Uncomplicate Following Jesus | Nick Bodine

It is truly such a blessing to me that we get this opportunity to gather each and every weekend. Hey, can we give a huge shout-out to all the men and women who are joining us with the ministry God behind bars? Let's give it up big for them, let them hear us. >> Yes, guys. We love you so much and we are just so grateful that you get to be with us at church this weekend. Well, we've been talking about this past couple of weekends and even today but we want to give one last shout-out to Rooted. We want to encourage you guys to sign up and even if you live in Henderson or if you live closer to our Aliante locations or Summerlin, maybe you live closer to our Sunrise Mountain location or even in Kingman, every single location is having their own Rooted groups. We want to encourage you to sign up. And hey, just a personal invite, Christian and I have both been through it. It was so amazing, so life-changing and in this next season, we are together leading a couple of young adults groups so we would be so happy to have you join us. It is really so incredible and we can't wait to see the way God moves through this throughout our church. >> Yes, guys. Our staff is excited and expectant for what the Lord is going to do over these next few weeks. Well, today we are wrapping up our series uncomplicated but it has just been so great. I mean Pastor Hosanna starting it off and Pastor Judd and now Pastor Nick today is going to give an amazing word but it is just such an amazing series and it has blessed me each and every week. If you want to follow along with the teaching notes, you can find all of that in our Central Church app. But guys, let's welcome out Pastor Nick as we conclude our series uncomplicated. >> Welcome everyone.

I'm going to give a shout out to our Central Summerland location, our Central Sunrise Mountain, Central Alliante and Central Kingmen. Thank you guys for all being with us this weekend. Thank you for being here on your long weekend, your Labor Day weekend. We appreciate just gathering together. Have you ever looked at something and thought there has to be an easier way to do this? I feel like this describes a lot of adulthood where something starts out simple but then we get involved and then it becomes somehow incredibly complicated, right? You buy that piece of furniture that says some assembly require. You open it up. It's like 147 pieces. There's mystery screws, all the directions are in pictures and they're not even that great illustrations and you're trying to build this thing or the worst. The worst is when you forget a password and you hit that "I forgot my password" button. That should be simple. But now they're sending you a verification code to an email that you haven't had since like 2013. They're asking you for your childhood best friend's name. Like I can't remember who my best friend was when I was a kid and they're making you click all the pictures of all the different traffic lights or bicycles and it's complicated. And life has a way of making simple things complicated. And if we're not careful, we can do the same thing with our faith. Jesus says things like, "Come to me, follow me." And we're like, "Oh, absolutely Jesus. I love you. I'm going to come. I'm going to follow. I want to follow you, Jesus." But first though, like Jesus, I've got to be enough. I just got to do enough.

I got to be enough. I got to get some things together and then I'm going to follow you. Let me first just do enough or I need to know enough God. I want to follow you, but I just got to know more of the Bible. I got to know more of what you say. I got to know is my faith for real or we're like, "God, I just need to. I need to be close enough. I need to feel you. I need to feel your presence. I can't follow you until I'm closer, God." And we end up making this whole big mess of confusion just in our own feelings, things that we think we want to do, we need to do. Jesus gives us this relationship. It's simple. Jesus says, "Follow me," and somehow we turn it into some big ropes course. We turn it into some big obstacle course, and all of a sudden we're climbing over expectations. We're trying to duck under spiritual pressure or religious pressure. We're trying to squeeze through everything we think that we need to fix first. And by the time we're finished, by the time we try to make our way through this, following Jesus feels exhausting. That's why we've been in this series called "Uncomplicated" over the last seven years. Throughout this series, we've been talking about the things that complicate our relationship with God. Things like busyness, distraction, confusion, disappointment, shame, uncertainty, feeling insignificant. And these struggles, none of these struggles, they have to become a wall between us and Jesus. They don't have to be blocking us from a relationship with Him.

They actually can become the very place where we return to Him, where we stay close to Him, where we learn to trust Him more deeply. So today we're gonna bring this series to a close, and I want us to look at one of the most beautifully uncomplicated invitations that Jesus has ever given anyone. And it's two words. The two words are follow me. Follow me. If you have your Bible, open it up to John chapter 21 today. We're gonna be in John chapter 21, and we're gonna be in verses one through 22. And these verses center on Jesus in one of His closest disciples, a man named Peter. This is one of Jesus' closest friends. And to understand what's happening in this chapter, we first need to understand what happened just a few nights earlier. Because Peter had always been that friend. He had always been that disciple that was one of the bold ones, one of the courageous ones. When everyone else was kind of like cowering or being a little quiet, Peter was always one that had confidence and spoke up. When everyone else was a little hesitant, Peter was always one that stepped forward. And on the night that Jesus was arrested, Peter made this promise to Jesus. He said, "Even if everyone else abandoned you, Lord, "I will not, I will not, I will die for you.

"I'm ready to die for you." But then Jesus tells Peter, he says, "Peter, "before the rooster even crows, "you're gonna deny me three different times. "You're gonna deny that you even know me." A few hours later, Peter was standing outside why Jesus is being questioned, why he's being arrested, why he's standing trial. And a bystander walks by and they recognize Peter and they're like, "Hey, aren't you one of Jesus' friends? "Don't you know him, aren't you close to him?" Peter's like, "Not me, you've got the wrong guy. "That's not me, I don't know him." Then someone else passed by, they asked him that same question. Peter denies that he knows Jesus again. And then when Peter was questioned a third time, he denies Jesus one more time and immediately the rooster crows. The man, the friend, the disciple who promised he would never leave Jesus. He denied three times that he even knew who he was. Jesus has been crucified, he's buried, and three days later, he rose from the dead. So by the time we reach John 21, Peter has already seen the risen Jesus. He's already visited the disciples since conquering death. So Peter's not questioning whether Jesus is alive or not. He's not in the state of grief anymore. He knows Jesus is alive. But in the gospel of John, John,

he hasn't given us or shown us a real conversation between Jesus and Peter about what happened that night where Peter denied him. So this means that Peter's probably still carrying some very painful questions. Questions like, "Does this guy still even want "to be a friend of mine?" Did I just destroy my whole calling here? Did my failure just mess everything up for me? Is there still a future for me, of someone who failed so badly in this guy's kingdom? That's the tension that Peter's carrying into this story. So we're gonna pick up on verse three when we get to the Red Word, say that out loud with us. But it says this, it says, "Simon Peter said, "I'm going what?" - Fishing. - "I'm going fishing." Well, "We'll come to," they all said. So they went out in the boat, but they caught nothing all night. So Simon Peter, before he followed Jesus, what Peter was is he was a fisherman by trade. His occupation was a fisherman. And John doesn't tell us exactly why Peter goes fishing in this story, in this moment. It could be just to pass some time. I can relate with that. But also, I like to think that maybe here, Peter needs something familiar.

While everything in his world is feeling so unfamiliar, so uncertain while he has all of his doubt and his questions and his worry, I think he's looking for something more certain here. Peter doesn't know what's coming. And maybe you can understand that. Maybe you can relate with that. Where you can worship Jesus on Sunday. But then on Monday morning, you can make a mistake and immediately start to question your worth. Immediately start to question your relationship with Jesus. And you're looking for anything certain from your past that you can just grab onto. Or maybe you can believe God is good and still wonder whether you've disappointed him. You can love Jesus, but you can still feel like this on the inside all tangled up a mess. And what happens is when we start to feel this way, we start adding more ropes. We start adding more obstacles. We start to feel guilty. We start to feel full as shame. We feel like we have to bring our shame in, which then makes us feel that we have to fix ourselves. We have to get it right. We have to prove ourselves. This is our story. This is what we go through. This is every day, every week for a lot of us. Where we just constantly feel like we're proving ourselves. Making up for our mistakes. We're trying to prove that we're enough. We're trying to prove that we do love Jesus, that we can do enough. We're trying to fix our past. We're trying to get it all together. And we just keep adding rope. After rope. After rope. After rope. Obstacle. After obstacle that we feel like we have to climb through. And before we are trapped in an obstacle course that we were never meant to be put in, we have to realize Jesus never asked us to complete this. Complete this. Jesus never asked for us to walk through this kind of life when he said, "Follow him." And so the problem we're trying to solve today is that we over-complicate our walk with Jesus. We turn our grace into our performance. We turn growth into pressure. We turn serving into searching for significance. We turn our calling into comparison. We turn following Jesus and trying to understand and control everything to make our way to him. But in John 21, Jesus does not meet Peter with some complicated process for earning his way back to him. We're going to see that Jesus meets Peter right where he's at. He offers him a meal. He asks him a question. He gives him an assignment. And then finally, he gives him an invitation. Because when our faith, our relationship with Jesus starts to feel complicated, he keeps bringing us back to what matters most. And the first thing that Jesus is

going to show Peter is that you can bring your past to him. That you can get honest and you can bring your past to Jesus. I was born in Decatur, Illinois. And if you don't know where Decatur Illinois is, it's like right smack dab in the middle of the state. And I only lived there until like I was two. So it's not like I remember it from that time period where we lived there. But even after we moved, my grandparents still lived there, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins. So we would go back to Decatur, Illinois a couple times a year to visit, mostly at Christmas or in the summertime. And if you know anything about Decatur, you know about the Staley corn processing plant. The Staley plant is smack dab right in the middle of the city. And it is a massive corn processing plant that produces things like sweeteners or starches. And because of that plant, the whole city of Decatur, anytime you walk outside, has a very distinctive smell. And I don't mean like distinctive like good. Like it's not like pulling into town. It smells like fresh popcorn. It's it's a strong sour smell. Bath and body works is not turning a candle into like to Decatur Illinois smell. Like that wouldn't sell. You don't even need to assign telling you you got there. Like your nose tells you like you're here. You're in Decatur. But something strange happened as I was growing up. That smell, that smell became connected to like family, to my grandparents, to my uncles, my cousins, my aunts. That smell became connected to holidays and family memories. It it became a smell of home. So now when I go back to visit and I smell it, I actually love the smell. And it's not because the smell got any better. It's because of everything that smell brings back. And our senses have a way of doing that, right? Like our smell has a way of unlocking Some memories. Sometimes those memories bring us joy. [BLANK_AUDIO] bring us something we would rather forget. And that may be exactly what's happening to Peter on this beach. Look at verse four, look at what it says. It says that dawn, Jesus was standing on the beach, but the disciples couldn't see who he was. So he called out fellas, have you caught any fish? No, they replied. Then he said, throw out your net

on the right hand side of the boat and you'll get some. So they did and they couldn't haul in the net because there were so many fish in it. This would have been a very familiar scene to the disciples. This would have happened to them before. And it says, then the disciple, Jesus loved who is John who's writing the book, he's calling himself the disciple, Jesus loved. He said to Peter, it's the Lord. When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his tunic for he had stripped for work and then he did what? He jumped into the water and headed for sure. Peter's like, I cannot wait for these guys to get all these fish in. I can't wait for this boat to get back to shore. He throws himself into the water. He starts making his way back to Jesus. That is how badly Peter wants to be near him again. But also think about everything that Peter must be feeling during this moment. Because every swim stroke carries Peter closer to the Jesus that he loves. But it also carries him closer to the Jesus that he denied. Excitement is pulling Peter towards Jesus, but you know there's still some shame that may be telling him to keep his distance. Now watch what Peter sees when he gets out of the water. When he gets to the shore, it says,

when they got there, they found breakfast waiting for them. Fish cooking over a what? A charcoal fire and some bread. Now this is an important detail. I think we can easily skip over that word charcoal and not even realize what it might be saying. 'Cause John could have simply said Jesus was cooking some fish over a fire. But he tells us it was a charcoal fire. And the reason that detail matters is because there are only two charcoal fires mentioned in the whole gospel of John. There's this fire that Jesus is standing beside in John chapter 21. And then there's the charcoal fire that Peter stood behind beside in John chapter 18, the night that he denied Jesus three times. So it's quite possible the moment that Peter steps onto this beach, the smell of that charcoal fire could have taken him right back, right back to that courtyard, right back to that night, right back to the memory of his greatest failure. At the first fire, Peter denies Jesus altogether that he even knew him. And it's at this fire that Jesus is gonna remind Peter, I still know you, I still love you. And Peter, I'm not finished with you. What I'm trying to say is

that Jesus isn't bringing Peter's failure back just to humiliate him. He's bringing Peter back to what happened so that he can redeem him there. But before Jesus asked Peter any questions, before they talk about anything, before they talk about what happened, before Jesus is gonna tell Peter what's still going to come. In verse 12, he says these words. He says, now come and have some what? Now come and have some breakfast. Who wouldn't love some breakfast after you get done fishing? Yeah, all of us would love some breakfast. But these words mean so much more than Jesus is just a nice guy who made breakfast. What these words mean is that Jesus is offering Peter grace. He's not asking Peter to explain himself. He's not asking Peter to prove how sorry he is or to ask for another chance. No, he invites him to sit down and to eat some breakfast. He simply invites him to receive his grace. Before Jesus gives Peter another assignment, he pours out his grace through this breakfast. But what happens when we mess up? What happens when we fail? When we make a mistake? I think we often believe that we can't sit down at the fire

and just enjoy Jesus' company to receive his grace, to yes, be honest, but just let him pour out his grace on us. No, I think we believe that we need to bring him our punishment. What we need to punish ourselves, we need to make ourselves pay a price, Jesus. It can't be that easy just to sit down and have breakfast with you. Surely I need to go through something. Surely I need to feel the failure. I need to replay it over and over and over in my mind. And then what we do is we keep our distance from God we've punished ourselves enough. Like maybe if we try to do just enough good things, we can balance out the bad thing. I think a lot of us that, I think we've even confessed it to God. I think we've gotten honest with God in our prayer time. We've said God, I know that I've messed up, but what we haven't done is allowed ourselves to receive His grace. Some of us are still making payments on a debt that Jesus already paid in full. Here we are, we do it daily. (congregation applauding) And it's important to understand, receiving grace does not mean pretending that your failure never happened. That's not what I'm saying. Grace doesn't ask you to hide the truth. What grace does is it gives you the courage

to face the truth without being destroyed by it. There's a difference between repentance and punishing yourself. Repentance says things like, I was wrong. Jesus, I'm bringing this to you. I'm gonna get honest with you. Help me make right what I can't make right on my own. Jesus, help me live differently moving forward. But self-punishment, self-punishment says things like I need to suffer a little longer before I can receive any grace. And Jesus doesn't call us to punish ourselves. He calls us to repent. He never asks us to pay for our own sin. He already paid the price. So if and when your past starts creeping back up this week and you feel the temptation to hide from Jesus, to punish yourself, to put some separation between you and him, don't keep your distance. Don't hide from him. Don't try to make another payment on your own for something he never asked you to pay for. Bring that mistake, bring your past to Jesus. Get honest with him and then trust his grace more than the voice of your own shame. Trust him, trust that grace. And remember this, stop making yourself pay for what Jesus already died for. We gotta stop it. Jesus may bring you back to the place of your failure,

but it is not to shame you. It's to heal you. It's to heal you right there. Peter's failure was not the end of his story. In your worst moment, it doesn't have to be the end of yours. Because grace doesn't only release us from what's behind us. Grace prepares us for what Jesus still wants to do through us. Which brings us to the second way that we can uncomplicate our relationship with Jesus. We can uncomplicate following him, which is to love people in your current situation. Love people in your present moment. Which loving people, it sounds really good sitting in church, right? It might sound really good watching church online right now. Like loving people, I'm in church. I love you brother, I love you. Praying for you. Yeah, it's a good day to love people. God is good, I'm gonna love him. I'm gonna love others, I love you all. (congregation clapping) But then we get in our car in the parking lot. (congregation laughing) Somebody takes 11 minutes to get out of their parking spot. Nobody's letting you in the lane so that you can make your restaurant reservation on time. And you're sitting there thinking like I love you Jesus, but I'm having a really hard time with your sheep right now.

Like, give me the grace, God. I don't know what to do, but loving people, my point is it's simple until people start being people. It's easy to love people in theory. It becomes more complicated when that love starts to cost us time, it starts to cost us patience, it starts to cost us convenience, starts to cost us our right to have everything our own way. We love people when they're easy to love or when it's convenient to love them, but it's not always the case, is it? Look at what happens next in our story after breakfast, it says this, after breakfast Jesus asked Simon Peter, Simon son of John, do you love me more than these? Yes, Lord, Peter replied, you know I love you. Then what? - Feed. - Feed my lambs, Jesus told him. Jesus doesn't say Simon Peter, do you feel guilty enough yet? Do you realize what you did? Simon, kind of how we talk to our kids, right? Do you tell me what you did Peter, what do you think you did? No, have you punished yourself enough Peter, can you promise that you're never gonna fail again? He doesn't say any of that. He simply asks, do you love me? And when Peter says yes, Jesus gives him an assignment,

Jesus repeated the question, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" Yes, Lord Peter said, "You know I love you. Then take care of my sheep," Jesus said. Hey, what, how many times? A third time, he asked him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" Peter was hurt that Jesus asked the question, a third time. I think it's hilarious that Peter is hurt that Jesus is asking three times. He said, "Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you." And Jesus said, "Then feed my sheep." Now it's hard to miss the connection, right? Three times, Peter denied knowing Jesus. And now Jesus asked Peter three times, "Do you love me?" And then three times, Jesus entrusts Peter with the same assignment. Feed my lambs, take care of my sheep, feed my sheep. You see, Jesus isn't pretending that Peter's failure never happened. He's not just rushing past that moment. What he's doing is he's restoring Peter in this moment. And notice where Jesus is directing Peter's attention. Peter has been all self-consumed with his own failure. And Jesus turns Peter's attention toward others, towards people, my lambs, my sheep, feed them, take care of them. Jesus is reminding Peter, if you love me,

care for the people that I love. And Peter had already been told earlier in his relationship with Jesus that he would have an important role in the church, in the church that Jesus was building. Peter would eventually preach to thousands of people. He would lead the whole early church. He would carry the gospel into the world. But right now, Jesus gives him one clear, uncomplicated assignment, take care of my sheep. But the problem is sometimes we take something so simple that Jesus said, and we over-complicate that. We hear love people, and then we imagine that it has to be something enormous. Like, do I need to go build some well in Africa? Do I need to help solve world hunger? Do I need to do something impressive enough that they make a documentary about it? And those acts of love, those can matter. Sometimes God asks us to do some of those things. But most days, the sheep that Jesus asks us to love are standing right in front of us. So you have to ask yourself, who is Jesus entrusted me in this season with? What do they need from me right now? Those that are close to me in my life. Maybe it's something as simple as just encouragement or patience, truth spoken and love. Maybe it's just simply sitting down and listening to someone, hearing them out.

You don't have to do something impressive for everyone. Just be faithful and loving someone. Feed his sheep, take care of his sheep because love does not have to be extravagant to be significant. And we don't care for people. We don't care for people because we need to feel like we matter. We care for people because they matter to Jesus. And the clearest way to love Jesus today may to be to love the person he has already placed in front of you. So in this story, Peter has been met with grace. He's been given an assignment to feed Jesus' sheep, to love people, but now Jesus is gonna tell Peter something about what's ahead. The final thing that Jesus teaches Peter in this story, and that is a word for us as well, is to trust him with our future. You gotta trust Jesus with your future. At this point, with Peter and Jesus, the conversation starts to become a little bit more serious. Jesus tells Peter that following him will eventually cost him his life. Look at this verse here. It says, I tell you the truth. When you were young, you were able to do as you liked. You dressed yourself, you went wherever you wanted to go. But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and others will dress you and take you where you don't want to go.

Jesus said this to let him know by what kind of death he would glorify God. Then Jesus told him what? - Follow me. - Follow me. Two simple words, follow me. Now that language may sound strange to us, but when John is describing the stretching out your hands, what he's doing is he's describing the kind of death that Peter will eventually face. When he says, stretch out your hands, that would have been a commonly associated, tells us that Peter was eventually killed because of his faith in Jesus and it most likely would have been through crucifixion. So just think about how significant this moment is with Peter and Jesus. Before Jesus was arrested, Peter boldly promised, "I'm ready to die for you, God. "I'm ready to die for you, Lord." But only hours later, Peter denies that he even knows him and now Peter is a failure, he feels like a failure, he feels like he failed and he can never be the man he promised Jesus he would be. But I love that that failure would not have the final word over his life because Jesus knew, Jesus knew one day, Peter's gonna remain faithful. There's gonna be one day in the future that Peter's gonna stand firm. There's gonna be one day where Peter is gonna follow me

and it's gonna eventually cost him his life. Jesus knew all of this. Peter's failure did not cancel his future. Grace was transforming Peter into the man shame told him he could never become and it all started with two words, follow me. And that's still the invitation that Jesus is giving us. Here at Central, our mission statement is to introduce people to Jesus and to help them follow him. We wanna introduce the city of Las Vegas, the United States, the world, to the savior who can dramatically flip their life upside down that can provide them grace, can provide them a second chance, yes. But we also want to help them follow him. And one of the ways we're doing that this fall is through an experience called rooted. You've heard about it all day. You've heard about it for weeks if you've been coming to Central. It all kicks off on September 16th. And this truly is an experience. It's a place to build relationships. It's a place to ask honest questions. It's a place to learn to follow Jesus together with others because we're not supposed to do life alone. It's a place where we can start to uncomplicate all of this. All of this. Jesus following him was never supposed to look like this. We built this.

Jesus didn't build this. God didn't say this is the way to me. We added every rope. We added punish myself, do enough, no enough, you'll close enough, fix our past. We added all these obstacles. And somewhere along the way we started believing that Jesus was standing on the other side of all this, just waiting for us to make our way through. Just waiting for us to fight through every obstacle to untangle every rope, to get ourselves together. But church, this is not the gospel. The gospel is not the story of us finally making our way to God. The gospel is the story of God coming all the way to us, of a God coming to us. We were never asked to do it on our own. We were never asked to climb through some course. Maybe following Jesus doesn't begin with trying harder to get through all of this. Maybe following Jesus just starts with us moving all of this out of the way, pushing it out of our lives, eliminating it. You were never meant to find your way through the ropes. Jesus made his way through the cross. And the cross is not some prize for people who finally get everything right. The cross is the rescue for people who know that they could never fix it on their own. Jesus didn't come. He didn't come to show you how to work your way to God.

He came to show you how far God would go to work his way to you. Look at what he says in Matthew chapter 11 about his way. What does his way look like? Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens. And I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you because I am humble and gentle at heart. And you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear. And the burden I give you is light. That doesn't feel tiring, does it? That doesn't feel complicated. At the cross Jesus carried your sin, your shame, your guilt, your failure. He carried your burdens. He carried what you could never carry. He paid the price you could never pay. He died in our place. He was buried in a tomb. And three days later he walked out of that tomb. And because Jesus lives your sin, it doesn't have to hold you any longer. Your shame doesn't get a chance to define you any longer. Your failure, it doesn't get the final word. (congregation applauding) Jesus didn't tell Peter to untangle his entire past, to make his way through the course. He said those two words, follow me.

He didn't tell Peter to understand every detail of his future. He said those two words, follow me. Peter even tried to compare himself to one of the other disciples. He said, what about John in this story? What are you gonna do with him? And Jesus says, what does that matter to you? You follow me. Bring your past to Jesus. Love the people that he's putting in your world right now. The person in front of you, trust him with your future. And when your past starts creeping back into your mind and you're trying to replay all those mistakes, just get right back to following Jesus. When loving someone starts to feel complicated, just get right back to following Jesus. When the future is uncertain, get right back to following Jesus. You may not know every answer. You may not have every step, but all of us have one clear invitation. Follow me. That's it. That's the gospel. And for some of you, that begins right now. Maybe you spent your whole life trying to earn your way to God. And today Jesus is inviting you to step out of that obstacle course,

to step out of that mess and receive what he's already done for you. Your next step isn't to work harder, try harder, fix everything. Your next step is to receive his grace. He has forgiveness for you. He's inviting you into a relationship, into a friendship, into a new life, the same Jesus who stood on that beach and called Peter back to him, is calling out to you. And his invitation is still the same. As for you, just follow me. You wanna see everything fixed? You want some peace? You want my joy, follow me. So if you wanna start following him today and name him the leader and forgiver of your life, I'm gonna give you that opportunity right now. If I could have everybody bow their heads and close their eyes. You're just gonna repeat these words. But you say him to Jesus. You say him to the Jesus that's calling out to you right now. Just pray, God, I know that I'm a sinner. I'm not afraid to tell you I've messed up. But I believe you sent Jesus to forgive me of those sins. I believe he died on the cross. I believe he rose from the grave. And now I'm ready to follow him.

Forgive me of my sins, God. I named Jesus my personal Lord and Savior. With every head bowed and every eye closed, what I'm asking you to do is if you prayed that prayer for the very first time, if you named Jesus, your Lord and Savior for the very first time, would you just slip your hand up in the air? Just declaring today, this is a bold step of confidence, a bold act just saying before you and God, I'm gonna follow you today. Thank you for every single one of those hands. God, for every hand in this room, for every hand reaching out to you online or inside prison facilities, God, that we can't see. I pray you draw incredibly close. For all of us, God, let us stop creating some sort of obstacle course to work our way to you, to be in relationship with you. Let us push it aside and focus on the only thing that you gave us, the only step you gave us which was to follow you. We wanna love people how you love them. We wanna let go of our past, how you've asked us to. We wanna receive your grace. Let us follow you boldly and joyfully. We pray all these things in Jesus' name, amen. Hey, can we give it up for everyone who made a decision to follow Jesus today? If that's you, if you go to central.family and you hit the quick link, I've decided to follow Jesus,

we're gonna send you a free resource. It just helps you take some next steps in your new faith. Well, if I could have everybody stand with us, we're gonna throw it to our different location pastors.