You Are Worth the Fine

Moses asked God a question. He said, please show me your glory, glory being the manifestation of God's splendor and God's beauty and God's greatness. Glory is a revelation. So Moses wants to see something that God has to reveal. That's why he asked, please show me your glory. I just want to have the simplicity of a Samuel who says, Lord, first of all, the answer is yes. But for the request, because you are Lord, I'm servant and I'm going to do what you told me to do. Hey church family, me and my family are on sabbatical this Sunday, so I'm very excited to introduce to you one of my friends. She is somewhat of a new friend. I met her actually in California when we were speaking at the same conference. And after hearing her share the word, I realized we have to get Lisa Harper in the house. This mighty woman of God is an incredible preacher and teacher. She's also authored over 15 books. Unbelievable. So for the very first time here at Legacy, I would love it if you could stand to your feet and welcome Lisa as she comes to share the word of God. Lisa, make yourself at home. We love you already. Welcome to the family. Oh, y'all sit down. Oh man, sit down, sit down. I am so excited to be here. I'm much more excited than y'all are. Because I know some of y'all walked in from vacation thinking Pastor Lyle will be up here and it's like, who is that old white chick? So I know you're wishing you had gone to brunch, but the Bible says God uses donkeys and rocks. So we're going to trust that he's going to move among them this morning. Reach out and touch that saint next to you. Gentlemen, if you're single and you're sitting next to a woman, be real careful about the the holy touch. Would you close your eyes and just exhale? Life is so busy. You know, if you ever have the privilege of walking up the southern steps in Jerusalem, the lead to temple, we know definitively Jesus, King Jesus, incarnate Jesus walked up those steps. Because every Jewish male did for worship. And it's so interesting because the steps are uneven. When they built the temple, they did that on purpose. So you had to stop going into worship and kind of recalibrate your heart. You couldn't just go in rote. You had to pay attention to your trip. Would you just ask God to dissipate any distractions you brought in here this morning? Ask God to, through his spirit, give us eyes that see more clearly. Ears that hear louder the love songs he promises to sing over us in Zephaniah chapter three. Hearts that are pliant for the seed God is going to sow into us this morning through the revelation of his word and revelation of Holy Spirit. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, thank you that we are sons and daughters. We are not orphans.

Thank you that when you ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of God, the Father, you didn't leave us by ourselves. You actually said it's good for me to go because I'm sending you Holy Spirit, the paraclete. Holy Spirit, we confess we cannot understand this love story called the Bible apart from you. So would you continue to have your way in this family room? Plow up the places in our hearts that are numb or hard. Lord, circumcise our hearts even as you inform our minds. Re-gospel us this morning. Re-amaze us this morning. Lord, even as I pray that it sounds so audacious to come before you, the author and the perfecter of our faith. The one who breathed the universe into existence to ask you to do something. Lord, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you that we are not slaves, we're children. That because of your great mercy, even fresh mercy this morning, we can come before you with our request. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, God. Thank you, God, thank you, God. Thank you, God, thank you, God, thank you, God, thank you, God. Jesus, we can't make it by ourselves. So we ask these things by the power and authority of your name, the name that one day every knee will bow before and the power and authority of the blood you shed on our behalf because thousands of years ago, you looked into eternity and you said, they're worth it to me. They are worth it to me. I read gospel as Jesus and we'll be careful to give you the honor and the praise for what you do among us this morning.

Amen and amen. I need to make a few confessions. One is Pastor Lyle, in absentia, and Pastor Brian said, I can come down here because for one thing, I'm old. I'm 62 and I can't see y'all good from there and so I like to be close, but I need to confess to y'all I'm a spitter and I don't mean to be. I just get real excited talking about Jesus and so there might be just a little overspray. Baby brother, you're gonna get baptized this morning. So I wanna confess, I wanna confess that and then I wanna confess that I am single. Now that's not necessarily sad. I've always been single, I'm 62. God promises that he's a husband to the husbandless and a father to the fatherless. I became a mom through the miracle of adoption the year I turned 50. So gentlemen, excuse me for TMI, but I went through menopause and motherhood at the exact same time. It was epic. Got all those emotions out in one fell swoop, but I wanted to TMI y'all first thing this morning. We will be in the Bible. The series is summer school and so I'm gonna take y'all to a book that out of all the books in the New Testament,

this would be probably the most summer schooly of all the books because there are some remedial Christians that God said, I gotta show y'all this again. Y'all didn't get it the first time around and so before we dive into the book of Hebrews, I wanna set it up by telling y'all one of my good date stories. By the way, if you know anybody, between 55 and death, I'll go younger, they gotta love Jesus and be employed. That's it. Don't have to have hair or money, just Jesus and employment. But anyway, can I get a witness? But anyway, couple of decades ago, I moved to Nashville to work for a youth sports ministry called the Fellowship of Christian Athletes from Central Florida and so I didn't speak Southern yet and I thought Nashville was Cracker Barrel and country music and I was like, oh, help me Jesus. And then I moved here and I fell hard. I'm now much more Tennessee than I am Florida. I've lived here for 40 years. But anyway, because I came up here to work for FCA, I started getting set up with a lot of gentlemen who were in professional sports. And I had a friend, his name is Reggie White, one of the greatest linemen ever in the history of time. Anyway, I got to know Reggie through FCA

and Reggie said, Lisa, we have got a guy, one of the guys I played with in the league, I'm not gonna tell you which team this guy played for because I don't want you to Google him and spoiler alert, we did not get married. So he married somebody else and had a mess of children. But when this fellow was still single, Reggie said, y'all just, I think y'all would be like a pot and a lid. You read all the same old dead guys, I love all the dead theologians, they're my pretend theological boyfriends. He said, he's pretty Southern, I think you'll like him. And I was like, okay, cool. So Reggie made the introduction, this guy and I started talking on the phone. Now this is before internet, well, if they had it, it was, it wasn't personal. There was no FaceTime, there's no way you can connect with somebody visually, except if you actually met him in person. And so I didn't see this guy, except I saw him on ESPN. And so I saw him kind of from a distance and he looked so cute in those little pants. And now I need to say this since I'm at Legacy and I'm 62 and nobody else is telling y'all this, I'm gonna bring y'all two Nana words of wisdom. The rocks from Whole Foods that they call deodorant don't work, I just wanna tell y'all. Your friends are not telling y'all that,

but it's summertime, y'all need to use more than those little rocks. They don't work, especially when church is this crowded. That's my first little Nana word of advice. My second Nana word of advice, I forgot, because I'm almost at the, I'll come to it in just a minute. And oh, I know what it is now, because I talked about his football pants. Gentlemen, if you are too old to be singing with the kids on this stage, y'all need to wear pants that come down to the floor. I've noticed in Nashville, a bunch of y'all are wearing crop pants. They don't look good on you. They just don't. Now, I'm not throwing shade, but I'm telling you, unless they're actual shorts, or unless you're a golfer or a toddler, crop pants, we don't wanna see that. We just don't. It's just, can I get a witness? I'm like, I'm so sorry, brother. You couldn't afford pants that go all the way down to the ground. So anyway, that's all my Nana words of advice. So I get set up with a guy who wore pants that didn't go all the way to the ground, but they were football pants, and he felt about nice. And so we talked for a couple of weeks. It's no FaceTime, because they didn't have it back then.

And then over the phone, he just seemed like a good guy. He said, hey, Lisa, we're playing Atlanta. And I know Nashville's only four hours to Atlanta. Would you be willing to drive to Atlanta? Because then we could meet face to face. And I was like, cool. So I drove from Nashville to Atlanta. This was before Buc-ee's. This was before all the cool stuff. I stopped at a rest area to fluff my hair in the blow dryer thinger. And I mean, I did everything I could with what I had to look good, because I knew I was gonna sit in the wives section. Told me I was gonna sit with the NFL wives who are all on keto. And so I get to the stadium where the Falcons are playing. One of these little itty-bitty wives takes me up to the wives section, sitting with, I don't know, 50, 60 NFL wives. One of these things was not like the other ones. And we're watching the guys on the field. They hadn't started playing yet. And I see the guy I'm being set up with. I'm just gonna call him Bill, that's not his name. But I see Bill from the back, and I was like, ooh, he's a biggin'. And you know, I'm not, I've never been accused of being petite. And so to see this big guy,

I was like, Jesus, this is awesome. Like, look to the east, this is amazing. Because I've always wanted to be with a guy that I could wear his jeans. We're getting to the Bible, I promise we're getting to the Bible. But I've been set up with all these little bitty boys. And I just, you've got a lot of them in Nashville. Have y'all noticed that? They come here thinking in six months I'm gonna be at CMA Fest, and instead they're a barista. And so they're little. They're little, and they have a spirit of bitterness on them. I get set up with them every time, in crop pants. So I'm like, ooh, he has a job, he's a biggin'. This is like awesome. And so the game was incredible. His team won, they beat the Falcons. And he made a couple of key blocks. And then one of the little itty bitty girls said, Bill wants to see you before they get on the bus and fly back to the city that he lived in. And I'm not gonna tell you, so you don't Google it. And so I was like, okay. So I go down, there's this area in the belly of those arenas. And used to NFL guys would shower and change into suits before they wore pajamas. They would change into suits.

Could you tell how old I am? I'm dissin' y'all already about your hair products, your crop pants. Anyway, I like it when a guy wears a suit. So they changed into suits, and then they'd come out, and they'd say goodbye to their wives, and then they'd take the bus to the private airport, get on a private plane, and go back to where they're from. So I go to meet Bill with all the other little wives, and he comes out, y'all. I mean, he was like even better than he was on ESPN. Nice guy, like tender heart, big ol' body, lot of polo cologne. You know how sometimes, you know how sometimes y'all overdo it? Because it's, my nephew almost gave me pleurisy the other day, because he was wearing some kind of something-something. I was like, baby, you've gone nose blind. But still, I like that they go to that much effort for us. And so he reeked in a good way, and he was big, and he's just talking to me, and I thought, I really could like this guy. I mean, this is kind of cool. Well, then they announce that they're all getting on the bus to go to the private airport. And I was like, oh, you know, I had my 15 minutes. Like, this was incredible. We'll keep talking on the phone. And he goes just like this.

After they announce they're supposed to get on the bus, what's your name? Simone, I'm Lisa. I'm using you as a prop right now. So Simone, he goes like this. Bill goes like this. Wait right here. You know, as if I was gonna leave. Like I was gonna stand there for at least a couple of weeks. And he turns around, and he goes to the bus, and some of y'all would know the coach who was his coach. He was a pretty big deal in the NFL. So his coach is standing on those steps at the bottom of the bus. All the guys are getting on the bus. Bill goes over and starts talking to this NFL coach. And Bill has his back to me, and the coach keeps going like this, like looking around his shoulders, looking at me, checking me out. And I thought, uh-oh, like I didn't know if I was in trouble or not. Well then, those hydraulic doors shut. Bill turns, walks away from the bus, as the bus with all his teammates is driving away. And they're yelling out the window, like, bro, she's already got you reptiled,

and you can't go into the bowl. I mean, they're just dissing him. But the bus is driving away, as Bill is walking toward me. Doesn't pay any mind to the bus behind him. Walks right up to me, and this is what he says verbatim. Best line in my entire dating life. I mean, there haven't been that many, but this is the best line. He gets right in front of me, ignores the bus, eye-to-eye, and he said, Lisa, I hope it's okay with you. I told coach that I really wanna get to know you. And so, rather than going to the airport with a team, I'd like to drive back to Nashville with you to have that four hours to connect, and then I'll get a hotel in Nashville, and I'll fly back to that state commercial in the morning. There was a pause, and then he said, you are worth the fine. You are worth the fine. Has anybody ever said that to y'all? Oh, yes, he has. Oh, yes, he has. Jesus, the Son of God, the bright morning star, the Alpha and the Omega. Jesus, second person of the Trinity. Jesus looks at us all day, every day,

through Holy Spirit and says, you are worth the fine. You were the joy set before me when I walked up Golgotha. How often do we forget that? How often do we just live this day-to-day, coming to church Sunday, if you're real spiritual, maybe Wednesday, maybe a small group, but we live from just kind of a big meal to another big, deep meal like spiritual pythons, and half the time, we do not have the sustenance we're so desperate for as Christ followers because we forget we are His beloved. We're not slaves, we're children. We're not slaves, we're children. I love hearing kids in church. Don't you worry about that, baby. And the reason I love hearing babies in church is I totally missed being a mom because I was so broken in my 20s and 30s. I was really drawn to abusive men, some abuse in my backstory, so that was kind of where the handprint got made on my heart. So I was drawn to abusive men, and then I would just barely squeak out of marrying an abuser. The few good, godly guys I dated, that God protected them from me because I was hot mess on a stick for a long time. But I didn't think I'd ever get to be anybody's mom

because of the reality of the toxicity in my life. Fear, I was ruled by fear for a long time. Became a Christ follower when I was five years old. How many of y'all can testify to being saved but not being free? Saved, I was gonna go to glory. Jesus had forgiven me from my sins, but because we're all in the process of sanctification, what was heavy on my life for a long time was shame and fear. And so I didn't think I'd ever get to be anybody's mama. When I hear babies in the house of God, that sounds like a miracle to me. I lived as an orphan. I lived as a person on spiritual keto, starved all the time for the intimacy that God lavishes on us because I just didn't think I was good enough. And so I bowed my head and I lived like a slave. I've just gotta do better, be better, do better, be better, do better, be better. The miracle of the accessibility of Jesus, all too often I didn't grab hold of it. And that's what was going on second half of the first century. About 30 years after the crucifixion and resurrection, there's a group of Christians, they're called the Hebrews because they're Jewish Christians. So they had left Judaism

and they, unlike most of their countrymen, had said he is the Messiah. Jesus, Yeshua from Nazareth, is the Messiah. We've been. waiting for, praying for, longing for for centuries. He is the one Yahweh sent. During a time period when it was not cool to be a Christian, no tattoos, no smoke machines, no great churches to gather together, very few followers of Christ during that time and culture, these Jews said, we believe Jesus is the Christ. But then the going got tougher than they thought it would be. Instead of being in a really close-knit community, instead of life going well for them, all of a sudden culture got crazy and Christians were being martyred because they lived in a polytheistic culture. Greco-Roman authority said, it's fine for you to worship a little G-God. As a matter of fact, we've got over 100 in the Pantheon. Take your pick. And if you aren't sure what your God's name is, we even have a statue to an unknown God. So you can worship anyone and anything with a little G as long as you acknowledge everybody else can worship whoever and whatever they want to worship. It can be a cow. It can be a little fat guy at an Asian restaurant. It can be anything you want.

Just don't say there's one way to be reconciled with God the Father. Sound familiar? Our culture wouldn't hate us if we called Jesus an option. If we said Jesus is simply a way, he's my preference, this is how I worship a supreme being, culture would say that's fine. But when we say he is the only way to be reconciled with a holy God, and there's only one true God, that's when culture has a cow. And so these Christians, ancient Christians, begin to go, we're not sure we're gonna hang on to Jesus. This is so much harder than we thought it would be. My metabolism has not gotten higher. I'm not dating good guys who don't wear crop pants. My job is tough. My kids got beat up on the way home from school. One of my cousins was martyred. You know what? It was easier just being a Jew. So let's jettison the Jesus part. A few of you have had family members talk to you about maybe you've gotten a little too intense with this Jesus thing at Legacy. A few of you have family members who go, is it really wise to give that much money to church? Every pastor I know has a double life. They're all having sex with whoever they wanna have sex with. Is it really wise to do this thing you're calling holiness?

I mean, goodness gracious. Isn't that just self-flagellation? I mean, it's fine if you do some kind of existential construct, but do you really think it's wise to put this much time and energy into a Bible-believing church? Isn't that just hate speech? There's nothing new under the sun. Different words, same story, same lies. The enemy's been spewing them since the fall. These Jewish Christians who go, we're gonna just go back to Yahweh. We're gonna jettison the Jesus part. Their pastor pulls them together for summer school, just like what y'all are doing. He pulls them together, and just imagine a small church, probably 30 to 40 Christ followers. Most scholars think there were no more than 100 in Rome at the time. Most of them had come to Christ when Pete preached at Pentecost, and then gone back. Most scholars think this is Roman Jewish Christians. They go back, and their pastor gathers them together because the book of Hebrews was first preached as a sermon before it was recorded as a book. Most people in the first century couldn't read. Reading was just for people who had a lot of bank. Most of us would have been illiterate during this time period. So this whole book in the New Testament

was first preached as a sermon. And the original audience was made up of men and women who were going, I'm just not sure. I can keep on keeping on. They had forgotten that Jesus is the one who says, you are so worth the fine to me. This is not a transactional religion, y'all. It's always been relational. Always, always, always. Old Testament, New Testament, we have a relational God who's perfectly transcendent. Jackie was just talking about glory. Perfectly transcendent. but he condescends to be knowable, to be accessible, and his accessibility is miraculous. Long ago, Hebrews 1, verse 1, long ago at many times and in many ways, remember, they're in summer school, so he's reviewing the theology of Christianity. Long ago at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of God, of the glory of God, in the exact imprint, verse 3, of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels

as the name he has inherited, is more excellent than theirs. So what he's saying to them is, y'all have engaged with Jesus, you have tasted what it feels like to be sons and daughters of the most high God, through the mediation of Jesus, you can't go back. If you just try to go back to religion and ritual, it is not gonna satiate your heart, because your heart, at some level, has experienced a real relationship with the God you were made for. I told y'all I have platonic crushes on a lot of the old, dead theologians. Blaise Pascal is one of my favorites, who is a mathematician and a theologian, and he said, we have a Jesus-shaped vacuum in our souls, and if you don't engage with Jesus, that vacuum never gets met. Once you've engaged with Jesus, your soul knows when it's running on empty. Once you've experienced intimacy with Jesus, you know what it feels like to have distance in your relationship with Jesus. And so at the beginning of this sermon, he says, y'all can't go back. That's not even an option for you anymore. Once you've tasted this, it's not just about the singing, it's not about the emotions you feel. You were made, imago Dei, quite literally made, for relationship with a God who breathed us into existence,

and once you've experienced that relationship, religion and ritual won't work for you. He says Jesus is the exact imprint, the original Greek of that verse, it's hypostasis, one of the cores of our faith, one of the cores, walls of orthodoxy for legacy. If you read through what Legacy believes, what Lyle puts online, Pastor Brian put online, Nicene Creed, Apostles Creed, and in that it says we have a hypostatic Savior. What that means is Jesus is transcendent. One of the pervasive heresies during the time of the Hebrews and now is that when Jesus became man, he somehow sullied his divine nature. He became a little less, that's why he's saying, no, he's not angel level. He did not become less when he became incarnate. He is hypostatic and homoousis is another Greek word, homo means sane, oousis is substance. So what we believe as Christ followers is Jesus isn't God Junior. Jesus is as authoritative as God, and our God is a triune God, drives me crazy in our culture that people think we've got God the Father in the Old Testament, white hair, kind of unibrowed librarian, just waiting to smack us over the head with the Bible if we get out of line, and then we've got Jesus with hair extensions

in the New Testament hugging lepers. Y'all, that is not biblically defensible. From the very beginning, Holy Spirit is the first verse in the Old Testament. He didn't just come on the scene in Acts chapter two. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, we have a perfect Trinitarian God who decided before the advent of humanity, they will fall and they mean so much to me that I will go and make a way for them to be reconciled. So Jesus didn't become less divine when he was hugging lepers, when he was engaging with the sick, when he was hugging people who hadn't been hugged in years. He didn't somehow sully his divinity. It proves the mercy God had for us all along, that he became accessible. So the shepherd says, remember, remember, he's perfectly God, and he's close. The supreme. in the nearness of God. Y'all, that should blow our hard drives. We should all have to go to summer school for that. I'm gonna give y'all two words. I just finished a doctorate, and I'm so proud. I busted my dumb tail. I was the dumbest person in my doctorate for seven and a half years, and I remember three words. So I want y'all to be impressed with these three words I remember from all these years of study.

Ketaphatic theology and apophatic theology. If you have a mother-in-law who thinks this church is cray-cray and wish you'd go back to the stiff church, I want you to bring these terms up at lunch with her. She'll be impressed. Apophatic spirituality means engaging with God, understanding God through negation. I'm gonna come back to that. You've gotta be careful with apophatic because you take that too far, that becomes apostasy. Ketaphatic spirituality or theology means we engage with God by what we know to be true of God. Carrie and Cody are dear friends. I consider them family. I have learned theology from Carrie and Cody. Carrie and Cody have written things and sung things. My daughter learned English through singing. When I adopted her from Haiti, she didn't know any English. So it's music that taught Missy how to talk. I love lyrics. That's ketaphatic spirituality. When Carrie or Cody write a song about who our God is, I can look at that and the majority of their lyrics come straight from Scripture. So I can read that lyric and go, that's right. We have a good father, that's right. We have an approachable king, that's right. We are called to be a blessing and we are blessed. That I can read, that's ketaphatic. I know in my head, God is this

because of this revelation and revelation of Holy Spirit. So ketaphatic is where the huge majority of our growth comes from as first world Christ followers. Apophatic spirituality is, I can't wrap my mind around all that he is. I am obviously a windbag. I've got a lot of words. When my daughter came to the US from Haiti, it was hard for her because I just filled every gap with English. And I was always talking to her about who God is and how he reveals himself to us. And finally, I just sensed Holy Spirit going, Lisa, maybe a few less words. And I was like, yes, sir. We live out in the boonies in Thompson Station. So I took her out in the front yard one night. We're up on a hill, so it's almost like you can touch the stars. And we laid in the grass in the front yard and I went, baby, God made all those stars. She goes, oh, wow. And I said, he named every single one of them. She goes, wow. And I said, and there's more than a billion stars behind those stars that we can't see. And he put those in the sky and he named those too. And she goes, wow. And I said, and he knows your name. She goes, wow.

I said, and he said, you're worth it to him. He loves you more than I do. And she went, wow. When's the last time you've been wowed by God? Turn to the right and we'll close on this. Hebrews 4, you know this. If you, like me, grew up in the South, you've probably seen this flannel graft or you've memorized it. Or some of y'all have part of this verse as a tattoo. Hebrews 4, verse 12, for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword piercing, to division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning of the thoughts and intentions of the heart. How many of y'all grew up hearing that verse? And we usually use that verse when we're talking about the word of God. We're talking about the Bible, right? When I was a young Bible teacher, I used to scream a lot. Cause my favorite pastor screamed a lot and their veins would poke out on their neck. So I thought to be effective, I had to scream and wave my Bible around. And I spoke, my first professional engagement was at a Baptist church, Women of the Word. I think I was 22. And I was swinging my Bible around teaching on Hebrews and I slung it real hard. On that verse, the word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword.

And Genesis flew out, hit an old woman on the front pew. It's a wonder I wasn't sued. I always associated Hebrews 4.12 with this leather-bound revelation. I want y'all to have a apathetic moment this morning. Do you know he's not talking about the Bible there? This sermon, this book was written between 60 and 70 A.D. We didn't have Bibles. There was no New Testament until 392 A.D., Council of Hippo, Council of Carthage. They didn't have the Gospels until the 60s and the 70s. So there's no collated Bible. The word for the word of God is sharper than two-edged sword is logos. The whole sermon is about Jesus. Once you've engaged with Jesus, nothing else will satisfy you. Mick Jagger was wrong. You can get satisfaction, but it's only through Jesus. The whole sermon is about Jesus. We get to chapter four and he says, the word of God. And suddenly we turn it into a Bible lesson. Now, y'all, I love the Bible. My whole life has been about studying the Bible. But this is not a member of the Trinity. This is a revelation of the authority of God. For the word of God is living and active. Listen, if we would only read the next verse, verse 13 of Hebrews 4. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Since then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens. Jesus, the son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who is in every respect has been tempted as we are. Let us then with confidence draw near to his throne of grace. I love the Bible, but this is the revealed word of God.

The pastor of Hebrews is talking about Jesus. He said, if you're struggling, if you're about to throw in the towel, if you just aren't sure you can keep on keeping on, get close to Jesus. Run to Jesus. He's the one who said, you're worth it to me. You're worth it to me. You're worth it to me. You were the joy set before me. I want you to close your eyes. Pastor's going to close out this time we have together, but I want you to close your eyes. Do you remember the first time you believed a God like that loves a man like me, loves a woman like me? Do you remember the first time you were wowed by the mercy of God? Do you remember the first time you walked an aisle or you raised your hand and you prayed, Jesus, I'm a sinner. I need you to forgive me of my sins. I'm giving you my heart. Do you remember that moment that should have changed the rest of our lives? And so many of us live as if we're orphans instead of his beloved. I was at a women's conference a couple of years ago, and for whatever reason, I decided to teach the very last session on dancing. Y'all can look back up. And this was not a dancing kind of group of women. These were stiff women. And that last message did not go over well. I've never been invited back to that church. But this woman, one woman came up to me at the very end, beautiful African-American woman. And she said, I was very surprised you chose to land on dancing. And I said, yes, surprised myself, too. So it didn't go very well, did it? And she said, well, it was really interesting because a couple of weeks ago in my quiet time, God impressed me to dance. And she said, a lot of people assume I'm comfortable dancing simply because I'm black. And she said, I actually have always been more of a left brain girl. She said, I have a master's in science.

I've never been much of a mover. And I told the Lord I felt uncomfortable. When he told me he wanted me to dance and she said that last session Lisa. It was just for me She said I've kind of hidden in my stiffness And as you were talking about how dancing intimacy leaning into the arms of God is not an option It's who we are I said the Holy Spirit talked to me again And Holy Spirit said to dance with God you've got to quit looking at your feet. You've got to just gaze into his countenance Expecting That you'll find affection. They're expecting that he's not scowling at us He is holy holy does not mean he's mean He's kind he's compassionate. He's loving he's slow to anger and rich in compassion Can you imagine if? Jesus was in the room right now. He is through the work in person Holy Spirit But if it was here in his incarnate form and he'd be wearing a white robe as all Jewish men did back then with blue tassels on the edges and He looked at you and because he's omniscient and omnipotent. We'd all think he's just making eyes for me He's just looking at me and then he were to say to you May I have this dance? I know it's a little weird if you're a man It's easier as a woman with Jesus being gendered, but can you imagine Jesus just extending his hand to you? Some days I wouldn't look at his face. I'd I'd look at my feet Believing there's no way a God like that Could really delight in a woman like me. I know he saved me that's in his job description The idea that a God like that would look at me and like that football player all those years ago and infinitely better Would say you are worth the fine I Actually walked to the cross with joy Because I saw your face on the other side of it Lisa I knew as a five-year-old little girl after all the abuse you went to I knew you'd walk an aisle in a Baptist Church And you wouldn't get it all but you'd go. Maybe just maybe this Heavenly Father won't walk away like my first one did

Do you remember? Do you remember the intimacy we once had? Do you remember when you used to go? I can't wake up without saying the name of Jesus He's my breath. He's my hope. He's my joy Let me ask y'all to stand up Pastor Brian is gonna wrap up this family meeting. We're gonna worship, but I want to I Want to ask you to do something if Holy Spirit prompts you and you feel comfortable doing this I want to ask you as the worship team leads us closer to the throne of God I Want to ask you to kind of as best you can I know it's crowded kind of move where you have a little bit of Space some of y'all know you need to be at the altar for prayer. There's a little bit of room in the back of the room and can I ask you to just Close your eyes Just Kind of seal out the visual distractions around us And when you imagine Jesus standing in front of you smiling with an arm extended towards you beckoning you into embrace beckoning you into intimacy and Would you just respond to Jesus this morning if you don't know what it is to have? Intimacy with Jesus. This is a super safe place To come to one of these brothers or sisters and go will you pray for me? I mean, I know I know the Bible I grew up in the South But the idea that a God like that looks at a person like me and says you're worth the fine kind of blows my hard Drive, it's hard for me to sit in that Maybe you've done something or something has been done to you that separated you from the intimacy you once enjoyed with Jesus And maybe it wasn't some massive sin. Maybe it's just life You've just grown cold in your heart. Would you please come to the altar? And So let's let's bend our knees Let's dance

Let's raise our hands. Let's be family church was never intended to be a country club or any kind of club It's really more of a hospital Rehab hospital, we're all in different stages of healing. I've had a hard year It has been a booger of a year and I don't want to repeat it And I'm finding myself in thin places over and over again Instead of remembering the stuff and ruminating on the stuff. I learned in a doctor program I've had to go back to the basics I've had to go back to Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so I've had to lay in the yard and look at the stars and go oh Lord I'm sorry when I try to wrap my mind around you you're bigger than that I don't want a God that I can fully understand Jesus overwhelm me Jesus let me get lost in you Jesus Jesus Jesus restore unto us the joy and the purity and the hope and the intimacy of our salvation let's respond to Jesus family