Not In Church

Jesus pursues those who feel excluded, urging us to notice and welcome the unseen people in our lives. Using Zacchaeus’s story, the sermon reminds us that no one is too far gone for Jesus to call by name, and challenges us to extend love and inclusion to those who feel unnoticed.

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It's going to be a good year, we're believing. Well, this morning we're starting a brand new series. And as we started this series and we're kind of dreaming about what we wanted this series to accomplish and what we wanted the series to be all about, it fell in line with me reading through the book of Acts. I'm currently kind of reading through the book of Acts with a few guys. And as I read through the book of Acts, I'm blown away by just the work that God does through a few simple men. I mean, ordinary people that God absolutely uses in some powerful ways to share and to spread the name of Jesus. And one of the guys that just strikes me that's just so hardcore is a man named Paul. And you guys have probably heard of Paul, but Paul is hardcore. He's moving from city to city. He's getting beaten, arrested, shipwrecked, he's run out of town, and he just keeps going. Nothing is going to deter Paul from sharing the good news of Jesus. He's not the one that you would typically expect, but he's the one that God is going to use in powerful ways. And he's going to some of the most unlikely people. He's going to the Gentile audience, the people that had been written off by the Jewish faith, and yet he's inviting them in to experience a relationship with Jesus and to be a part of the church family. And as I'm reading through this, it's just so easy for me to be convicted. It's so easy for me to be convicted by just looking at the life of Paul and Peter and some of the other apostles and just how committed they were to sharing their faith and sharing the gospel with people that didn't know it. And I recognize that that's not my natural tendency. That my life doesn't necessarily reflect the same way that Peter or Paul or some of the other apostles lived. And so often I'm not even able to walk across the street and talk to my neighbor. When we first started the church almost 20 years ago now, I remember being in one of the very first services we were meeting at youth middle school up in Loganville. And Pastor Russ, who pastors at the Walnut Grove campus, he made this statement that's always stuck with me. He said, God doesn't take attendance by who's here, but who's not here. And that thought has always just stayed in the back of my mind because that's what the mission and the purpose of the church ultimately should be. It's not just about who gathers here on Sunday mornings, but it's about who isn't gathered here on Sunday mornings. When I sent Russ my notes for this message, he said he loved this message because I quoted him in it. And I said, only if you quote yourself will it truly be a great message. So I don't know if he's quoting himself this morning or not. But the statement has stuck with me for 20 years because that's the heart of God, that we have a God that is all about chasing after the 99. I'm chasing after the one and leaving the 99. In Luke 19, 10, it tells us, for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost. That's why he came. That was his purpose. That was his mission statement. And if we're going to go after the lost, and if we're going to be like Jesus and have a heart like Jesus and the heart of an early church, then we've got to be people that do the same thing to seek and to save those that are lost. Now there's a number of reasons I recognize that maybe we don't share our faith. Maybe it's that we're scared. We don't know what to say or how to say it. We're scared how somebody's going to react. Maybe it's that we're just busy and we're just going through life and we don't really feel like we have time to make meaningful relationships. For some of us, it's just that we don't feel equipped, that there's so many questions that we have ourselves that we don't feel equipped to be able to speak into other people's lives. There's tons of reasons. There's lots of excuses. But as I thought about it this past week and writing this message, I was just thinking, you know, I think the main reason that oftentimes I don't, and probably we don't, share the message of Jesus is because it's kind of out of sight, out of mind. It's not something that we're often thinking about. I mean, we're just trying to survive another day. We're trying to get our kids, you know, wake, woke up in the morning and dressed and their teeth brushed and fed and take to school and brought home and taken to all the different sporting events, or we're trying to figure out things in our marriage or in our lives or in our workplace that so often we can even lose sight of the mission that God has given us because we're just trying to survive another day. And so this morning, as we kick off this new series that we're calling the empty chair, um, this is an empty chair to represent what we're talking about this morning, which by the way, not to throw anybody under the bus, but I just happened to grab a chair with an iron mark on it. Um thank you, Stacey Lawrence, for that. Um, just joking. Uh uh, not joking, she did do it that, but uh it was for good purpose. Um please don't leave the church. Uh but the empty chair. As we look around the room this morning, because we're at one service, there's more chairs that are filled than normal, but there's a lot of empty chairs too. There's empty chairs here, there's empty chairs that aren't even put back out yet. And the goal of this series is to hopefully expand our heart to focus on people who are not here, to be consciously aware that there are empty chairs that need to be filled. And it's not about just growing a church, it's not just about having more people attend on a Sunday morning. That's not the ultimate goal. But every empty chair represents a person, it represents a soul, it represents a family that has yet to put their faith and trust in Jesus. And at the end of the day, if they took their last breath, apart from having a relationship with Jesus, they'll spend eternity separated from him. And so my goal in this series is to hopefully give us some practical tools to get us to be able to recognize the world around us and recognize the empty chairs that are next to us and to do our best to live out the mission of Jesus, to seek and to save those that are lost. And here's what I recognize that in our world today, research would tell us that three in five Americans feel that there is no one that truly knows them. So a majority of the people that you come in contact with on a daily basis, whether that be at bread and butter or at your workplace or shopping at the store, most of them would say that there's no one that truly knows them. Most people don't feel too sinful for church. They feel invisible for it. According to research, a significant majority of unchurched individuals ranging anywhere between 70 and 80% say that they would attend a church service if they were personally invited by a family member, friend, or neighbor. So it's not that people are disinterested. It's not that people are anti-church. I mean, sure, there are some there, but the majority of people will say that they are interested and would attend a church service that would fill an empty chair if they were asked. And these are the people that Jesus is after. And that's our invitation this morning. And so what we're going to do over the course of this series is look at three different things, three different types of people that will hopefully help you kind of uh trigger something within you when you hear some of the statements that they might make. So there's three groups of people that can fill the empty chairs in our community. One, this is pretty self-explanatory here, those that are not in church. The people that are not in church, maybe they've drifted, maybe they never started, but they've never maybe filled a church chair, or maybe they did at one point and are no longer. Man, when we hear that someone doesn't go to church, that's an opportunity for an invitation. Another opportunity for an invitation is when somebody says that things aren't going well. When it's not going well in their life, when life has caved in, maybe there's a diagnosis or a marriage issue, or maybe there's a rehab stint or a job or a kid that is going off the rails, whatever it might be, when life falls apart, it's an opportunity for the Lord to step in. And then the third thing is the people that are not prepared for something. It's those that are facing something that they are not trained for. Maybe it's the loss of a loved one, maybe it's a season they never saw coming, maybe it's a new job opportunity that they don't feel prepared for. That's an opportunity, it's a gift from the Lord to be able to step in and to invite, to speak life into them. So it's those that are not in church, things that are not going well, and those that are not prepared for something. And this morning I want us to focus on those that are not in church. And here's the big idea this morning. Again, this is not earth shattering, but the big idea this morning is that not in church is not out of reach. Just because someone is not in church doesn't mean that they are out of reach. And so with that, I would love for us just to pray before we open up the word this morning. And so, Lord Jesus, we thank you. Lord, we thank you for just who you are. And uh, Lord, just for this moment in time to be here together. And Lord, as great as it is to fill a room like this and to sing praises to you, Lord, we also recognize that there are a lot of people this morning that are at home, maybe at in bed, maybe at work, maybe uh in just doing different things this morning, and they're just separated from you. And Lord, you've called us as your followers, as your children to represent you here on earth and to carry out the mission that you began to seek and to save those that are lost. And so, Lord, with the empty chairs that are next to us, Lord, this morning, Lord, would you begin to stir in our hearts a compassion and a uh a heart for those that are separated from you? Um Lord, even now, would you put people's names and faces in our minds that we can begin to pray for and serve and love on and invite um to join us? And so, Holy Spirit, would you come now and speak to us? And it's in your name we pray. Amen. If you have a Bible, you can turn to Luke chapter 19. We'll be there all morning long, and we're gonna talk about a story that is probably familiar for many of us in the room. Um, it's a story that I know I've taught probably a half a dozen or a dozen times here at Church at the Grove, and it's a story of a man named Zacchaeus. If you grew up in church, we know the song, right? Zacchaeus was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he. He climbed up in a sycamore tree to see what he could see. Like we we we've we've been familiar with this story, and that song does a disturbice to what we're talking about this morning because it tells us that the primary thing that we know about Zacchaeus is that he was short, and he was indeed short, but that was not the main thing about him. Look what it says in Luke 19, starting in verse 1. It says, He entered Jericho and was passing through. This is Jesus going into the city of Jericho. Verse 2, there was a man named Zacchaeus who was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. So the first thing that we learn about Zacchaeus is not that he was short, it's that he was a tax collector, not just a tax collector, but the chief tax collector. He was the guy that was in charge of all the other tax collectors. And if you aren't familiar with tax collectors in the Bible, this is more than just like an IRS agent. This is more than just somebody that works for our local government. These were known as criminals. They were people that were employed by Rome that were taking advantage of their own. They were taking advantage of the poor. And Rome, this nation that they were working for, was cruel and often barbaric. And Zacchaeus has signed up to work for them. He's collecting Rome's taxes off of his own neighbors and family members. And it's not that he just collected taxes, but he would also tack on crazy amounts of commission to get wealthy off of the backs of the poor. This is a bad dude. This is somebody that would have been hated in this culture and at this time. Imagine for a second that there was a cruel nation that came and took over our nation. And they did horrible things to the people that you loved. And then your neighbor next door to you begins to work for them. It takes a job helping them, going door to door, taking your money and your family's money and the people that you love's money, taking advantage of them. That's what Zacchaeus is doing. He's in charge of the people that are doing this. And so Zacchaeus, because of this, was disliked. That's an understatement that he would have been somebody that would have been despised and hated because of his job and his profession. But Zacchaeus was also banned often because of religious worship because of his job. Tax collectors were widely suspected to have been categorically expelled from the temple and not even permitted to enter. First century priests would not have allowed this practice. Tax collectors were seen as uncleaned and barred from attending the synagogue. According to Jewish scholar Alfred Edersham, a Jewish tax collector was barred from the synagogue and forbidden from any religious or social contact with fellow Jews, ranked with unclean animals, swine, and forbidden to testify in Jewish courts. The religious and social ostracism went beyond worship restrictions. Jews were forbidden to receive money and even offerings from tax collectors since revenue from taxes was deemed robbery. This comprehensive exclusion reflected deep contempt for tax collectors who were viewed as traitors, collaborating with Rome against their own people. So Zacchaeus was hated, he was despised, but because of his job and his perfection profession, he was not permitted to go even to the synagogue or the temple. He was someone that was not in church. He was the last person in the city of Jericho that you would have ever expected to care about God. He did not seem like he would be somebody that would be interested, or else he wouldn't be doing the job that he was doing. He's exactly the kind of person that would have been written off and ignored by the religious community. And so this is how the scene is shaping up. Zacchaeus, this wee little man, tax collector, he has a traitor against his own people, taking advantage of the poor, excluded from the worship in the temple and in the synagogue. And this is how the story transpires in verse 3. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but he was not able because of the crowd, since he was a short man. So running ahead, he climbed up a sycamore tree to see Jesus, since he was about to pass that way. This was a man that was not in church, but what's interesting to me here is that in verse 3 it says that he was trying to see who Jesus was. And we see that he does two things in this situation. The first thing he does is that he runs. So he's running to find out and to see who Jesus is, just to get a glimpse of Jesus. Dignified, respected men in this culture did not run. They would have to wear these long tunics, and for them to be able to run, they would have to kind of lift up and expose their legs, and that was seen as undignified. And then he not only does that, but he also climbs up into a tree. Only children climb trees, not grown men. And so what we see Zacchaeus doing here is he's throwing away his pride. He's throwing away his dignity. He climbs up a tree in his nice clothes, in his richness. He climbs up just to catch a glimpse of who Jesus is. And everyone in the crowd looks up into the sycamore tree, sees this little man up in the limbs and the branches of this tree, and they look up and they see contempt. They see a crooked little man. But Jesus looks up and he sees a man that is seeking. See, we assume that because someone doesn't go to church, it must mean that they're not interested in the things of Jesus. We've decided that the whole thing is over before it even starts. But here's what I want us to understand is that not in church doesn't mean not interested. What we're seeing from statistics and kind of the culture that we live in is that we're seeing that there's this peak and there's this massive interest in spiritual things in the world in which we live. We're seeing this among younger generations, but we're also seeing this just across the board where people are interested in spiritual things and they've got God questions that they're asking, but they're maybe not running to the church to be able to answer those questions. We might not invite because we think that people are uninterested, but the most far-off people you know might be quietly exploring faith, just waiting on somebody to notice them. I wonder how long Zacchaeus had been interested in Jesus. How long had he thought about Jesus and just hoped that maybe he's heard rumors about what Jesus was doing in his ministry and the miracles and the teachings that he was performing? How long was Zacchaeus interested until finally somebody took notice? Well, Jesus takes notice. Verse 5 When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, because today it is necessary for me to stay at your house. Now, one, um, you know, I I always hate it when people just like invite themselves over, and that's exactly what Jesus does here. But I guess it's Jesus, so it's okay. Um, but this huge cloud is following Jesus. Busy streets, this place is just, you know, grumbling with noise and people following him, and dust kind of being stirred up by people as they watch march down the streets. And Jesus stops long enough to look up into this tree and look at the most not in church, not you know, somebody that didn't have the religious kind of background and and understanding. Jesus stops and looks up Zacchaeus. And he doesn't care about Zacchaeus' crime, he cares about the criminal. He doesn't care about the man's sin, but he cares about the name behind the sin. He calls Zacchaeus, and it's unexplainably personal here. He did it here and he's still doing it today. He calls us by name, he knows our stories, he knows our past, he knows everything about us, he calls us personally to himself. But what's interesting here is that Jesus just calls him, doesn't just call him by name, but then he does what follows. He says, Hurry and come down, because today it is necessary for me to stay at your house. Isn't that shocking? Jesus is willing to go to Zacchaeus' house. I mean, he Zacchaeus, again, remember, he's not allowed to even go into the synagogue. He's not allowed to go into the temple. He's excluded from religious worship. He is not someone that anyone would have anything to do with because if they had any self-respect, they would not want to be caught with this man, Zacchaeus. And Jesus says, I'm going to your house. And notice what he doesn't say. He doesn't say, clean up your act, quit your job, pay everyone back, and then maybe I'll consider going over. No, he invites himself over before Zacchaeus changes a single thing about himself. This should amaze us. Before Zacchaeus says, I'm gonna stop cheating people, I'm gonna stop taking advantage of the poor. And then Jesus responds with, I'm gonna come home with you. Jesus doesn't do that. He says, I'm coming today. Zacchaeus hasn't repented, he hasn't cleaned up anything. Jesus is the one who invites himself into this man's life. Jesus went after the most unchurched man. He didn't address his sin initially, and he just started a relationship. And see, here's what I think we've got to understand when it comes to us being the people that God wants to use to carry out his mission and his plan is that relationship happens before repentance. Relationship before repentance. Now, I'll be honest with you, as I wrote that down and put it in my notes and even say it out loud now, there's something in me that kind of shudders. That doesn't seem quite right. But that's exactly what Jesus does here. He initiates the relationship in this circumstance because there's even when there's no repentance. And in the same way, we must, as God's children, are his sons and his daughters, we must be people that enter into relationships first. That we often want to do the exact opposite. We want people to believe like us and behave like us and clean themselves up and then we'll get close to them. We want them to change and then a relationship will happen. But that's not the model that Jesus gives us. He didn't wait until you had it all figured out. He didn't wait until Zacchaeus had all of his questions answered. He didn't wait until you had stopped doing something that you're most ashamed of. But the real the thing that Jesus does with all of us is that even in our sin, as Romans 5.8 tells us, that God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Slow down and let that hit for a second. There's nothing that you bring to the table. You didn't have some like great goodness or something, something significant to offer Jesus, and he just looked at you and went, Man, like that's somebody that I want on my team, and so I'm gonna call them. That's not what was happening. All of us, no matter what our past and what our history might be, as wicked or as good as that might seem, our righteous deeds are like filthy rags, all of us are in the same boat that we have a Lord and Savior that left heaven and earth, came down, took on the form of man, died on a cross for my sins and for your sins. Before we repented, before we changed, before we had any interest in him, but we were still rebelling, still walking away from him. And he came for us. Before there was repentance, there was a relationship that he initiated. And so we need to follow in his footsteps. We need to be people that engage in relationships with people that are not churched. And we can't just assume that people are uninterested because they don't go to church. And so what does this look like? Well, it looks like actually knowing your neighbor's name, who lives behind you and next to you and across the street from you. It looks like having people in your home that don't believe what you believe, that don't live like you live. It's about inviting them in, not for ulterior motives, but it's about really starting a relationship, and God uses those relationships to bring about transformation. It's about sending a text just to check in with somebody. It's about being a friend with no agenda and no script. You don't have to win the arguments, you don't have to have all the answers, you don't have to do all the things. All you have to do is be willing to do what Jesus did, moving towards someone who doesn't have it all together. The same thing that he did with you. And so while Jesus valued this idea of a relationship before repentance, that is certainly not the way that many people felt in this story. And this is the sad reality that has taken place in the modern American church and among believers today, that we have the spirit of religion. And this is what it looks like. Luke 19, 7. It says, All who saw it, all who saw Jesus going to Zacchaeus's house, began to complain. He's gone to stay with a sinful man. That should be a gut check for us. I mean, they're complaining that this outsider has somehow gotten Jesus' attention. This is the church crowd. This is the people that were already in. These were the ones that had figured it out, but they had thought that somehow they had earned their spot and that this guy wasn't allowed. He's done too many bad things, and that Jesus should not befriend or even associate with this man. And so they begin to grumble and complain that someone was receiving grace that they felt didn't deserve to get grace. And that same idea still permeates through our culture and our church world today. Where so often we can think that we deserve God's grace, but that there's other people around us that don't. That they're too broken, they're too gone, they're too liberal, they're too whatever, like whatever the adjective you might want to put in there. The crowd looked at Zacchaeus and saw a lost cause, but Jesus looked at him and saw a lost son who was on his way home. And we've got to be very careful to not fall into the trap trap of the religious leaders and being people that think that we're somehow good and that other people are bad, but that we deserve God's grace and other people don't. That is not the heart of our Father. Luke 19, 8, it says, But Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, so this interaction is taking place. They're at Zacchaeus' house, and he looks at Jesus and he says, Look, I'll give half of my possessions to the poor. Lord, if if I have extorted anything from anyone, I'll pay back four times as much. And Jesus says, Today salvation has come to this house, Jesus told him, because he too is a son of Abraham. The unchurched man, the one that everybody had written off, the one who had taken from the poor and exhorted money from those that were probably part of his own family and neighbors, is now transformed, and he's giving half of everything he owns, and he's paying back all the people that he's wronged. And he's not doing this so he can experience God's grace. He's doing this because he's already experienced God's grace, and as a result, he's giving back. It's a transformed life. David Gusick says, Jesus went to be a guest with a man who was a sinner, but he came out from the dinner with a saved man. This is the order every time. We don't clean up to get close to Jesus. We get close to Jesus and he cleans us up. And then Jesus makes this statement. And I could just imagine with Zacchaeus standing there and the religious leaders probably around and the crowds of people that have their mouths dropped wide open because Jesus is here with this known sinner. And Jesus makes the statement that we read at the beginning: for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost. Jesus doesn't just come to save the lost. Like I love that he comes to save the lost. I love that picture. I love that he came to die the sinner's death so that he could save us and we could be reconciled with our heavenly Father. But there's another word, there's another verb that's there too. It says that he came to seek and save the lost. I love that idea that he came to seek. Zacchaeus thought that he was the one that was seeking Jesus, but really it was Jesus that was seeking him the whole time. I would argue that the whole reason that Jesus was coming into the city of Jericho was to have this encounter with Zacchaeus. This is the gospel in the truest form that Zacchaeus climbs the tree to catch a glimpse of Jesus, but Jesus climbed down from heaven to get to Zacchaeus. And he went to the most unlikely, the most undeserving, the most not in church man in the entire town, and he gives him grace. And this is what he has done for many of us in the room this morning. As broken, as messed up as you are, whatever story you have, whatever past, as good or as bad as that might be, Jesus has sought you. He has chased you down to give you his grace. And that's what he's still doing today. He doesn't stop doing that. Like here in this story with Zacchaeus, but he doesn't stop doing that today, that through his Holy Spirit, he's still chasing down the most unlikely people. He did it for us and he does it for others. But here's the amazing thing that once we experience the grace of God, get this. And so while Jesus describes his mission as the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the loss, if you're a child of God, if you're his son or his daughter in the room this morning, you've been given the exact same mission. You've been given the mission, I've been given the mission to seek and to save the loss. And it's not through our power, it's through the power of the Holy Spirit working in and through us, but we are called into this mission to seek and to save those around us. That the empty chairs that sit among us, that we are called to fill those chairs. Again, not to grow a church or to grow a service, but to grow the kingdom of God, to see lives transformed, to see be see homes be transformed and families be reunited and people being connected with their eternal Father for all time. And so maybe you're in the room this morning and you're a lot like Zacchaeus. And maybe, you know, this is your first time in church, or maybe it's been a while since you've been in church, or maybe you've been in church every single week, but you still feel like you're one of the ones that are on the outside. And that Jesus wouldn't want to have anything to do with you because of your past, because of the things you've done or said or thought. And I just want to tell you this morning that our Father in heaven, the one that left heaven, came down to earth, he came to seek and to save. And he wants to do that for you today. I can tell you with everything that's within me that you might be the person in the tree seeking Jesus this morning, having a lot of questions and not many answers. And you might think that Jesus doesn't recognize you or see you, but I'm telling you this morning that this message is pointing to the great hope of Jesus that if you're here and you hear the sound of my voice, that Jesus is stopping. He's looking up and he's calling you by name this morning. That you are sought after, that you are loved more than you could possibly imagine. And you don't have to climb up anything, you don't have to clean yourself up first, you don't have to even come down from the tree. All you have to do is say yes to Jesus, and he will transform your life like he did to Zacchaeus. But then for most of us in the room this morning, verse 10 is your job description. You might think that you have another job description because of the employer that you have, but I'm telling you, if you are part of the body of Christ, this is our mission statement that he came, we should go to seek and to save. That we should recognize who they are, that we should know their names, that we should be people that call them down to come over to our house, that we should be people that are actively looking to fill the empty seats around us. And so this morning, this next step, and really throughout this whole entire series, I want you just to stop for a minute. Maybe close your eyes as we just kind of respond to the Lord in a second. But close your eyes and just think of one person. Who's one person that you know that's not in church? Who's the empty chair in your life? Maybe it's a neighbor or a coworker or a brother-in-law or a kid that you are trying to raise, maybe it's a friend that's drifted. But just ask the Lord, even right now, like, who is it, Lord? Who's my one? Who's the one person that I know? Or the maybe it's a group of people. But maybe just focus on one this morning that you feel like the Lord's just bringing to your mind and your attention. And with that name or that face in your mind, I want you just to pray for them right now. We don't save people, it's the Lord that does that. He opens the hearts and the minds and the ears of people. We are just his conduit. We just preach the good news and he does the rest. But would you just pray now for an opportunity? That God would open up doors for you to be able to share the good news, that God would open up the doors of your home to be able to invite people to fill your table. And maybe there's even some repentance that needs to happen. Where maybe you've dropped the ball in this, and you just need to say, Lord, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for not taking up the mission that you have given me, for being so consumed with my life that I've missed out on what you've been calling me to do. Help me. And I think the Lord will answer those prayers. And so maybe with that name in your mind, maybe just even in your Bible, if you want to jot down that name in the front of your Bible, just somebody that you're praying for, somebody you're intentionally investing and reaching out to and trying to develop a real relationship with. And then, Lord willing, maybe invite them to church or to share your testimony with them to tell them the good news of Jesus. And then for others of us in the room that maybe have never taken that step of faith, we're we feel a lot like Zacchaeus in that tree. And this morning, maybe Jesus is calling our names. And he's telling us to come down, to come and to engage in a relationship with the Lord and Savior Jesus. And this morning, if that's you, that the Lord is calling by name. Maybe your heart feels like it's even beating out of your chest this morning. Would you just surrender? The Bible tells us that He He came, He died, He rose again. And it says that anyone that puts their faith and trust in Him, when we believe who He is and what He did for us, when we surrender our lives to Him, making Him our Lord and Savior, that He will save us, that He'll rescue us, that He'll transform our lives and our hearts, He'll reconcile us with our Heavenly Father. And this morning, maybe that's the step that you need to take. And so in a moment, the band's gonna lead us, and we're just gonna declare that we've witnessed the goodness of Jesus in our lives. But this morning, maybe you need to come and just respond, or maybe you need to come to the altar, and maybe you need to just pray for the name that God's placed on your life, that God would open up their hearts and that he would use you in that process. But let's just respond now as we just ask for the Holy Spirit to come and to use us in mighty ways as we move forward. And so, Holy Spirit, would you come now? It's in your name we pray. Amen.