7/5/2026 Sunday morning service

message from the book of Romans week 5 

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SPEAKER_01 1:43

As we celebrate this country's independence, Lord, for this great country, Lord. We pray, Lord, right now, especially for the leaders of this country. God, that you would find a way to move. That you could you could touch the ones that are leading, that you could bring a revival back to this country, God. Lord, that you could lift us up, Lord, that we could remember once again that this this country was founded in trust in God. Lord, and we need to bring that trust back to this country, God. To strengthen this country, Lord. I pray that you'll just be with this service today, God. Lord, right now I pray that you would just uh surround this church with your holy angels, God, and that you can you can stop Satan from being any part of this service today, God. That you would just let your spirit move amongst us, Lord. Right now you pour the spirit out upon us. Anything that we've brought into the service today, God, anything that's troubling us, something that we feel bad about, Lord, you can just help us realize right now, God, we can just drop it at the altar, God. It don't matter. We can just put our hands to you. You're there for us no matter what, God. God, I praise you'll just use the music as we sing it today, God. Lord, that we would sing and praise and honor to you, Lord, and I pray that you'd just give Carla the words to speak. Lord, that you can speak through her and touch our hearts. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_05 3:22

Good morning. As Brian said, we're going back old school today. So hopefully you guys will enjoy the older music today. I sure did while we were practicing it. So everybody, if you will, go ahead and stand with us and let's uh start off this morning. I'll fly away.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

That was his favorite song. He'd get his guitar out, and he would sing that song, and let me tell you, that song brings back so many good memories. Amazing grace.

SPEAKER_05 18:41

I don't care if you don't hear the name on it. I think that's wonderful. I think that you should do that. But we had someone who had a rather large sum of money in an envelope. So here's the thing. If you want that to go like on a credit line uh in our computer so that at the end of the year we always give those receipts, um you're gonna have to tell me who you are. So on those um offerings, those envelopes, if you give ties and you put it in there, if it's not a check where we can see who you are and you want credit for it in the computer, make sure you put your name on the envelope. Also, we're gonna start uh there's a couple of extra offerings that I would like to start. And I don't mean like uh I'm gonna go take offering three times. We normally don't take offerings, but there's an offering plate on the back table if you want to give, give. If you don't, you don't because that's up to you and God. That has nothing to do with me whatsoever. But we've got a couple of events coming up for our kids. We've got the back of the school batch that we're getting ready for. That's our next event, and that's August, and it's gonna be on a Saturday this year instead of a Sunday. So I need a couple things. I need volunteers for that. And I see some hands going up because hopefully we're gonna get a lot of kids in this year. Um, and we're gonna show a movie that night, and we are we are gonna try to actually get an event to go off here. We had um New Year's Eve this past year, and we ended up having to be on lockdown in here because of a shooting that took place on Market Street. And then when we had our um vacation Bible school a couple weeks ago, we was out here getting ready to watch our movie, and some gentleman was running from the law, and they thought he was armed, and we had to bring all the kids in the sanctuary and lock them down again. So we're gonna try again for a back to school bash, okay? And we're gonna try to show a movie that night. But I tell you one thing I can guarantee you is we've got to get a protocol for emergency now because it seems like we have to keep handling them. But if you want to give anything towards um the back to school bash, uh put it in that envelope and write the back to school bash on it, and that way I'll know that that's where you want that to go, and I won't put that into our main offering. Um, also our wonderful table in the back. Uh, I think y'all we enjoy that table. We go back here, we get our coffee, we get our our snacks for Sunday morning. If you would like to give some to help us, because that's about fifty dollars a week that we spend on that table back there. I don't know, a dollar, two dollars, three dollars, anything. Put it in the envelope and just write a snack table on it. Okay? Enough of that. Let's go. We're in Romans chapter four this week. And I'm going to um be talking to you uh in in from last week. We're gonna tie it in the last week, bring it over a little. Bit into this week, and we're going to be talking about uh Romans chapter four. Um, one of the richest books in the whole Bible. And if you don't walk out of here shouting today, I at least hope you walk out of here thinking a little bit today about the things that I am going to teach you this morning. Now, before we jump into chapter 4, I want to back up just a little bit to give you some context about what we're talking about, about because you can't understand where Paul's taking us if you don't understand where Paul's been. All right, you have to get the context of it. So, Paul, he's the man that wrote over half of the New Testament, and he used to be Saul of Tarsus. That used to be his name. Saul was a Pharisee's Pharisee. He was trained under Gameleel, uh, and he uh was one of the top rabbis of his day. And Saul knew the law front and back, okay? He knew the law front and back because that's what they followed in in this time in history, is they followed the law. He could quote Leviticus in his sleep. That's how good he knew the Bible, the law. Okay, so this wasn't a soft man. This was a tough man. He was a warrior, he was a man among men, a Pharisee among Pharisees. But then on the road to Damascus one day, Jesus interrupted his life with a blinding light. And that light, and he asked him one simple question in Acts 9, 4. He said, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? That was Jesus' uh words to Saul on that road. So that encounter didn't just save Saul, it flipped him upside down and turned him into Paul. Paul was his uh name, that the greatest missionary that the church has ever known. So by the time that Paul writes this letter to the Romans, we are somewhere around A.D. 57. All right, long time ago, because we're now in 2026. This was wrote about A.D. 57, and he's not writing as some outsider theorizing about grace because Paul was a persecutor of the Jews, uh, of the Christians. He was a persecutor of any follower of Jesus Christ. He he um authorized executions, uh, he authorized public beatings of men and women that followed Christ. That's how much he hated Jesus Christ. But yet on the road to Damascus, he experienced that grace firsthand. When Jesus got a hold of him and changed him, flipped his world upside down, and he became the greatest preacher of Jesus Christ. Paul experienced grace. So, like I said, he's not an outsider that's theorizing about it. He's telling you about it from his own experience of grace. So he used to think that he could earn God's approval if he kept the law. That's what he was doing. If he kept the rules that were set out and he had to follow those exactly. He thought that he could earn God's approval by doing that. So now let me tell you a little bit about what's happening in Rome at this time. This is a church that's made up of both Jews and Gentiles. All right? And for those of you that don't understand the terminology, Jews, of course, was God's chosen people. They were descendants of Abraham, and Gentiles is everybody else. Okay? Gentiles is everybody else. If you weren't a Jew, part of God's chosen people, you were a Gentile. Um, Gentile believers were probably saying, we don't need any of this law stuff to come to Jesus. And the Jews were saying, but we've always had the law. We have to follow the law. So it was causing some conflict in the church. So Paul was writing this letter in Romans to say, listen, both of y'all are missing the point. Uh, he lays out his whole argument in the foundational verse of Romans 1.16, when he says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. All right? Did you catch it? Everyone who believes, not everyone who was born in the right family, not everyone who is able to keep the right rules, but everyone, Jew and Gentile, that covers everybody, the gospel's for you. And that's what he was trying to say, and that's like the whole book of Romans put into uh one verse. So that's where we're going today. So let me paint a picture. All right, y'all with me? Let's say that you are a diehard Minnesota Viking fan. All right, well, Justin, you're a diehard Minnesota Viking fan. You bleed blue, uh purple, sorry. You bleed purple. I'm a tiger, guys. You bleed purple, okay? You've got the foam horns in your closet, right? Everything like that. You know the fight song. You've cried actual tears at missed field goals, okay? And y'all, if you've ever been in my house on a Sunday when Minnesota's playing, you don't get around my husband. You don't. If they're having a bad day, I know about it on the third floor, okay? Because I can hear him. He's one of those that will cry those tears. All right, so let's say that you move to Washington. All right, you've moved to Washington, and Ben, let's say, invites you to a football watch party. All right. Ben's gonna invite you to a football watch party. Now, being loyal to your team, you show up in your full Vikings jersey, all right? You show up. So you already know what's about to happen, guys. Ben's invited him to a Washington watch party, and Brian shows up in full Viking gear. So the guys, the they're kind of looking at you sideways now. They're accidentally spilling like nachos on your jersey. All right. Brian's like, uh-uh. That ain't happening. So, and and they're looking at you kind of sideways. It doesn't matter that Brian loves football just as much as Ben and his buddies do. It doesn't matter that Brian knows all the stats just like they do, and Brian understands the game just like they do. He's wearing the wrong colors. He's wearing the wrong jersey. And in that room, that's all that matters. Brian's wearing the wrong jersey. You're not one of us, Ben's people was gonna say. Why did you bring a Viking fan, Ben? He doesn't belong here. He's not one of us. That's what was happening in the Romans church. You had your Jews that were looking at the people in the wrong jersey, the Gentiles, coming in, and they're like, wait a minute, they're doing it wrong. They're wearing the wrong colors. Why are they allowed to come into this church and not follow our rules? Now, here was the the um the rub, if you'd say. For generations, the Jewish people had had a covenant with God. It was the covenant of circumcision. All right? What do you mean by that? Circumcision in that day by the Jews meant that you belonged to God. That was their outward show that they belonged to to um God. They had the law of Moses, they had the sacrifices, they had feast days, the whole system that God gave through the man Abraham. All right? Abraham was the man. So that was their jersey. That's how they knew who was in and who was out. If you followed the law, if you had been circumcised, and if you followed Jewish customs, then you were in. If you were a Gentile, you didn't do those things, so you were out. All right? Gentiles, outsiders, nations who had never done any of those things, and they're showing up to this party for Christ, believing in Jesus, receiving the Holy Spirit, and they're worshiping right alongside the Jews. All right. So the Jews are still asking, but have you been circumcised? Do you keep kosher? Are you really one of us? So Paul he steps into this mess and he says, Hold on, guys, listen to Romans 3.28. Romans 3.28. For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Okay? So, so the Gentiles, Paul's coming in and saying, hey, these Gentiles are children of God just like you are, because now we're no longer justified by being able to follow the law. We are now justified because we believe we have faith in Jesus Christ. And it's not by keeping a heritage, it's not by keeping the law perfectly, because nobody ever has, nor will they ever, except for Jesus Christ Himself, been able to keep the law. Apart from works, apart from works. Church at the cross, God didn't ask what team colors people wore. He didn't ask which side you were on, he didn't do that. He didn't check your family tree, he didn't check your background or your record. That doesn't matter to him because when Jesus Christ hung on that cross and shed his blood, he did that for every single person so that everybody, through faith, may come to him and enjoy an eternity in heaven. But the Jews were having a problem with that because they were stout followers of the law. So let's bring us a little bit closer to home. Um, because this isn't just an ancient Jew and Gentile problem. This is an us problem today, because we do the same thing. We check jerseys all the time. As people in today's society, we check jerseys all the time. We look at somebody's past and say, they can't sit at my table. We do that. We do that. We look at somebody's mistakes and we think they've got to clean themselves up before they can come to this church. Not here at Lifeline, guys. It doesn't work that way. We look at somebody who doesn't talk like us, doesn't dress like us, and doesn't vote like us, and we go, they're not one of us. We have a big problem in the country today. We are divided, and we have a big problem because if somebody doesn't fit our mold, we give up on them and we say, they're not for us. But the gospel of Jesus Christ will tear every single jersey off of every single person. Hallelujah, right? Every single jersey off of every single person, because there is no home team with Jesus. There is no home team and away team, there's only one team, and that's the team of faith. The team of faith. So we're going to talk about Abraham, and I've already said Abraham is the man. Abraham is the man to the Jews, all right? He's the father. Have you ever heard the song Father Abraham? Had many sons? Have y'all heard that? I see a couple heads nodding out there. So somebody's gonna say, Well, Paul, that's fine for the Gentiles, but what about Abraham? Abraham is our father. He had the covenant of circumcision. Doesn't that count for something? So Paul does something brilliant here. He takes their strongest example, which is Abraham, and he's the father of the Jewish nation, and he uses Abraham to prove his whole point. All right. So go to Romans 4, 4 through 6 with me. It says, now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work but trusts God, who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works. Now, stay with me because it gets good here. This is where I'm going to show you something. Paul says, if you work for something, it's not a gift, it's wages. That's a paycheck. All right. If I go to work and I work a 40-hour week, and at the end my boss comes up and says, Here's your gift. Oh no, I earned that. That's my paycheck. Give me my pay, right? So righteousness or being made right with God doesn't work that way because you can't clock in enough hours to make yourself righteous. I can't work enough to make myself righteous. There's no way. There is no way that we can do it. And I talked about it last week by talking about swiping that card and you just keep building up the debt and you keep building up the debt. That's how sin is. You say you're going to stop and you're going to become fresh and new and you can earn your way, but that doesn't happen because you already owe interest plus your past debt and you keep on swiping the card of sin every day. Well, that's kind of what it is here. You cannot earn your righteousness. You can't work enough to earn righteousness. That is truly a gift from God. True gift from God. So let's go back and look at Abraham's actual story. Because if anybody needed grace, it was Abraham. When most people think of Abraham, they think of the father of the Jewish nation. They think of this great and mighty man. Let me talk about Abraham for a minute. Genesis 17 tells us that God cut this covenant with Abraham, circumcision. It's the sign in his flesh that he belonged to God. But you know what's wild? The covenant comes after Abraham was already declared righteous. That covenant of circumcision happened after God declared Abraham righteous, which tells me that you don't have to have it in order to become righteous. You don't have to do the work in order to become righteous. So Abraham believed, past tense, before circumcision, before the law was even existed, that it was credited to him. Not because he was a perfect man, because Abraham was far from a perfect man. This is the same man who, when God promised him a son, he got tired of waiting. And he decided that he was going to help God out. And he ended up having a son, Ishmael, with Hagar, who was Sarah's nursemaiden. And we all know what that's done. That sin situation created Iran and it has separated us and we have fought. We have fought Abraham's sin for thousands of years. We have fought that sin for thousands of years. So this is the same man who not once but twice went into a territory and he told them that his wife, Sarah, was his sister. He didn't say it was his wife because he is afraid they'd kill him to take his wife. So because of his fear, he lied and told them that Sarah was his sister. Now the first time went sideways, you'd think he'd have learned his lesson, but no, Abraham was not some super saint with a halo that never messed up. Abraham was a man who lied. He lied. He took shortcuts. He tried to make God's promises happen on his own timeline instead of God's timeline and in his own way. And yet God still credited him with righteousness. He still did that. So that ought to give every single one of us in this room today hope. If God can credit Abraham, who did these things with righteousness, God can credit every single person in this room with righteousness this morning. Your mess does not disqualify you from grace. Your faith is what qualifies you. Abraham wasn't declared righteous because of circumcision. That came later as a sign or a seal of a righteousness that he already had by faith. Kind of like baptism doesn't save you, but once you get saved, you want to be baptized to show an outward sign of the change that happened inward. It's not a requirement. So Abraham is the father of everybody who believes, circumcised or not, Jew or Gentile, Jersey or no Jersey, faith is the family bloodline. It's faith. Not flesh, not works, but faith. Now, here's where I need you to lean in. Paul is about to describe what real faith actually looks like. And then it's not what a lot of us think. All right. Romans 4, 18 through 21. Against all hope, Abraham in hope, believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him. So shall your offspring be. Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead, since he was about a hundred years old, and that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had the power to do what he had promised. So I want you to notice something here. Paul doesn't say that Abraham never doubted. He never says that Abraham didn't doubt. Paul doesn't say that Abraham felt confident the whole time. All right. In fact, look at that phrase again. Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed. That's not a contradiction. That's actually the definition of faith because against all natural and logical, biological hope, Abraham believed anyway that God was going to make him the father of many nations. Faith does not mean there is an absence of doubt in your life. That doesn't mean that. Faith is not some warm, fuzzy feeling that never wavers. All right? Faith is forged. You have to learn faith. You have to go through things that God delivers you through. It's forged, it's built in the middle of tension. When promise hasn't shown up yet, when your body says it's too late, when your circumstances say it's impossible, and you choose to trust God anyway. It's against all logic, but you say, God, you said it, so I'm believing it, and it's going to happen. A hundred-year-old man and a woman with a dead womb having a baby, that's not a strong faith situation if you're looking on paper. That's a I'm about to have to explain to everybody at the assisted living home type of faith how I got pregnant. Right? So Sarah, she wasn't even sure about the situation. If you remember, she laughed at first. She laughed. In fact, Genesis 8 12 tells us that. So Sarah laughed. To herself, as she thought, after I'm worn out and my uh and my Lord is old, will I know? Oh, talking about Abraham, will I now have this pleasure? She's talking about having a child. She laughed. Um, but here's the beautiful thing. Even in the moments where faith wavered around Abraham, God still called him fully persuaded. He still called him fully persuaded. That that kind of reminds me of a story in the New Testament in Mark. It's Mark chapter 9. And there's this father, and he had a son. Some of y'all might remember this as I get going. He had a son that was tormented by a spirit. And he comes to Jesus all desperate and he says, But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us. So y'all might remember that son. Um and so Jesus says, looks at the guy and he says, If you can, all right? That shows the doubt. Jesus, if you can, will you do such and such? Show us, have pity on us. And Jesus, even though Jesus was very compassionate, what he picked up on in what that man said was, if you can, if you can. So this daddy, he cries out immediately. And in Mark 9 and 24, immediately the boy's father exclaimed, I do believe. Help me overcome my unbelief. Now, when you read that statement, just read it out, it sounds like he's contradicting himself. I believe. Help me overcome my unbelief. But but he's not. He's not contradicting himself. I believe. I also need help in believing. That's called real faith because we doubt. We as humans sometimes doubt. What he was actually saying was, I'm fully persuaded that God can do it. And also, my flesh, however, is scared to death. It's a conflict inside you. The spiritual side of you says, I know my God can do anything. But the flesh side of you that looks at circumstances, that sees a hundred-year-old man, that sees a 90-year-old woman that's that's womb is barren, that in the physical looks pretty hopeless. So your spiritual side's believing, but your physical side is saying, oh, but please help me in my unbelief. That's true faith, right there. So let me set you free this morning. Faith isn't a feeling that you can conjure up. All right? Sometimes you wake up and you have no faith that day. You are worn out, you're worn out mentally, you're worn out physically, and the physical side takes over, and you're like, Jesus, not even you can pull me out of how I feel today. That's why it's so good that faith isn't a feeling. Faith is not a feeling. You had a bad day, you had a bad week, a season where you don't measure up to your own standards, much less God's. Works are unreliable. They depend on you, they depend on you. And we as humans are inconsistent people. We're inconsistent. But faith depends on God, and God's perfect. God is perfect, God does not run out, God does not take a day off, God does not waver. That's why Abraham could be imperfect and still be called righteous. His righteousness wasn't hanging on his performance, it was hanging on the performance of God, and so is yours this morning. It hangs on God, not yourself. So now we're going to talk about proof, however. We've been talking a lot about faith. Now let's talk about proof. Somebody in here is probably thinking, okay, Pastor Carla, if it's all faith and none of its works, then why do I need to do anything? Why do I need to do anything? Y'all, I get up here all the time and I say, help us out. We need volunteers for Bible school. We need volunteers for back to school bash. We need volunteers for the kids program on Sunday morning. Like charity, charity's down there, and this morning I saw several kids get up and go. Charity in Bible school had 16. And uh John and Nan uh Susan, who's not here this morning, neither one of them, came and helped her out. We need workers in the field. We need workers in the field, and not so that you can earn your salvation, because you can't, you can't earn it. I've already gone through the whole thing. It's about uh faith, not works. Why show up to church? Why read my Bible? Why try to live right at all? If it's all by faith, I'll just say I believe in Jesus. Right? Well, let's clear it up. Paul's not giving anybody a pass to live however you want. James, Jesus' own brother, puts it plainly in James 2, 17. He says, in the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. Now, here's one of them contradictions that people talk about. Well, Paul tells us in Romans it's by faith, but James is saying, faith by itself don't get it. If it's not accompanied by action, it's dead. Let's not confuse it. They're not against each other, they're actually saying the same thing. They're looking at the same diamond from two different perspectives. All right? Two different perspectives. Paul is answering the question: how does a person get righteous? Through faith. That's how it's accredited to you that you're righteous. His answer is faith alone, apart from works. Now, James is answering a different question. How do you know somebody's faith is real? And his answer is, you'll see it in their actions. So faith is what makes you righteous. Actions is what shows me that you're righteous. Does that make it's evidence? Exactly. It's evidence. I need you to get this. Works don't earn your righteousness, works prove your righteousness. Does that make sense? Works prove your righteousness. Works aren't the payment for your salvation. Works are the receipt that shows that the payment already happened through Jesus Christ. You don't do the dishes because your husband will love you for doing them. You do the dishes because he already loves you and you love him back. Do you get it? The love came first and the action flows out of it. The action flows out of it. Same thing with God. You don't obey God so he'll love you. You don't come to church, pay your tithe, read your Bible, live right so that God will accept you. You do all of that because he already has. Because he already has. Obedience isn't the price tag, it's the response. And look, Paul actually wraps up chapter four by pointing us straight to the cross, straight to the finished work that made this all possible. Romans 4 25. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. So sit with that for just a second. Jesus was delivered over for what? Our sins. He was delivered over for our sins. He was raised for what? Our justification. So he prayed the price, which was the death on the cross, the blood that he shed to cover our sins. That's what the death was about. But when he came and rose up out of that grave, that was the justification that we needed. Everything you needed done, he's already done. The payments already been made, the work has been finished. There's nothing left for you to do. You cannot earn forgiveness for your sin because it's already there. It's already there. Jesus already did that. So when your life starts changing and you find yourself praying more, forgiving people more that you used to hold grudges against, when you find yourself giving generously, living differently on Monday than what you used to, that's not you working for your salvation. That's the proof that you've already received your salvation because you want to do things for the Lord. A changed Monday is the fruit of a surrendered Sunday. The changed Monday is the fruit of a surrendered Sunday. It doesn't happen the other way around. If you're sitting here this morning thinking your Monday through Saturday life has got to get cleaned up before you can come running to Jesus on Sunday, you've got it backwards. You need to come to Jesus so that your Monday through Saturday life will get cleaned up. Come to Jesus exactly like you are. Let your faith in him be credited to righteousness just as Abraham's was. And then your life will start to catch up to what the change is inside of you. So let's bring this all the way home. Hoku, can you start playing something for me? Remember that Viking jersey back at the beginning? Standing in that room with Ben in Washington, and everybody's looking at you sideways because of the colors that you're wearing. Maybe some of you have been walking around your whole life like you're wearing the wrong jersey to God's house. You don't feel welcome. You don't feel like you belong. You feel like everybody else in the room is the away team, and you just stepped in wearing the wrong colors. You feel like you've got too much history, too much baggage, too much mess for God to really want you to sit at his table. Church at the cross, Jesus, he paid your ransom with his blood. He's not asking about your past or your family name, your income, your track record, your failures, your Ishmael-shaped moments, or your Hagar-shaped shortcuts. He doesn't care. The whole gospel is wrapped up in one question. Now, here's what I want to be crystal clear about as we get ready to respond this morning. I don't want anybody leaving here confused. This is not about surrendering your life for faith. Like you've got to hand something over or do something or pay some price. This is about surrendering your life to faith in Christ. It's the difference between paying your debt and receiving a gift that's already been paid for. So here's what I'm going to do. In a minute, I'm going to give you an opportunity to come forward and to pray. All right? But I need you to remember Mark 9. I believe, help my unbelief. And I don't think there's a person in this room this morning that doesn't have wavering moments from time to time when you don't rely on your feelings and have doubt from time to time. So what I want to do is we're going to bow our heads and I'm going to say a prayer. And then when I finish, I want to invite everyone that wants to pray that to God. I believe, help my unbelief. I want you to get up quickly and make your way down here to the altar. Heavenly Father, I come to you this morning, God, and I confess that I am a sinner in your eyes and my eyes. And God, what I need is to make sure that I'm covered with the blood of Jesus. God, I surrender to faith, to faith in you. But God, please help my unbelief. There are areas of my life where I still let the physical take control, where I still see impossible situations and wonder if you can, Jesus. God, help me this morning to walk in faith that I know you can and that because you say it, it is. And help my unbelief, Father. This morning I pray that over each and every person within the sound of my voice, either in this room or online, help my unbelief. Help my wavering moments. Help me know that it doesn't cost me anything but surrender to you. It's a free gift that you would count me righteous, God, and help me walk in that. In the precious name of Jesus, I pray. Come forward if you want prayer this morning so that you can do that, so that you can walk in faith. I need some prayer warriors to come forward. If this is you, come forward and somebody will be here to pray with you. If you feel content where you are, please raise your hands up and pray for the ones that have come. Just stretch your hands toward them this morning and help them. There's some that maybe didn't come because some of you just don't like to be a pub in the public. You don't like to step out and be seen. If that's you, just raise your hand up where you are, and I'll know to pray for you this week. Yes, I see it. I see it. I see it everywhere. I see him popping up. I will pray for you this week that God will help you with your unbelief. I will pray this week that God will help you to rely on him with faith. To rely on him with faith. Heavenly Father, you're so good to us. You are so good to us. So good to us. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. I'm going to tell you a couple things that we can pray for this week that I know of. I know Donna has a hernia that she needs surgery for, and I think they're setting her up for that. Please remember Donna. Miss Julie is in the fight of cancer. Uh, she's been diagnosed with throat cancer. Is that what it is, Julie? Throat cancer. And she is, the doctors are deciding on how to treat Miss Julie. So we all need to make sure we stand with Miss Julie and lift her up in prayer every single day. And there might be more in the room. If you have a request, just raise your hand and put it right back down, and I'll just pray for you as we go through the week for your requests. Amen. All right. So I'm going to give you some announcements real quick. Um, Sunday night at 6 o'clock is youth group ages 12 through 17 is welcome. And Ruby, okay, y'all, the kids are okay, I promise. And Ruby, we've got EMTs and medics in the building, should they not be. So Ruby and Carson and um Allison are our youth leaders. They are doing a fantastic job. They had about 11 or more in Bible school, I think. Something. And steadily going up every day. That's right. You guys, if you're in here or if you're watching online, we have a youth program that's fantastic. They just got back from summer youth camp. We just had Bible school. We're getting ready to have the back-to-school bash. We plan trips for them. They have wonderful, wonderful leaders. So please, 12 to 17, you have uh youth on Sunday nights at 6 and Wednesday nights at 6. Uh, Tuesday night outreach. We haven't done this in about a month now because we've been so busy or it's been raining. Um, so we haven't been out to do this, but we will plan to meet here Tuesday night at 6 o'clock for our Tuesday night outreach. If you want to help be part of an outreach where we walk through the community and invite people to church and pray for people, be here Tuesday night at 6. Wednesday night are our small groups. We have kids on Wednesday night, and that's anywhere from your little, you're just born, your baby, up to um 11, up through 11. Kids up through 11 on Wednesday nights at 6, and youth 12 through 17. And we've got men's group, Mark does that, and uh Mark does the men's group, and then um ladies, we're gonna take a break for a little while and help charity with the kids, all right? Because kids are growing. So, Donna, me and you will be helping charity out and hoku with the kids on Wednesday night at 6 o'clock, or any other lady that would like to help. Um, Friday night, thank you. John usually hollers, woo, and I say Friday night, and John's working today. Friday night is celebrate recovery. 5:30 is a free meal. 6:30 is a lesson up here in the sanctuary, and then they break into small groups and have small group shares. Um, I've told you about the snack table in the back, uh, in the back to school bash. So I think that about covers it for this week. Um, I love you guys. I thank you for being here this morning. Let's have faith in God this week, right? Um, I don't see Brian or John or Heather, everybody I look to. Hoku. Oh, watch your look at me. Will you will you dismiss us this morning?