What About CHURCH?

We are in week number five of our series, What About? We started off looking at a conversation that Jesus had with a couple people that were dejected, had doubt after his resurrection on the road to Emmaus. And they were pouring out their heart and their questions and they didn't know it was Jesus walking with them. And he was not put off by their questions. Did you know that God is not put off by your questions? He's not offended by them. And so what he did do though is he redirected them to the scripture for their answers. And he showed them the truth in the scripture. That's what we've been talking about each week in the series. We have real life questions about doubt, about suffering, about truth. And then about last week, Jody did a great job sharing about what about me and what about the, what's in it for me part of things. And I can tell you this, that any of our questions in life should go back to the truth. All of our social media platforms can redirect us and get us spinning with questions. And that's true, I don't know if I can trust that organization, I don't know. We can get all off track, but we all need to go back to the word of truth. Amen? The Bible is the word of truth. Today the title of the message is this,

what about church? What about church? My highlight for this week was I was invited to come in and to speak in two classes at a local public middle school. And so I got to go back in. I was invited to talk for and share my career with these students, seventh grade one class, eighth grade another class. And I just, I was back in my happy place. I was just hanging out with these students, getting to present to them. I was asked to just share my education journey, my experience, what I do for a job and all of that. And I would just be like anybody else, a lawyer or a doctor or anybody else who would come in to share it, I was asked to share. Little why I was asked to share is that a youth leader from 25 years ago is now a teacher in there. And they said come in, and they knew I wouldn't violate some of the boundaries that you need to honor when you're in public schools. And so that was part of the reason. But the thing that really got me excited was after I presented everything, were the questions that these students were asking. And they were honest questions. They weren't angry questions. They were just kind of like curious questions. And the questions that they were asking were like, other than speaking, what do you do all week?

What does your schedule look like? What does your schedule look like? Are you ever afraid when you speak? Do you have people that hate you? Why does your job matter? And I thought it was interesting because these students have a lens from which they view me and the church. What's the church for? Why does it matter? What should I think about my own involvement in church? Their view has been shaped by parents perhaps or by social media or by their friends. And often, it's by the worst things. Things that they see as they scroll. Can you trust the church? Are they only out for your money? There's all kinds of other things that are hitting this world of curious people, but they're still open. And that's what I loved about my time with these students this week. They're soft clay. They're still moldable. They're still open, and they haven't closed their future to the church altogether. Now, all of us have our own lenses that we view the church through. We all have a history. Many people never grew up in faith and their family story, and so they just were outside of normal, what would be kind of Christian lifestyle even.

And it's all brand new, and they don't know how to filter it, what's real and what's not. Some people had the opposite. They were overdosed on religion. They had to be in church 24-7, and then the rules at church were the rules at home, and it was just overbearing. I know people who have had a great experience with church, that their local experience was actually good. They had good relationships, good friendships, people that they could rely upon. They had perhaps good leaders in the ministries that they came up through. If you grew up in church and you had good experience with kids' ministry or youth ministry, it really shaped and formed your life. So in this room, we have many different vantage points for how we view. to the word church. Just like a family of origin, when we say church, not everyone has the same feeling. We have different feelings and thoughts and memories that come to the surface when you think about your family. Isn't that true? Now you're stepping on my toes, Pastor Nate. Because it's sensitive when we talk about our family and then it becomes, ooh, it's complicated. And we have complicated family structures and it can feel overwhelming. This is why I am fascinated by the metaphors

that are in the Bible that describe church. If we could look at how church can be, we can access all that Jesus promises. What if all of us took a fresh look at church? What we could shake free from in pain and disappointment of the past? What if we got rid of those things? And we started asking the question of what could church become? That's a different thing. Why don't you turn your Bibles to Ephesians? How many have your Bibles, your physical Bibles or your electronic ones? Go ahead and hold them in the air like you just don't care. Let me see it, all right. If you can, bring your Bibles to church. We're gonna be talking from Ephesians. Ephesians was written by a guy named Paul who was an apostle who wrote to the church of Ephesus. The church in Ephesus had a very religious culture around it, not towards Jesus, but to other religions and philosophies. And so people that became a part of that church were confused at times about philosophy and doctrine and what we can do with our lifestyles and whatnot. So you'll see within Ephesians very direct language about how to relate to other people, how to relate with your own body, what to do within relationships and families and the like. And in this particular part that I'm gonna look at

in chapter two, Paul is talking to them and he's wanting to give them God's definition of church. Now you might have a definition that comes from somebody else, but let's look at how the Bible describes what church is in Ephesians chapter two, verse 19. So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with God's holy people. You are members of God's family. No longer strangers and foreigners, you are citizens. Now he's talking about people who were outside of what would have been known as the faith because the church started off in Jerusalem and it was all former Jewish people. They still were Jewish, but they accepted Jesus as the Messiah. So the first part of the church world was just them. As the gospel spread throughout the world, now it began to reach people who were not Jewish. And the Bible and the reference of the word for that was a Gentile. Anyone not Jewish was considered to be a Gentile. So now Paul is saying, you who are Gentiles, you are now a citizen of this family. You're a part of the family of God. You're members of the family of God. And so he tells them that you belong, you're in. Turn to the person next to you and say, you're in. And then he says, you're the members of God's family. Now this is interesting because the language

that Paul uses for the church is he uses family language here. He says family, members of God's family. Family is that language of God's kingdom. You're not a renter, you're not an outsider, you are a member of the family. You are connected to the family. That means you have sisters and brothers. That means it's not just you, but you are connected to other people. Then Paul continues in verse 20 and he says, together we are his house built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself. He uses this visual of a house. Now I have a picture of a house that I want you to see. Go ahead and put that up if you will. This picture is a picture of a house. You might like the house, you might not like the house. Some of you are like, I could renovate that house. I just took a picture of a house. The generic Minnesota house picture. But I want you to visualize when God is talking about family and house, he's not really talking about the outside of the house. He's talking about what happens inside of the house. A family lives in a house. So there is a context for the family. The family is connected in the context of a house. So they move in, they're there, everything that they do,

their bedrooms, the kitchen, everything in the house, but they are all one family in one place. This is the language that he used. And then he talks about the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself, and that the foundation is the apostles and the prophets. So in other words, if this house is gonna healthily contain the family of God, it has to have a foundation. That foundation is the teaching of the prophets and the apostles, and Jesus Christ is the cornerstone. So literally, no church can succeed without Jesus being on its foundation. And I would argue no church can last with the presence of God without there being the teaching of the word of God in it as well. It's how the family holds together. Now verse 21 says this, and we are carefully joined together in him, becoming a holy temple for the Lord. Through him, you Gentiles are also being made part of this dwelling where God lives by his spirit. It says that you are carefully joined together. This means that the members of the family are not disconnected from each other, but the way God puts his family together is we are connected to each other. And as we are connected, we become a holy temple. Now the temple in the Old Testament was a place where all of the people of Israel would go and they would worship Yahweh,

and they had protocols that they have with sacrifices that were made. Many of those things, we still have elements of those in the church. But what Paul is very clearly saying is that in the New Testament with Jesus, now wherever the family members gather, there's a temple so that when we gather together and we are connected, now his presence is a part. God lives in that place by his spirit. This is why, this is when the church went viral, y'all. It wasn't left to one location, but it works in every place on the planet. In every kind of economy and governance structure, the kingdom of God can survive. Now it might be illegal to gather publicly as a Christian in some countries, but I'll tell you right now in every country in the world, there is a church somewhere where people are gathered together and the structure, the family comes together and God's spirit shows up. This is a picture of the New Testament that we see that's very different than what we've seen popularly in 2026 regarding Christianity. See, today we are more isolated and independent with our faith. People have created, it's just as a part of society, a kind of a Netflix approach, an on-demand approach where we go, I like this at that church,

I like that message, I like that worship, and it's become more about what we view than who we are connected to. But that, I wanna pull you back to what does the Bible say? What about, what does the Scripture describe what the church is? Church can become very disconnected from other people in the family. Go to church online, you can time your approach to church services right before it starts. Get in the sanctuary and listen and time your exit before everybody else leaves the parking lot. You haven't connected with anybody, you've observed, participated, but you haven't connected with the rest of the body. Just in general in life, this is not a shaming exercise, this is the things that we go through, like even with life schedules, like if I were to ask for a show of hands how many people are busy, I think I could have an altar call right now. Because everybody is busy and we're busy and we're busy and we're busy, and we're busy and we're busy, busy choosing many different things. and we're busy and we're busy, and we're busy and we're busy, We have trips and obligations, and we're busy and we're busy, and if you're a parent, there's tournaments

and all kinds of places that we are required to be at with our personal family, but it can combine and add up to disconnection from the house and from God. I have a bag of blocks that we now have in our house. I thought I got rid of all my toys. They have re-emerged with grandkids, and let me know what these are. You've seen these things before? So you get all of these. I could make every one blue and gold, but I'd choose not to. Maze of blue, I'll throw a little red in there. That's just for my friend Rick. So if I have all of these blocks, one of the things that parents do, and grandparents now for me, is I'll get down on the floor with the kids, and kids will learn how to connect it, and it's fun at first, because everybody, when they see it, they get to our house, they run to the room. I get down on the ground, and I'm playing with them, and I'm like, do this like this, and they're learning their eyes, and they're trying to shove things that don't work, you know, and it doesn't work, and they grow into it, and one of the things that parents do as we train our kids is we try to connect basic things

to other things so they build, and these are called building blocks. Later on, there's smaller things called Legos, right? These are the big ones. All right, now, we try to connect them to basic things, and we wanna learn. At first, we're changing their diapers, and we're feeding them, and then we expect them to build and grow and adapt. That's what we want them to do. Now, when it comes to connectiveness, we also wanna train them to connect God with other parts of their life, so how they treat their brother or their sister is connected to their relationship to Jesus, and somehow, we are to call to, and it's biblically our responsibility as parents to train our kids how they should live, how to remain connected so that when they're old, they don't depart from it. They don't become disconnected, and parents, I just tell you, we have to fight to help our kids remain connected, amen? Even as a church family, that's what we're committed to. Our kids' ministry, our youth ministry, our whole focus is trying to say, hey, we want to connect your life to Jesus and the church so that when they graduate from high school, they don't graduate from church. Now, these blocks are important.

We've got to teach people to build, and I want you to now go a couple chapters to the right. In Ephesians chapter four, I'm staying in the letters to Ephesus right now, and in Ephesians four, it says, now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church, the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. Now, what Jesus does, and Paul is describing, if we're a house, we're a family in a house, and now he's describing what people in the church do, there are people sent to the church that are like coaches for the church because the church is to build, so God sends these five things in, and he starts with the various roles. He talks about the apostles, and think about a hand here, okay? So all of these five things are the different coaches for the church. The thumb is the apostles. The apostle brings all the other gifts together. They're really important, they're part of it. And then if you were to take the pointer finger, the pointer finger is like pointing people out, that's the prophet. Prophets just are black and white and declare the truth. Sometimes it's uncomfortable.

Most of the time, people don't like prophets right away because it's black and white. If you read the Old Testament prophets, they're calling out injustice and that kind of thing in the culture around them, and then they suffered for it. It wasn't like they could run for local mayor or something and win. Nobody liked the prophet, but they were calling out the truth. Every one of us needs a prophet sometime. How many are thankful that there are people God sends into your life to call you out at the right time, right? Okay, so prophets aren't bad people, they just point the finger. Okay, and then, I'll do it this way. The middle finger is the evangelist. The evangelist sticks out out of all the other fingers because they're thinking about people outside. They're not thinking about just us. They're thinking about people who aren't in church. They're thinking about people that need the kingdom of God, that need the gospel, and so they're the ones that prompt us to do this way, do that. This week, I went to lunch with Will Jones, who's an evangelist, a part of our church family, and we met for lunch, and we ordered our food, and I was getting ready to pray so I could eat because I was really hungry, and Will stops, and he says to our server, hey, we're about to pray.

Is there anything we could pray for for you? And our server, she said a couple things. She didn't have anything right away, but then she walked away and came back with a whole list. I know what I need, okay? Because Will thought of her outside of our little bubble at lunch, she became a part of something good, okay? The evangelist does that. He challenges us, or she challenges us, if there's an evangelist, to think about your neighbor. Think about the people that aren't in church right now. Think about the people that are waiting, okay? That's what they do. Now, then there's the ring finger. The ring finger is the pastor. That's the shepherd. They're married to the church. They're the shepherd and care for people. That's why I'm here, and I will be here. This is my last job, essentially, right? I'm not going anywhere. I'm not looking for an upgrade in another church or something like that. Why, because I'm a shepherd to be with you, and then finally, there's the pinky, which is the teacher, because they know how to get in your ear. All of these are arranged to help us be connected to the mission God has called us to.

One of our grandkids loves to knock down the towers that their cousins put up, and it's so funny to her when she knocks down their tower. It's not funny to them. It becomes World War III, right? But the truth is that right now, in her level of maturity, she doesn't understand the consequence of knocking down somebody else's blocks. And immaturity cuts on the church. And I would just say this when it comes to how we view each other. We wanna grow in our maturity and not be immature and grow beyond it when we're not cutting down other people's blocks, but we're connected to them. How can we be connected to each other? How's this all gonna take place? Well, in Ephesians 4, 13, Paul goes on to say, this will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's Son that we will be, what, mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won't be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We'll not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ who is the head of his body, the church. This is the dream, y'all, that we,

as we view our own place in the church, that we grow in love, that we can handle the immaturity of people around us without kicking them out. Not having cancel culture in the church, can I get an amen to that? But at the same time, as we grow, then we have ministry to each other and Jesus is the head of the church. So if you have a business, you have a family, you have your life, you want to be one that comes underneath the head of the church. Make sure your whole life, your business, your Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, are up and connected to the head of the church or you will be missing out on who you could be. And it cannot happen in isolation. You cannot grow in Christ in isolation. In Ephesians chapter four, verse 16, he says, as each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of life. Love, I'm just gonna say it, you can't grow when you're disconnected. Disconnected from Jesus as the head of the church or disconnected to the people who Jesus uses to grow us. We cannot be healthy when we are disconnected. It's a big deal and we wanna grow more and more in his love. Can I get an amen to that?

All right, I wanna just, I was thinking about why do people disconnect from the church? If there's all these opportunities, why do people disconnect from the church? Let me just give you a few things. One, never connected in the first place. Maybe there are lots of people who were never invited to church, never been to church, weren't raised going to church. There's no pattern there. So they were never connected in the first place. Secondly, they got out of the habit of connection. Maybe they were a part, one part of their story, but they became disconnected. This was a big part of many people that during COVID got used to staying home, but we weren't allowed to go into buildings for church. And then all of a sudden it just became easy. And before you know it, one thing led to another and we are no longer connected. It was like, we weren't eating church anymore, so we no longer had an appetite for church. That happens to some people. Third thing, why do people disconnect from the church? Could be a crisis in life. People go through stuff on any given week. I've run into people in the lobby, their parent died this week, or something happened in their family,

or something's going on, or they lost a job. And a crisis can kind of take you out of your rhythm. One thing leads to another and you find yourself disconnected. Why do people get disconnected from the church? Fourth, there could be hurt, real hurt. Maybe there's a disappointment. You had high expectations that weren't met, or a person in the church acted un-Christ-like, and maybe they even sinned and it took you away, or a pastor or a leader you trusted had a moral failure and it drove you away from church, or hurt. And when people are hurt, it's hard to trust. I just have trust issues. I won't ask for a show of hands of how many of you have trust issues. But even previous trust issues can stop you from future connection. And that's what disconnected some people. Fifth, are people disconnected? Boredom. They're just plain bored. They've been going for a long time, doing the same things, and they got bored. They're stuck in a rut. They're tired of doing the same thing over and over again. Some people, that's all they know, and they're like, I'm tired of this, I'm getting out. And they just change one thing for another thing. Finally, number six, no friends.

No friends. I think the number, this would be the number one if I were to put most common. When you lose your friendships, you lose wanting to go to church. And I would just say this, we gotta fight to build friendships. Don't wait for friendships to come to you. You show yourself friendly first. We talk about that in Growth Track, but listen, we need friends. We don't need to just come in and listen to a guy yell at us on Sunday morning and walk out. No, we actually need the people that we're around. You need, in fact, look to two or three people and say, I need you, I need you, I need you, I need you, I need you. Yes. If you don't have friends, whoo. So how can we reconnect? Just as quickly, let me give you a few things. We need to return to Jesus. Return to Jesus. How can we reconnect? Return to Jesus. If he's the architect, humble yourself and say, I need you to rebuild my house, my family, my life. I want to be reconnected. Whatever the source, whatever the reason I'm disconnected, I want to be connected.

Jesus never turns away people like that. In fact, Jesus' message to the church in Ephesus in Revelation 2, he gave a message to the church in Ephesus as well. It says this in verse four. But I have this complaint against you. You don't love me or each other as you did at first. Look how far you have fallen. Turn back to me and do the works you did at first. It's not that hard. Go back, repent, humble yourself and go, I want to be back in. And it's never too late to come back to Jesus. Can I get an amen to that? Secondly, forgive. How do you reconnect? Forgive others and forgive yourself. I run into people all the time that reasons for churches and their family and. Institutions have failed them and people. If it weren't for all the people, church would be great, right? But people are broken and they're messed up and forgiveness brings you home. If you've left home, you're disconnected, gotta forgive. Let me ask you a question. Whose face in your mind keeps you from connecting again? You gotta forgive that person. And sometimes it's the person in the mirror. Let them go.

Ephesians 4, two, always be humble and gentle, be patient with each other, making allowance for each other's faults because of your love. Number three, to reconnect, let go of guilt and regret. Some people don't try and connect because of what they did in the past. Let it go and have a new narrative, okay? Say this with, repeat this out loud after me. Say, because I am forgiven, I can love others. Say it again, because I am forgiven, I can love others. Turn to the person next to you and say, because you are forgiven, you can love others. Number four, intentionally schedule connection with the house. Intentionally, you're gonna have to intentionally do it. It's too easy to remain disconnected. So you gotta figure out how to connect. Hebrews 10, 25, and let us not neglect our meeting together as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near. I'm not talking about passive attendance and observation. It's engaged connection. Coming to church and praying and saying, Lord, I want divine appointments today. I want divine appointments when I get out of my car. I want divine appointments when I connect. I want you to use me and I wanna hear from others. Serving connects you to the family. Get on Team Emmanuel.

How many of you have been through GrowthTrack? Let me see your hands. You been through GrowthTrack? If you haven't yet, I encourage you, all these people have, get involved, get connected. If you've become disconnected because you had to take a break for a while, get back in again. That's a way for you to do it. And then you have a reason to show up next Sunday, right? But what if I wanna, number five, ask God to stretch your vision of what church can be. Ask God to stretch your vision of what church can be. Leave that up there for a moment. I'd like to ask Andrew, come on up. In Ephesians 3.20, they're gonna read this in a minute, but it's about God's vision for the church. And he can go above and beyond anything we could ask, think, or imagine. Now look at this, Ephesians 3.20. Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to him in the church. Glory to him where? In the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever. Amen. What if God were to expand our vision

of what he can do in the church? Not just our services, but in us. The type of people we are and how we are in the family. What if God in his mighty power began to build the faith of his church in neighborhoods, in schools, in families around us? What more could God be saying than we're hearing? What if he wants us to close the door on the past that stunts our faith for the future to forgive and to be willing? I believe God wants to expand our vision for the church. Not just go, Lord, give me more money. Lord, give me a better career. God, give me more stuff. You can pray for those things. He can answer it or not. But what if you said, Lord, expand my vision for our church. Expand my vision for how I see myself in the church. Expand your vision for the gifts that can flow through me in the church. You began to pray that prayer. What could God do? I asked pastor, or not pastor, global elder, Andrew Mead. Maybe that was a prophetic word, I don't know. He's part of our board of elders here at the church and meet with the board once a month. We go over the finances of the church. They're all affirmed annually at our annual vision night.

But yesterday we were talking at an open house. We were sitting at a table. And I had an unfinished message today. And I'm like, Lord, what do you want to do? And I just left the message and I'm sitting at the table, Andrew's sharing his story. And I felt the Holy Spirit say, that's how you need to end the message. And because Andrew in his story wouldn't be where he is without the church. God did something and he was outside the church. His family didn't go to church. So how did God reach you? And I want you to share your story. Well, good morning, Emmanuel. I'm so honored to be able to share my story with you. And actually it's my story, it's God's story. I'm just one living it. So as Pastor Nate said, I'm from a small town in Radcliffe, Kentucky, a very, very poor central part of Kentucky. And I grew up in a trailer park with next to nothing. My dad was a triple amputee. My mom was mentally handicapped and battled schizophrenia. So on any given day, you just didn't know what was going to come. And we had no money. And when you did eat, you were picking cockroaches out. And I'm telling you when you're hungry

and you don't know when that next food is going to come, you will pick out roaches and you'll eat that food that they just been snacking on. And I remember Wednesday nights always, I was about 14, so 26 years ago, there was a red van that would come through our church. I mean, our trailer park and this on the side of the van, it said Lifeline Assembly of God. And this man would lean out and he would get to know my brother and he would invite me and say, Andrew, are you ready to come to church? And I had no relationship with God. I didn't believe it was a God because if there was a God, how could I live how I was? So I was angry and I would throw eggs at the van when he would come by, I would cuss him out. I was mean and angry. This went on for months and months and months. And then finally I was like, okay, hey, if you stop bugging me, I'll come to your church. So I go to church and they're talking about a message that Wednesday about this big old God that cares about little old me, right? He cares about little old you. And something began to move in my life and something began to change. And we go to a youth camp and I come home one day and I noticed there's a big group of men at our house. And I talked about all the roaches we had. They were in there pulling out all the cabinets

to get rid of the roaches. We had a, in the middle of our kitchen, there was a hole and I could jump through that hole, exit out. And at nights I slept in the living room on the floor and possums would come in or raccoons would come in. My dad would wheel in in his wheelchair. He'd grab them by the tail and he'd kill them. And they were fixing that. And what I, you gotta hear this church. This is a small central part of Kentucky that has no money, but yet it was the body of Christ, the body of the church, Lord God, being the hands and feet of Jesus. They came with what they had. Some of them had their hands and they just gave labor. Some had money. People had food and they would bring that to us. Some filled the gap of a mom or a dad that I didn't have. So that's a little bit about my story. And then all these years later, so of course that's one part of the story. He's a part of the church as you grew older, found your wife. And now you're building your family in a different way. Come on, somebody. She had mercy on you. Yes, she did. And... Sorry.

And of course now serving on the leadership of the church. It's not just the one moment, but 30 years ago, what God did has paid off now. And the investments we make in the people around us as the church, because we're connected, we notice the needs. Because we're connected, we invite others in. And we're, because of evangelists reminding us, we need to not be only about ourselves with church, but about our neighbors and the people we come by every day. May we have a different vision for our future too. Can I get an amen to that church? Amen. Would you stand with me? In this moment, I wanna just ask God to begin to give us a new vision. I'm gonna have you do something different in just a moment, but if you could just put a hand on the shoulder of the person that's next to you. Lord, would you connect us? Would you do what we can't do? Lord, we don't know who we're standing next to, and maybe they've got hurt. Maybe they got church hurt. Maybe they got family hurt. Maybe they've, they're beating themselves up because of the mistakes they made in the past. Lord, would you heal each one? Would you overwhelm us with your love, your kindness, your gentleness?

I pray God that there would be in that space an expanded vision for what you can do through us, through ordinary people, each of our locations. I pray God that, Lord, every age group, every socioeconomic status, every person, regardless of our backgrounds, may we become the church you see. May we become what you're designing us to be, I pray. Hallelujah. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Amen, amen, amen. Would you give it up for Andrew? Stacey, I wanna do, amen. So we're gonna do my favorite response that we get to do in church. In a minute, I'm gonna have you huddle up with one or two other people and just pray. You can do what Will did. You can turn to the person, is there anything I can pray for? And you're like, I've never prayed out loud. Well, today might be your first day. And all you gotta do is repeat whatever that person said to God. She said she needs help, blah, blah, blah. Please help her. That's a prayer. So everybody can pray, okay? Everybody can do this.

And I'm gonna have you, you're gonna be the end of the service. Before we do it, though, I have one audience, part of our audience that's really important to me. If you just close your eyes in the room, you're here today and you don't have a relationship with Jesus. Your heart, you're away from God. It's really important that you not walk out of here disconnected from Jesus. It's really important that you find your hope and your life and your joy and the one who truly loved you died on the cross for your sins. And if you're here today and you need to give your life to Christ, or perhaps you once walked with him and you need to come back and be reconnected to Jesus, I wanna pray with you before we go. And if that's you, just lift your hand up and say, Pastor Nate, that's me. I need to give my life to Christ. Come back to him. Yeah, yeah, three, four. Yes, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 people. Come on, somebody. You matter.

And the cool thing is, you come like you are and Jesus takes your sin and you're connected. Not only will you be connected to him, but you will be connected to the family of God. If you raise your hand, I wanna lead you in a prayer and just pray this prayer out loud after me and everybody else who can join right in. Say, Jesus, thank you for loving me so much that she came to the earth and died on the cross for my sin. You rose from the dead and I know that you're alive. Today, I surrender to you. Please forgive me of my sin and make me new. I wanna be connected to you for the rest of my life. In Jesus' name, amen, amen, amen.