The Power to Change Your Life | Firm Foundation

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Join us as Gabe Kolstad brings us a message about the power to change your life. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Happy Sunday, everybody. I hope you are doing well. How's it going? Good. Yeah. Beautiful day, right? We're grateful for the air conditioning. And thanks for coming and being part of our services today. As we get going, I'm going to ask you to take your notes out of your program or pull them up online. And we'd love to have you follow along. We're in the series Firm Foundation. This is part two, and today we're talking about the power to change your life. Before we get into the message, though, I want to just share a little bit of good news. Is that all right with you guys? We did a thing this week. We did a thing. We signed on the building that we are going to be moving into. And so that's very exciting. Many of you have been praying. Thank you for praying. Thank you so much for praying. And uh as if you don't know, God's brought us an opportunity to move just down the street into a facility that will double our capacity as a church. So we're very excited about that because it's been a real season of God working in powerful ways in our church and community, and we don't want that to slow down. And so God's opened up that door and we are walking through it. And more to come, we'll share more detail as it comes uh to fruition. But the the bottom line is we're committed and we're moving that direction. So thanks again for all your prayers. And I want you to know that as those good things happen in our lives, there's times when you have new news. Maybe you get a new job, or maybe you have a new baby, or maybe uh you know somebody comes into your life, or there's all these things in life that can be really good. But if you ever step out in faith to follow God and to his call forward, uh there can be times of resistance. Anybody ever experienced that before? Maybe you got baptized. And uh we always we always talk to the people that are gonna be baptized. We say, hey, just a heads up, you're taking a step of faith forward. And the enemy will at some point resist your spiritual momentum. And uh as a church, we've had all of these blessings and all these wonderful things. And of course, what else would we expect? The enemy resists that spiritual momentum. I had an experience on Thursday where I had the most amazing day. It was his most amazing day. We we had signed on the deal, we had our design meeting with the firm that's helping us get the new space designed and so that we can get it ready and move in. And that was exciting, and uh, and then I just I had like eight hours of awesome, and then I had one hour of resistance, and it was pretty intense. And the Lord, the the the enemy's just coming, you know, things are flying in your mind and you know, doubts or whatever. And and so, you know, it's funny how eight hours of awesome can just be wiped away by one hour of struggle, right? Isn't it funny? And then that could be all so I got little I got pretty discouraged, and I came home from work, and Melissa could tell, and she said, you know, maybe she goes, My brothers are at the beach, maybe we should just like go to the beach. And I was like, that sounds really good. So we go to the beach and stay at the at the house with her brothers and uh families, and it was it was relaxing. The next morning I got up and I was just feeling that kind of heaviness that was settled, had sort of settled, and I needed it, just needed a change. I needed that to change. And so I went to the beach, I went to the sand. I love the sand, I love the ocean. I walk out there, it was 6.15 in the morning, nobody else was out there. And there, but there were all these footprints, and I was wondering, well, if nobody else is out here, where'd they all come from? But then there was the seagull that had walked all through the beach. There was all the, and it was like the most aimless, you know, set of foot. I was like, where was this guy going? The seagull, like all over the place, you know, I had no idea where he was even going. And I looked at those wandering footprints, and for a second I thought, that's kind of, I feel a little bit like that right now. And I was just saying to the Lord, I just, would you revive me right out of this? I don't want to be in this space, you know? So I got out beyond the footprints to the sand and I was near the water, and I was just walking, and I pulled up Psalm 23, and I just started reading it out loud like a crazy person on the beach all by myself. And I'm not even kidding. Seven minutes is all it took for me to have a complete and total turnaround, 100% like revive my spirit. I was flying back to life, like that cloud is gone, that black cloud is gone. In seven minutes, all it took was seven minutes and the word of God. And I want you to know that God's word has the power to change your life. That you could, any setback, I mean, like he can just come in and turn everything the right way if we just make ourselves available to him. And I think what people need right now in our world with all the things that are going on is more than like a spiritual fortune cookie. And we need something substantial to put our feet on. We I believe that the world needs people who are strong. I believe that the world needs people who are secure. I believe that the world needs young people who know who they are, and they know what's right, and they know what's wrong, and they know what's true, and they know what they're standing on. And I think if we saw that happening, and as we see that happening, it changes the world for the better. And it's it's what the Lord is at work doing. But people are asking questions like, why am I still anxious? Why do I keep blowing up at my children? Um why do I keep repeating the same mistakes? How the bottom line is we're all asking this question, how do I actually change? Because there's things in my life that maybe they they they're they're persistent, maybe it carried something from childhood into adulthood, or maybe there's been something that's developed, and you're like, you're oh no, I got I got into the wrong path here, and there's this now habit or something going on in my life, and how do I change? And most people assume that change comes from effort or motivation, maybe from willpower or routine or guilt or information, but that is not actually true. Real transformation requires a completely different mechanism, and in fact, it requires us to go deeper. Like I was thinking about cars and how sometimes they break down. Anybody ever have a car breakdown? Okay. Three of you have had your car breakdown. I know, like, so we've all we know what that's like, right? So what if your car breaks down and you just like, I know how to fix it, I'm just gonna yell at it. Car, be better, you know? Stop it. Don't do that anymore. You know, like that's probably not gonna work. Or let's say you're like, I got an idea, I know what's wrong, I need premium gas, and so I'm gonna go over to the gas station. Well, first I'm gonna go to the bank and get a loan, and then I'm gonna go to the gas station, and I'm gonna pull the thing out, and I'm gonna get the premium, I'm just gonna pour the premium gas all over the hood. Just soak it real good in a premium gas, because that must be the problem. Like it's gotta, it's it's internal, right? The the issue is internal, and we have to be willing to do an internal system. We have to do a system change. The good news is this, and I want you to look at your notes with me. It's it says, if you're tired of being stuck, God's word has the power to change your life. If you're tired of being stuck, God's word has the power to change your life. Last week we looked at a verse with Pastor Stephen Rady teaching, and the verse was from Hebrews chapter 4. It's not in your notes, but I just want to explain it. It says, For the word of God is alive and powerful. The Bible is a completely unique book. In fact, it's God's word. Next week we're gonna talk about how we got the Bible. How do we know we can really trust it? How did we even get it? How did it show up? What is it? And I can't wait to get into that, but it says, For the word of God is alive and powerful and sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between the soul and the spirit, between the joint and marrow. It says it exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. The way that that verse describes the point of the Bible, the function of the Bible, is it's like uh it's like surgical, it's like a diagnostic tool. It goes in and kind of reads the situation. Like to know what's the real truth about the your soul, about this the condition of your heart, what's really going on there. It's almost like a biopsy tool. And what we discover is that most of us in our spiritual life, we'd we'd we're not necessarily looking for a biopsy. We're looking for like a pain pill. It's just easier, right? Let me just pop another spiritual pain pill, because I don't really have the time to slow down and do the deep work of the spiritual renewal that needs to happen. And so I'm just gonna cover it up with something, you know, maybe maybe another little habit that I can do that kind of cover things up. But I think what God is asking you and me to do is to slow down, to go deeper, let his word change us for good. If if you're tired of being stuck, God's word has the power to change your life. I do think it's important to just offer a little warning here. One thing that won't work, and this could be a news flash, or it could be like, well, yeah, I've tried that, is just more exposure to God's word. That that is a mistake I do see people making, is they're like, well, then I just gotta, I just it's just more exposure. Yes, more exposure is important, but that's not it. And we're gonna talk about specifically what we can do to see our lives really, really change for good. And so let's look together at Luke chapter 8. We're gonna look at the four types of soil that Jesus describes here. And really want to ask the question, which one are you? Which one of these kinds of soil that we're gonna look at are you? Soil in Luke 8, Jesus is talking and he's describing soil and seed. And it's a it's a metaphor for God's word and our hearts or our minds. And what's the relationship? In this passage, let me just read it for you. It says in Luke chapter 8, verse 4 One day Jesus told a story in the form of a parable to a large crowd that had gathered from many towns to hear him. A farmer went out to plant his seed. As he scattered it across his field, some seed fell on a footpath, everybody say, footpath. Let's try that again. Some seed fell on a footpath, everybody say, footpath. Yes. Okay, you got it. Okay, where it was stepped on, and the birds ate it. Other seed fell among the rocks, everybody say rocks. Oh, wow, that was good. Okay, it began to grow, but the plant soon wilted and died for lack of moisture. Other seed fell among thorns. Everybody say thorns. That grew up with it and choked out the tender plants. Still other seed fell on fertile soil. Everybody say fertile soil. This seed grew and produced a crop that was a hundred times as much as had been planted. Wow. I mean, a hundred times as much as had been planted. Think about it. If you if you took one apple seed and put it in the ground and it produced a tree, actually, it's reasonable to think that you might get a hundred apples, isn't it? If it was healthy, if you kind of knew what you were doing, if it was in the right place, had the right sunlight exposure, hadn't had enough moisture, good soil, you know, no bugs, you know, some of these things, right? That that's I think what Jesus is saying is you're so used to low production in your spiritual life that this is gonna sound crazy a hundred times. But he's he's he's going, but in my kingdom, this is normal. Normal for you to be this fruit-bearing tree with tons and tons of fruit coming off you. But one thing would be really required. You have to have fertile soil for you to do that. If you look at your life right now and you go like, boy, I just I I wish I had more fruit. I mean, honestly, which one of us wouldn't raise our hand and say, I wish I had more fruit in my life? But how do you get it? Well, that's what we're talking about today. Because Jesus wants to teach us how we do this. Then he finishes, it says, When he had said this, he called out anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand. And he's like, This message is important. He's like shaking us by the shoulders here. Listen up, this one's gonna change your life. So I want to unpack what this looks like. We've got four kinds of soil. And by the way, the bad soil here is not the villain, okay? It's it's simply an environment that's been compromised by competing elements. That's all it is. It's not the villain, just an environment that's been compromised. But there are four types of soil. I'm just gonna unpack them real quick. The footpath to start with is downtrodden, beaten soil. Why? Because people walk on it, be like a sidewalk in today's language. Like it's a sidewalk. I mean, it's a it's a footpath, it's a walkway. It's distracted. It's like trying to get God's word in your mind when you've also got a hundred TikTok videos, 62 text messages, a bunch of emails, you know, Netflix, you got your kids, you got all the work demands, you know, you got all of this, you got the news stuff, you got all of this happening. And the truth is that your mind is just absolutely exhausted. And I I feel it. I feel it. It's like they trample God's word to dust. Because getting a word and edge wide for the Lord, I think sometimes is a challenge. Like, wow, there's so much coming at us. I did a weird thing this last Monday. I decided, because I feel this all the time. And I decided I was gonna have a day off. Monday's our day off. I mean, we take the whole day off, Melissa and I. We we don't, it's we call it a Sabbath. I know you might think that's from the Old Testament, but I think the principle continues. And so we we try really hard to take a day off of work. Can you imagine that? A day off with no work. And um, I've been feeling that that kind of like, ah. So I decided I was gonna have what I call dark Monday. No tech at all. Like no phone, no watch, no iPad, no computer, no tech, no email, no social media, just nothing, none of that. It was the weirdest. I was I felt like I was in another universe. About four hours in, my mind got quiet. And I was like, I remember this from the 1980s, you know? I remember this feeling before I had a phone, you know. Here's the thing your soil might be downtrodden because you've just let so much noise in, and God's word has no chance at getting through. How do you quiet that down? How do you increase the flow of God's word and decrease all the other voices in your life? Because apparently that's what's required for actual changed life. They call it cognitive traffic. It's too heavy. They call it microcontext switching. Oh my gosh, we're so busy. Footpath. Second kind, rocks. In the rocky soil, we see it's a cre it's a quick sprout. Okay? We do see life come up. It comes up because there's basically a layer of dirt over a bed of rocks. So there is a way for life to happen. It's just it doesn't have a way to sustain because it can't even hold the water. The soil can't hold the water and the nutrients. And so what happens is there's no roots, and so then the hot sun comes and the plant wilts, right? We see shallow, it's shallow engagement. Almost like we get inspired, we feel that emotional high, and then it just doesn't stick because the boss yells at us on Monday morning, and then we forget who Jesus even is, right? Because it didn't stick, we're not, it's not deep enough. And I think this is like they call it emotional resonance. It's not the same thing as structural change. To go, I liked that message at church. That's great. But if we don't see structural change, it doesn't change anything. Emotions aren't going to change our lives for the better. Obediences. You know, putting it to practices, and we'll talk more about that. Then there's thorns, that's the third kind. This is where the roots take hold, and hey, the plant begins to grow. But the problem is that the thorns grow up alongside the plants, and they choke out the tender plants because they're taking up all the sunlight and the nutrients. So it's like there's other things that are also in the soil. It's crowded, right? We've allowed other things to take root in our life. And they're competing for limited attention. They're competing for the sunlight and the nutrients. Jesus actually calls out two in this passage in Luke 8. He calls out two very specific thorns. The first one is worry. But I know none of you struggle with that, so let's move on. Just kidding. Like, worry is worry is a big deal, right? I'm I'm really good at it. Any other like A plus worry players in the room, like really good at it. I can project doomsday like nobody's business. I can look at a situation and be like, oh, I can tell you how that's gonna go wrong. And a lot of us are really good at that. And this worry can just consume us because it can, it can, it can steal the joy, it can steal the faith that God's trying to plant in us. But Jesus calls out another one that I think is a little surprising. He says it's wealth. Wealth. Which is a little bit weird because if you think about how a little more money could bless your life, you might be thinking, man, I could finally afford those counseling appointments, or I could bless my kids, or, you know, there's a lot of things we could do. I could be more generous, there's a lot of things we could do with a little bit more money. But what we notice is that it is often that friction in our lives that God uses to move us to the right place. Money in our society has a way of being used to eliminate friction and replace the friction with another distraction. In other words, we don't want to deal with something, so we just use a little bit of money to make it go away, and then we get ourselves another distraction. It's the curse of abundance. And Jesus says, if you let worry steal it, or if you let wealth steal it, that those are thorns. So as you look at that, is your soil ever in the place of being hard or shallow or crowded? I talked to somebody after the last service and he said, I noticed that in the course of a week, I'm all of those. I'm just all of those. And uh we were laughing about that because I feel the same way. But if this is true, what should we do? Because here's the thing the problem is not the seed. The problem is not the seed. This whole series that we're in is about God's word. This is the seed. The problem is not the seed. I know and you know that the word of God comes under criticism from our world. And we could people say things like it's not reliable. People say things like it doesn't make sense. People say things like it's outdated. But what we know from scripture is it's not the seed that's the problem, it's the soil. If we if we have a problem, it's the soil. And so we're not gonna go to work and change the word of God, but we could go to work and see our the soil of our life change. And I think ever all of us have to take responsibility and we have to take ownership for the condition of the soil in our life. It's not anybody else's job. It's your job. It's my job for me. I think a fertile soil then would say things like this I surrender my right to define reality. Because if there is a word of God that is the truth, then it's the it's the source of truth, meaning I'm not the one, I'm not the master of the universe. I don't make the rules. I'm not gonna define reality. This defines reality, and then and then I will allow my deepest thought patterns to be continually reorganized by God's thoughts. I'm gonna let God rearrange my life and my thoughts because his word is truth and I can trust it. So, if all that's true, what should we do? I'm gonna give you three really practical things that you can do based on God's word, so that we can cultivate the soil of our hearts, so that God can take more share of it, so he can take more ground in our soil, so that we can see the fruit begin to grow, so that we can establish ourselves firmly on solid ground, so that when a storm comes, when a problem comes, when a discouragement comes, we recover a lot faster. You're never gonna have a week where you don't experience discouragement. You're welcome. And that's great news, right? God's word can help you recover faster. God's word can help you recover without going off the rails. And it's such a gift. And so we can learn how to give God's word more space. So the first thing I would encourage you to do is to hear daily. Hear daily. Just like open up the windows of your heart, open up your mind and hear and listen daily. Faith grows through repeated exposure, not occasional exposure, continuous, unbroken exposure. This is how faith grows. In fact, Romans chapter 10 says this so faith comes through hearing, from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. Faith comes from hearing the word. So if you hear daily, you get this daily injection of faith. Notice in that verse, if you're looking at the notes, I put ESV, that means English Standard Version. There are different versions of the of the Bible, and those are different translations. We'll talk more about that next week because sometimes you might look at that and be like, what in the world? Why is it why isn't it all just the same? Well, it was written in a different language, and so there's different translations, so we have the best sense of what this is saying to us. But faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. So the volume of exposure, then it matters. It's not the only thing that matters. I warned you about that in the beginning, but it matters. I went to the doctor a while back and I finally got uh connected to a nutritionist. I'd been wanting to do that for a long time. Nutritionist, I said, Can I get a blood test? So we know what my levels are so we go to work on that. And they said, Sure. So I went and got a blood test and came back with all those things you can't pronounce, you know. And I'm like, I don't know what any of this stuff is, but I know what that one is. It said sodium. And as a 52 year old Old man, I've I had an assumption about what the number was. I thought that they were gonna say it's too high. But they said it's too low. And I was like, too low? How's that possible? They said, Well, some people's bodies just, you know, they said, How much water do you drink? And I was like, I told them they was like, Oh, okay, you need to drink less water and eat more salt. And I was like, that seems a little backwards. Are you tricking me? You know, like I'm not gonna give that advice to my church, drink less water and eat more salt, everybody. But that's what they said to do. What I found out was I was actually having these little heart things that I I thought might have been problematic. But the thing is that sodium and potassium are what regulate your heartbeat. Both those were low, actually, for me. And so just with a little bit of dietary change, I was able to increase it. And the same thing goes with your intake of the word of God. If you got a blood test right now, what would it show about your levels of faith, which come directly from how much exposure you have to the word of God? Faith comes from hearing, hearing from the word of God. Greatest changes in your life won't come from trying harder. Isn't that sad? The greatest changes in your life won't come from trying harder. They'll come from allowing God's word to reshape how you think. Reshape how you think. Secondly, discuss weekly. I think this one's a surprise. I get to hear daily, that one was obvious, but discuss weekly. As I was studying scripture and looking at how God changes people's lives, it was it became exceedingly obvious that there is something that a lot of people never do. Discuss God's word with other Christians. Wow. Did you know that 50% of people, according to research, never make it to that place in their faith? Half of all Christians never make it to the place where they're discussing God's word with other Christians, which is a major, major growth barrier. And so they're stuck in kind of like this, as the writer of Hebrews would say, like it's like they're drinking milk only all the time. They're sort of in this baby infancy stage of their spiritual life because they've never gotten to the place where they go to the depths of discussing what scripture means with another believer and then unpacking it. And why does that matter? Well, the experts in the growth industry these days would call this socialized learning. You're coming to somebody else going, well, what do you think? One of the things about this is it's easy to twist God's word by yourself. You could bend God's word to match your will. All alone. To match your whims. You'd be like, I don't know if I really believe that God's word teaches that, you know. Because do you know what we often do is that we will, we will, it's easier to change your theology than it is to change your behavior. It's easy to go, uh, I no longer believe that. What you're really saying is, I'm not willing to give up this practice or this sin in my life. And so I've changed my beliefs. But if you get in a community with other people and you start discussing scripture, it's harder to do that, which is a blessing, because now we're like, I'm gonna be confront, I will allow myself to be confronted by God's truth, transformed by God's truth. We do this uh at Westside in groups. That's probably no surprise. We have growth groups. You saw the, if in the recent weeks, if you were here, you saw the catalogs, we're talking about this. Get in a group, get in a group. We love it. I did two groups this last week. One was our discovery Bible study at my house, which I loved. It was so much fun. And then I also went to Men's Alliance, which was a blast. Men's Alliance uh is a men's group that meets, and there was a fire, and and they were reading scripture, and they uh and they said, Who wants to read the scripture? And this and this young man named Xander, um, who I think is maybe still a teenager. I don't even know how old Xander is, but I know he's young, and he he goes, I'll do it. And I honestly I don't know if I've ever heard Xander speak before. He he starts reading scripture like he's an old testament prophet, and I'm just like, Whoa, where's this coming from? He's like speaking with authority. I mean, he knows this scripture, he's pronounced, he knows exactly what it says, and he's like imparting it to us. And with this bunch of guys sitting around the fire, and I'm like, I was challenged by that and encouraged by that. There is something very spiritual and special that happens if we will get in an environment where we discuss scripture together on a very regular basis. It's what the first disciples did. Look what it says in Acts 2.42. It says, All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship and to sharing in meals, including the Lord's Supper and to prayer. I mean, they were feasting on God's word together. What do you think this means? What should we do? Just going there together over and over and over again. And it's part of what allows us to build fertile soil. If you don't have a group, one, there's tons of them here for you. You can just go right on the on the Tap Connect right now and go find one. You go out to the lobby later and talk to somebody on the groups team. We'd love to plug you in. But if you can't do that, take a look at the questions that are at the bottom of your notes. Grab a person or two or three and discuss Luke chapter 24 this week and see what God will do as you just start to open your life to other people who are also on this journey. The third thing I want you to write down in the notes is this obey immediately. This is what we learn from Scripture that if you want the power to change, you want God's word to have the power to change your life, it has to be obeyed to be effective. I'll say that again. God's word has to be obeyed to be effective. There's no good just knowing something. Jesus constantly talks about that. James, his brother, talks about it and gets real, gets real direct with us about it. And we learn that we must obey immediately if we want God's word to have an effect. It's kind of like the baptism thing that we mentioned earlier. The baptism is this outward display of a brand new relationship with God. And I don't have anything against churches that have educational classes for people to prepare for things like that. But one thing that we try not to do at Westside is to put barriers in the way of obedience. The New Testament said they believed and they were baptized. It's so simple. And so if you've been saved, if you've given your life to God and you've not gone public through baptism, my encouragement to you is do it fast. We got it coming up, I think, in a couple of weeks. I mean, don't delay obedience. They say delay, uh somebody said delayed obedience is disobedience. So what is it that God has prompted me to do that I still haven't obeyed, and can I put that into practice? There's a quote that says this sow a thought, reap an act. So, like sow as in plant, sow a thought, reap an act. Sow an act, reap a habit. Sow a character, reap a destiny. So it goes thought, reap act, habit, character, destiny. Which only means that whatever direction our lives are pointing right now is because long ago, at some point, we allowed a seed to be planted, and it grew into an act, habit, character, destiny. And the good news of that is we can plant a new seed today. We can allow God to plant a new seed today, and we can allow him to plant a whole bunch of seeds, and we can let the thorns be torn out, and we can we can allow him to put the nutrients in the soil, and we can give up a lot of those distractions, and we can say, God, I'm gonna give you more ground, and I'm gonna obey immediately. Every time you obey, another weed gets pulled, another thorn gets removed. Every time you obey, more soil gets enriched. So we obey immediately. Matthew 7, 24, Jesus is talking about this exact thing. He says, Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And he goes on to say, and when the storm came, that house stood firm. But he contrasts it with another one, where the house was built on the sand and it fell immediately as the storm came. The problem was that not the blueprints, but both the builders had the blueprints. The problem was the obedience. One builder built on the rock, the other built on the sand. How? Because when you hear and obey, you're building on the rock. And Jesus is encouraging you and me that if we want a life that's stable, steady, secure, solid, strong, we build on the rock. By hearing, understanding the word of God, his teachings, and putting them into practice. This is exactly, I think, what the world needs right now is the kind of person who is not going to be knocked over by the news or one hour out of a whole work day that goes negative. Right? But has the wherewithal to withstand because God's word is is the is the foundation that they're standing on. And so my my encouragement to all of us is to just ask, what's my soil like? What's the soil of my heart like right now? Is it hardened? So much coming at you. Like you can't even see straight, you can't even think straight. Could you turn down maybe the volume of all that other stuff? Turn down the amount of things coming to you that aren't God's word? Could you turn up the volume of God's word in your life? Could you just let it be more consistent, more intentional? There's a bazillion ways you could do this these days. I'm not anti-technology at all. I think the Bible app is one of the most brilliant things I've ever seen in my life. It's been downloaded hundreds of millions of times by people. It's used all the time. Even right now, they're doing a Bible reading plan that goes along with the World Cup of all things. So many amazing things available for us to get God's word in. That's where the faith comes from. So we hear it daily, we discuss it weekly, we obey it immediately. So that we're not hard soil, we're not shallow soil, we're not thorny soil, we're fertile soil. And ready for God to go to work, expecting a hundredfold return of fruit coming out all over the place. We're blessing people all over the place because we've allowed him to have the whole the whole heart. Would you bow your heads and pray with me? Father, we we want to give you our hearts today. No more delaying. I pray for boldness and courage in this room that you would raise us up as people who are going, we will build our lives on your word. We will build our lives on a firm foundation. We're not gonna be tossed back and forth, we're not gonna be knocked over by a storm, we're not gonna be discouraged by one tough hour. We're gonna stand strong. We're gonna stand up. We're gonna be fruitful. We're gonna bless our neighbors. We're gonna build a family tree that carries on a spiritual legacy. We're gonna cut off the things in life that are dragging us off course. We're gonna boldly step forward and obey what you ask us to do. Lord, we wanna be those people. I get a sense that there's a resolve in this room to do that, and I'm excited. And Lord, I pray that you would strengthen that resolve. God, give us the wisdom to walk this out. Lord, I pray for anybody that might be discouraged in this room, dealing with a major decision. God, I pray that you would break through to us even right now, through your spirit and through your word, just break through even right now. Lord, I pray for those who today need that foundation. And maybe you're here and you've never made your own personal peace with God. You've never said yes to Jesus, you've never accepted Jesus as your savior, to cross the line of faith, to receive his gift of salvation. If you've never done that before, it's time. That's your move today, is to make Jesus your Savior. And I want to invite you to do that right now. If you've never done that, right where you're at, online or in this room, you can say these words back to God in your heart. Say, Jesus, I give you my life. Thank you for saving me. I believe in you. Your life, your death on the cross, and your resurrection. Forgive me of my sins. Fill me with your spirit. Lead me and teach me to follow you. And I ask it in Jesus' name.