Why God Moves Toward Your Mess // Pastor Vance Pitman // Heights 2026

- What an incredible honor it is to be here. And I know that's kind of what you're supposed to say when you come to a church, visiting as a speaker. But I'm just telling you, it's the truth. I'm, Kyle and Margie, my wife and I lived your story. Like we moved our family 25 years ago to Las Vegas, Nevada to join in. By the way, it's Nevada, all right? Just so you know that. Like if you wanna feel like a local from Vegas, say Nevada when you visit. I know you're not gonna tell anybody you visited, but when you visit, just say Nevada. But God moved our family out there to join in his activity of birthing a church. And then after 20 plus 22, 23 years, I passed the baton of leadership to a younger leader who'd been with me for 15 years. And they're continuing to see God. They just, Kyle, they just sent me a thing. They backed us 564 people last year. So still continuing to see people come to faith in Christ. But because of that, like this is special. Sometimes you can be so close to the miracle that you miss it. Like what you guys are experiencing here at the Hudson, and I know you guys know this, like this is not happening everywhere. This is not normal. Like it's normal to you because it's your story.

Like you've been living this for 10 years. It's normal to you, but I'm just telling you, you are riding the wave of a supernatural move of God. And if you're not careful, you can be so close to it that you miss it. So do not take this for granted. This is precious. And as somebody who got to be a part of something like this for 20 plus years in a place like Vegas, and now I'm in a different season and stage of life, like it goes by so fast. Like I feel like it was just yesterday. My wife and I, and our three little kids at the time, they were seven, five and three, rolled into Las Vegas looking and sounding like the Beverly Hill buildings, man. Like we were country folks from Alabama, like talking about Vegas, like you don't, if you're from Alabama, you don't go to Vegas. If you do, you don't tell anybody, right? Like where I'm from, they don't think Las Vegas is hell, but you can smell it from there, like it's real close. But we roll into Vegas, not having any idea what God was gonna do. And now all these years later, my oldest daughter, she's now 33, she and her husband and three children have planted a church out of our church in Vegas tomorrow. This next weekend, they celebrate two years as a brand new church in Vegas and had no idea. But here's what I'm, I'm just telling you this.

It goes by so fast. So don't take it for granted. God's doing something special here. Let's pray together before we jump into the word. Father, or just because we planned an event, doesn't mean anything supernatural is gonna happen. Or do we need you tonight? Or do we're desperate for you tonight? I'm gonna ask you to pray three things before we launch into the word. Number one, Jesus used to phrase in the gospels. Here's what he would say. He would say he who has ears to hear, let him hear. So I want you to turn that into a prayer in your own heart. Here's what I want you to pray. Maybe this is the first time you've ever prayed. Just say this, Jesus, give me ears to hear what you want to say to me tonight. Now, I also know this weekend you've invited your friends here. So here's what I want you to do. All of those in the room that are already followers of Jesus, I want you to pray that prayer over the people around you. You may or may not know them. But just right now in your own heart, just think about the people sitting around you and say, Lord, give them ears to hear. What you want to say to them tonight. And I'm going to ask you to pray a third thing. I travel and speak a lot of places.

And a lot of times what you do when you travel and speak, is you just show up and preach something you've preached over and over and over and over and over again. But I felt led to do it here tonight. So would you just ask right now in your own heart, just say, Lord, give him strength, give him your words, Holy Spirit of God, have your way. It's in the name of Jesus we pray and all of us say together. Amen. I have had the privilege for almost 40 years of pastoring people. I've sat with CEOs and prisoners. I've sat with millionaires and single moms. I've sat with athletes and addicts. I've stood beside hospital beds, grave sites, at wedding altars and in counseling rooms. And after all these years, I believe I've learned something. Everybody has something in their life. They wish was different. In a room like this, hundreds of people in this room, and I know there's hundreds watching online at a student gathering at the Lexington campus. In a gathering like this, I promise you, all these people in this room, people in this room, there's something in our lives we wish could be change. I mean, let's be honest, that's why a lot of us are here tonight, right? We're here because what that thing is, we've brought into this place tonight, hoping beyond all hope that tonight is the night that it finally changes. For some, it's spiritual. There's some of you here tonight like the young man in that video. You walked in today with an emptiness. There's a void in your life. There's a hole in your soul that you can't feel and you've tried. You've tried all the things that the world says that you have to have to fill that hole on the inside. You've tried success. You've tried material possessions. Maybe you've tried drugs or alcohol or sex or relationships, platform, career, legacy, and yet still your soul is longing for satisfaction. You walked in here tonight because maybe somebody just invited you said, "Hey, would you go with me to this event?" And you stumbled into this place because there's a hole in the inside that you've been trying to fill. You hadn't found it yet. You're still not satisfied. For some, it's spiritual and you already know Jesus. You had a moment like Cody wearing the video. I think it was Cody right in the video where you've come to know Christ. You've met Jesus, but there's still an area of your life that you desperately need him to change. Maybe it's an area of weakness or an area of sin. Maybe if we were going to be honest tonight,

and I don't know we always like to do that at church, right? Like we come to church and somebody will say, "Man, how you doing?" And we put the church face on and say, "I'm doing a wonderful brother." Went on the real story is we're falling apart inside, but we can't really tell them that, right? And they didn't really want to know. They just wanted me to give them the attaboy, right? But if we were going to be really honest in this room tonight, there's some of us that have been before the Lord more times than we'd like to be honest about an area of weakness or sin in our life that we've cried out to God about, and it's still an area of struggle and dominates your walk. It discourages your soul. Maybe tonight you're hoping, I hope tonight is the night that finally changes. For some it's physical. What they need changed is not something spiritual or it's a real physical need. There's a need for healing. It's that diagnosis that you receive that you weren't expecting. It's an issue of chronic pain that nobody can seem to fix. It's a healthy body, or excuse me, it's a body that's not doing what a healthy body is supposed to do. Maybe you've come here tonight hoping that somehow this God that you've heard about can touch you physically. For some it's relational. It's a marriage that's struggling. Maybe you walked in here and the thing that you're holding on to that you wish Maybe it's not a marriage relationship, maybe it's another relationship, maybe it's a dating relationship, maybe it's a relationship with a child who's far from God and living the prodigal life and in rebellion, but again, you've come in here and you're just hoping that maybe, maybe, maybe, Jesus could change this. For some, it's financial, for some, it's vocational, for some, it's emotional. You walked into this room today carrying something that you desperately wish could change. We all got our something, right? We all came in here with it. And here's the problem, when our lives are broken

and when there's that stuff going on that we just think is beyond the ability to change, we often fall into a trap of believing one of two lies. Here's the first lie that we believe. Jesus doesn't really love me. I mean, if Jesus really loved me, he'd change this. We begin to question his love. Maybe we would never say it out loud. Maybe we would never utter the words, but we think he just doesn't care or he's too busy or maybe you've never met Jesus and you have the mentality that, hey man, you don't know what I've done. Like you don't know all the stuff in my past. If you knew all the stuff in my past, you'd know for sure Jesus can't love me. Like I got a lot of stuff buried in the closet. There's no way, like if Jesus really knew all of that stuff, there's no way he would ever love me. But then there's the second lie we often believe. Maybe he loves me, but Jesus can't really change this thing in my life. Maybe you've reached the point where you just think, hey man, my thing, it's just beyond his ability. It's too big for Jesus. He can't change me. But can I let you know this weekend that you have come to this church on this night on a very good night?

Let me tell you why. I got some great news for you. Here's the first part of the news. Jesus loves you right where you are. It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter what you've done. It doesn't matter where you've been. It doesn't matter what you feel. It doesn't matter what the lies of your own flesh are saying to you about your performance. The reality of this book is that Jesus absolutely loves you right where you are. Here's the second thing. Jesus has the power to change you right where you are. He has the power to change you right where you are. You say, how do you know he has the power to change you? Listen what this book says about it. There's a man in the Bible by the name of Paul. You want to talk about somebody who was far from God? Paul, before he was known as Paul, was called Saul. Saul had devoted his life to killing Christians and trying to stamp out the name of Jesus. Like I don't know that you can get further onto the dark side than murdering Christians and trying to stamp out the name of Jesus. And Paul meets this Jesus on the road to Damascus and experiences radical life change. And here's what Paul said about Jesus in Ephesians chapter three and verse 20. Listen to these words that Paul writes

telling us about the power of Jesus. He says about him. He says now to him who is able to do abundantly more than we can ask or think according to the power that works within us. You know what Paul says? Paul says Jesus has the ability to do more than we can think, more than we can imagine, more than we can ever ask. Jesus is all powerful. I'm here to tell you tonight Jesus not only loves you, Jesus has the power to change you right where you are. Here's the only question of the night. Will you and I reach out to him by faith? You got your Bible, I want you to open it to a text of scripture that is not one that you hear preached very often. It's Luke chapter six. Just a minute, I'm gonna be reading out of verse 17, 18, 19 right there. The verses right before this text of scripture are pretty infamous, they're pretty famous because it's the verses where Jesus calls his first 12 disciples. It's the original call. The verses right after this text are very famous because they're actually containing the most significant sermon Jesus ever preached. It's called the sermon on the Mount. So the verses we're about to read are sandwiched right in between

two significant milestones in the New Testament. And often we read these verses like they're just the pathway to get from one to the other, but we don't realize all that's here. So let's read it. Luke chapter six, beginning in verse 17. Here's what it says. And he, the he hears Jesus, came down with them and stood on a level place with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the seacoast of Tyre and Sidon, who came, listen to this, to hear him and to be healed of their diseases and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured and all the crowd sought to touch him. For power came out from him and healed them all. Imagine with me for just a minute this crowd of people. Filled with brokenness. There were people in this crowd who had physical disabilities that needed to be touched by Jesus. There were people in this crowd who spiritually were broken and had heard that Jesus had the words of life that could finally bring peace to their souls. There were people in this crowd whose families were falling apart. There were people in this crowd

who literally were being dominated and controlled by demonic spirits. Like this is not a crowd like we have here on a Saturday night in Winston's or in Greensboro, North Carolina, at two cities church. Like this is not a crowd that everybody came in a car and everybody's dressed looking good. Like this crowd was broken, hurting, discouraged, depressed people. Many of them, the Bible says it come from Tyre and Sidon, which means they walked almost five days. I don't know how far it took you to get to church. How long it took you to get to church tonight? I live now, I lived in Vegas 25 years. I now live in Atlanta, Georgia, but I talked about Atlanta traffic. Man, it is real, it's terrible. Like you can't get anywhere in Atlanta in less than an hour, but you're talking about five days? Like would you have walked five days to get here tonight? If we're going to be honest, I think most of it would say probably not. That's how desperate, that's this crowd of people, different backgrounds, different stories, different problems, but everybody in the crowd had this in common, they had something they wanted Jesus to change. So out of this text, let me share with you three truths and we're done. Number one, Jesus loves people right where they are.

Do you hear what the verse said? Verse 17, "And he came down with them." And Jesus had been up on a hillside. He'd called his original 12 disciples. Now here's all these needy, broken, messy lives rather than withdrawing from them. The text says he moved towards them. You know what that is? That's a picture of the gospel. It's a picture of the whole metanarrative of the Bible that God loves you and me. God looked out on the world that he'd created, the world that he spoke into existence. And God saw that humanity had chosen to sin against God that through sin brokenness and death and disease had entered the world. And he saw a world that he created perfect that was now ravaged and broken and messed up because of our own sin. And rather than God distancing himself from us, the scripture says in John 3, 16, that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Rather than distancing himself from us, God ran to us. That's exactly what's happening in this text. All these broken, messy people and Jesus is coming towards them. Here's what I want you to hear tonight.

Listen, if you're here and there's some brokenness in your life that you need Jesus to change, you don't have to wait for it to, you don't have to try to just run to him. You need to know that he's run to you. He's here to meet you right where you are and bring that change. There's this thing in the world called religion. Religion basically teaches this and it doesn't matter what you call it, you can call it Christianity. But here's basically what all religion teaches. God is at the top of the mountain. We're all at the bottom of the mountain. There are many paths from the bottom of the mountain up to the top of the mountain. It doesn't matter which one you choose, you can choose any of those paths and each of those paths will give you steps that you can perform that hopefully will ultimately bring you up the mountain so that you can meet God and you can earn God's love and God's favor through all the stuff that you do to try to earn it. That's what religion says. You know what Christianity says? The exact opposite. Christianity says, yeah, it's true. God's at the top of the mountain. And yes, it's true. We're all at the bottom of the mountain.

But here's what Christianity says. There's nothing you and I can do to ever work our way up the mountain. There's nothing we could ever do to get to God. So here's the story of the Bible. When you and I couldn't get to him, God came down the mountain to get us. And the person of Jesus, He came to rescue us from our brokenness. Tim Keller says it this way. The gospel is this, we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared to believe. Yet at the same time, we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope. You see what Luke six is? It's a personification of the gospel in real life. Here's a whole crowd of broken, messy, hurting people. And what do we find Jesus doing? He's moving towards them. Why? Because He loves you right where you are. A couple of things the Bible teaches us about the love of Jesus. Now, honestly, there's so much we get unpack about the love of Jesus that I'm gonna limit it to two things. Two things the Bible teaches us about how much Jesus loves you and us.

Number one, He loved us initially. What does that mean? Here's what it means. He chose to love you before you loved Him. Why don't you tell me say that again? You're so loved by Him. You need to understand He chose to love you before you loved Him. I'm gonna read it to you out of the Bible. I think it'll be on the screen. First John chapter four. It says, "In this is love." And I want you to say the next word out loud. And this is love, what's the next word? All right, we're gonna do it one more time. You ready? And this is love. What's the next word? I want you to say it one more time. We're gonna do this one more time. All right, ready? And this is love. Not that we love God, but that He loved us. You're talking about love. It's not not that we loved God. It's that He loved us and said His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. That means the only way you and I can ever love Him

is to love Him in response. The word love that's used here, there are many words for love in the Greek New Testament. This particular word is a word that means love as an act of a will. This is not an emotional feeling. This is not something you fall in and out of. This is love that is an act of the will. It is finding your joy in someone as an act of the will, meaning this. He chose to love you. Listen, He didn't choose to love us because we're lovable. As a matter of fact, listen what the psalmist said. In Psalm 14, the Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there's any who understand who seek after God. They've all turned aside together, they've become corrupt. There is none who does good. Not even one. He didn't love us because we're lovable. He didn't love us because we loved Him first. No, we just read not because we loved Him first. He didn't love us because we can do something for Him. As a matter of fact, Jesus said apart from me, you can do if you know it's that out loud. Nothing. Here's what Jesus said. There's not anything you can do apart from me that would please me and it begs the question.

Why did He choose to love us? Glad you asked because He answered it in Deuteronomy chapter seven. I'm gonna show you these verses and I'm gonna read them to you out of Eugene Peterson's what's called the paraphrase. It's called the message. It's a paraphrase of the Old Testament. Listen what He said, God wasn't attracted to you and didn't choose you because you were big and important. The fact is there was almost nothing to you. He did it out of sheer love. James' voice summed it up. Here's what he said. The reason God loves us is that He loves us. Jesus loves you right where you are. You don't have to earn it. You don't have to perform to get it. He loves you. It doesn't matter who you are, doesn't matter what you've done, doesn't matter what dark roads you've been down. Jesus loves you right where you are. He loves us initially. Here's the second thing I want to tell you about His love. He loves us unconditionally. Here's what that means. He loves us in our brokenness. The verse I want to show you, Romans 5.8, I got it on the screen, but God shows His love for us in that, don't miss this, while we were still, what? Not once we got our act together, not once we cleaned it all up.

He said, God showed us He loved us in that while we were still sinning, Christ died for us. A lot of us think, here's the message of the gospel. Get it cleaned up and then come to Jesus. Get your act together and then come to Jesus. Get your brokenness cleaned up and then come to Jesus. Some of you think Jesus is waiting on you to change in order for Him to love you. The gospel says Jesus loves you, and it's His love that's going to change you. That's what Luke 6 is. This story in between these two significant passages of Scripture is a story of Jesus moving towards broken people because He loves them right where they are. Here's the second truth I want to teach you tonight. Not only does Jesus love us right where we are, number two, Jesus has the power to change people right where they are. Did you hear what the verse said? Verse 19, "All the crowds sought to touch Him for power came out of Him and He healed them all." Our power here is a word in the Greek language. The Greek word is dunamis. We get our English word dynamite from it. It's a word that speaks to ability and strength and might. And here's the promise of the Word of God. It doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter where your life is today. Jesus loves you and has the power to change you right where you are. You say, "Man, how can you be so sure that Jesus has the power?" Well, two reasons. One, I've seen Jesus change people right where they are because He changed my life. There's some special friends of mine sitting right here on the front, James and Tracy. I've worked with them in other parts of the world. James will remember this, we were one time in a place in South Asia.

We were in one of the largest red light districts and a place in South Asia that we were teaching the gospel to about 30 or 40 prostitutes that packed into a little crowded room to learn some sewing skills. And while we were teaching the gospel to these 30 or 40 women that packed into this room, a demon possessed woman literally came in the room and a voice began to come out of her that was like something I'd never heard before in my life. I'd read about this stuff in the Bible, but I've never seen it with my own eyes. And then some of the pastors began to pray and before we knew it, man, God moved. The demon was cast out of this woman. She's sitting clothed in her right mind, gives her life to Christ. I'm telling you, I've seen it with my own eyes, that Jesus of this book can change you right where you are. But not only can I tell you that as a matter of personal testimony, I can tell you that based on the authority of the Word of God, and that's even more significant. I want to show you just one verse that speaks to the power of Jesus. It's in Colossians chapter one. Colossians chapter one, listen to what it says, for by Him is Jesus. For by Him, get this. All things were, you know what the next word is? If you know the verse, say it out loud, what's the next word? Created. By Him, Jesus, all things were created. We're talking Genesis 1-1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Use that God, Jesus. Meaning everything you and I can see, taste, touch, feel, smell or experience, Jesus spoke it into existence, and the word used here for create is a word that means to speak out of nothing. It's not like he took a box of Lincoln logs and made something pretty. No, Jesus spoke out of nothing, and everything we know. The world we live in is a cosmos and not a chaos because Jesus is sitting on the throne

holding it all together in place. That's the power of this Jesus we're talking about. I said a moment ago, we all got something we wish was changed. What I'm telling you is Jesus loves you right where you are. He has the power to change. You write where you are. I said, for some it's spiritual. Some of you came into this room with that emptiness, that void. You say, "Where does that void come from?" Let me show you. It Ecclesiastes chapter 3, put it up here on the screen, verse 11. "Also he," this is God, "has put eternity into every man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from beginning to end." I got to be honest, I don't know all that verse means, but here's what I know it means. Every human being on planted earth was made in the image of God and came into this world for one primary purpose. Here it is, to know God and love God and to be known and loved by God. That's the purpose. I don't care what country, what culture, what color, what language, the purpose of every human being on planet earth is to know God and love God and be known and loved by God. The Bible says, "God put that in the soul of a human being." There is a God-shaped vacuum inside of every human being and we try to fill it with all kind of stuff. But the only thing that will bring peace and satisfaction and contentment and joy in life is a personal relationship with God where you know him and love him and are known and loved by him. But here's the problem. Isaiah tells us, "Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear meaning this. God made us to know him and love him, but because we've sinned against God and God is holy, our sin has separated us from God." Like the mountain we were talking about earlier, God's at the top, we're at the bottom and our sin has created this chasm that separates us from God and no matter how much good stuff we do, no matter how moral we try to be, we can't erase the fact that we've sinned against God and our sin separates us from our relationship with him. The verse we read a moment ago said that he loved us even though we were sinners and Christ died for us. He said, "What is the death of a man 2,000 years ago have to do with my life today? Here's what it has to do. You see sin separates us from God. God loves us, but he's holy. He will not be in fellowship with sin. And because of our sin, we don't have access to God. The very reason we were created to know him and love him, we've lost because of sin in our lives, but God loved us so much that he sent his son Jesus into the world. Here's what Jesus did. He did what you and I couldn't do. He perfectly fulfilled the will and law of God. He lived a

completely righteous life as God in the flesh. He lived as a human being and he perfectly kept God's law. Then he offered his body on a cross as a substitute. Here's what happened on the cross. Jesus took all of your sin and he took all of my sin. Every sin I've ever committed, every sin I'll ever commit, every sin of action, every sin of reaction, every sin of attitude, every sin of thought, Jesus took all of our sin on himself. And when Jesus died, God the Father poured out all of his wrath and judgment against sin on Jesus. When he died, he died in my place. He died the death that I should have died, separated from the Father because of my sin, but as my substitute, Jesus stepped in the middle and he took all of my sin and he died. But here's what the gospel's good news. He didn't stay dead. On Sunday morning, he rose again from the dead as a testimony that God had accepted his sacrifice for our sin and now any one of us who simply reach out by faith and grab ahold of him and any one of us that reach out by faith and touch him, we can be reconciled back to God. If you're here tonight and you've never surrendered the control of your life to Jesus, you've never reached out by faith and laid hold of Jesus tonight for the very first time. the power to change you right where you are, and you can be forgiven. You can be reconciled back into relationship with God. Others, I said, need this change, because it's spiritual, but they already know Jesus. Some of you are here, and you're walking with some disobedience. You're walking with some baggage. You're walking with some attitudes that He wants to change, some habits that He wants to break, some sinful patterns that He wants to set you free from, some priorities that He wants to reorder. A few moments, we're going to have a time where our team is going to come and lead us in a song, and we're going to open this altar up, or maybe you just need to turn your seat into an altar, and like the people in this crowd, there's some of you. You've been carrying this weakness, this area of disobedience in your life. We call it a struggle, we excuse it, we justify it, we come and make a decision one day, and then we go back the next day and do it again. Maybe for some of you for the first time tonight, you need to come get in this altar, you need to stop trying, you need to start trusting, and just reach out and touch Him. Let Him change you. For some, it may be physical. There were some people in this crowd that needed the healing power of Jesus,

maybe it's cancer, maybe it's chronic illness, maybe it's a syndrome, maybe it's pain, infertility, disability, disease. I understand when we start talking about this kind of stuff, some of us are so theologically conservative that talking about this healing power of Jesus makes us a little bit nervous and uncomfortable. We kind of respond like this, man, we start talking about that's that people are going to call us charismatic, they're going to call us Pentecostal. Well, let me just ease the tension, all right? Ain't none of us even close, all right? Nobody's going to be accusing us of that, all right? We're not that, all right? But here's what I do know, that Jesus of the Bible is still the same Jesus that's sitting on the throne today, and that Jesus has the power to heal. Does he always heal? Listen, for the believer, yes, just not always on our time-learn. Have you ever read the book of Revelation? No more crying, no more death, no more sickness, no more, you know what happens when we see him? All the stuff we've struggled with in this life, he ultimately will heal us, but I do believe this. I believe today that sometimes Jesus chooses in His sovereign plan to touch people and heal people. Does he have to, is he obligated to? Absolutely not. But I think often in the church in America, we miss out on the supernatural activity of God because we somehow have theologically explained away the God of this book, and the God of this book is still sitting on the throne, and the Bible said when they touched him, he healed them. Maybe tonight, maybe. And listen, I say this with the sense of fear and trepidation of my own. Listen, I got two boys. My two boys are both adults, they're married, they got they got kids, they're leveraging their lives for the sake of the mission. Both of my boys were born legally deaf. They've been deaf most of their life. They were hearing aids. They're in the normal range of hearing about three years ago. They started losing some peripheral vision, having some night blindness. We had them tested, found out I got two sons, both of them are what's called Usher's Type 2A syndrome, which means not only are they legally deaf, but by the time they're 60 years old, they'll be legally blind. You know what? We pray a lot. We pray. The matter of fact, the last time I preached this message, I got with my son.

We knelt down an altar, and I asked Jesus to heal him. Did he that day? No. Can he? Yes. Maybe he won't. Maybe Jesus desires to use those things in my son's lives so that they can bring him glory in other ways, but he doesn't stop me as a dad from getting on my face and saying, Jesus, if tonight is the night, God, would you heal them? There may be some people here tonight who in the days, weeks, and months to come, you're going to tell the story. You came and gotten an altar. It may need to happen tonight. Some of you that know somebody who's here that's sick and needs a physical touch. Maybe you need to get in this altar with them, and you just need to lay hands on them, and you need to ask God to do what only God can do. We can see God supernaturally touch people's lives. Others need change relationally, financially, vocationally. A lot of different ways we need change. Here's the last thing, and I'm done. Whatever brought you into this room today did not catch Jesus by surprise. He loves you. He has the power to change you, or to lovingly carry you through whatever it is in your life that he chooses to use for You're good in His glory. But here's the last truth. Jesus owned Did you hear the last verse we read? "All the crowds sought to touch Him. For power came out from Him and healed them all." What the text is not saying is He healed everybody in the crowd. Here's what the text is saying. He healed everybody who touched Him. What is that touch? It's a touch of faith. Just a few moments, we're going to open these altars. They're going to be pastors, elders, and prayer team members standing over on both sides. If you're here tonight and you don't know Jesus, you can come to one of them and say, "I need Jesus," and they'll show you from the Bible how you can meet this Jesus, and He'll change you just like the young man's testimony. He'll take you from where you are and change you from the inside out. Others of you need that spiritual bondage to be broken in that area of weakness or shame. Others need a physical touch. Others need relationship change.

This altar is going to be open. You can turn your seat into an altar. But here's the deal. You've got to come with faith. Last verse I'll show you in Matthew 17, it says, "Jesus said, 'I say to you, if you have faith, like a grain of mustard seed.'" You'll say to this mountain, "Move from here to there and it'll move." You ever held a mustard seed in your hand? We think about a seed and we think about a pumpkin seed or a apple seed. Did you know that a mustard seed is so small? You could have it on your tongue and you would not know it was there. Jesus is not here saying, "You've got to have a whole lot of faith." He's not talking here about the amount of your faith. He's talking about the object of your faith. If you put just a little bit of faith in Him, He can change. He said, "What is faith?" It's hard to define, to be honest. It was actually a missionary named John Patton. He was a missionary to the Hebrew to his islands. He was translating the Bible into the language of a people that had never had the Bible before. And he got to the word "faith" and he didn't know how to translate it because there was no word in their language for faith. So he sat in his hut and he just wrestled with this word. And finally, a native that he'd been ministering to comes running into his hut, sits down in his chair and has been working all day exhausted. He said, "Man, it feels so good to rest my whole weight on this chair." And as soon as he said it, John Patton said, "That's faith." Faith didn't have it all figured out. Faith didn't have it all put together. Faith is just resting it all on him. In just a moment, after I pray, the team is going to lead us.

This altar is going to be open. You ready to reach out and touch him by faith? Let's bow our head for just a moment. Maybe you're here. A friend invited you to come. Your soul is empty. You've never surrendered your life to Jesus. But here's what you know. He loves you. He loves you right where you are. He died for you and he has the power to change you, to bring you into fellowship with God, to give you a relationship with God. With nobody looking around right now, but me, if you're here tonight and for the very first time you're ready to rest your whole weight on him, you're ready to surrender your life to Jesus and trust him to forgive you and to give you a relationship with God. I want you to just pray right there in your seat. These words that I'm going to pray out loud. You don't have to pray my loud. You can pray in your heart. But if you're here tonight and you've never trusted Jesus and for the very first time you're ready to embrace Jesus and be forgiven and be changed. Just say this. Or Jesus, I know that I've sinned against you. Jesus, I know that you love me anyway. I know that you died for my sin. I know that you rose again. And right now, Jesus, I put my faith in you to forgive me of my sin, to reconcile me with God and to give me a home in heaven forever. Now, just say thank you, Jesus, for saving me. Just hold your hand up for just a moment.

I'm not going to embarrass you. Just hold your hand up. Thank you. God bless you. Somebody else. God bless you. Just hold your hand up for the first time tonight. God bless you. Thank you. God bless you, young man. God bless you, man. Somebody else. For the first time tonight. I've given my life to Jesus. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you, sir. God bless you, sir. Listen, in just a moment, when we start to sing, if you've given your life to Jesus, here's what I want to ask you to do. You don't have to do this to be saved. You don't have to do this to earn the love of God. This church wants to walk with you. When we begin to sing, I want you to come down from where you're sitting, come to the side of the stage, to one of these pastors or prayer volunteers, prayer team members, and they're going to talk to you about next steps in following Jesus. If you didn't pray with me, but you'd like to know how to pray and receive Jesus, you come to one of them too and say, hey, I need Jesus for the rest of us.

This altar is going to be open. Lord, right now in the name of Jesus, I pray for those that have surrendered their life to you. God, I pray as only you can. God, that in this moment, they would sense an overwhelming peace and security, knowing that you have forgiven them of their sin. You have reconciled them with the Father. They don't have to earn their way in. They don't have to perform their way in. They are a loved, adopted child of God because of you, Jesus. Lord, I pray they'd come and talk to somebody and say, I've given my life to Jesus tonight or give them the boldness to take that step. Lord, for many others here tonight that need you to change them spiritually or physically or relationally, God, would we come get in this altar like this broken, messy crowd and Luke, may we press our way and reach out by faith in an altar and touch you. God is only you can in this moment have your way. Move, Lord, in power. It's in the name of Jesus, we pray. Let's stand together. Our team is going to come and lead us. The altar is open. The pastors and prayer volunteers are here. You respond right now as God speaks to you. [ Silence ], "God is the Son of Christ." You