God. Now, Paul again is in prison and he's in prison for several reasons. One, he's claiming that there is a God higher than Caesar. And so the Romans didn't like that. But he's also talking about how God's love is for other people. And it's interesting that in this time of capture and I'm sure that he did pray for release from prison because he wanted to share God's love all over the world. But here he takes the time to pray for us that we would understand his wide, his long, his high and his deep love. He wants to know that God's love is wide. He was proclaiming that it's wider than just the Jewish population. Paul said, God's love is for the Jew and the Gentile. And that's another reason why he was in prison because the Jewish leaders didn't like that the Gentiles were, that God's love was available to the Gentiles. And I'm glad that he said that it was because I'm a Gentile. You know, the majority of us in this room and online and in the hub and at the campuses, we're Gentiles, the majority of us. God's love is wide.

So Paul is saying a truth that is for all creation, all created is for all humans. It's wide. And it wasn't because of their culture, because of their language, because of their traditions that they were included, it's because God loves all, His love is wide. So it doesn't matter your ethnicity, your tribe, your tongue, your language, who you are, God's love is wide. It is welcoming to all. He pursues all of us. So if you feel today like you're on the margins, that there's no way God could love me because I'm over here, His love reaches further. Everyone is included. His love is wide. Every tribe, tongue, and nation, every race, ethnicity, every pay scale, His love is for all. It's wide. When you feel beyond His reach, His love reaches further. His love is wide. His love is long. Length speaks of duration, of time. From eternity past to eternity future, God is love. It's His very essence, it's who He is. It's not something that He does, it is who He is. So from eternity past to eternity future, He is love.

And it says that when you were knit together in your mother's womb, that He was already thinking you as many times as there are sands on the seashore, His thoughts of you, He loves and He cares for you, He has plans for you. And so it doesn't matter where you're at on this journey, God is pursuing you with His love. There is no age when it starts, there's no age when it ends. It doesn't matter what circumstances you're in, whether it's a high of your life or a low of your life, wherever you're at on this line, God's love is for you. I know there's people on the journey that they feel stuck right now, and we've talked about this. There's people who are watching online who are in the prison system. And I want you to know, no matter what your circumstances or no matter where you're at on this journey, God's love is for you. He is walking this journey with you wherever you're at, no matter your circumstances, wherever you're at, your circumstances as you walked in this door are different than anybody else's. He wants you to know today, He sees you, He has not left you, He loves you. And your story is not done being written, that you have another chapter coming, that He wants to walk with you into that chapter. And He wants to walk you into eternity, to life with Him. His love is wide, His love is long, His love is high. It elevates us above circumstances.

Paul talks about how when we come to surrender our lives to Jesus Christ, when we say, I am not the boss of me anymore, and you are the boss, you are my Lord, you're my Savior, I accept your great love, that we are living forever now, that all of a sudden the things of this world, they grow strangely dim. We don't try to hold on to things of this world, we see an eternal perspective now, so we see circumstances, we see life a little differently. We're lifted higher, we're given dignity, because we see ourselves as a created being, not an accident. You're not an accident, you're created by God, you're created in the image of God. You have dignity and worth and purpose. It helps you see other people that way as well, that they're image bearers of the Creator God, with dignity and worth and purpose. His love is high. It gives us hope. We have a hope when we go through loss, we have a hope that is not like anything else, when we see the harmful parts of this world, the brokenness in this world, we have a hope, because God's love gives us that. His love is wide, it's long, it's high. His love is deep. His love goes to the hardest places of your life. His love is there in the trauma. His love is there in the shame.

His love is there in the guilt and in the regret. His love is there in the sin and the things, the selfishness, and His love is there in the things that you try to keep hidden from Him and from others. He's there in the addiction. His love goes deep, and when you think you are the lowest possible and you are so unlovable, His love goes below that and lifts you up. God's love is deep for you. No matter how you feel or you think you've done something so bad that God could never love you, His love is deep. It's wide, it's long, it's high, it's deep. Now, scholars would say that Paul is not here to give us a geometry lesson about those, that it is something beyond that. So he's talking about those, and yes, those are all parts of God's love, and that's something that we can know. But Paul is talking about this is actually things that we can know, but it surpasses our knowledge. That God's love is bigger than our knowledge. Those things that I told you may have touched, like that's what I needed to hear about God loving me in those places, but His love is bigger than that. Matter of fact, Paul says this, that we would know His love, that surpasses knowledge. There's a paradox here. We would know something that we can't know. How do we know something that we can't know?

Well, he's saying that God's love is knowable, and he uses the word gnosko there. It's the Greek word gnosko, and it's that we would know and be known, but it's a very intimate knowledge, that we would be in such a safe place that we'd be known by God, and we could know God in such a way that we're safe. We're free from shame. We can be ourselves. We know our weaknesses, and we're not afraid of them. We know our strengths, and we use those, but we can talk the truth, and there's no fear of retribution, and it's a safe space. It's a known and being known and knowing, this intimate, safe relationship that lets us live out our full purpose and live in fullness. That's the known part, but then it surpasses knowledge. The Greek words there are huperbolognosis, huperbolognosis, and it is that it is way over our heads. It's like if you're waiting for somebody to throw you something, like this knowledge of God's love, and they just overshoot you. It's like, psh, over your head. It's so big.

It fills the cosmos, and scholars would say that he's speaking this way because in Ephesus, there was a lot of pagan gods, and they would fill the cosmos. The Temple of Artemis was there in Ephesus, and it was these gods were not loving. They demanded you to do things, and we've talked about this, and Pastor Graves talked about the horrific things that they demanded you to do to get favor from this God or those gods. They were very conditionally loving, and they filled the cosmos, and Paul is saying to the Ephesus people that you know what? There is a love that is unconditional that pushes out any false god. There is no room for false gods where you have to work your way into a loving relationship. No. God is the one who worked his way into a loving relationship with us by sending his son. This love is huge. It's bigger than there is no room for any other gods, and so Paul is saying I want you to grasp what you know, but I want you to know there's more than you know. We can know more. Now, I don't know how to illustrate this.

I was in Heidelberg, Germany recently, and I was having lunch with a particle physicist. That sounds impressive, doesn't it? Yeah, you're laughing like that's not true. It actually is. It's not as impressive as you think, but it's true. So I was sitting there, and I was studying for this mission, so I'm thinking about dimensions, and I'm Googling string theory and all those kind of things, and then I happen to be sitting across from a particle physicist, and I said so what do you think about multiple dimensions? Because I believe obviously we have to have, if God lives outside our dimension, and if we talk about miracles, how does that work? And she's like yes, I believe there's multiple dimensions, and then she started blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I'm like okay, and I just thought Sheldon Cooper was my next sentence, right? She was talking about, I said just help me out with one thing. If you can. measure the weight of this certain particle that would help prove that there's multiple dimensions and you could do all those things.

Would we be able to tell? And she said, no, because we're locked within our own dimensions. Like we can theorize about it, but we're locked. Now I wanna suggest to you that we aren't locked because God intervenes in these dimensions. But how do I explain that to you? Because it's not explainable. She told me it wasn't. There's something to that. But I believe that we can talk about the knowing and the unknowing of God's love. So let me see if I can explain the fullness in a simple illustration. So this is Gnosko. This is the love that we know, the intimate relationship that I have with Jesus, okay? And then his love is bigger than that. His love is bigger and it's, I'm gonna do, let's see if I can do mind blowing, okay? All right, now you have an image. Now you have an image. You can take the guy out of youth ministry, but you can't take youth ministry out of the guy. His love is knowable, but it's not knowable, right? Here you go. Oh, sorry. I don't know if that did it for you. How do I explain it? How do I feel the cosmos?

So I had another idea. I wanted to fill the rooms with foam, okay? So all the campuses get ready. We're just gonna... No, they said no. They said no, that I couldn't fill the rooms with foam. I wanted to do that. But instead, I want you to experience something. We're gonna fill the room with sound and with light. And so you may wanna close your eyes at some point, but if you take all the colors and you wrap them all together, it is white light. And it turns white. And God's love is bigger than those directions. God's love is bigger than the screens. His love is bigger than we can understand. His love cannot be contained on a screen. His love is something that cannot be shrinked or measured. Certainly cannot control His love. His love is knowable, but beyond our knowledge, it fills the cosmos yet is deeply personable. It is the perfect love that our soul longs for. As light fills the room, let that represent His love. And the light may overwhelm the darkness. Close your eyes and feel the warmth of His love. For God so loved the world that He gave us one and only Son, but God demonstrated His great love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. What great love God has lavished on us

that we will be called children of God. His love is patient, it's kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it's not proud. It does not dishonor, it's not self-seeking, it's not easily angered. His love forgives, does not delight in evil, rejoices in the truth. His love always protects, always trusts, always hopes. His love never fails. His love fills the cosmos. It's bigger than we can understand. And I don't know if even that helped you understand the breadth, the length, the height, the depth of His love. And I don't know if I understand it, but here's what I do know, here's proof for me. It's transformation, lives transformed. See, Paul had a similar experience. He was walking on the road to Damascus, and on his way, as he approached Damascus, he was suddenly a light from heaven shone around him, and falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said, who are you, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. This is 30 years before he's in prison and praying for us to have the understanding of God's love. 30 years earlier, he hasn't experienced, the light was so bright that it blinded him for days. But the love that he felt transformed him immediately. That transformation led to a life that,

actually, he was persecuted for sharing that God's love was for all people. He lived through a lot of persecution. Matter of fact, he says this in 2 Corinthians. He says that, I have worked much harder to share God's love. I've been in prison more frequently. I've been flogged more severely. I've been exposed to death again and again. Five times. I received from the Jews, 40 lashes minus one. Three times I've been beaten with rods. Once I was pelted with stones. Three times I was shipwrecked. I spent the night and day in open sea. I've been constantly on the move. I've been in danger in rivers and bandits from fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles, in dangers in the city, in the country, danger at sea, danger from false believers. I've labeled and toiled and I've often gone without sleep. I've known hunger and thirst. I've often gone without food. I've even been cold and naked. And besides all that, I face daily the pressure of my concern for the church. His concern for the church is that we would understand this love. Now let's be clear, Paul, he didn't seek out these persecutions. That would be insane, right?

But Paul was convinced of this love when he had that encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. That love transformed his life so that 30 years later he's in prison praying for us to understand how big God's love is. God's love is transformative, but it's just not in here, it's in here. There are lives and stories that have been transformed in the seats next to you because they've experienced God's love. And they would tell you their story if you would ask them right now, but we're not gonna do that. But I am gonna tell you a story of two people, Mary and Mark Guloff are gonna come up and they're gonna share their story how they encountered God's love. So would you please help me welcome Mary and Mark? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, we're here. All right. All right. And thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your story. I've known you, I've known you've been an employee for the crossing and you're on the music team. You play in the band as a drummer as well. But I just recently got to sit down with you and hear your story. And it was then that we were working on this message. I was like, we need to share your story. And so let's just give us some background, like tell us kind of your spiritual journey briefly, just kind of where you were at spiritually kind of from growing up until you found each other. So I was raised in the Catholic church. And for me, church was more of an obligation. It was going through the motions. It was a lot of performance in order to get God's attention. And I didn't really understand the personal relationship of what he was offering to me. And so really when I left for college, I quit going to church. And that's really where I was. Yeah, I was a lot farther away than that. When I first met Mary, I was, best word, skeptic, atheist, non-believer, whatever you want to call me. I was as far away from God as you could possibly be,

even though I have family members that were Christ followers and believers, and it just never, never hooked me. Right, and so you would say that you had a faith experience when you were younger, right, before college and leaving the house. You would say that Jesus had an experience. So there was something there, a little bit more drawing to you as you were going through life and you didn't, right? Skeptic and is just a myth. It's a fairy tale. All of this is just not true. Yeah, I was gonna say that too, that I consider myself intellectual. I'm a teacher, a high school English teacher. And to me, God equaled mythology and just stories. Yeah, and so you got married and so there was no pressure for church attendance or any of that. So you just were living your life, right? And so you went through some ups and downs, okay? And so we want to focus in on kind of those ups and downs. And so tell us that story. So as Dave said, I did have some personal experience as a child. And so I did feel drawn to faith and I wanted it and I felt like something was missing in my life, something that I wanted for our family, but Mark wasn't there.

And so we were just kind of going through life. I was working in corporate America. He was a teacher and, sorry, and we went through highs and lows, just like every other couple in life. And we were not seeking. But I had a friend, Nancy, who came to the crossing and she and I worked together. And every day at lunch, we would walk together. And for months, Nancy was telling me about the crossing and encouraging me. me to come here. In fact, I forgot this in the last service, but this was back in the time before online services. She would actually come here and get CDs made of the Weekend Message and she would bring them to me and I would listen to the CDs from Greg's Weekend Message and she kept telling me, come on, the music is great. Mark will come for the music. So, eventually we did. We came and I really felt a powerful feeling during the service. I was drawn to the message that Greg was giving. It really touched my heart. Yeah, and I pretty much just enjoyed the music at first. But it did give me a place where I was feeling something now that I look back on it. The worship songs were hitting me in a way that other music hadn't before and it just kind of opened my senses to pay attention and start to listen, even though I didn't really do anything with it once I walked out the door. Yeah, and some of that was happening, but alongside of that was also life was happening. So, there was some struggle with infertility and kind of share those. Yeah. So, about a year after we were married, we got pregnant and had a miscarriage and then went through several years of infertility, doctors, treatments, all the things. During which time, you know, we felt unseen and I was praying to some degree, but I feel like I'm losing my track. No, no, you're doing great. You're doing great. So, you had the miscarriage, but then you had a high of two boys, right?

Yes. So, then we did have two boys and then we got pregnant with a third and we found out fairly early on that things were not going well with the pregnancy and that things were really delicate. So, I went on bed rest and during that time, I did find myself really crying out to God, praying. I had a lot of time to spend in bed and I was just begging. I'm begging him to save our child and he didn't or it didn't happen and we found ourselves in the hospital and gave birth to our son, Reed, and he was born not breathing. And so, we felt very sad, angry. I wasn't even calling out or praying to God. I had never really prayed in my life before that. I was just overwhelmed with grief and sadness and anger, but just more at the world than God. Not a God that I didn't believe. Right. It wasn't an indictment against God, but for you, it was. It sealed the deal like God doesn't care. Right. He doesn't see me. He doesn't hear my prayers. He's not there with me. Yeah. And so, then three years go by and then another high in your life. Yep. So, after losing Reed, we felt a tremendous hole in our hearts and in our family and we learned that we weren't going to be able to have biological children. And so, we went down the road of adoption and found ourselves in a hospital in Arizona and our son, Elliot, was born. And it was just an incredible experience for us and it truly completed our family. So, in that time, it didn't affect you. Highs and lows, there's no God anyway. You kind of closed off now to it. But then an experience happened where God's love intersected your life in a real profound way. And so, I want you to share that. Yep. So, I had stopped working at that point and had just kind of more space and time to seek other things. And not that I was seeking God, but I think I was seeking peace. And so, one night, I found myself very angry and very hurt by something that had happened in our extended family. And I couldn't sleep. I found myself laying on the couch in the middle of the night, crying, angry, and feeling like since, you know, I've always had to have all the answers and solve all the problems myself, my solution was, well, we're just going to cut those people out of our life. That's the answer. And I felt a tug in my heart that, no, that's not the answer. And at that point, I cried out. I didn't cry out to God. That was not my intention. But I cried out and just said, well, then what is the answer? What do I do? And in that moment, I was overcome by warmth

and peace. My whole body went warm, kind of like Dave's exercise in the light. I felt light. I felt warmth. I felt peace and I felt this unexplainable love. And in that moment, I knew it was Jesus. And he spoke to my heart, that's not the way, I'm the way. And for about 45 minutes, he took me on a journey of my life, of my own life, where he revealed to me in the trauma of my childhood, to the loss of our son, to the joys also in our son, Elliot, but he showed me how he was there, that he put people in my life, that he opened certain doors, that he closed other doors, that he helped me make difficult decisions, and that he wasn't far away, that he was there all the time and he was just waiting for me to turn to him and to receive the love and the peace that he always meant for me to have. Yeah, and so you have a husband who's a skeptic, okay? And that's quite an experience. Quite an experience. And so in the same way, I've never had that experience, that experience is yours, it's not everybody's. And there's skeptics in the room, right? Of that experience. So Mark, as a skeptic, she comes to you, what did you do? Yeah, my story is nothing like that, but I did not have that, but I have my own story. Yeah, she came to me that next morning after it happened and basically the conversation was, you're gonna think I'm totally crazy, I'm insane.

I remember her also saying as she's telling me the story, like, I sound like a Jesus freak, I sound like a Jesus freak. Now she considers that a term of endearment, likes to call her that. But I knew right then, and I told her, you're not crazy, I believe this happened, I don't know what it was, I don't know if I see it the way you do, I didn't. But I knew my wife wasn't crazy. And I saw her over the next few weeks very quickly transform. I mean, she's still my wife, still the woman that I loved, but she was different. She was more at peace with herself. She had more joy. She was not as quick to get angry. She was just different. It was hard for me to put my finger on it. So I kind of saw her and was like, I want that in my life, because I was at a place where I felt stuck too. I'm sure there's people out there that feel the same way I did, didn't believe, felt stuck, lost in my own insecurities, dealing with some of my own issues at the time in life with drinking too much, that affected my relationship at home and work and with my kids. And just struggles that I would like to get past. So you saw her transformation,

but one thing that was kind of an immediate transformation too was we're going to church, right? And you said... Well, before that, we actually were introduced to The Crossing 18 years ago. And so we went for a period of eight years saying, The Crossing's our church, but we really only came maybe once, maybe twice a year. We didn't have community here. And so then you started... And I said, we're going to church. I'm going to church. The boys are going to church. I hope you're going to come along with us, but... I agreed to knowing, all right, the music's cool. I'll be able to sit there and at least enjoy that. But it didn't take long. I mean, we started to go every week. Explorations was like within weeks of us starting to attend regularly. We signed up for that. And that was life-changing for me, a place where I could go and just start asking questions that I thought I had the answer to that I didn't. And the leader there introduced me to a book called The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. And that really opened and unlocked things for me because I have a journalistic background. That was my original degree. That's who he was.

His wife had this big transformation and he went out to try to prove that it was false, but his evidence showed that it's all real. And so that's what got me seeking more, seeking, reading C.S. Lewis and listening to Rick Warren messages. And I was like, I started to feel something I hadn't felt before, a peace of my own, a love that I didn't think existed that was hard for me to put my finger on. So I kept seeking, received it, and then ultimately we both surrendered to that love and we're both baptized here in 2017 together. You surrendered, you proclaimed it through baptism. Yup. I think we might have, there they are, yeah. Yes. Please come down and get your Bible. It's time for sure to return to home. And so since 2017, since baptism, life has been perfect. Right? Not even close. Yeah, share that. It's actually been harder than it was before. Exactly, we talk real life here, so explain that. It's been harder. Yeah, so I would say that since coming to know Jesus, we've had some of the biggest struggles of our life and what we've faced as a married couple.

We lost Mark's dad. There've been actually just in the last few years, we've had several medical diagnoses that are life-altering. Our son struggled with mental health anxiety, depression, and then battled addiction over the last couple of years. And we found ourselves many times just crying and in each other's arms and praying and on the floor. Together, holding each other and praying to God, going, all right, we have this hope in you now. We have this belief in you now, because you've seen, we've seen the horrible things that have happened in our life that he turned around for good. We have that, I have that evidence now. And so we would pray together and say like, come on, we know that there's light behind this darkness. And in my moment, one of the things that God clearly revealed to me that just kind of brought it all together was that he showed me in a moment when he was with me, when we lost Reed, that night we got home and I felt an overwhelming peace. And then he showed me in another moment that I experienced after we brought our son, Elliot, home, where he was with me then. And it just brought it together for me and showed me that he was with us in the depths of our pain and he was with us in the joy. And that actually Reed's story

was not separate from Elliot's story. They were part of the same story and God redeeming and bringing good out of something really horrible. Yeah, the relationships we've created here with our small group that we're in now and just so many people that have just become our life, a huge part of our life that we can look to, wrap their arms around us, pray for us, help us through those things, stuff that now I count on every day. Yeah, and first of all, thanks for your vulnerability, right, because I know as we listen to your story, it touches us all in different ways. That's just God reaching in through your story and showing us his love. So thank you for being vulnerable. Thank you for sharing. Let's thank Mark and Mary for sharing. Thank you. So what's your story? Those are their specific experiences, but I do not believe you're here by accident. I believe God loves you so much that he has you here and he wants to interact with your story. What's your next step? What is your next step? Think about that. If you're a skeptic and you're where Mark was, you're invited back.

He was invited and he said yes. I would just say, just keep saying yes to the invitations to get closer and closer to examine the truth of scripture, the truth of Jesus. That's a step. You know, we have lots of opportunities around here to grow and there's lots of classes. There is explorations. There's genius of one. We have a marriage course. We have a course about mental health in the church, sanctuary. We have all those things. You can find those online, but maybe you take a next step and you actively pursue something here that will help you grow deeper. We have a series coming up called Base Camp, where we're going to go practical application. How do I grow in God's love of my own life through certain aspects? So what is your next step? But let me just, the challenge today for me, for you, for you is as God has impacted my life with his love, am I loving wide? Am I letting his love flow through me that when I see those people who don't agree with me on social media, that I'm loving them? When I see family members or I see people on the margins, am I cynical or am I loving? Is my love wide and am I letting God work through me?

My question is, is your love wide? Is your love long? Are you meeting people in their circumstances and right there you're loving them, no matter what their circumstances are, that you can hope that they have another chapter. coming? That maybe your children are in a space that you don't think that there's going to be hope, but their story's not done being written? Or are you holding on to something that happened in the past? You're holding on to that grudge. And you're not loving now, you're resentful and you're bitter. And are you loving long? Are you loving high? Are you able to see yourself with dignity? That you are loved? That God created you with a purpose and a plan that you see eternally focused, not just right now? That your head is lifted up and not just focused down? And do you see others with dignity? That they are image bearers of God? And do you love deep? Are you loving people in the hard places? In the real difficult places? Are you loving deep? As we move into 2026, know this, God loves you. And let's go out and demonstrate that love as well. So if you would, I'd just ask you to stand and let me pray this commissioning prayer over you. From Ephesians chapter three, let me pray what Paul prayed. I pray that out of God's glorious riches, He may strengthen you with the power of His Spirit in your inner being so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power together with all of the Lord's holy people. I pray that you'll be able to grasp how wide, how long, how high and deep is the love of Christ. And to know this love that surpasses all knowledge. I pray that you may be filled to the measure of all

of God's fullness. And now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is working in us, to Him be the glory in the church forever and ever. Amen and amen. We'll see you next year.