SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: We got kiddos in the room.
SPEAKER_01: I saw you kids worshiping today.
SPEAKER_01: Man, we had a great week last week with created, and uh we're kind of in big time summer mode right now.
SPEAKER_01: Do you y'all feel like you're in summer mode?
SPEAKER_01: You feeling a little bit?
SPEAKER_01: I'm married to a school teacher, and um my work schedule really don't change that much, but hers changes big time.
SPEAKER_01: And so what I find myself having is I find myself being tempted to stay up later because she stays up later, and I want to stay up with her.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm like starting to average more like five to six hours of sleep instead of the what I prefer, which would be like eight.
SPEAKER_01: I love a good eight-hour night of sleep.
SPEAKER_01: If I can get it, if I can get it, it's hard to get sometimes, but but I do love that.
SPEAKER_01: I love seeing her be in summer mode, even when we had our kids at home.
SPEAKER_01: Seeing them be in summer mode was was pretty awesome.
SPEAKER_01: And uh we're there, we're there.
SPEAKER_01: We're beginning a new series today called the Summer Song Series.
SPEAKER_01: It's our third summer doing this, where we really look at a song that we sing in worship and see how it's connected to scripture and also let the scripture that it's tied to guard our hearts and inform us.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, there's a lot of practicality in the lyrics that we sing.
SPEAKER_01: And so as we go through these next eight weeks together, I hope that you can see that and experience that.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm so grateful.
SPEAKER_01: We have our live stream going right now.
SPEAKER_01: I know we're in heavy vacation season.
SPEAKER_01: It is such a blessing to be able to have that technology.
SPEAKER_01: I enjoyed it when I was gone out of town.
SPEAKER_01: And man, I tell you, over the last, I think about five weeks total, we've had a couple of different uh guys step up and speak for us.
SPEAKER_01: Chad Cadell, one of our very own, at early May, brought a message about dealing with difficult people.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, last week, my friend Jeremy uh Lawson brought a great message about how life is hard, but Jesus is greater.
SPEAKER_01: And they, I wasn't here to be able to experience that live, but going back and being able to watch that and listen to that, I was like, oh man, truth bomb after truth bomb after truth bomb.
SPEAKER_01: So, whatever your schedule is like this summer, if you have to be away or whatever, we got all those technology tools for you to be able to stay connected.
SPEAKER_01: So take advantage of them.
SPEAKER_01: They are such a blessing.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm so grateful for those guys who really, really stepped in and came and brought these messages that God gave them.
SPEAKER_01: So, as we begin the summer song series, I want to tell you about a thing we used to do here at church.
SPEAKER_01: And I, when I came here back in the late 90s, I was the youth minister in literally the very first event I was a part of.
SPEAKER_01: I had not been here but maybe a few weeks.
SPEAKER_01: So I didn't even plan it.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't even uh coordinate it.
SPEAKER_01: I just had to show up for it because the volunteers had made it happen.
SPEAKER_01: But we used to do this thing you may have heard of called a lock-in.
SPEAKER_01: Now, we don't do those anymore because we adults were like, we like sleep.
SPEAKER_01: Uh we want to go to sleep.
SPEAKER_01: Uh but I was reminiscing, literally, I got to do a wedding uh yesterday of a girl I watched.
SPEAKER_01: Basically, um she was born here and uh now she's married, and we were reminiscing about the lock-ins we would do.
SPEAKER_01: And her first memory she thought of was, I remember when I started to fall asleep, and you came and made sure I did not fall asleep, and you threatened me if I fell asleep that somebody would prank me or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: That's how we did lock-ins back when I did them.
SPEAKER_01: We you slept at your own risk.
SPEAKER_01: But I noticed as we continued to do them over the years, I think I think we used to do them like you can come at like 6 p.m.
SPEAKER_01: and you get picked up by your parents at 8 a.m., maybe or something like that.
SPEAKER_01: And I noticed we started starting them at 8 p.m.
SPEAKER_01: and 9 p.m.
SPEAKER_01: And you're gonna pick up your kid at 5 a.m.
SPEAKER_01: No, we didn't go that early.
SPEAKER_01: But we noticed like that that stamina of being able to run an event like that, you know.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but lock-ins, the reason I'm bringing it up is because I was reminiscing about that a little bit and it kind of hit me.
SPEAKER_01: Something that I'd kind of forgotten is I became a follower of Jesus at the age of 15 at summer camp.
SPEAKER_01: And the church I'd already been invited to by a friend at high school, Cumberland Missionary Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_01: I get back from camp.
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm just so on fire for Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: My life has been changed.
SPEAKER_01: And one of the first events that church did for youth was a lock-in.
SPEAKER_01: And uh the church didn't have as big of a campus as we have here.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, it was more like several medium-sized rooms.
SPEAKER_01: The big room was the actual worship center.
SPEAKER_01: And here I am, a new believer, and I wasn't really like uh raised in kind of strict Christian tradition at all.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm still like I'm here learning.
SPEAKER_01: And but even though I didn't have that background, I remember thinking, are we allowed to be doing what we're doing in this worship center right now?
SPEAKER_01: Uh, because we were having scavenger hunts, uh, we ate great food, and we were just kind of all over that church.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, this is pretty cool, which is probably why I did it for so long.
SPEAKER_01: I loved it.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but even at that point in my very early spiritual walk, I was kind of wondering about this building, this room that we called the sanctuary or the worship center.
SPEAKER_01: Like, what are we allowed to do in there?
SPEAKER_01: It what is it uh is this building, is it like completely different than any other building, than any other place where we have to behave completely differently in order for God to be okay with us?
SPEAKER_01: And maybe as you're hearing me say that, you can already see where we might land.
SPEAKER_01: Um, the church is not a building, it is a people.
SPEAKER_01: I remember when this song came out that we just sang, the house of the Lord, I remember thinking at first, like, ooh, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: Like that's a phrase often used in old tradition about whatever the worship center is, and that's okay that we use that.
SPEAKER_01: But I remember we have spent a lot of time over the years trying to help our church understand that it's not a building, it's a people.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a building, it's a people.
SPEAKER_01: We don't act differently because of a special room we enter.
SPEAKER_01: We act differently because the Holy Spirit has made us a room that contains Him.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, what how crazy would it be if we only acted the way we think God would have us act here for an hour on Sundays?
SPEAKER_01: If you're here for a couple of hours, and then we're like, hey, free game to do whatever we want when we leave this room.
SPEAKER_01: Let's go, let's just live however we want.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what's kind of helped me in my brain, even since I was a teenager, to start to understand that this room that we might call a worship center or a sanctuary, it's not so completely different than any other place we are, because the church isn't a building, it is a people.
SPEAKER_01: However, let me say this: this is true too.
SPEAKER_01: There is something special that happens when the people of God gather together, no matter where it is.
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's why we have this really unique view of whatever room we're in that we tend to worship in, whether it's this gym that we flip completely into a worship center early on a Sunday morning, and then we flip it back to a gym.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, by 1 p.m., this place will look nothing like this.
SPEAKER_01: And there'll be screaming awesome kids in here all week long, doing all kinds of fun, crazy stuff.
SPEAKER_01: And that's okay.
SPEAKER_01: But then there's a there's something set apart about this moment, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: That we've all gathered together because we come together as a family, and we all are desperately in need of the voice of God and the presence of God.
SPEAKER_01: And yes, we have his voice, we have his presence in the quiet places alone in our homes or wherever we go to meet with him.
SPEAKER_01: But we also have it here.
SPEAKER_01: There's something special that does happen when we come together and gather together.
SPEAKER_01: I think that's why that's that we sometimes enter into a chapel, a worship center, a sanctuary, a cathedral, or whatever it is, and it just feels so different.
SPEAKER_01: And that's okay.
SPEAKER_01: But make no mistake about it.
SPEAKER_01: This building isn't actually the house of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: You are.
SPEAKER_01: It is a people, it is not an address.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna look at that in Ephesians in just a moment.
SPEAKER_01: God inspired Paul to write this letter to the church in Ephesus.
SPEAKER_01: And back in the day, in the first century, one of the biggest barriers to the work that God was doing in the early church was division.
SPEAKER_01: And it's funny, I think we still battle that today, don't we?
SPEAKER_01: Like the human experience, it's just so easy to become disunified and to separate ourselves out and to sort of, you know, pull ourselves away and separate ourselves based on different things that maybe we agree or disagree with.
SPEAKER_01: And they battled that big time in the first century.
SPEAKER_01: It was probably a bit different, though.
SPEAKER_01: One of the greatest divisions that they faced that Paul was on the front lines of trying to help them with was the division between Jewish believers and non-Jewish believers.
SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't as, it wasn't just an ethnicity difference.
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's it was way more complex than that because uh doing life in any of the cities in Asia Minor, there were lots of Jewish people and non-Jewish people just kind of in the population.
SPEAKER_01: So it wasn't like this, like, oh no, they live over there, we live over here, but we're trying to come together.
SPEAKER_01: They were in the community together, they were in the culture together.
SPEAKER_01: It was more kind of the history and the background.
SPEAKER_01: You bring in people who had been raised in Jewish thought, they had the Old Testament as their scriptures for all their lives, they had all these traditions, they had been told their entire life to not even eat with a non-Jewish person.
SPEAKER_01: That was the religion had taught them that.
SPEAKER_01: And then you bring in someone who is non-Jewish, where they did not know much or care much about the law and the prophets and any of those writings, those ancient scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't care much about that or maybe know much about that.
SPEAKER_01: But all of those people were also coming into these churches, having been transformed by the power of God.
SPEAKER_01: They encountered the gospel of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit fell upon them and entered their hearts too.
SPEAKER_01: And they're all in the same house churches together, and they're trying to figure out what it means to be the church.
SPEAKER_01: So it's with that background that Paul writes this sentence in Ephesians 2, 17.
SPEAKER_01: He says, He, talking about Jesus, he came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near.
SPEAKER_01: Peace to those who were far away, and peace to those who were near.
SPEAKER_01: And this is kind of referring to that division.
SPEAKER_01: And it might sound a little bit like that Paul's playing into the division and the differences, as if the Jewish people were the near ones and the Jesuit people were the far ones.
SPEAKER_01: But he's trying to make a point of something they got, they understood, that the Jewish people were like, hey, we had the prophecy of the Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: Uh so we expected, we knew uh this is something we've been praying for, waiting for, and we know the ways of God.
SPEAKER_01: And so there was a there was this whole experience they had had where they were the chosen people of God.
SPEAKER_01: And the Gentiles were like, Well, we didn't have that experience.
SPEAKER_01: And what Paul is saying that both of you were targeted by God with his gospel, he brought the gospel to both of you, all of you, every single one of you.
SPEAKER_01: And in verse 18, he continues, for through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people, and here we go, and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone.
SPEAKER_01: In him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And I just envisioned this building being built.
SPEAKER_01: You know, it starts with the chief cornerstone.
SPEAKER_01: Everything is square because of the cornerstone that exists, and the foundation is laid, and then brick by brick with mortar in between, this building begins to rise up and rise up and rise up.
SPEAKER_01: And Paul is saying, that's you guys, you the people.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the chief cornerstone, and the apostles and the prophets, they have all the truth of God.
SPEAKER_01: That is the foundation being laid.
SPEAKER_01: And you, the people, those who put their faith in Jesus, you are every single piece of brick and mortar and siding and sidewall and wainscoting, everything that makes up the household of God.
SPEAKER_01: That word household in the Greek, it literally means family or being related by blood.
SPEAKER_01: It's because it's so easy when you see that word household that it's talking about a building.
SPEAKER_01: No, he's talking about a bloodline.
SPEAKER_01: He's talking about kinship.
SPEAKER_01: He's talking about a family that he's building person by person.
SPEAKER_01: Every single new child of God being adopted into the family is another brick, another piece of the house that he is building.
SPEAKER_01: Christians are the household of God, unified by having the same access to God, the same truth of his word, and the same Savior and Lord who is Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Think about that.
SPEAKER_01: All of us here in this room, all of us watching, listening online, we are all in the same boat.
SPEAKER_01: We are all part of the same temple of God.
SPEAKER_01: We are all part of the whole family of God.
SPEAKER_01: All those things are true of us.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we got some amazing prayer warriors in our church.
SPEAKER_01: The kind of folks that if something's going on difficult in my life, I would love for them to have my prayer request.
SPEAKER_01: So they'll be praying for me.
SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
SPEAKER_01: Every single person who's a believer in Jesus Christ sitting behind you, in front of you, to the left of you, to the right of you, have the same access to God the Father.
SPEAKER_01: The same access.
SPEAKER_01: We have the same truth of his word, scripture.
SPEAKER_01: One of the things you've heard us talk a little bit about, you'll hear Missy talk even more about it as we get closer to the end of the summer, is we have these groups of people that are meeting, one type of small group that we have meeting that we're hoping to have more people be a part of in the fall, or what we call D groups.
SPEAKER_01: Uh D just stands for discipleship groups, and the curriculum is just the Bible, and that's it.
SPEAKER_01: And it's people committing to read every day a chapter of the Bible and journal it and come together every week and talk about what they experienced, what they journaled.
SPEAKER_01: And we know what we're finding?
SPEAKER_01: We're finding the Bible's enough.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible's enough, man.
SPEAKER_01: The truth of God, like everything we know about who God is and what Christ has done for us and how that affects our lives and our identity in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You trace it all back, it's from that book.
SPEAKER_01: And you have it.
SPEAKER_01: Every single one of us has access to it.
SPEAKER_01: We are all the same, we're all built on the same foundation and the same Savior and the same Lord that is paid for by the same cross.
SPEAKER_01: We're alive because of the same empty tomb.
SPEAKER_01: Man, we have way more that bring us together than would ever divide us.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that true?
SPEAKER_01: The family of God.
SPEAKER_01: And I like this next verse, verse 22.
SPEAKER_01: And in him, you two are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit.
SPEAKER_01: All of us who are believers in Jesus are the brick and the mortar and all that thing.
SPEAKER_01: And it and earlier in that passage, it called us, it called us a holy temple.
SPEAKER_01: And that sounds like the kind of room I don't want to have a lock-in in.
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01: Like, let's not do that in there.
SPEAKER_01: It's holy, it's set apart.
SPEAKER_01: That's what God is creating.
SPEAKER_01: God is constantly constructing his household, he is adding to it daily.
SPEAKER_01: It is being built by his hand, by his power, by his might.
SPEAKER_01: And you are a part of it.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, as I was studying this, my favorite Greek word in that verse that I geeked out about is actually a simple word, the word you, Y-O-U.
SPEAKER_01: The Greek there is humice.
SPEAKER_01: And in the Greek language, it's so much more complex than our English language, where just a simple word like that actually has so many different possible tenses and versions of it.
SPEAKER_01: And this is that plural encompassing tense.
SPEAKER_01: A good way to translate this would be you yourselves or you together would be a good English translation of the word humice.
SPEAKER_01: And so when Paul was saying, in him and in him, you, he's saying, you, all of you, all of you together, all of you yourselves are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason I bring that up is because of something I feel like God has been teaching me most lately.
SPEAKER_01: What he's been teaching me most lately is that our relationship with Jesus, our walk with Jesus, our journey with Jesus isn't as completely individualized and isolated as we tend to make it to be.
SPEAKER_01: If you study what the first church was like, it was very communal.
SPEAKER_01: We they needed each other, they relied on each other, they gathered together way more frequently than even we gather together.
SPEAKER_01: They ate together, they fellowshiped together, they served together, and they gathered to worship and they learned together.
SPEAKER_01: And we do that too.
SPEAKER_01: It looks a little different, I'm sure, here, way different perhaps than it did in the city of Ephesus.
SPEAKER_01: But I think it's so easy to just sort of compartmentalize our time together and think of it as that thing that we do that I can maybe personally get refueled and then go back to my personal journey and walk with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And I would argue with you today, as I've argued with myself, don't settle for that.
SPEAKER_01: We are a family, we need each other.
SPEAKER_01: I actually think we know that deep down.
SPEAKER_01: We just don't always lean into it.
SPEAKER_01: We don't always plan it or direct it.
SPEAKER_01: We kind of we show up to it without fully knowing exactly why it means so much to us.
SPEAKER_01: I just want to tell you, it means so much to you, not just simply because we come together and we recognize the presence of God in this place, and we call upon him and we learn from him from his word.
SPEAKER_01: All of that is true, but just as importantly are the people to the left of you, to the right of you, in front of you, and behind you, because we are fellow bricks in the house of the Lord, and we need each other.
SPEAKER_01: We're setting ourselves on the same foundation, we're clinging so desperately to the same Savior.
SPEAKER_01: We're going through some of the same struggles.
SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite things to say to people when they come and tell me about something they're really dealing with that's so hard is that guess what?
SPEAKER_01: There are a bunch of people sitting out there that have been through the very same thing.
SPEAKER_01: And I can really say that now because I'm almost a senior adult.
SPEAKER_01: And I've heard some of those stories for years.
SPEAKER_01: Like, yep, same.
SPEAKER_01: I've heard that.
SPEAKER_01: We can make a list, we can have a support group for that, you know.
SPEAKER_01: Uh so much of the same things we the enemy wants to say, but this is just unique to you.
SPEAKER_01: Nobody's hurting the way you're hurting right now.
SPEAKER_01: No one has felt the struggle that you have felt right now.
SPEAKER_01: The enemy wants to isolate us and divide us.
SPEAKER_01: But friends, in this very room today, this is one little piece of the entire family of God, and you are not alone.
SPEAKER_01: Not just because God is with you, but because we are together.
SPEAKER_01: Even when we leave this place shortly, go back to the next thing that we're gonna do today, we are the family of God right here for each other.
SPEAKER_01: If you believe in Jesus, you are a part of the ever-growing house of the Lord, and there is joy in this house.
SPEAKER_01: That's kind of the big thing about the song that we sang earlier.
SPEAKER_01: There's joy in the house of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know till we researched this.
SPEAKER_01: I'm really bad at keeping up with songs like the songs we sing, I love them.
SPEAKER_01: And then someone will say, What's the name of that song?
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, gosh, I don't even think I know the name of the song.
SPEAKER_01: I can think of a lyric that I remember really well.
SPEAKER_01: And so, what I love about this series is learning the backstory.
SPEAKER_01: I did not know that Phil Wickham wrote this song in the midst of the first year of the pandemic, and he emphasized joy.
SPEAKER_01: I remember in that year 2020, it was a bit of a struggle, y'all.
SPEAKER_01: And and for him to write about how much joy there is, there's joy when we are part of the family of God.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because we were the beggars, now we're royalty.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Peter 2 9, but you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
SPEAKER_01: Do you dare think that this verse only applies to a certain few in this room right now?
SPEAKER_01: The ones Who've been really following Jesus a long time, the ones who've been in small group a much longer time than the rest of us have.
SPEAKER_01: The ones who have actually been committed to serving on some team for much longer than you have.
SPEAKER_01: That's not true, guys.
SPEAKER_01: Every single person who has placed their faith in Jesus Christ, this is you, your royalty, though you were a beggar spiritually.
SPEAKER_01: We were the prisoners.
SPEAKER_01: Now we're running free.
SPEAKER_01: John 8 36, coming from the words of our Savior Himself.
SPEAKER_01: So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
SPEAKER_01: And I know there's times that we don't feel as free.
SPEAKER_01: One of my other favorite kinds of conversations to have with people is people who are battling some type of addiction in their life.
SPEAKER_01: Because when I came to faith in Jesus, I didn't call it that, but I was in an addiction.
SPEAKER_01: And I knew immediately God did not want that in my life anymore.
SPEAKER_01: And I would say it took the better part of three years to completely kick it out of my life.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes our freedom comes instantly like that, but sometimes it's a battle.
SPEAKER_01: Or we get knocked down.
SPEAKER_00: And what it means to be a part of the passage Ephesians 2, 8 through 10 is powerful, for it is by grace you have been saved through faith.
SPEAKER_01: This is not from you.
SPEAKER_01: You didn't save yourself, you didn't rescue yourself, you didn't forgive yourself, you didn't earn it, you didn't deserve it.
SPEAKER_01: This is not from yourselves.
SPEAKER_01: It is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.
SPEAKER_01: And for all you kiddos who were in created last week, you know that verse 10 really, really well.
SPEAKER_01: For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
SPEAKER_01: When you see all of this, no life circumstance can take that away.
SPEAKER_01: No bad day, no bad week, no bad month, and they do happen.
SPEAKER_01: They do come.
SPEAKER_01: That's what I loved so much about Jeremy's message last week.
SPEAKER_01: The biggest thing I took away was, and I've heard and read that passage of Mark so many times about the disciples being in a boat with Jesus and just being reminded of how it must have been a pretty bad storm for those fishermen to be so scared.
SPEAKER_01: They thought they were gonna die, yet Jesus was right there the whole way with them.
SPEAKER_01: And so, whatever storm right now, whatever thing maybe kept you from feeling that there's joy in the house of the Lord today, whatever that is, you're not to be judged for feeling that way.
SPEAKER_01: Because we all have gone through life storms, tough days, tough circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: But what I will say to you is this as Jeremy said last week, Jesus is greater, and no circumstance will take away who you are in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You are forgiven, you are accepted, you are redeemed by his grace, no medical diagnosis, no broken relationship, no season of grief, or just a bad night's sleep can take that away from you or me.
SPEAKER_01: And because of that, there is always joy in the house of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: We may be a little sleepy, a little stressed, a little sad, a little worried, a little fearful.
SPEAKER_01: And that's why when we come together in this place, even if for just an hour, I think the reason we keep coming back is because of joining the rest of the family, we're like, yeah, we were the beggars in our royalty.
SPEAKER_01: I am forgiven, even though I messed up a little bit ago.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we keep gathering, that's why we keep singing, and that's why we keep running to his word over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_01: So I have a next step for you to consider taking today.
SPEAKER_01: Every single time we gather together, we love to talk about what is your next step with Jesus Christ today.
SPEAKER_01: And the one I would say today is simply to enter into his joy.
SPEAKER_01: It's his joy that sustains us.
SPEAKER_01: We can't often manufacture joy.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we can try, we try.
SPEAKER_01: But the joy that comes from walking with Jesus and knowing who we are in him is something that cannot be shaken by life's circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: What is it that you need to step into to experience his joy?
SPEAKER_01: It might be that it's time for you to finally step into salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Step into that free gift that it says in Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, that if you're here today and you've never taken that first step of faith where you call upon the name of the Lord and say, Jesus, I'm now declaring to you that I believe.
SPEAKER_01: I believe you died for me, I believe you rose again, and I believe that you died for me so that I could be with you forever.
SPEAKER_01: So please forgive me of my sins and make me your child now and forever.
SPEAKER_01: By asking in faith, you receive the free gift of salvation.
SPEAKER_01: And man, that's a joy that will never be fully shaken no matter what happened to you.
SPEAKER_01: So maybe that's what you're supposed to do.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's to step into the waters of baptism.
SPEAKER_01: I always wrestle with pushing baptism.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I for some reason I feel like we preachers, pastors might be accused of like, man, you're just trying to, you know, count the number of baptisms or something like that.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm very sensitive to that.
SPEAKER_01: That is not my goal at all.
SPEAKER_01: But I will tell you, every single person that chooses to enter those baptism waters, they're declaring their faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And that matters.
SPEAKER_01: They're doing something Jesus did, they're doing something that the scripture teaches us to do.
SPEAKER_01: And what I've come to learn, I've I've studied baptism more lately than I ever have.
SPEAKER_01: Like, why do we do that?
SPEAKER_01: What's the point?
SPEAKER_01: Why does God command us to do that?
SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that the Bible teaches about baptism is it identifies us with the rest of the family.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we do it here in front of the whole family.
SPEAKER_01: It's a way of identifying.
SPEAKER_01: There's this one baptism that unifies us all.
SPEAKER_01: There's this one declaration of faith, this one story that unites us all.
SPEAKER_01: It's a story of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: So if you've not done that yet, maybe that's a way to enter into his joy, that to finally take that step or step into community.
SPEAKER_01: We can have it here.
SPEAKER_01: You hopefully interact with people as you come in, as you leave, as you stop and get a coffee, as you sit down together.
SPEAKER_01: But there's a way to go deeper with these small groups that Missy always tells us about.
SPEAKER_01: There's something special that happens when you gather in a small group and you share prayer requests.
SPEAKER_00: We already did our egg hunt back in April.
SPEAKER_00: We're about to do our 4th of July Independence Festival for the city.
SPEAKER_01: We talk about it all the time, and that's where you can just say, okay, I think this is a step I'm supposed to take next.
SPEAKER_01: And let us know that.
SPEAKER_01: You can use that code.
SPEAKER_01: You can go online and find the get connected form.
SPEAKER_01: You can use the card in front of you, write it down, or you can see me or Missy.
SPEAKER_01: And uh starting today, we were gonna have so a deacon who will be helping us in the next steps area so that anybody who's come needing to just talk about a next step or pray, we have more people standing over there.
SPEAKER_01: Chris Buck, my friend, who's a deacon, is going to be standing with me at the end of the service and Missy.
SPEAKER_01: Come tell us what that next step is and let us pray for you and encourage you in that next step.
SPEAKER_01: Before we do that, let's go to the Lord and let's ask him to help us to remember that we are the church.
SPEAKER_01: That this building we're in right now, yes, it's amazing.
SPEAKER_01: It's awesome.
SPEAKER_01: I thank God for it.
SPEAKER_01: It's a special, special place for sure.
SPEAKER_01: When you, as a believer in Jesus, walk out of this room, you are still the church of the living God.
SPEAKER_01: You are his temple, you are his dwelling.
SPEAKER_01: So let's continue to be the church together.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Father, I praise you and thank you that you are building your church brick by brick with more and more souls turning to you.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe even in this moment today, Father, there's another soul turning to you, calling upon your name, asking you to save them, receiving your free gift of salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps someone is realizing today, man, I really need to let my family, my church family, be a bigger part of my life.
SPEAKER_01: I want to be baptized, or I want to join a small group, or I want to start serving and just be more embedded in my family.
SPEAKER_01: Father, as you speak to our hearts, give us the courage to take a next step with you, Father.
SPEAKER_01: Father, I thank you that the joy you give, though it may feel dampened because of our circumstances, it's still there carrying us through ever we're going through.
SPEAKER_01: There might be someone here going through a lot.
SPEAKER_01: They're feeling heavy.
SPEAKER_01: I pray, Father, that you help them to feel the power of your presence.
SPEAKER_01: You help them to remember who they are because of you, and let that joy rise above their circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: We love you, Father.
SPEAKER_01: And we pray all this in the powerful name of your Son Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.