Let’s turn in our Bibles to Luke Chapter 2 because Linus [ph 0:00:42.9] just read the first 14 verses of Luke Chapter 2. We’re going to pick up the story, the story of the Birth of Jesus in verse 15. And also turn to Revelation Chapter 12 if you want because I’m going to go to that. We’re going to read the entire chapter in just a moment. But the title of this talk this morning is ‘The Grand Invasion.” The Grand Invasion; and I’ll tell you I only have one really objective; one goal this morning. And that’s this; I want us, as a group of people, to recapture our awe of Christmas.
In the last 50 years especially of American history, we have reduced Christmas down to a cheap set of Nativity plastic figurines, to commercialism, to buying gifts; buying extravagant gifts. The rest of the world watches on as we go into this long season of just pure indulgence, greed, or overindulgence. And yet somewhere along the way we’ve lost the message of what really happened that night when the baby Jesus was born from the Virgin Mary.
It was a sweet moment. I mean, all the pictures that we see of the young Mary holding the fragile little Baby Jesus; both of them with little halos over their heads. It was a sweet moment. But something else far more powerful was happening in the unseen realm around them, that I want to draw you retention to this morning because it plays a big role in the way we’re living, to what’s happening with us today. I do believe the Incarnation; the infinite God coming into a finite human body and entering the world through a natural birth, placed in a manger surrounded by shepherds, is the greatest miracle in the Bible. That God would leave the heaven and come as our salvation, our redemption, but choose to do it through coming in as a baby, taking on human flesh while not giving up any of His deity, is the greatest miracle in scripture.
Well I think somewhere a long the way, we’ve lost the awe, the wonder, the mystery of it. And so I want to pick up today in Luke Chapter 2 in verse 15. At this point, a group of shepherds are out in the field guarding the sheep and an angel appears to them. And just like every other time an angel appears to a human being in scripture, they’re afraid, they’re terrified that this angelic host, this angelic beings would come. And not only would it appear to them, but this angel would have a conversation with them, and then gives them very specific instructions, “Go into the town of Bethlehem and find the baby that’s in the manger.”
Now it’s important — we’ve made the manger some kind of religious relic. In fact there are people who construct mangers and they worship at these mangers. They come and pray at these mangers when there’s nothing – that was not the point of the baby being in the manger. The point was, “Hey, there are a lot of babies in Bethlehem.” So the angel’s saying to the shepherds, “Look there’s a lot of newborn babies right now in Bethlehem, but the one you’re looking for is going to be in a nasty manger. That’s the way to tell if that’s the baby you’re looking for. But somehow we’ve made the manger the focus of that when it’s what was inside the manger that was important.
Let’s pick it up here, it says in verse 15, When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that’s happened, which the Lord has told us about.” So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in the manger, just as the angel had said. And when they had seen Him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child. And all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen which were just as they had been told. So the shepherds had this angelic encounter but this was not the only angelic encounter in the story of the birth of Jesus.
In fact, there were six different angelic interactions with human beings in the telling of the story. Luke tells about three of them and Matthew tells about three of them. In my opinion, it was not just an opinion I think it’s fact, that this was the most concentrated account of angels coming into the natural realm of human beings in the Bible. Nowhere else in the Bible are there this many angelic visitations in a short period of time. Something was happening in the heavenly realms around them. Something was happening in the unseen realm that I think it is important for us to know. There’s a reason why so many angels came. And these angels came for various reasons.
We know that in Luke, obviously we know that the Angel Gabriel told Zechariah that he was going to have John the Baptist and his wife would be pregnant, and then Gabriel is the one that showed up to Mary and said, “Listen, you’re about to be with child. The Holy Spirit’s going to come upon you.” And then the third reason, obviously the angels and the shepherds that we just mentioned here. But also in Matthew, there were three different times that angels came, and they were mostly to Joseph. All three of them were with Joseph the father; the dad.
The first time as he came to Joseph and comforted him saying, “Hey Joseph, the baby that your engaged wife is carrying is from the Holy Spirit. Don’t divorce her. Don’t disown her, that baby is from God.” Secondly he said he came to Joseph and said, “Hey, your baby is in danger. Flee to Egypt.” So it was an angel that came to Joseph and said, “Take that baby and flee to Egypt because that baby’s life is in danger.” And then the third time is when an angel appeared to Joseph and said, “Okay it’s safe to go back home. Go back to Nazareth and establish your home there.”
So six different times we have these angelic encounters with human beings. I wish there was somewhere in scripture that would kind of give us a behind the scenes look at what was really happening. I mean, sometimes we read these stories, “Oh an angel appeared. No big deal.” We just kind of keep reading through the story because we’ve read it over and over again, and we know how the story ends. But that’s not the way we should read scripture. And I’ve asked you, as we read these very familiar stories in the book of Luke over the next five months, I want you to open up the Bible and I want you to read the book of Luke as if it were the first time you’ve ever read it. Don’t read it knowing the end of the story. Ask God to show you new things.
And so I asked the Lord when I was reading it this week, I said, “Why were there so many angelic encounters, it seemed like all of heaven was on combat alert. All of heaven was at Death Com 4 [ph 0:06:48.5] or whatever, and they were ready to launch or ready to go and these angels were having all these encounters. What was going on?
Let’s look at Revelations Chapter 12 because it gives us a behind the scenes view of what was happening in the heavenly realm as Baby Jesus was being born on that night. Revelations 12 verse 1 says, “A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of 12 stars on her head. And she was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.”
Do you notice that in Luke and Mathew, there are no details of the actual birth? We don’t understand what Mary was going through. We don’t get inside her emotions at all. It’s quick to realize, and for the ladies in this room who’ve had a baby, especially your first baby, can you imagine being with your young husband alone in a city where you didn’t know anyone, no medical care, no midwife to be there to help you, and your first child is about to come into the world completely unknowing? You don’t know what to expect, what’s going to happen. Can you imagine how terrified this young Mary was? And so John, the Revelator, gets this insight that she was pregnant, she cried out in pain as the baby was being born.
Verse 3; then another sign appeared in heaven. An enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his head, his tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. Now, John here is looking back to Isaiah who prophesied that — Isaiah is the first one who kind of gave us this inside information, that demons were actually fallen angels; angels that have rebelled against God and then expelled from heaven. So John is looking back. He obviously was very familiar with the writings of Isaiah, but now he’s tied that in to the birth of Jesus. Somehow now the birth of Jesus is being woven into this grand big story of how angels got expelled from heaven.
First let’s keep reading: the dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. So he’s saying that there was real danger for Jesus. There was a real danger point for Jesus that he really was at risk. Now it’s making more sense to us why so many angels were on guard, why so many angels appeared, why Gabriel himself was in this story — the strong angel, the warrior angel; because now it’s beginning to make sense that there was a battle that we couldn’t see at the time and we may not can see now. But there was a battle raging for the souls of human beings.
Keep going here; and he says, “She gave birth to a son, a male child who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to His throne. The woman fled into the dessert to a place prepared for her by God.” Notice that that’s when Joseph and Mary had to flee to Egypt. And it was the prophetic dream, it was the Old Testament prophecy that the Christ child would be born in Bethlehem, would come out of Egypt but will be called a Nazarene. Isn’t that amazing that Jesus fulfilled all three promises, even as a baby? And I’ve had some Jewish scholars confront me on this and I said to them, and this is kind of an aside, but I’ve asked some Jewish people, I said, “Why is it so hard for you to believe that Christ is not the Messiah? He fulfilled every, every Old Testament prophecy to be the Messiah.” And their quick response since last time I had this conversation, this guy’s a scholar. He said, this was his reply, “Jesus knew about all the prophecies, and so he made sure He fulfilled them so that people would believe that He was the Messiah.” But I said back to Him, “Jesus was a baby when He was born in Bethlehem. He was a baby when He went to Egypt. And He was a baby when His parents decided to move back to Nazareth. He had no control over what His parents did, yet the prophecies were fulfilled.”
We didn’t get into an argument. It was a nice conversation, but it’s kind of where it ended. So the woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1260 days, which is about 3 ½ years if you do the math, 3 ½ years; most historians believe that’s about how long Jesus was in Egypt before it was safe to return back to Nazareth.
Verse 7, and there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down. That ancient serpent, called the Devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth and his angels with him and then – this is verse 10. This is amazing. Please focus on verse 10 with me. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say – this is John, a human being, he’s on an island, he hears this loud voice from heaven; literally a loud voice he says, “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God.” And this is the awe of the birth of Jesus. Yes, it was a little woman, a little young lady with a sweet baby and it was probably sweet, warm, and cuddly, but there was a war raging in heaven and the birth of Jesus was more than just a little baby being born to a young couple. It was the Kingdom of heaven coming to the earth; salvation coming for all of us. That is the awe, the mystery of Christmas.
Now let me tell you what else was happening when Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Hundreds of thousands of miles away in Rome, an evil ruler named Caesar Augustus was setting up his rule. Caesar Augustus was the adopted son of Julius Caesar. And a lot of you that read Shakespeare and read history, you know about Julius Caesar. He was murdered. And when Julius Cesar was murdered, a civil war broke out in Rome for control of the greatest empire on the earth.
And after a series of battles, after years of struggle, Caesar Augustus finally defeated Mark Antony at a battle, and Mark Antony fled with Cleopatra. The two of them took their own lives and then Caesar Augustus was established as the sole ruler of the Roman Republic; instead though of keeping it a republic, which is like a group of states that make up a republic, he made it an empire. He declared that he himself was the sole ruler of Rome. In fact people began to tell him that his birth was a word called gospel. That his birth, when he was born – “Caesar Augustus, when you were born, ‘gospel.’” That word’s not found in the Hebrew by the way. The word gospel means good news. Caesar Augustus said about himself that, “My birth …” his birth, “… was good news for the rest of the world.”
He called himself “King of Kings.” He called himself “Lord of all, Lord.” And people worshiped Caesar Augustus like a god. He thought he was a god. He even said, “My father Julius Caesar was a god. I am now a god. I have good news for all. I am the prince of peace. I have come to bring good news to all of you.” Yet at the same time he was enslaving and murdering and pillaging and raping all of the empire. He was an evil man that would kill to keep power.
It was under this oppressive regime; under this oppression of slavery where people really didn’t know if they were going to live or die the next day. Then a baby came; a baby from heaven, fully God, fully human to bring redemption to this evil empire led by a ruler who considered himself to be the god, king, deliverer of all mankind. This is not a new story in the Bible though, this happened before.
The people of Israel found themselves under the captivity of Egypt; an evil pharaoh enslaving them, telling them to make more bricks with less straw. And the people of Israel cried out to God, “Oh God, send us a deliverer.” And they thought, just like the Jewish people that we are reading about now, they thought a warrior king would arrive and defeat Pharaoh and lead them out to victory. Instead a little baby named Moses was found floating down the Nile River one day. And Pharaoh’s wife had her assistant go out, swim out, fished the baby back in and raised the baby as their own.
And Moses when he was an adult through signs and wonders and miracles, led the people out to redemption. See the story of Mosses in my opinion, was a type and shadow, a story to prepare the people of Israel, thousands of years later for the real arrival of a real king. Jesus came under oppressive conditions. And right now, I’m grateful that I live in a geopolitical nation state like the United States where we have freedom to assemble, freedom to talk, freedom to worship as we please. And I’m thankful, grateful for the price that was paid for those freedoms. But that’s not true around the world. In fact in two of the most oppressive countries in the world, are the very two places where God is doing the most amazing things right now.
In China for the last 30-40 years, this underground church in China has exploded. Some people believe there may be a hundred million Christ followers meeting secretly in basements and houses and growing everyday; people are coming to Christ in China. Right now in Iran, especially in the last 10 years in Iran, somewhere between 2 and 4 million people have said “yes” to Jesus while meeting underground under oppressive dictatorships. The people in Iran right now are just exploding with the miracles and the power. I get reports every week of miracles happening in Iran; of people being raised from the dead, people being healed, and people coming to Christ despite being under the ruler, under a dictatorship of an oppressive evil regime. Here’s the point I’m trying to make; I don’t want us to lose our awe and wonder of what happened because nothing that the enemy does, nothing he can do, nothing he will do will ever suppress the Kingdom of Heaven. That’s already been decided.
So you can persecute the Christians, you can kill the Christians, you can make it difficult for them to meet. No matter what you do to Christ followers, the Kingdom of Heaven will expand and grow everywhere. It’s amazing that God set it up to arrive as a baby at the peak, at the absolute peak of the Roman Empire. I mean when we’re reading this right now, the Roman Empire was at its height, all of its glory. They had captured more land than ever before. And at the peak of their power, when Caesar Augustus stood and said, “Look at what I have done. I am the god.” Jesus arrives. He says, “Well I’ve got better news than yours; good news.” Now we don’t live under an oppressive government, no matter what your opinion may be. We have tremendous freedom here and we need to defend our freedom for sure. So we don’t live under threat of military rule. We don’t live under threat of arrest, but I really do believe that we have a more significant enemy than that, that we are fighting against; that is warring against our soul. And I think it’s called “stuff,” “flesh,” “stuff.” That’s a much greater enemy that’s a threat to our hearts than anything that a government or military could do to us. What I want to bring us back to is this idea of what are we really worshipping right now during this Christmas season?
Let’s pick up the story again in Luke Chapter 2, let me point this out to you; Luke Chapter 2. In Luke Chapter 2 verse 25, Jesus now was eight days old, so He’d been born eight days later. It was required by Jewish custom and law for a male child to go to the temple at eight days old and there he would go through a ritual; a right of circumcision.
In verse 25, Jesus is taken there by Joseph and Mary and they arrive, and a man named Simeon meets them there. So there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel and the Holy Spirit was upon him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit, that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. Moved by the spirit, he went into the temple courts. And when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the law required, Simeon took Him in his arms, held Baby Jesus in his arms, praised God saying and then a prophetic word comes out of Simeon, this prophecy comes out of him, “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace, for my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for a revelation to the gentiles.”
Notice that Luke is choosing this prophecy to once again show us that the outsiders are now welcomed to the inside; that those outside the family can now be a part of the family because Luke himself was an outsider. And he says, “Listen, this is salvation for all of us.” And he says, “For the glory to Your people, Israel.” The child’s father and mother marvel at what was said about Him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary His mother, “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be spoken against.”
Now this jumped off the page at me, verse 35; “So that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” This week I was reading a book by A.W. Tozer, and Tozer’s book is called The Pursuit of God. And I think it should be required reading for anybody that’s a Christ follower; it’s that deep. This guy wrote this book on a train ride, a 2-3 day train ride from Chicago to L.A. back in the 40’s.
A.W. Tozer died in 1963 but his writings are some of the deepest, richest writings that we have available today. This guy was a self-taught theologian whose one desire while he was on the earth was to know God, deeper and better and more personally than he’d ever known Him. And out of this comes these books, this one book called The Pursuit of God. And in Chapter 3, he talks about Adam and Eve when they were put into the garden, they had access to enormous wealth; and they did. Everything on the earth was theirs. I mean they had all the food they wanted to eat, they had livestock and cattle. They had enormous resources.
Somewhere along the way, the altar of their heart, God was taken off the altar of their heart and stuff took over. They wanted something they couldn’t have so they went to the forbidden tree, the fruit that God said, “You can have everything else, but don’t eat there.” And somewhere along the way, the altar of their heart, where God once ruled supreme, where He was the preeminent person that was worshipped in their heart, was replaced by the stuff that they saw around them.
And that’s what we’ve made Christmas. Let’s be honest, that’s what we’ve made Christmas. Christmas is very little about worship anymore, it’s about stuff. And we all feel the pressure of it. I’ve met with single moms in the last couple of weeks where they feel enormous pressure. Especially with the economy that we have, they feel pressure to give their kids stuff and to keep up with what other kids are going to get at school. And they feel pressure. We’ve put this pressure on ourselves to be extravagant in every sense and we’ve lost the sense of worship. We’ve replaced the Lordship of Jesus in our hearts with stuff. And that’s only happened in America the last 50 years. My dad when he was a boy, this was not the case; in the 40’s. But after the 40’s and the 50’s, extravagant Christmas giving began to be normal. And I’ll tell you where it started honestly. It started in the New York City department stores. Macy’s is the evil regime I’m talking about because Macy’s and all those department stores in New York City are the ones that started having Santa with the big bag of toys, the big elaborate parades. They’re the ones who used the advertising for the first time with people walking down the street; Miracle on 34th Street, watch that. It’s on right now. So watch that movie.
Everybody’s walking down the streets with these big old armloads of gifts. It’s happening today. Every commercial promises you something that they can’t deliver. Like I was watching -- this BMW commercial’s driving me nuts right now. And I don’t mind you driving a BMW, they’re nice cars. If you drive one it doesn’t bother me. I don’t drive one but if you do, that’s great. But here’s what the commercial says, at the very beginning they show this new car, they show this guy in the car, all happy. I mean just smiles everywhere, and at the end the announcer says, “BMW, we don’t just build cars, we build joy.”
Really? So that’s the source. Now we know. If you don’t have joy, you’re not driving the right car. My goodness, why didn’t someone tell me that before? I’ve been driving this Nissan. I thought I was happy. “We build joy.” That’s my best announcer voice, by the way. You like that? I used to be an announcer. You know what we call that in the business when I was – “puking.” Honestly that’s the word in the business. When you use a voice that’s not your own, superman voice? “Quit your puking,” we’d say it. Anyways – sorry about that.
“We build joy.” Listen to the commercials that are on television and radio, stuff you see right now. Everything is promising something that they can’t deliver it. And somehow we bought into this. All of us in this room have something on the throne of our heart right now. Every one of us is worshipping something. People will tell me, “Well, I’m not a worshipper.” Oh yes you are. We’re designed by God to worship. And we all will worship something: the sports team, or stuff, or whatever. We’re going to worship something. Something right now is on the throne of our heart. Something right now takes preeminence in our lives. What I’m calling all of us back to … I’m calling us all back to making Jesus the reason. We all put that sign that “Jesus is the Reason for the Season”? Well, is He really the reason for the season? I mean, that’s what I’m asking, what takes preeminence right now in our hearts?
Here’s what I call stuff. I think a lot of us have weeds growing in our hearts. Let me tell you the definition of a weed. A weed is anything that’s taking up resources but not producing anything fruitful. It’s taking up our time, it’s taking up our energy, it’s taking up our emotional bandwidth, and it’s not producing anything.
This week, just this week, I felt like God really came to me one day this week and convicted me. Pam and I have been talking about this for a few days now. I realized, you know, I bought this iPhone back in March, and it’s an amazing device. It really is. The technology behind it is amazing. It’s an amazing device. But here’s what I was finding I was doing most of my day. At home, you know, I’m checking scores on it. I’m using apps; I’ve got a thousand apps, so I’m doing this the whole time. Abram and Cali [ph 0:25:35.3] are walking in front of me, walking by me, Pam’s walking by me.
In a moment, what I had in front of my face this week, the Holy Spirit came to me and said, “Brady that’s not an evil thing, but it sure is taking up a lot of your time.” The iPhone was getting more face time with me than my own family, this week. Pam, she’ll tell you she did this. I’m not making this up, I’m not embellishing it. I said, “Pam, I want you to just eliminate all that stuff.” So she went and she eliminated a whole bunch of those apps. So all the distractions, the temptations, the things that you can access on that thing, it’s just a weed in my life.
I don’t want anything else to take the throne in my heart. There’s only one person I want on the throne of my heart and we have to constantly evaluate who’s there and who’s not. And if you don’t do a regular heart check, I can tell you, something will creep in and you’ll look up one day, and you’ll become somebody you didn’t want to become. How did that happen? Because we planted seeds there and they’re now ripe and growing and deeply rooted. When weeds first come out of the ground, they’re easy to pull up. But when they become full grown, if you wait until September to pull them, I mean those things can get five or six feet high here in Colorado. You’re yanking and pulling; but if they’re small back in May when we first get our warm days, you know in May when things start getting green here, if you deal with it then, it’s a lot better issue to deal with, easy, easier. So the question we have this morning, we are five or six days away from Christmas and Christmas has invaded our world.
Christmas, commercialism has invaded us and it’s going to leave residue. It’s going to leave something in its wake when it’s all done. The most depressing day of the year for many people is the 26th of December. All the hype, all the anticipation, all that – either you have unmet expectations that you’re dealing with on the 26th or you’re coming down from an amazing adrenalin rush the day before. Either way the 26th is not normally a high-water mark in most people’s calendar.
So Christmas is here; it’s invaded us. What’s it going to leave in our wake? It’ll leave one of two things: it’ll leave debt and fatigue, or it’s going to leave worship and peace. So if you’ve bought in to something else, I promise you on the 26th, all you’re going to be left with is fatigue and debt, and neither one’s good. But if you’ll choose this morning to set up Jesus as the preeminent place, put Him back in the center of our heart and really be honest about the weeds that are taking up resources in our lives, on the 26th when I wake up, I want to have peace.
Christmas has invaded, now what’s it going to leave? And the choice is up to us. I can choose for it to leave me in debt and leave me tired, or I can choose for it to leave me with a deeper sense of peace, a deeper sense of reverence, a deeper sense of worship.
So I want to pray together this morning. I’ve asked John to come back and -- he’s going to sing. We’re going to have some time where we can really evaluate what’s going on in our heart. That’s all I’m asking you to do. I just want you to ask the question that I’m asking myself. What is taking up the resources? What will this invasion of Christmas leave behind in Brady Boyd’s life? What’s it going to leave behind for you?
There was a grand invasion 2,000 years ago and he’s still invading empires today. And the one that he most wants to invade today is the empire of self. That is a tough empire to bring down; tougher than any Roman Empire ever was; the empire of self. Could you just close your eyes or focus on the Lord for a minute and ask yourself, who‘s leading your empire? Does God even have permission this morning to invade the empire of self? Stuff.
I know this is not the sweet Christmas message. I wanted it to be sweet, I really did. I was trying for it to be sweet. It was sweet at some times, that’s why I started off with Linus because I knew I was going to end up here. But let’s just be honest with ourselves, okay; this is an honest good thing. This will cause you to go deeper with God than almost anything else you can do, and that’s to ask this question, who’s leading my empire? Who is on the throne of my heart? Who gets the preeminent spot in my life for worship? Where is my focus? Where is my devotion? Where is my worship?
Let’s pray together and we’re going to sing. Why don’t we all stand this morning; let’s go ahead and stand. Let’s open up our hearts to the Holy Spirit; the possibility that God wants to come today and invade hearts in this room. The grand invasion has begun. Let’s embrace it. Let’s ask God to do it, to complete His work. Let’s make it easy for Him.
I’ve asked this question before, how easy are we to lead as a people? If God speaks do we move with a whisper or does He have to shout to get our attention? This morning let’s be easy to lead, okay? Let’s start, Father in heaven thank you so much for the invasion of heaven to the earth. Father thank you for the grand invasion that’s already happened, Lord we embrace it. We ask now in our own hearts this morning for the grand invasion to continue its work. Lord I pray You would leave behind in Your wake, worship and peace today. Father I pray that we would lay down our temptation Lord to embrace the things of this world. Lord, everything around us is temporary but You are eternal. Father thank you, I pray that in this room that nobody else will search for peace in places that can’t give it; Lord, You are the Prince of Peace. You just don’t give peace, You are peace. You are peace, Lord. We receive it today. So Lord as we worship right now, I pray around this room that You would show us the weeds that are in our lives and give us the faith and the obedience to pull them, and to move forward as worshippers; worshippers today. Let’s worship together this morning. We did this earlier in the service, it seems to be the theme of the day that’s just surrendering, falling on your knees, declaring that He’s Lord, lifting Him up and everything else below. Can we just make that one more time our declaration before we leave today?
Father, thank you that you came. First of all, thank you so much that You loved us so deeply that You would send Your Son to the earth as a baby, born of a Virgin, that He would live a sinless life and die on the cross for our sins and on the third day, be raised again. Lord Father, thank you that that story is true. And Lord that we can say “yes” to You today and receive what You’ve done for us. Lord we lift You up today as Lord, Supreme Lord. You are the Lord of our lives. Lord, we give you the preeminent place in our heart today, preeminent spot. No other gets that spot. No other thing, no other person, no other idea, no ideology gets that spot. You get that spot in our life, the preeminent place in our heart, we give it to You today, we surrender it to You today, in Jesus’ name, Amen.
I want the people who prayed that, our altar people who prayed down in front to come forward. Let me tell you a great story that I told this morning. Every Sunday morning for the last … at least a year, every Sunday morning with very few exceptions, there have been a few where they weren’t here, a sweet lady in our church named Jeffrey Miller [ph 0:33:29.4] – some of you know Jeffrey because they’ve been around New Life for a long time. But she’s been battling cancer now for many, many years and not long ago, a few months ago, she got the worst possible report. I mean an awful report. I mean multiple places in her body where she had advanced cancer.
But every Sunday morning she would faithfully come and she would wait right there for me and she would just wait there patiently until she could get prayed for. It actually became one of the things that I most look forward to on Sunday. Preaching was way down the list, by the way. Praying for Jeffrey was way up on the list. And so I just had so much faith, but it’s been over a year now we’ve been praying for her. And this week the doctor called her one night, 7:00 at night … you know 7:00 phone calls from your doctor are not normally good news, but he was just beside himself and had to tell her. She had done extensive tests and he said, “I don’t know how to explain this …” I mean she was all but planning her funeral. Seriously, she was all but planning her funeral, this is how bad it was. He said, “You’re 99% cancer free and I can’t explain it. I don’t know what happened.” And that’s amazing. I just saw them, they were here at the 9:00 service and they said, “This is going to be a great Christmas. This is going to be a great Christmas.” She’s got grandchildren that she wants to watch grow up, you know.
The reason I tell you that is that I think many of you may be sitting out here today and you’ve been praying for something for a long time and you may be discouraged. The enemy wants you to stop praying, by the way. He wants to discourage you to the point that you stop asking God. But I just want to encourage you with that story this morning that even if it’s sickness, or about prodigal child or a business, anything, whatever you just kind of feel discouraged about asking. And you’re tired of asking people to pray for you because you think you’re bothering us.
Look, can I give you some breaking news, you’re not bothering us. That’s why God’s called us to this, is to stand with you and to stay with you. You’re not bothering us. And the moment it does start bothering us, we need to do something else. You’re not bothering us. It’s a privilege to pray for you. It’s a privilege that we would love to do. So if you need prayer for anything this morning; sickness, family, whatever, can I ask you to ask one more time?
I just believe with all my heart, God wants to do miracles among us. This is going to be a common story. I hope every week I get to stand and tell a story like that, a fresh story of God invading our world. He wants to so desperately. So I want you to step out, you’re not bothering me. Come out and pray right now. Let’s pray one more time, I’m going to Guest Central and I’m happy to pray for you. I pray for people everyday and every week in Guest Central. So you can’t come to Guest Central and think, well I won’t get prayer if I go there. No, I’ll pray for you there too. I’ll pray for you anywhere: Walmart or Guest Central, anywhere, all right?
All right, let’s pray one more time, Father thank you for what You’re doing in our hearts. Thank you for coming. Thank you for being a part, the preeminent place. Thank you Lord for being our Father, for being our Lord. Thank you for healing us. Thank you for saving us, in Jesus’ name, Amen. God bless, have a great Sunday. If you need prayers, step out and let us pray for you.
