Proof You Can Trust the Bible | Firm Foundation

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Join us as Gabe Kolstad brings us a message about the proof you can trust the bible. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Wow, you guys are like alive today. Is everybody awake? Oh my god. I was trying I was sitting here while that video was playing and the people were on the screen talking. You didn't hear any of it because you guys were all talking to each other. It was beautiful. I felt like I was in one of those Italian restaurants where everyone was just so loud and it was so talkative. And I gotta tell you, that is awesome to me. Because what I see and what I feel is this life and connection that God has put inside of us. Do you guys feel it? That was really fun. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here. I'm so thrilled to be with you today. I want to start with just a couple of exciting things that are happening. One is if you missed the last weekend, I shared some news about our church and about what's been happening and kind of where we're at with our initiative called The Time is Now. Just to catch you up in case you're brand new, we've seen our church grow over the last few years. It's been really, really exciting, and we've been praying for what God might do to open the doors wider, to allow us to make more room for changed lives in our community. And we're just waiting on God. He brought us an opportunity for a building and we explored it and we realized this is this is the time, it is the place. And so we opened up this new initiative called The Time Is Now. This building is just down the street, about a half mile. We don't have to leave the neighborhood. We get to double our capacity. It's gonna be so much fun. Um, and so we uh we've pledged, we've we've gone on an you know, we needed to raise $750,000 pretty quickly in order to secure the building, make it usable, and move in. And uh we we set out on that venture not that long ago, and quickly you all have pledged $508,000 uh toward that effort, which yes, please let's give that a full round of applause because uh that's amazing. We are praying about closing the gap to that this summer between the 508 and the 750. But listen to this already, and here's the really cool thing already of that $508,000, you've already given $217,000 of that. Why that matters, yes, please let's let's go ahead and thank God for that. Why that matters is because that allows us to get moving on things, and we're so thrilled. So stay tuned for what's going on. Um, very, very soon we're gonna be able to build the teams and start working on the space, and hopefully, in not too long, we'll be able to move our church just down the street and be able to open the doors wider. So, can we all just thank God for what he's doing right now? That's pretty exciting. Yeah. Also, part of that growth has been with our student ministry. Students here at Westside has been a really fun thing. Not only when we gather on Sundays uh for our student ministry, but also around the community as we have clubs in schools and stuff. The students are going to camp in just a very soon. And one of the ways they earn their money to get there is through fireworks. And we have a little stand you might have seen out here. And if you're gonna so I'm just gonna say this if you're gonna buy fireworks, might as well support these students. It's all the same price anyway, so you can get it there uh today and next weekend, or you can go down to the Wilco down the street and get get it from the big tent down there anytime from now through the 5th of July. So want to encourage you to do that. And I also thought I'd bring one in and give it away, okay? So here's a firework. I got this one because it's called Eternal Eruption, and I was like, that is perfect. Perfect. Okay, quiz question. Uh, anybody know what the first year our nation started celebrating with fireworks on the fourth? Go ahead. Very close. Seven. Who said seven? Right here. Kelly, it's you. Come get it, Kelly. She gets it. Everybody give her a hand. Good job. 1777. Good job, Kelly. Thank you. All right, that's fun. Um, uh that has absolutely nothing to do with what we're actually doing today. So let's switch gears, okay? We're in a series called Firm Foundation, and we're talking about how we have such a firm foundation in the Word of God. This whole series, six weeks long, is about the Bible. And we I believe that the Bible is true. I believe it's God's Word. I believe you can count on it. Uh, I believe that, like those who were baptized today, how exciting was that? Uh that we that that you know they're looking for this firm foundation, like, please tell me that there's someplace solid where I could put my feet, where I could, where I could build my life, where there's truth and it's solid. I'm gonna have security, right? That's what we're all hoping for, and I think we find it right here. So grab your notes out if you're online with us, if you're here in person. I gotta tell you that uh a few years ago I had the privilege of having my identity stolen. If you ever have a chance to do that, don't because it is a pain, okay? That is not that is not fun. For me, it was a big deal. It it got all blown out of proportion. It took 18 months of weekly hours and hours every week working on this to get the wrinkles out. I had to work with the Washington County Sheriff's Department, I had to work with the Federal Trade Commission, I had to work with the FBI. I mean, it was a really big deal. There were businesses opened up in my name on the East Coast in Chicago and here in Beaverton. There was an office space leased in my name in Beaverton that was being billed to my credit. Uh, there was a P.O. box opened up in Beaverton that had full of bills that were coming to me that were for tens of thousands of dollars of bills people had racked up in my name. All of this, oh my goodness, it was a Tuesday morning uh when I was doing my normal thing. I just opened my online banking and I checked my balance like I always do. And uh I was looking for my accounts and I was confused. I was like, where are my accounts? I had nine accounts at a local bank, disappeared. They said, I called, they said, Oh no, we seized those assets. And that was how I found out my identity was stolen. Can you imagine how many times per day after that I've been checking my account balances? Oh, I mean, 10, 12 times a day I'd be checking in, you know, like alarm goes off, okay, it's been 30 minutes. Let me check again. Let's see, is everything there still, you know? Because it took a long time to get that straightened out. And that reminds me that as a culture, we are obsessed with certainty. And for good reason, especially when things like that happen. That we we go, is the money there? You know, we we we go, did it really happen? We go, can I really trust? And I think that's important. I mean, if you buy a used car and something goes wrong, in fact, has anybody ever had that happen? You buy a used car and something went wrong with the car. Anybody in the room? It happens, right? Um, so they invented something called Carfax. It's supposed to solve all your problems because you can run the report and it's gonna bring you a report, it's gonna say, oh, there was an accident here, or here's all the service records, or oh, it has a branded title, or you know, you can find out about a car by the car factor, which that gives us what? More certainty. And we love that stuff because it helps us to feel like we know what's going on and we're secure. So we have this kind of obsession with certainty. And I think that we sometimes take that to our faith, and I I want to just point out something though. That the demand for evidence may not be all bad. It may not be all bad. In fact, it might actually be a prerequisite to your faith to find the evidence, to find the evidence. If all you believe is what somebody else told you to believe, that's pretty shaky. And and what I what I believe is the Bible doesn't ask you to ignore evidence. It doesn't ask you to ignore evidence, it invites you instead to build your life on evidence strong enough to carry the weight. Because Jesus said, you know what's coming? Storms. Storms. Are you gonna be ready for them? So Jesus says, the way you get ready for a storm is you build your house on the rock, and the way you do that is you listen to his teachings and you do them. And if you don't know what the teachings are, or if you don't trust the teachings, you can't build your life on the rock. And then when a storm comes, he says, Your house is gonna fall down. But nobody wants that to happen. We've all watched it happen, and maybe some of us have had it happen. We don't want to go there again. What we want is solid ground. Yeah, that's why we're in this series Firm Foundation. Today I want to talk about proof that you can trust the Bible. I know that's a strong word, proof that you can trust the Bible, but Paul talks about it in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. So look at this with me, where he's talking, by the way, to the people in the city of Corinth, which was a city that, I mean, if you think Portland, Oregon is secular, Corinth was miles ahead, miles more secular. Like all the new ideas. Corinth was like the hotbed for any experimental idea there could possibly be, a sexual idea, a religious idea, a business idea, didn't matter. It was Corinth. And Paul is writing this letter to the people of Corinth, and he's talking about this firm foundation. So he starts out like this in chapter 15. He says, Let me now remind you, dear brothers and sisters, of the good news I preached to you before. You welcomed it then, and you still stand firm in it. It is this good news that saves you if you continue to believe the message I told you, unless, of course, you believed something that was never true in the first place. I passed on to you, he said, what was most important, and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the scripture said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the scripture said. If you're taking notes, I'd be underlining that just as the scripture said. That's a really important thing in there. He's going, let me tell you why we know this. He was seen by Peter, and then by the twelve. After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. Last of all, as though I had been born at the wrong time, I also saw him. For I am the least of all the apostles. In fact, I am not even worthy to be called an apostle after the way I persecuted God's church. Paul's talking to the Corinthians, going, like, this is a big deal. You can count on this. I mean, Paul lays this out actually as like a legal brief. It's it's like he's in a courtroom and he's going, Let's talk about the evidence for whether what God wrote in his word to us about Jesus is true. Let's talk about the evidence as to whether the good news is true. And so he lays it out like somebody's on trial. He's going, Well, there's these people that saw it. You know, he uses something called eyewitness testimony, which is still the gold standard in reliability, right? If you somebody commits a crime these days and they're and they're convicted, they go to trial, and somebody's gonna say, Let's call forward a witness, right? And the witness is supposed to say, Well, here's what I saw or heard. And if somebody saw something happen, that's a really big deal. If more than one person saw the same thing happen, you're toast, right? It's like it's it's just, you know, boom, guilty. Um by the way, Paul's pointing out something, he goes, Jesus was alive after he died, and he and he and he was buried and he was raised again. He said he was alive, and people saw that. Lots of people saw that and admitting to this fact would have been social exile, would have been certain persecution, potential death. It happened all the time. Why? Because people were trying to snuff out the followers of Jesus who were saying that Jesus was alive. It definitely stole the power from the Jew, you know, from the Jewish religious leaders, and that was the whig one of the big reasons why Jesus was crucified in the first place, because it was stealing power from a system. Jesus is still taking power from a system. The world system, Jesus is still taking power from a system. He is actually the king of kings and lord of lords, right? He is coming back again, and he he will set up his kingdom, and he is the victor, and we get to join him in that. And I think it's important for us to recognize that when Paul mentions people in here, that wasn't for them like uh uh some sort of worldly victory. That was for them a sacrifice to go, I know what this means for me. And I think that's important because there's two different things in history there's mass delusions, and then there's the truth. Mass delusions, like my wife and I, we watched recently one of those documentaries on the thing that happened in Waco, Texas, with David Koresh back a long time ago. And we're kind of sitting there going, like, how do these people believe this stuff and get sucked into this? How does this happen? You know, somebody goes from like, I was working nine to five job, I got a family and a house in the suburbs, and then now I'm in the compound with David Koresh. How does that happen? Mass delusions are often high pressure, secrecy, and control. All the opposites of how we got this message, and we'll talk about the difference. Uh, you know, hallucinations is another thing. People could say, oh, I know, all these people claim they saw Jesus, but that was just a hallucination. The thing about hallucinations is it's each person sees their own version of something. In this case, they all saw the exact same thing. That's hard to that's hard to argue with, and history says so. So I want to give you reasons why you can trust the Bible, okay? First of all, the evidence is actually you. You can write this down in your notes. The evidence is actually you. Let me let me unpack that a little bit. The evidence for whether the Bible is true or not is you. Because something that has the power to change a life is miraculous. If you look at your life, just look at your life for a second, just look back for a minute in your mind and think about all the things you've tried to change on your own. And how many of those things have worked. And when you come up with the same number as I came up with, zero, um, you know, then you go, and then there was when Jesus got involved, then there was when God got involved, then there was when a power beyond myself got involved. Now it stacks up, and you go, Oh, wow, that's just amazing. So the evidence is actually you. If, if, and Paul, Paul said these words in the gospel in the New Testament, he said, You're a living epistle. You're like, you're like a living word of God. He's working in you and you're alive and you're changing, and that's the miracle right there. He said to the uh Corinthians, he said, You still stand firm in it. It is this good news that saves you if you continue to believe the message. He said, You welcomed it at first, now you're still standing firm in it. That's the miracle. He's like, especially in Corinth. I mean, like, come on, everything is competing with your worldview, everything is competing with your belief system, everything is competing for your allegiance, and you're still standing firm in the gospel, that's a miracle in Corinth. And it's a miracle in Portland. It's a miracle in you. If God has done something in you and you're still standing firm in it, that's a miracle. If I were not a believer in Jesus and I were looking for something to stand on, that's what I'd be looking for. Does it work? I probably, as much as I love the stats and the facts and all, and I'm gonna talk about some of that, I love that stuff, but I care a lot more about what actually works. I mean, let's be honest. Most people aren't saying, is Christianity true? Most people are saying, does Jesus work? And when you realize that he does, and you and you know somebody that has been changed by Jesus, it's it's crazy cool. I was uh in the back just a few minutes ago and I almost lost my voice screaming as uh my family members were being baptized. Just crazy. So Landon and Zoe up there being baptized. Katie and Jonathan are here. I have, let's give them a hand. God has been working so much in their life. I'm so proud of you guys. I'm so proud of you guys. I mean, I see this in you. You are a living epistle. You are God is working in you, and it's a miracle, it's an absolute miracle. And when you when you know somebody like that, I think you could reach out and touch it and go like, wow, it's true, it's real. He does it.

unknown 16:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

And he can do it for anybody, and he will. One of the things that uh we know is that human change is hard. Henry Cloud wrote a book called Uh How People Change. And in it he said, people don't change through knowledge. If that were true, you would just have to read a book and you would be changed. They don't change through knowledge, they change through to truth or knowledge that is then put into relationships that is then lived out. That's how people actually change. And so when Jesus tells us his word, it's it's important and it's activated when we get into relationship, and then it's it's really implemented as we practice it. That's how we actually change. So again, look back at your life and go, like, when did I actually change? It was when I allowed God's word to get a hold of me, put me in a community, and let me live it out. That's how people change. The evidence is you secondly, the crux is the resurrection. The crux is the resurrection. If you if you wonder, can I trust the Bible? The crux is the resurrection. The crux just means it's like if you if you see a seesaw or a teeter-totter, it's got that point, right? The fulcrum is like the crux. It's like the crux is the one thing that everything depends on, everything turns on. And so Paul Paul said it this way in 1 Corinthians 15. He said, I passed on what was most important. You see that circle of the words most important. I passed on what was most important. Christ died. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead. Paul said, if there was one thing that we just like laser lock in on, like, only if you could only say there's one thing I'm gonna look at, and that's gonna tell me whether I can trust the Bible or not, he said it would just be that one laser-focused thing, it's the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Did Jesus really raise from the dead? Because if he did, then whatever he said about the Bible absolutely has to be true. And whatever the Bible said about him has to be true. There are lots of prophecies in the Old Testament about Jesus. I mean, by the time the Old Testament was done being delivered, it was around 400 or 500 BC. Um, and you saw all these prophecies. They start in Genesis chapter 3, and they go all the way through the Old Testament about who Jesus would be. The Messiah was his name. He was gonna come, he's gonna be the savior of Israel. There were hundreds, hundreds of prophecies about Jesus before, you know, hundreds of years before he came. Stuff like this, stuff like he'd be born in Bethlehem, he'd be born of a virgin, that he would be from the line of Judah, that he would uh be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, that he'd ride into Jerusalem on a donkey. I mean, all that stuff was was prophesied about Jesus way, way, way before he came. And it's very interesting how that changes people's lives. There's a guy named Lee Strobel who was uh who's written a book called The Case for Christ, and there's a movie about it you might have seen. Lee was an atheist, married to a Christian, and he said that he was kind of tired of his wife giving him trouble about not going to church and stuff. So he's like, okay, I I work at the Chicago Tribune, I'm a journalist, I do this for a living. Honey, just sit still. I'm gonna disprove Christianity so that you just get off my back. And so he went, you know, sincerely to go do that. And what he discovered through all the conversations and all the interviews and all the resources and all the documents, too much evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That was his thing. He found too much evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and he had the same response that in the New Testament the apostle Thomas had, which was that he fell to his knees, he said, My Lord and my God. He he gave his life to Jesus because there's no way that he could deny that Jesus Christ is alive. And that kind of change is amazing. Now there was a guy that he found, I think one of the things that changed his mind was this guy named David Stoner, who wrote a book in 1952 on science in the Bible. This guy was a mathematician and an astronomer, and he said, Let me just quantify the likelihood that Jesus Christ would fulfill even eight of those new of those Old Testament prophecies about him. Just eight of those prophecies. He said, It'd be like this. Anybody ever hear taking a road trip through Oregon? Got any people taking a road trip through Oregon? Yeah, great. Call out a town you went to that you liked that took a road trip through Oregon.

unknown 20:30

Sprague.

SPEAKER_00 20:30

Sprague, Vernonia, Burns, okay? Sisters, Coose Bay. Portland. Okay, great. Um, how about Texas?

unknown 20:46

Boston.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

Okay. Texas is a long drive, right? Oh my gosh. That's like you gotta have a team to get through Texas. You can't do that by yourself. Okay, Texas is over two and a half times the size of Oregon, 268,000 square miles. David Stoner said, here's the likelihood that Jesus fulfilled only eight of those prophecies from the Old Testament. And he said, Imagine you take quarters and you and you and you fill the whole state, you put them across the whole state of Texas, just like all quarters, the whole state, all 268,000 square miles. That'd be a lot of quarters. But then he goes, but make it two feet deep. That's a lot of quarters. That'd be a lot of quarters in a room like this. Imagine an entire state of Texas, two feet deep. He said, Um, you you put you put an X on one of them. You put an X on one of them. So I've got some quarters, and here's one with an X. You drop that in, and then you stir them all around. And then you blindfold somebody and you push them, and you say, now go find the one with an X. You get one try. You gotta walk the whole state, and you got one try. If you reach down and pick up the one with an X, it's the same odds that Jesus would fulfill eight of those prophecies. It's one in ten to the seventeenth power, it's one in a hundred quadrillion chances. Lee Strobel's like, that's probably enough evidence for me. One of the things I think that about stuff like that, those stats, I mean, I geek out about it, I love it, but the truth is that that doesn't change your life. Information doesn't change your life. Application changes your life. Put this into practice. How do you take that faith, that belief? Belief is faith. If you just said, yeah, I believe that too, then that's faith. Put that faith into practice, that's what starts to change your life. Third thing in your notes, the proof is undeniable. I know I'm making big claims. The proof is undeniable. The proof is undeniable. That what? That you can trust the Bible. The proof is undeniable. Here's a little test. What mountain is this? Okay, how do you know? Because it sloped? Is it the only mountain that sloped in the world? Is it? I don't know. I don't think the top's blown off. This for sure is Mount St. Helens, right here. Let me show the next one. There we go. That looks more like it, right? Okay, how many of you uh believe that Mount St. Helens erupted? Okay, how do you know? You watched it. Give me a break. Nobody watched Mount St. Helens erupt. I mean, that was 46 years ago. How could anybody say people think that that a mountain erupted, like yet there's no ash? I mean, we're not we were never swallowed by you know, there's evidence. What kind of evidence? Eyewitness evidence, right? There's eyewitness evidence. I actually watched it erupt. And I know someone else who watched it erupt. Her name is Melissa, a different Melissa, my wife, who normally sits right there. Um, we didn't even know each other when it was erupting, and we both saw the same thing. I know lots of people. Some of you would say, would claim I watched it erupt. Anybody in the room? I watched it erupt. On TV? No, in person. Anybody see it in person erupt? Yeah. People watched this actually happen with their own eyeballs. Did we all know each other and did we corroborate with each other and be like, hey, in 46 years, there's gonna be a sermon at a church? Let's all say that we saw the same thing, okay? No. Do you know that the way we got scripture and the way we know about the resurrection of Jesus is the exact same circumstance? Paul says, here's what's going on. He said, He was seen by Peter, by the twelve, by more than 500, by James, by all the apostles, last of all, I also saw him. These were not corroborated stories. This was not a hallucination, this was not a mass deception. This is what's called an eyewitness testimony. And if you believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, you can believe everything else God says. And you can believe everything that Jesus says about the Bible. And you can take that confidence that I hope you walk away with, and you can start putting it into practice. Because that is really where God wants us to live is in this practice place. I I believe this. I believe having all the information is really important. And I'm I'm here to say, don't believe me. Do your own work. Go find your own answers. Be careful where you look. If all you do is go, I'm gonna, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna go, I'm gonna do some TikTok research. And then I'll know. Okay, I think that's I think it's one way, it's not the only way, it's it better not be the only way. You know, TikTok and YouTube, these things can be very, very manipulated, and we know that. So, what about some source documents? What about some real research? What what about a library? What about an interview? You know, if you really are that curious, if you really if you really would think, I'm not sure this is God's word, man, there's so much at stake, I'd go spend some time on that. And I hope that you do. And when you do, I hope you come back with the confidence to say, yeah, this is God's word. And then I hope we all say, now let's put it into practice, because that's actually what's gonna change our lives. Knowledge is not gonna change your life, application is gonna change your life. I I have to say that Corinth was, the city of Corinth was like a wild environment. I mean, it was just wild. And so for Paul to say, you're still standing firm. I could look out even in this service right here. I've been doing this the whole weekend, looking out, going, like, I see so many people still standing firm. It's so encouraging. It tells me that there's something at work in you that's bigger than all of us. It tells me that it's there's no there's no human power that could do that, that could get you through your crisis, that could carry you through a divorce, through a bankruptcy, through cancer. I mean, no human force could do that. That God's given you a firm foundation, and that's such a testimony to everybody around you. That's such a light to everybody around you who's looking in. You know, everyone in the world wants the same thing security. We're all looking in different places. I believe this is where we find it. And I think God wants us to trust the Bible. I think he wants us to trust the Bible because Christianity is not built on private feelings, it's built on public evidence. Public evidence that produces transformed lives. There's this law about the universe. It's it's called the second law of thermodynamics, and it just basically says that everything is not falling together, it's falling apart. You know, that that matter doesn't fall together, matter falls apart. That was so dramatic just now, wasn't it? Sorry about that. That's okay, Rachel. That's okay. I'm gonna give Rachel a high five right now. Because we all intended for that to happen a little differently. That's okay, but it's fun. Yeah, but but let me just say, matter doesn't fall together. It falls apart. And I think you know that when you when you look at, you know, if you buy a new product and then you use it three times and it falls apart, or if there's an earthquake or a tornado somewhere, or you know, then there's people talking about global global warming or global climate change, things that are happening. That this wasn't meant to last forever, right? Jesus said in the world you're gonna have tribulation. And I think there's also the same law at work spiritually. I think there's like a spiritual law of thermodynamics, which is just that there are gonna be challenges. Jesus said, in the world you're gonna have tribulation, those things are gonna come. And yet I read this morning in Colossians chapter 1, it says Jesus is the one that holds the whole universe together. And I was I was fascinated by that because imagine how bad it would be in the universe if Jesus wasn't holding it together. But if he can hold the universe together, I don't think my bank account is a problem for him. I think he's got us, and we can trust him. You know, we can trust him. And what does that trust look like? Well, it looks like obedience. If we're gonna build our life on the rock, he said you you hear the teaching, you listen to it, and you do it. So we're all in different places with this. We we all have a different spot in the journey. We call it the mountain range here. My question is, what's your next move? Based on what you've heard today, based on if you can trust the Bible, then what's your next move? Some of you are on the first mountain we call the Jesus Mountain. Some of you the second mountain we call the community mountain, or the third mountain we call it the mission mountain. Let me talk about it for a second because if you're at the beginning of your journey, then we always say you're on your Jesus mountain. Maybe you've said yes to Jesus as your Savior, maybe you haven't yet. Your place right there is to engage directly with Scripture. That's your step. That's your move. Engage directly with Scripture. Don't just borrow your faith from somebody else. Don't lean on the stories you heard 30 years ago when you were a kid going to church. Open this thing up, engage directly, feast on it, read it, interact with it, question it, underline it, mark it, pray about it, obey it. This is where you begin your faith journey. It lights it up. If you're on the community mountain, we're saying we notice you're starting to look around for some support. You're starting to notice that it's hard alone, and you gotta lean in. One of the things that I love about community, like when I was at Men's Alliance yesterday, and the guys were just leaning on each other, sharing is amazing. It's this big group of guys. We just got done with this big workout. You'd think we'd all be grunting. Instead, we're over there crying by the fire, you know, we're talking about the stuff in our lives and all the support being poured out, amazing, amazing. In in community, you start to realize that when you don't know for sure about whether you can trust the Lord, you can look to somebody else and you can see the evidence in their life. If you don't have your own evidence through a season, maybe you're going through a valley, you can look to somebody else and go, like, well, they're going through the same thing, or they went through the same thing. They're still standing. Maybe he'll carry me too. So I'm gonna trust for another day. Sometimes a person in your life gives you enough faith to trust for one more day, and sometimes that's all you need. If you're on the mission mountain, what we know is that God's starting to stir you because you know some things, because you feel some things, because you have this calling on your life. And for you, it's no longer about information. I mean, that's always gonna be true. You always gotta feed yourself, you always get that fullness coming in. But for you, it's gotta be about expression. Are you giving this away? They say the Dead Sea is dead because there's no outlet, it's not giving anything. Did you know that if you're not giving anything or not receiving anything, you have to release before you can replenish. You gotta, you gotta have a flow. The reason why the Dead Sea is dead is there's no flow. So let me ask you a question. What's coming out of your life? Where are you serving? Where are you sharing? And if you're not sure, that's okay. We can help you. We want to encourage you to take a step. But I'd love for you to bow your heads with me right now so God can just talk to us individually about what that might be. Father, we are grateful for your truth. You said, Jesus, you said sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth. Lord, we pray that you would sanctify us or set us apart or continue to work on us through your truth. And we we want to yield ourselves to you for that. So, right here, right now, if if you've been struggling with whether you can trust God's word, I'm praying this for you. Lord, we pray that you'd open our eyes so we can see the truth of your word. We pray that you would allow us to move past our questions or through our questions so that we can gain confidence that you've spoken the truth to us, that we have it right in our hands, that we can trust your word. Lord, we pray for those who are here today that need some people in their life. Pray that they'd lower their barriers, let their guards down, take a courageous step today. Father, I pray for those that are here and never have yet said yes to Jesus. If you're here and you're not sure where you stand in God's family, whether you have had your sins forgiven by Jesus and his death and his burial and his resurrection, whether you're the one that is part of his family. And I want to invite you today to make sure of that. John the Apostle said, I've written these things so that you may know that you have eternal life. He wants it in his family. He's done everything. He's given his life for you, he's paid for your sins. Your sins are already paid for. Have you received that gift? And if you've never said yes to Jesus and you're ready to do that, I want to lead you in a very simple prayer. You could say this right where you're at, online or in this room. You can say, Jesus, I give you my life. Just tell him in your heart and mind, 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 Holy Spirit. Lead me and teach me to follow you. And I ask it in Jesus' name.