What Does it Mean to be Saved?

All right, hey everybody. It's great to see you and so glad that you're here. And man, I want to celebrate just one more time over the last two weeks, over 80 people who were baptized in our church and taking that next step and following Jesus. It's pretty incredible. And we celebrate every time somebody takes a step of obedience. I also, I just learned this, but I want to give a shout out to those that are watching in correctional facilities here in North Dakota today, but also I found out we have 10,000 subscribers on the Pando app, which is shared across correctional facilities all across the country. People that are hearing the message of Jesus. So welcome to all of you. We believe in you. We believe God is redeeming your story that God's not done in you. And so we're thankful that you're joining and a part of the broader of Angel family, amen? Amen. I want to speak to our 9.30 service for a moment. If you're watching online and you're not a part of the 9.30, just bear with me. This room is already getting full. Praise the Lord.

Who knows what I'm going to say next. And I want you to know that as the sky gets darker in the morning and you start to think it feels early to go to church, just go with that feeling. We have plenty of space at the 11 and the 12.30. And also at the 8.00 AM, if you're an early riser and I'm not, if you're new to Evangel, I'm not asking anything of you, but if you're a long time part of the Evangel family, especially in the fall, we start to get into peak attendance in September and October. And I'm asking you to consider giving up your seat, serving this service and maybe giving up your seat and coming to an alternate service. So we have room for all the new guests for people who are maybe checking out church, they're going to come at the most convenient time. And so we're inconvenienced for the gospel and for others, right? That's who we are as a church. And so pray about it, hear the voice of the Lord and help us to create space. It's a good thing. And there's other churches with problems of trying to get people to come and praying people in and God has given us a great harvest here and we want to steward it well. Amen, amen. So thank you for considering that.

You know, I was saved at four years old. I was at a vacation Bible school. I'm pretty sure there was a guy who was dressed as a clown telling people about Jesus. And I remember stepping out of the wooden pew that I would sit in every Sunday next to my parents. I would fall asleep on my parents lap in that pew. I fainted during worship. It wasn't spiritual, I just didn't eat enough that morning. And I just have a lot of memories and I specifically remember being four years old and walking out of that pew down to the front, getting on my little knees and trying to surrender my life to Jesus, whatever that looked like. It was a few years later that I was baptized in water. Ironically, I was baptized in Crappie Creek. Some of you have been to Crappie Creek. Ironically, it's spelled Crappie Creek. What a better place to get baptized than to leave all your old self in Crappie Creek. I did it literally, some of you did it symbolically. You left your whole life behind in Crappie Creek. And I was raised in church my whole life and I never left. And I thank God that that's my story. And I also thank God for the people who have never been in church and today's your first Sunday and that's your story. And what God is doing in you and you're welcome here. No matter what your journey has been like up to this point,

we're so glad that you're here. And I wanna give you a message today. Actually, I wanna celebrate just again, the baptism. Please give it up for everybody who's taken steps in following Jesus. I just love, I love these moments and the look on people's faces when they have this experience. But I wanna give you a message today entitled, what does it mean to be saved? What does it mean to be saved? Lots of people proclaim to be Christian. Some say I'm born again. Others will say, yeah, I'm saved. And do we understand what that means beyond like a prayer? Do we understand what that means for the rest of our lives? Not just the moment when we maybe give our life to Jesus. And so I wanna jump into one of the most common passages, one of the top passages that speaks to what salvation is. It's written by the Apostle Paul. It's a great passage of scripture. It's a chapter worth digging into often. It's Ephesians chapter two. And it says this, it says, as for you, you were dead. Everybody say dead. When the Bible says you were dead, the Bible means that when Adam and Eve stepped out of relationship with God, something in them died.

Spiritually, what was alive was no longer alive. And what Adam and Eve began to live after what we call the fall of humanity by sinning against God, we being seeds of Adam and Eve. received that same condition and the Bible says that condition is that you were dead in your transgressions and your sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the Spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. If you're apart from Christ, you're not living your best independent life. There is a Spirit at work in you and against you. It continues, all of us also lived among them at one time. We were gratifying the cravings of our flesh, we're following its desires and its thought and like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. See, in order to understand what it means to be saved, you have to understand the necessity of the saving. To understand salvation, we have to understand the human condition. Both what it was, what it became, what people who are apart from Christ are truly experiencing in their inner being, even right now. See, God's original design, God's original plan was humanity existing in unhindered relationship with himself. What is the goal of being a Christian? It's to live in communion with God, in unity with him. God dwelling with his people and them dwelling with him, like Adam and Eve did in the garden before the fall of humanity. Not subject to death. Death is an invader in our world. It wasn't a part of God's original design. Jesus came to overcome it. Not subject to death, not subject to separation from God. God supplied Adam and Eve with all they needed and he also supplied them with a choice. He did not force their love. He did not force their obedience. We are not human robots made to serve God or made to not serve God. We've been supplied with a choice of what we'll give our obedience to. And by humanity's own rebellion, their original condition was corrupted by sin. And the Bible is clear that the wages of sin is death in the book of Romans. The penalty of our sin is separation from God's holy presence. You are not born good. We are born with a sinful nature. One of the first things

you teach your children is how to come into obedience, how to come into submission. It's not natural to us. See, this is important because many people view Christianity or following Jesus as, I was good and God made me better. Or I had a good life but God pro-maxed my life. That's not the reality. Humanity fell and was not bouncing back. In fact, the Bible tells us that we became more and more and more morally decayed and declining. More dysfunctional. That it wasn't that on our own we would figure it out and enter into some sort of utopia. No, but when given to our human nature and the influences upon that nature, things get worse and worse. See, humanity in decline apart from Jesus is informed by three forces. The Bible says the Apostle Paul just told you them. Let me point them out to you. The first is humanity in decline is informed by the world around you. The Apostle Paul wrote, when you followed the ways of this world. See, the world has its own values, doesn't it? The world has its own definitions of life, of love, of sexuality, of happiness, of morality, of right and wrong. In fact, the Bible says that to the world, more and more wrong will seem right and right will seem wrong. The world has its own ways and dead fish float downstream. And the Bible's clear, you were dead in your transgressions. Floating downstream with the ways of the world. See, there's this deception where people think, apart from Christ and on my own, I am independent and I get to experience the fullness of life. I get to decide how I'm going to live. But Paul says, no, you're actually dead in your sins and transgressions, being carried along by the current of a world that is in rebellion against God. In moral decay, moral decline. It's not only the world around you, but there's also a force on the human nature of the devil who's against you. Let's be clear, Lucifer was an angel. In the heavenlies with God, he rebelled and was cast out of heaven and now he has set his mission because he's not able to destroy God, he tried that, but to destroy those who are made in the image of God. He's jealous of your relationship with God because of Christ. And so he seeks to steal, to kill, and to destroy. People there, it's like a joke, I'm gonna go to hell and party with the

devil, like no you're not. He hates you, he despises you, he steals and he kills and he destroys. There is one who is against you and the Apostle Paul says he's the spirit who is now at work and those who are disobedient. And when we're disobedient to Jesus, we're not just prideful and going our own way with the world, there is a spirit who longs to tempt us, steal, and kill, and destroy from us an enemy actively opposed to God and his people. I know this is real like downer of a message, but in order to understand the good news, you got to know the bad news. The enemy is not equal to God, but he is influential. And when we don't surrender and worship God, we will worship something else and he will influence us into idolatry and into self-worship. It's the devil against you, it's the world around you, and it's also the flesh within you. I talked about this a little bit in previous weeks, but the Apostle Paul says you were like us gratifying the cravings of our flesh and gratifying its thoughts and desires. There is the thought out there, and there's many of us guilty in this place, of living a life that essentially says, I can do whatever I want and gratify my desires and my flesh, and God in his grace will forgive me because God is gracious. And even if we don't overtly say that, we internally keep on sinning, keep on in the same habits and the same way of living, and the Apostle Paul says this shouldn't be. Because God's grace abounds, should you go on sinning? His response is absolutely not, because God's grace was never meant to just forgive you, it was meant to set you free, to transform you, gratifying the cravings of our flesh. We can't just blame the devil every time we go our own way, we can't just blame the culture and the world around us. We have to understand there's also something in us that wants what is contrary to God. Come on, who knows? There's something in you that wants what God does not want. Okay, all five of us that understand that, it's fine. But the Apostle Paul said that I'm the greatest of these sinners I'm talking about. See, the problem is not only around me, if it was I could change my environment, the problem is not only against me, if it was I could ask God for protection, but when the problem is actually within me, then I need new life. I need to become someone new. And it's this condition that

Paul speaks to when he says, you were dead in your sins and in your transgressions, and if you are dead to something, you need raised in order to live again. And this means that this salvation and this saving is not possible for you to do on your own. The dead don't raise the dead. This salvation, this saving is impossible for us to lay hold of on our own. See, people who think that Christianity is about self-improvement, or I'm becoming a better version of myself, Jesus with the assist on my tray. Or going from bad to good, don't understand the true problem. In fact, if that was the truth, Jesus wouldn't have had to die. But salvation is not making a better version. It is death to life. It is a resurrection. And that required the sacrifice of a perfect Lamb who was slain, and who marched out of the grave overcoming death and the grave itself, raising us to new life. See, apart from Jesus, you're standing before God is clear. You, like all of us, and like others, are by nature deserving of God's wrath. Not because God's angry. He is just. But because God is holy. Because of his holiness, God does not just shrug his shoulders at evil and say, what will be, will be. Or, but they're good people. See, to be a God who shrugs his shoulders at a world filled with evil would be the equivalent of God looking at abuse and exploitation and trafficking and murder and racism and hatred and greed and violence and injustice and shrugging his shoulders and saying it doesn't really matter. But because God is holy, his wrath against sin exists because his goodness is real. It's actually out of his love that he deals with the sin condition. And apart from the perfect blood of Jesus, saving us and freeing us, we all by nature are deserving of wrath.

And the Apostle Paul says all of us, he's including himself, he's including me, and he's including you. We are all implicated for all have fallen short of the glory of God, the book of Romans says. The wages of that falling short is a continued death of the one that Adam and Eve experienced. I know when we look at ourselves, this is uncomfortable. And many people are very comfortable when God judges somebody else's evil. But when the microscope turns around and it looks at our own evil, we go, that's not fair. Why would God do that? We're uncomfortable allowing God the right to judge our evil. And what makes it even more difficult is that Jesus raises the standard. He says, it's not just about murdering, you gotta get rid of the anger in your heart. It's not just about adultery, you gotta get rid of the lust in your heart. In fact, Jesus raises the benchmark so high that it's impossible for any of us to crawl over it. If the law and just doing the right things was so good, then why did Jesus have to die? If we could climb the wall of morality on our own, but the reality is it's not possible for us to do it on our own. What are you going to do with this message? What are you going to do with this bad news?

What is your response? I'm going to tell you exactly what you can do about this. Are you ready? That was the problem, here's the remedy. Nothing. I know it's funny, but many of us live our lives acting like we can do something. You can do nothing to change this situation. You can do nothing to raise yourself to new life. Nothing on your own can solve all of this. Dead people spiritually cannot go to church enough to fix it. They can't give enough to fix it. They can't be generous to the poor enough to fix it. They can't be nice enough to fix it. They can't be a good person enough to fix it. They can't take communion enough to fix it. They can't confess their sins to people enough to fix it. They can't be religious enough to fix it, to satisfy God's wrath against our sin. It is, I was at the water park this summer and I was going around the lazy river, around and around. And as I was going around the lazy river, you got to pass people sometimes, you know? Like it's lazy, but sometimes you got to. And I came up upon this group of teenagers and they were all taking up the whole lane and I was stuck behind them. And as I was stuck behind them, I started watching them.

And they were all friends and having fun. And there was a certain situation going on with one of them that they were kind of picking at them over something. And it was kind of like the, I've been a teenager. I know the, that doesn't bother me. I don't care. But inside you're like, I don't like this. And it was kind of like wearing on him. Got out of the lazy river, went, was playing with my kids, came back and was watching my kids go around the lazy river. And I realized that this kid had 15 year old baby had gotten out of the lazy river, was sitting on the opposite side by himself, by some trees. And he had this look. I was like, oh, he's like pressed down. Like he's feeling something. I don't think he's okay. And then I had this dilemma. Like I can see he's not okay, but he's like a 15 year old kid. I could walk over there and ask if he's okay. But then I become like the 40 year old creepy guy at the water park. Lord, you're leading me, but I don't want to be a creep. How do I, give me wisdom, Lord. And so I did what many. and I walked by like three times, like trying to decide what to do, as if it wasn't creepy if I had just walked over there.

Now I'm... I'm circling the situation. And finally, I just thought, you know what? Logically, if something happened to this kid or he went home and he was really depressed and I didn't step in and the Holy Spirit was prompting me, that would not be okay. So I walked around, I walked over, I approached him and I just said, hey man, I'm not trying to be weird. But I was behind you guys in the lazy river. I saw everything that happened and you just look like you might not be okay. Are you okay? And he goes, yeah, I'm fine. Okay, I'm a creepy 40 year old. See you later. And I turned around and I started to walk away. And you know what I really thought in my mind? Can I just be vulnerable? I pastor like the largest church in this town. I am equipped to help you. Like, just tell me I'm good at this. Like, I know how to do this. I can really, I can lift you out right now. I've actually, and not only that, it's not about my position. I've been there. I've walked through exactly what you're feeling right now. And he's like, hey, I'm good. And I turned around to walk away and he goes,

but thank you for checking. I think sometimes that's a little bit how it is with Jesus. We're working and doing and trying to figure out and we're like, I'm fine. I got this, I got this. And Jesus goes, I'm really equipped to help you. Like, you don't actually have to like, try so hard. If you would just trust rather than try, I could actually really help you. If you would just be honest, I could actually equip you. See, there's nothing that you can do on your own. And that's the bad news. But the good news is that God did the saving. That God through Christ did what you couldn't do. Ephesians 2, four through five continues. And it says, but, come on, everybody say but. But because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy made us alive. We were dead, but he made us alive with Christ. Even when we were dead in our transgressions, it is by his grace that you have been saved. And everybody who knows Jesus ought to say, amen. It's by his grace that I am saved. This is probably the biggest but God in all of scripture. You had no way of saving yourself. There was nothing you could do. You were dead in your sins. But God, you were going along drifting with the ways of this world. But God, you had an enemy who was against you.

But God, you couldn't control the desires that were in you. But God, you deserved wrath. But God, because of your goodness? No, because of his great love for you. See, we think I'm not good enough, I'm not good enough, I'm not there yet, I'm not good enough. And God says, stop thinking about whether you're good enough and start thinking about the love that God has shed and given to each of us. See, he didn't just save us from something, he saved us for something. And many people who know Jesus are still thinking a lot about their dead life. How I used to live, what I used to do, the things that I did that weren't good. And we have a very little amount of information about what God has actually saved us into. And the Apostle Paul explains it to us, he says it this way, God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. God will raise us up, God will seat us? No, God raised. In elementary school, that's called past tense. Seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus in order that in the coming ages, he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness. How is it expressed? In his kindness to us.

In Christ Jesus, for it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works. Because there was nothing you could do so that nobody could walk around heaven going, look how I got here. In all the good things that I did, we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good work. So do we not do any good work because the grace of God is sufficient? No, God does the work of saving us and then we do the work of his kingdom as saved people. To do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. God has a plan for your life. He's prepared something in advance for us to do and many of us live our lives very aware of how dead we were but we don't come into an awareness or an understanding or a revelation of who we are when we're made alive in Christ. And so I'm gonna give the most points I think I've ever given in a message in 15 years at this church. Nine realities of salvation in 10 minutes. With the Lord's help, he can do it. Nine realities of salvation. You ready? The first one is that you've been forgiven.

Amen. Your debt has been paid. And the Bible says, come on, if one claps, who I'll clap for being forgiven. But don't clap too long because we got 10 minutes. My debt is paid. Sin creates a real debt before God. But forgiveness means that God no longer holds that debt against me because Christ has dealt with it. That on that cross, he bore all of my sin and all of my shame. My record is wiped clean because of Jesus. Not only did he forgive you, he cleansed you. Come on, have you ever been forgiven and yet you still feel like you're carrying the defilement, the stench, the stain, the guilt of your sin? The Bible says that God not only forgave you, but he cleanses you. First John 1.9 says he cleanses us from all unrighteousness. That we need forgiveness from our sin and the guilt of it. And that dirty, ashamed, damaged feeling that comes with it. God not only removes the sin, but he removes the stain of our sin when he cleanses us. He also justified us. I love, if you don't know what justified means,

he makes you just as if you had never sinned before. He sets you back by making you new. He sets you back to his original design. My standing before God has changed then. In fact, in the book of Romans, it says, because I've been raised to new life in Christ, my standing with God has changed. What is my standing now? I was once an object of his wrath. Now I'm at peace with God. I'm at peace with God. Because of Jesus, I'm at peace with God. He doesn't overlook what I've done wrong, but he declares me righteous. And it's not my righteousness, it's the righteousness of Christ now in me. He sees me in Christ. Come on, Jesus stood with sinners, didn't he? He entered into the circle of the woman who was condemned and he said, go and sin no more. And she stood and he stood with her. This is what Jesus does. He gets into your pit and he stands with you. And he takes his righteousness and he puts it on you. He also reconciled you. So he handled the legal part and he also handled the relational part. He brought you back into relationship with himself. He restored your relationship with your heavenly father. There is only one way through to the father

and that is through Jesus. It's through the son. He has reconciled us. Colossians says that we were once alienated from God, but now we are reconciled to God. Ephesians two says we have been brought near to God. How? By the blood of Jesus. But he didn't just open the front door and say, nice to meet you. He pulled you into the house and he adopted you into his family. He picked you up as a dead branch on the ground that was dying and drying out. He plugged you back into the vine where you could have life flowing into you again and you could begin to bear fruit. He adopted you into his family. He called you his own. So your spiritual family has changed. He doesn't just meet us at the front door to reconcile. Ephesians two says you are members of God's household. The Bible tells us that we have been forgiven by the judge. We have been reconciled by God and we have been spiritually adopted by our heavenly father. If you know Christ, despite your record, you're welcome to the family. You're adopted in. He adopted us in and he delivered us out. That means that whatever mastered you before

doesn't master you anymore. Whatever used to govern over your thoughts and your attitudes and your emotions doesn't have to govern over you before. Your master has changed. Colossians says he rescued me from the dominion of darkness. He brought me into the kingdom of the son he loves. Listen, you have been delivered from the penalty of sin, from the power of sin, from the kingdom of darkness, from the fear of death, from the finality of death, from the coming wrath of God. God has broken open the prison and he declared I'm bringing you into a new kingdom. I'm bringing you into a new place. Why? Because Christ Jesus, when he died for you, he made you no longer dead, but he made you alive. Not only has your life changed, but your condition has changed. You are not who you used to be. There's this amazing mystery in scripture that Paul says if you are in Christ, your life actually begins to mirror Christ. This is why Christianity is not behavior modification. It's an invitation to a new life. And death brought a need for resurrection. And this, that we have been made alive, is the hope of the church. It is the hope of the church that I have been raised with Christ Jesus.

That in the mystery of God, I was dead in my sins, buried in the grave, but Jesus grabbed a hold of me and he raised me. My inner being, my inner person has experienced a life and life abundantly. So many people come to church and they go, I feel something. Yeah, you're feeling the presence of the body of Christ, the living, breathing, alive people of God. It's not passion, it's not the worship team, they're great. It's not the preaching, it's the breath of God, the moving in and through the body and the people of God who have been made alive with Christ Jesus, who understand that they've been raised with Christ, that not only has my position with Christ and my position with God changed, but my future has been changed. When Christ raised me to new life, I began living an eternal life with God. One day, we'll be there, we'll live with Jesus, the lamb of God who was slain, his light will illuminate that great city, the future that we go to. But even now, every time I go into my prayer closet, every time I open my Bible, every time I sense the presence of Jesus, I am tapping into the well of everlasting life. I am no longer given to moral decay and destruction, but now I'm being renewed day by day into the likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ. I've been raised to new life, I'm not who I was. I've been changed. There is a BC, a before Christ, but there's also an AD in my life. And after the death and the resurrection and what happened in me, Christ's story becomes our story. Christ died, and my old life died with him. Christ was raised, and I've been raised to new life with him. Christ will live forever, and resurrection life is my destiny. Not just the inner part of who I am, if I die before Christ returns, my body may lay in a grave for a moment, but my body was never meant to be separated from my spirit. My body will be raised at the resurrection of the dead, and I will be given a new, glorified body that does not experience sickness or death or shame or anxiety or depression or

fear or doubt. I'll be given a new body, I'll be a new person raised to new life in Christ Jesus. This is the hope that we have. It is not merely escaping hell. It is participating in everlasting life. The life of the age to come has already begun in the church, in the followers of Christ, because God has made us a new creation. Literally, the best translation in scripture is that God has made like a new human race. Maybe race isn't right. A new human kind. Those that have been raised into the likeness of Jesus, made in his image. God has made you new with good works to do. That's why salvation isn't primarily, look what Jesus did for me. That's the salvation experience. But the testimony of the believer is, look what Christ continues to do through me. There will be a new world around us, rather than influencing us like dead fish. The enemy who's against us will be defeated, and our flesh that wants the contrary to what God has will be redeemed. A new humanity, different than the one I described at the beginning. This is why following Jesus is so much more than someday I'm going to somewhere better. I've spent the entire message asking, what does it mean to be saved? And I've given you nine answers. If you're a tedious person, you're thinking, okay, if I can just work on the adopted part, if I can just work on the made alive part, if I can just work on the cleansed part, then I'll like, you're trying to do it again. You jump back into that workspace, like I got to make it happen. These nine are encompassed in one gift to you that makes this all happen. That one gift is Jesus. It's being in Christ, in him. That one gift, what if those are all the result of the one gift?

What is the gift? John 3.16, God loved you so much that he gave his son. So yeah, I get forgiveness, praise God, but I get Jesus. I get to be raised to new life, but I get Jesus. You can't want eternity with God and not want Jesus, it is Jesus. You were dead, but God made you alive. with Christ. I'm closing with this. It says, And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. Watch this part. In order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. What does that mean? That means that 80 or a thousand or 10,000 or a million years from now, we will stand as the eternal evidence of the grace of God displayed in his people. It's why right now at the threshold of heaven, the angels are looking over, mysteriously looking at these people of God made in his image and saying, what kind of love is this? What kind of grace is this? We are the trophy, not of our own accomplishment or goodness, but of how gracious he is. In eternity, nobody's going to be walking around saying, look what I accomplished. Look at what I've done. Like we so often do in this world. But the lamb of God, the light of the world will be pointing and saying, look at what my grace accomplished in them. And he will get all the glory. What does it mean to be saved? It means I was dead, but God, by his grace, gave me Jesus. And in Jesus, he gave me life. What does it mean to be saved? In Jesus, he gave me life. Friend, if you're here today and you've been trying to save yourself, you can't. If you even came to church on Sunday because you thought, I gotta be okay with Jesus. Church and being with the body should be an overflow of a surrendered heart, not an effort to be in good standing with God. That bad news is the door to the good news, that Jesus already did what you could never do. So the question is not, will I ever be good enough? The question today is, will you trust Jesus? Wow, Josh, you paint a picture of a future city of being raised and that's all. Will you trust Jesus? But I still struggle with my sin. And will you trust Jesus? But I don't know how. Will you trust Jesus? Does he save me? Will you trust Jesus? And so with every eye closed in a moment of just contemplation and response, if you're here today and you're saying, Pastor Josh, I need to trust Jesus for the first time, or I need to renew my trust in him. Will you lift your

hand with mine? I need you to just know that in this moment, you lifting your hand is not to tell me. You lifting your hand is to inspire action in your heart of surrender, responding to the spirit of God, not the pastor. And together, can we just pray, God, I yield to you. I thank you that you forgive me. I surrender to you right now. Lord, I thank you for saving me. I thank you that because of Christ and his Lordship, I'm a new creation. And I ask that your Holy Spirit who lives in me and is taking residence in me right now would lead me into the truth. Thank you, Jesus. In your name we pray. Amen. Will you stand with me? If you're a follower of Jesus in this place, this is not a one-time transaction that you made 20 years ago. But today you are new. Today you are whole. Today you are saved. Today you are made alive. Today, right now, God is making all things new. Amen? Amen. Amen. Let's declare it together.