Urban Legends #2
[Video, Eerie Sounds] Well, I wanted to give you a little bit of, kind of a little bit of scoop on the now famous haunted house video. If you are new with us, we were promoting our legends, and we were at a house where there is an urban legend, where a little girl was supposed to be murdered, and now, she haunts the house. And the freaky thing is, we found in the video a couple of freaky images. If you want to see it, you can go to Utube.com, type in Urban Legends and it is there on the first page. We have had thousands of people looking at it. We have been bombarded with emails, phone calls. In fact, Sarah, you got this one in this morning. What’s the email say?
[Sarah] It says, “Sarah, my name is William and I attend the Edmond campus. Can you please get this message to Craig? My friends and I used to go to that house for fun. One night, I swear we felt a presence and heard a female voice asking for help. Most people don’t believe us, but we will never go back to that house. Anyway, thanks for your ministry. God is good. William.”
[Craig] Yeah, we’ve got some parents who are a little freaked out because their kids are scared. Let me be just very clear. I don’t believe this house is haunted. I don’t think we are seeing a ghost. I do believe in evil spirits. I do believe in demons, but when a little girl dies, they don’t turn into an evil spirit, so I wanted to introduce you. This is Mark. He is the guy who shot the video, and he is the one who found this first. Do you want to just talk us through what you think?
[Mark] Well, I’m not really sure, Craig, because you see, the first shot I had out here, it’s tilted down from the window there. You know, there’s … the sun glares on there, so my guess is, we were shooting you through the window over here. You kind of see it for the first time coming up. Right there. Pretty weird.
[Craig] Show it to us again. What, what could that be? Go ahead and roll it.
[Mark] Well, you know, that could be someone walking outside, a reflection of light or something like that, but what is strange is, the second one … I’m kind of going, I’m rolling in the same direction, but the thing is going the other way.
[Craig] Yeah, show it to us one more time. It looks like a person.
[Mark] But, here we go. Here we go. Rolling. Strange.
[Craig] Yeah, so it could be some light reflection, could be camera, so it’s nothing to worry about. It is an interesting house. We won’t go back there, but today we will talk about another urban legend.
[Video, Music]
Well, welcome today to all of our campuses, and all of you watching on video. If you have your Bibles with you, please open them today to II Timothy 4. That’s where we are going to start, as we continue our study on Urban Legends. Today, I want to talk to you about a spiritual urban legend that I think is one of the most dangerous, and yet, one of the most common spiritual urban legends in the American church today. You will hear people talk about this. You will hear it on TV today with TV preachers. You’ll read books about it, and you will hear it over and over and over again, and it is a message that feels very good. Here is the urban legend. It goes something like this. God wants you happy. God has good things in store for you. God wants you to enjoy your life. God wants you to prosper in every single way. The bottom line is, God wants you happy. I call this message the theology of happiness, and the danger is that it elevates us to the point where God is there to serve us, rather than the truth, and that is that we are here to serve Him. It is very subtle, and yet very seductive. You can see it even permeating our children’s stories. Read any fairy tale, any story to a kid, and you will always hear it close out with the same famous line … “And they all lived,” what? Say it with me, “And they all lived happily ever after.”
[Video, Craig with children] Papa bear said, “Who’s been eating my porridge?” And mama bear said, “Who’s been sitting in my chair?” And baby bear said, “Hey, somebody’s sleeping in my bed. It’s a little girl.” Well, papa bear had had a really bad day, because his house taxes went up, and because his boss was mad at him. So, papa bear lost his cool and went in to the little girl, grabbed her with his paws. So mama bear grabbed the little girl and pawed her across, and blood shot on the wall. And the little girl screamed, “Help me. Help me. I’m only a little girl. Somebody save me!” But mama bear and papa bear showed no mercy. They clawed the little girl, and threw her little blonde hair up against the wall like a rag doll until the little girl slowly bled to death, and baby bear went up to the girl and said, “That’ll teach you to sleep in my bed.” And baby bear ate the little girl for dinner, and the three little bears lived happily ever after. The end.
For those of you who wonder what kind of parents we are, in my wife’s defense, she was at the grocery store when we shot that, and she’s seeing the video for the first time today. She was wondering all week long why our kids wanted to sleep with us in the same bed, so … anyway, the truth is, sometimes, stories don’t have a happy ending, but yet, the positive message that God wants you happy, it just feels so good, and it is so right. And yet, scripture in II Timothy 4:3-5 tells us this. “For the time will come when men will not put us with,” what? Say it out loud, “They will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” Verse 4, “They will turn away from the,” what? Say it out loud, “They will turn away from the truth, and they will turn aside to myths.”
What I would love to tell you is this. If you just come to God, you will have the best year ever! Everything will work out and you will always be happy. Because God wants you happy, God only has good things in store for you. The problem is, though, when we believe that God revolves around us, we reduce a holy God of the universe into a cosmic Coke machine. What we do is, we put our quarters in, and we say our little prayer, and we press the button choosing which we want, and we expect God to deliver. And if what we pray for doesn’t come out of a slot, we blame God, because there’s something wrong if God wants me happy, and yet, I’m not. Therein lies the danger of this very subtle and very seductive urban legend that God wants you happy. Write this down. Understand this. If God wants me happy, and I’m not, then God failed. If God really desires for me to be happy, but I am miserable, then God didn’t deliver. God didn’t do what I needed Him to do to make me happy. So, as much as everyone I know wants to believe, “God wants me happy,” and as often as you will hear, “God wants you happy. God wants you prosperous.” As often as you will hear that, today I am going to submit to you that there are least three different times when God does not want you happy. If you are taking notes, the first one is this, and this is very, very true. Never forget it. God never, ever, God doesn’t want you happy when it causes you to sin. God never wants us happy when it causes us to sin. I Peter 1:15, scripture says, “But just as he who called you is happy, so be happy in all you do.” Diiiiid I mess that up? Well, what does it say? I’m sorry. I must have misread it. Scripture says, “But just as he who called you is,” what? “Is, is holy, be,” what? “Be holy in all that you do.” You see, in God’s spiritual economy, our happiness is never the bottom line. God never calls us to sacrifice His standards in the name of happiness.
Now, I hope that you won’t miss the heart of this, because I believe with all my heart that God is a good God. Scripture says He is. Scripture says that He loves to give good gifts to His children, and with everything in me, I know that God delights in the happiness of His children, just as I. I’ve got six kids. As the father of six kids, I love when I can make my kids happy. I love it, love it, love it, love it. In fact, a buddy of mine and I took our sons … I have two sons. He has two sons. We dropped some big bucks to take our kids to the Harlem Globetrotters. Why? We wanted to make our children happy, have a good time, great boys’ day out. And so we went. I asked my kids afterwards, “Did you enjoy …” “Oh, we loved it!” I asked my six-year-old, “What did you like about it?” He said, “Everything except the basketball part,” [laughter] which was very confusing to me. I said, “Well, what did you like?” He said, “I love the part where the guy pulled down the other guy’s shorts.” That was his favorite part. I asked my three-year-old, Bookie, I said, “Bookie, what did you like about it?” He said, “Daddy, I love the cotton candy,” which really bothers me because I dropped almost $100.00 on tickets, plus the expense of the cotton candy, when I could have gotten that anywhere. But anyway, Bookie, he did. He loved the cotton candy. He became a three-year-old piece of cotton candy. It was everywhere. He was eating it off his arms. It was everywhere, and the Bookie looked at me with this very ornery look. He said, “Daddy, I think I am going to put it on that guy’s head.” Well, there was a bald headed guy right in front of us, and Bookie just went down with his cotton candy hands, and I knew it would make him happy, so I just let him do it. Of course, I didn’t do that. Yes, I want Bookie happy, but not at the expense of someone else. If it’s not the right thing, no matter how much he wants to do it, nor how happy it will make him, I don’t want him happy if it causes him to sin.
How does this play out in, let’s just say, in the church world, in the every day church world? Scripture teaches us that if you are a follower of Christ, you are a part of the body of Christ, and that means, in the local church, God has something for you to do to serve, to use your gift. In other words, if you are not serving, using your gifts in the church, then something that God wants to get done is not being done, and in our American-feel-good culture, though, what do we hear all the stinking time? “I don’t want to do anything at church. I just want to go when I want to, occasionally. I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to serve, because I’ve been busy all week long. This is my time. I want to go and just, just, just be there. I don’t want to serve, because it’s all about me, and I want to be happy.”
Let’s talk about finances. Scripture teaches us that we return the tithe to God. Ten percent of what God trusts us with, it belongs to Him. We give it to Him. But, what do people say? “I’m not going to give that much money. You kidding me? That’s crazy. It’s my money. I worked hard for that. I’m not giving that much money to God. I’m going to do something with it myself, because I want to be happy.” College. Someone was in college. “This class is too hard. I don’t like college. Quit. That’d make me happy.” Maybe you are at a job you don’t like, and what do we see now? “I’m not happy in this job. It might not be that God wanted me there to make a difference in someone else’s life, or maybe God was going to do something to my life in an uncomfortable situation, but I’m not happy, so I quit.” Marriage. “They’re not making me happy, so I quit the marriage.” Dating world. Boy meets girl. Girl smells good. Boy, he says, “Urrrrrh, urrrrrrrrr ahhhhhahhhhh. God gave me these desires, and I know the Bible says I should wait until I’m married, but we are in love, anyway. And gazoom gazoom makes us happy, so I don’t care what God says. This makes me happy.” Do you see how subtle and how dangerous this is?
Let me tell you the conversation I’ve heard about a zillion times, hear it all the time. “Hey, dude, how’s it going? “Ahhh, much better now.” “What do you mean?” “Well, you know I used to be married to old so-and-so.” “You’re not married anymore? What happened?” “Well, we just weren’t happy, so we divorced.” “Oh, man, I’m sorry. Well, are you happy now?” “Yes. I’m happy now.” “Oh, well, that’s good, because that’s all that matters.” It’s never been all that matters. Understand, God does not want you happy when it causes you to sin, and in Romans 6:1, Paul was making a very powerful argument, and he asked a question, “Shall we go on sinning that grace may increase, that grace may abound?” If you can allow me to read into it, he was kind of saying, “You know, if God’s going to forgive me anyway and I’m having fun and this makes me happy, why stop? Shall we continue to sin that grace may increase?” He said, “By no means, under no circumstances do we continue sinning so God can just forgive us if we like it.” He said, “We have already died to that. How can we live in it any longer?” As much as we want to believe it’s all about our happiness, it is not. Our happiness is never the bottom line in God’s spiritual economy.
Thought number one, God does not want you happy when it causes you to sin. Thought number two, if you are taking notes, is important. God doesn’t want you happy when it is driven by circumstances. Where does the word happy come from? Well, you are happy if the happenings are right, but if the happenings around you are not right, you are not happy. Ecclesiastes 7:14 says, “When times are good, be,” what? Say it out loud, “When times are good, be happy,” enjoy, and have a blast! Embrace it! Live it for everything it’s worth. “But when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other.” God doesn’t want you happy when it is based on happenings. There is something deeper, and something richer, and that is what scripture calls joy, and joy is something that is not based on what is going on around, but joy is something based on what’s inside. It’s a bit like this. If you know the story, in Luke 15 of the prodigal son, I want you to listen carefully to this story, because you might recognize yourself here. The younger son had everything you could ever want, much like almost everybody that I know in our country, and yet, he said, “Father, I don’t like your ways, your rules. Give me my share of everything. I want to go do what I want to do,” which is what many of us do. God, I want to do what I want to do, and so the son went out and he partied, and he blew all of his money, and he tried all these things, and he did everything he thought was going to make him happy. And in his pursuit of happiness, he became miserable.
I want you to think about this. In his pursuit of happiness, he became miserable. What do we see all around us today? “Well, maybe this will make me happy. Maybe this will make me happy, and maybe this will make me happy. Maybe this will make me happy,” and in our pursuit of happiness, in the most blessed country on planet earth, most people I know are the most discontented and most miserable people anywhere. Write this down. Internalize this. Like the prodigal, in the pursuit of happiness, most people become miserable. It’s all about what we want. It’s like possums. I hate possums. Used to not mind them. When you drive by them in the road, they didn’t look that bad. But when you’ve got a possum stuck in your garage, they are from hell. You need to understand that. Stupidest little, ugliest little, dangerous, scary, freaky, little ugly, demonic creatures. If you get a possum mad, what they can do, they can open their little mouth like this … hssssssssssssssst, hssssssssst, and I’m telling you. They can open that thing wider than any sharp teeth, and they just look at you like, “I may be little, but I’m taking your leg off, giving you rabies, and putting you in the hospital.” [laughter] So, yes, I had a little possum in my garage. I opened the garage. I got a two-car garage. I got a two-car garage open. Plenty of possum room to run out. What does the satanic creature do? Whatever the heck he wants to, and that’s not leaving my garage. I’m out there in boots. Got a big broom and a shovel. I’m trying to get him out. Thirty minutes later, Amy says, “Do you want me to call the fire department?” “No! I don’t want you to call the fire department.” Can’t get the stupid guy out. Why? He’s going to do what he wants to do. What do we see? “This will make me happy. This will make me happy. I am going to do what I want to do,” and in our pursuit of happiness, we become miserable.
God doesn’t want you happy when it is based on happenings. There’s a deeper gift that God gives us, and that’s a gift of joy and contentment that we can find in the life of the apostle Paul. I want to read you a verse that is fairly well known, Philippians 4:12-13, but before we read it, let me just remind you of the context in which this verse was written. The apostle Paul was writing this from within a prison, okay? He was locked up to another Roman soldier, and don’t forget this, he was waiting a decision that would decide whether he would be executed or whether he would live. So in other words, life wasn’t great right now for him. He was in prison and waiting to hear, was he going to be executed, and here’s what he wrote. He said, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.” In other words, “I’ve been on both sides of it.” “I have learned the,” what? Would you say it out loud? All of our campuses, “I have learned,” to what? “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” He said, “I can do,” how much? “I can do everything.” Say it one more time. “I can do everything through,” whom? “Through Christ who gives me strength.” Now, listen to what he is saying. “I’ve had it all, and I’ve lost it all. I’ve been healthy; I’ve been hurting. I’ve been blessed, and I’ve been cursed, but I have a secret that most people miss. I have a joy and a divine contentedness that is not based on happenings. It is based on something internal that no one can see, and that is that I can do everything. I can make it. I can make it through this. I can make it while being locked up in prison. I can make it if they kill me.” How? “I can do it all through Christ who gives me strength. There is something internal that sustains me. It is not the external happenings,” God wants you more than happy. He wants you to have a joy no matter what is going on on the outside.
Understand that we all want to believe that God wants you happy. Not always. He doesn’t want you happy when it causes you to sin. He doesn’t want you happy when it’s based on circumstances. And number three, if you are taking notes, God doesn’t want you happy as much as God wants you blessed. God doesn’t want you happy as much as Him wants you blessed. I love the Greek New Testament word that is translated blessed is the word makarios, and it goes like this. It goes dun ta da dun dun da tun ta ta da ta. Dun dun da dun ta ta. Dun dun tu dun ta, duuuuun ta … how it goes. Anyway, but, okay. It doesn’t go like that. What this word means is, it means supremely blessed. This word, very literally, it means more than happy. Do you understand that? If you are pursuing happiness, you may be very likely insulting the heart of God. Why are you shooting so low? Uh ha? Why are you settling for something that doesn’t last? Why are you pursuing something that is not even possible all of the time? It was Jesus who said, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart.” He said, “I have overcome the world.” God doesn’t want you happy as much as He wants you blessed.
Who is blessed? Let’s talk about that. Psalm 112:1 said, “Blessed in the man who,” does what? Say it out loud. “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord.” All of our campuses, one more time. Let’s say this out loud. “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who finds great delight in his commands.” Blessed is the one who fears the Lord. When have we forgotten the fear of God? Not talking about the, “I’m scared” fear, but a reverent fear of a holy God. What do we say now? “Oh, God, my co-pilot. Ha ha ha. Jesus, he’s my home boy.” You know, I’m serious. What about, “He is the supreme creator, righteous judge of the universe.” He is so holy, He cannot even look upon sin. He is so holy that we cannot see Him in His purest essence and live. That kind of God. “Blessed is the one who fears the Lord, who finds great delight in his commands.” If you ask people today, are you blessed? Here’s what you hear. “Ah, dude, praise report. God blessed me with a new Lexus. Oh, glory to God.” Right? Or some version of that. “Oh, we are so blessed. We got this house, and oh, my gosh. Look at this. We got a new leather sofa for our butts. We are so … our butts are blessed.” You know, “Oh, dude, we are blessed. I got a raise, you now. Ooo hoo. I got more money to spend on me. Woo hoo!” Okay? Who’s blessed? Who is more than happy? Let me show you what Jesus said in Matthew 5, Jesus told us who is blessed, and He said this. He said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” That’s who is blessed. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn.” Let me just pause for a moment, because there are many of you right now, you are hurting. You are mourning, and let me remind you that you are blessed of God. Why? Because you will be comforted. You will know a side of God that many don’t know. “Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Notice, it doesn’t say, “Blessed are those who pursue material things of this world that do not last.” But, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Why? Because they will be filled. “Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, because they will be called the sons of God.”
Now, I want you to look at verse 11. The Bible says this, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you. So, bad news is, God doesn’t want you happy all the time. Good news is, He wants you more than happy. He wants you blessed. Let me tell you some neat things about blessings. Sometimes, God will bless you with a job where you make a ton more money, and that’s from Him. He will bless you with it, and what does He want you to do with that? Well, chances are, He’s going to want you to give like you haven’t given ever before, and guess what? He will probably love it if you even blow some of the blessings on yourself and enjoy it. That’s just the kind of God He is. He is the God who gives wealth. He does. It’s not a bad thing. Give more, enjoy more, save more, and give more again. It’s from God, and God may bless you with healthy children. Enjoy them. It’s how He might bless you. And God might bless you with conflict-free living for a while, where you’ll just go without any problems. Enjoy it. Embrace it, but understand this. God may just bless you in another way. Instead of getting the higher paying job, God may bless you and allow you to lose your job. Why? So you can learn to trust in Him like you never, ever have before. Or, so that you can finally pay attention to your kids that you have been neglecting when you were supposed to be doing something for them, but you weren’t raising them. You were building a career, not a family. Or, so that your marriage that has been struggling because you have neglected it can flourish, because now, you’ve got to pay attention to it. God could bless you that way. God could bless you with healthy kids, or God could bless you with a child with incredibly special needs … and you may experience the love of God through that child in ways that you never, ever thought of before. And, God could bless you with conflict-free living for quite some time, or God could bless you with conflict, and trouble, and persecution, and those who hate you because you love Him. And you are still blessed, so as much as I would like to tell you, “Come to God and everything’s going to be okay,” if I did that, I would be lying to you, because sometimes, that is just not true. But, what I will tell you is this. Psalm 37:4, do this with all of your heart. Scripture says, “Delight yourself in the Lord.” “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” The Hebrew word for delight is the word anag, and it means to be made soft or pliable. It means to delight or enjoy. Here’s what we do not do. We do not go to God for Him to serve our desires to make us happy. We go to Him as His servant, true to worship Him in spirit and in truth, and as we enjoy Him, as we delight in Him, what He does is, He gives us His desires, and they are no longer our desires, but they are His that He plants in us. And as His desires become our desires, then He loves to give us and fulfill the desires of our heart. How do we get there? Matthew 6:33, Jesus said it this way. He said, “But seek first the kingdom of God.” Not seek happiness, not seek the things that we want, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and then all these things will be added unto you. And so, I’ve got good news for you. The good news is, God doesn’t always want you happy. He’s always got something much, much better for you than that.
All of our campuses, let’s pray. “Father, we ask that we would never pursue what we want, but we would pursue You instead.”
All of our campuses today, now here’s a question for you that may be hard to answer, but I want you to be just gut-level honest. Are you pursuing happiness more than you are pursuing God? Now, I will be really, really honest with you. I’d like to say, “Man, I’m just, you know, I’m pursuing God, and all that kind of stuff, but when I’m really honest and I look at my life, I’d have to tell you that there are more seasons and longer seasons of my life where I’m honestly pursuing the things of this world, and what I want, and happiness more than I am pursuing God, and I want that to change. If you relate and you are being really honest and say, “Man, I am. I am off track here, and God, I want You to forgive me. I want to pursue You more than anything else.” If that is you today, I want you to lift your hands up at all of our campuses. Just lift them high, and there are hands going up all over the place, maybe more hands than I’ve ever seen before. “God, I ask that You would forgive us for being so easily distracted and pursuing the selfish things that are temporary and don’t matter to You. God, we pray that we would be more focused on You than ever before, that we would put You first. God, the moment we start to drift, and that would probably about five minutes from now, and later on today, and tomorrow and every day, bring us back, God. We pray that You would bless us with whatever it takes to keep us close to You, even if it’s the very thing that we never want. God, do whatever it takes to keep us close to You. God, we want to know You intimately. We want to serve You. We want it to be about You. We want to worship You. We want to put You first, in every single way.”
Now, as you pray at all of our campuses, God may show you something that’s really missing from your life in an area where you can really seek Him. I want you to commit. You can talk about it with your LifeGroup this week, maybe, an area to seek God, and it could be that you need to read God’s word. You haven’t been. It could be that you haven’t prayed more than “Bless this food,” or you know, some kind of selfish prayer in weeks or maybe even months, and you need to devote time to God in prayer. It could be that you don’t have a Biblical community, where you experience God with other people and through a LifeGroup, and you need to commit to that. You might commit to fasting and say, “You know, the next seven days, I’m only going to drink liquid or something, because I’m going to seek God.” God shows you something, I want you to tell your LifeGroup, and we are going to, in our own ways, passionately seek the One who gave His life for us. Those of you who are Christ Followers, put Him first.
Now, let me talk to another group, those of you who are not wholly and completely surrendered to God, and let me tell you what I’d love to tell you. What I’d love to tell you is, “Hey, Jesus died for you. He wants to be your buddy. He will forgive your sins. Just pray this prayer and go on with your life, and everything’s going to get better.” But, let me tell you right now, I cannot tell you that. In fact, what I am going to tell you is this. If you surrender your life to Jesus and make Him first, things may get worse. Things may get harder, and things on this earth may never be what you thought they would be. Read about it all through scripture, I can’t make you any false promises. Here’s what I can promise you, though. I can promise you that scripture says your sins will be forgiven. You will be made brand new. You will be filled with the Spirit of God. You will be able to talk to God. You will be able to hear from God. There will be a God who is working in all things. He’s in the bad things, and He is working to bring about good. You may see the good in this life, you may not, but He is bringing about good to those who love Him and to those who are called according to His purpose. God wants to bless you, and it may not be the American dream. It may be something much greater than that, something that draws you close before God as you walk with Him and know Him intimately.
At all of our campuses, there are those of you who, maybe like me, you grew up in church, and if someone said, “Hey, are you a Christian,” you’d say, “Yes, I am.” But the truth is, you are not following Christ, and neither was I. Others of you, just the fact that you are here is like major miracle, like “Dude, I can’t even believe I’m in church, but I’m really feeling drawn to God.” What that is, is that’s the Spirit of God drawing you, and it’s your time to make a decision, and that is, “I’m going to keep doing life my way,” or, “I’m going to surrender it all to Him and say, ‘Jesus, save me from my sins and take my whole life. It is no longer going to be my will, but it is going to be Your will.” That’s making Jesus your Lord.
At all of our campuses, there are those of you who recognize He is not that, and “Today is the day that I give it all to Him,” and, “Take my whole life. Save me. Forgive me. I’m not pursuing happiness. I want to pursue You. Jesus, be the Savior and the Lord of my life. I give it all to You.” That’s your prayer today at all of our campuses, lift your hands high now. Just lift them up and leave them up all over the place. Leave them up and let me just acknowledge you. Put them up high, and let me just acknowledge you. Ma’am, right here in the middle section. Both of you guys, let me just meet you eye-to-eye and, both of you guys right here, God bless you guys. Right back here, all three of you together, awesome. Others of you saying, “That’s my prayer.” Right back over here on my side. Sir, God bless you, man. Others of you. Right back there. Ma’am, right back there. Both of you here in this section. Way back there toward the back, God bless you guys. Way back there. Way back there toward the back. Here in the middle up close to the sound board. Way back there. Both of you guys together, awesome. Others of you saying, “Yes, that’s my prayer.” Right over there, ma’am, being born into the kingdom of God. Others of you, “Yes, I want to surrender to Jesus. I want to follow Him.” All three of you right here. Praise God for you guys, big smile. Back here in this back section. Way back here on this side. Awesome. Others of you, “Yes, Jesus, take over. I surrender. Save me. Forgive me. Be the Lord of my life.” Right back over here. I see, back on that side. Right back there. God bless you. Thank you. A holy moment. Right here. Awesome. Surrendering to Christ. Praise God for you.
Pray with those around you. Just pray out loud. Pray, “Heavenly Father, I am ready to give it all to You. Jesus, forgive me for my sins. Make me new. Because You died for me, I want to live for You. Fill me with Your Spirit. Make me like You. I no longer want my will. May Your will be done. I surrender to You. Thank You for new life. Now you have mine. In Jesus’ name I pray.
