Come and See

Join us for “Come and See – Week 4 – The Empty Chair,” where we share how simple invitations can spark life‑changing chains of faith, from Andrew bringing Peter to Jesus to modern stories of believers reaching out. Using John 1:35‑51 as the foundation, the sermon challenges us to notice, invite, and invest in the people around us, reminding us that every great movement begins with one personal “come and see.” Watch to discover practical ways you can become the catalyst for someone’s encounter with Christ.

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Wow. Listen, it is so exciting to see baptisms take place. It is, it is, it just blesses my heart so much. My name's Russ. I'm one of the pastors here at Church at the Grove. And there's a family that visited with us last week. It was so cool to meet them as they left. And I never met them before. They came at the invitation of some friends, but they have spent most of their life in the country of Turkey as missionaries. And so they are at home basically on a furlough to get two of their older children checked into college, and then they'll head back to Turkey with uh younger their younger children. But here's what they said on the way out. They said, it is so refreshing to see baptisms in church. And I didn't know how to respond to that. I was like, we I you know and I found that I I take for granted what God is doing here. It's so easy. And they said that, hey, when we're when we're in the states, um typically we we end up in churches where there are no baptisms. Many churches where there are no young people, there's no children, and there's no no teenagers. And and so I I just don't want us to lose sight of the significance of what God is doing in this season in the life of our church. Um, statistically, I mean you could go uh check this out on chat GPT and and you find out that the majority of churches in our country do not baptize one person a year. Not one person. And so it is so significant to be in a place where we're seeing baptisms take place the way they are, and it is such a blessing. Um, we're in this series called The Empty Chair, and it's really about it's about us looking with intention at the relationships that God brings across our path and investing and inviting people to come to church, but ultimately to bring them to a place where they understand that Jesus died for them and they put their faith in Jesus. And so many of us, all of us have a story. We all have a story. And you you've heard my story probably many times, or at least parts of it many times, but but I'm I wasn't a church boy. I wasn't in a church family that went to church, and I had two older brothers that both came to Christ uh before I did and had tremendous influence. Both of them had influence in my life, and and particularly my my oldest brother, um uh he was he he grew up not going to church and he met this girl, her name was Terry, and she was a Christ follower, and she made it clear if you have any interest in me, then you need to you need to uh talk to two people, God and my father. And and so that led that led to him putting his faith in Christ. And my my uh my uh middle brother Eddie that that has been in heaven since 1992. Um Eddie uh ended up in a whole different set of circumstances, uh ended up in being invited to play in a band that was in a church, a local church, uh, that was led by a guy named Ed Roland, who ended up founding a band called Collective Soul. And through that relationship, Eddie came to faith in Christ, and both of them influenced me toward Christ. But then after, later on down the road, my brother left, my oldest brother left the business world, went into ministry, and in 1991, he invited me to join him at a camp called Impact Camp, where they ministered to middle school and high school students. And I walked onto that campus, and the very first worship gathering on that campus, which was on the weekend, before all the kids got there, was just all the adult leaders. There was a girl standing up on the stage singing, and she was good looking, and she sounded really good. And I and I said, I want to meet her. And I did meet her. I ended up marrying her, and and and God used, listen, God used just a simple invitation for me to just go volunteer at a youth camp to change my life. It's at that camp that I met my wife, it's at that camp that God began to work in me a call to leave the business world myself and to go into ministry full time. And then I became a youth pastor in 1995, and and and and I could I could I could talk about all the chain reactions, but I'll just mention one. There's a young man that was that started coming to youth group. He was a basketball player at North Hall High School. Uh his name is Walt Avra. And Walt had been in a church, but he was in a church that was not preaching the gospel of Jesus. I don't know what they were doing. I don't know if the pastor would get up and just maybe recite a poem or or tell a good story or warm and fuzzy kind of thing. I don't know what it was, but he they he was in a church, had been in church most of his life, and never heard the gospel, came to the youth group there at the church that I was part of in North Hall County, and he gave his heart to Jesus. And I I could I don't want to tell you every story. He ended up going to college at Stanford University. Then he went to what's called the Bethlehem Institute in in Minneapolis, Minnesota, founded by Pastor John Piper. And then he met a girl while he was there, and and they both gave their, they both received this call and they were obedient to it to become missionaries. And I remember the day they packed up all their stuff and they got on a plane and they went to Pakistan. And their heart was to reach Muslims. And I could keep going on down the road to tell you about all of these chains that line up that brought about the possibility that I would move to Walton County. Had no idea really for sure about where I was going to plant a church, but it ended up being right here in the metropolis of Walnut Grove. And I could go on there. Listen, we all have stories, and all our stories have chain events. Somebody, somebody reached out, somebody had a conversation, somebody talked to you, somebody planted a seed, somebody watered it, a preacher gave a sermon. Whatever, you all have stories. Some of you, hopefully, if you don't have one of those stories, you'll have one that begins today. And so this morning we're coming to the end of the series called the empty chair. We've basically said, hey, there's three knots. There's three knots that we want you to be aware of. N-O-T, not K-N-O-T, N-O-T. Three knots that we want you to be aware of. And we connected these knots to characters in the story of the Bible where Jesus interacts with each one of these people. And the knots are this. The first knot was when you hear, when you hear someone is not in church, it ought to trigger an automatic response that, hey, I need to be willing to reach out and ask that person to come to church with me. And who did we look at? We looked at Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was not in church. Zacchaeus was a tax collector. He was a chief tax collector. And because of his role in partnering, he was Jewish, but he partnered with the Roman Empire to oppress his people. He wasn't allowed to go to worship. He wasn't allowed in the temple. He wasn't allowed in the synagogue. It was so far from him, his mind, to think about going and being part of a worship community because he had sold his soul to the Roman Empire. But he heard about this Jesus that taught differently, with a different authority, that healed people, that was casting out demons. And we know the story, Zacchaeus was a wee little man. He climbed a tree so he could see Jesus. And so Jesus says, I'm going to your house, Zacchaeus, we're going to have a meal at your house. And it began this chain reaction where Zacchaeus filled the empty chair. And then the second knot is this. The first one is when you hear someone say, I'm not in church, that ought to cue you to invite. Invest and invite, invest and invite. And then there's the second knot that says that when you hear somebody say, It's not going well. It's not going well. It ought to cue you. Maybe somebody is dealing with a diagnosis. They're dealing with a death in the family, or there's financial issues, or there's marriage issues, or whatever it is, it's not going well. And so the second chair that we talked about that was filled, it was filled by a man who was paralyzed. We don't even know his name, but he was paralyzed and he could not get to Jesus. And the house where Jesus was teaching there in Capernaum was so full, nobody could get close to him. So he had four friends, four people, four people that cared enough about him. That would get him to Jesus. And when he gets to Jesus, Jesus doesn't heal him. He says, your sins are forgiven. And here would be the tragedy. If Jesus had healed his legs and then just sent him on his way, he would have had the strength to walk, but he would have walked straight into hell. And so before Jesus tells him to pick up his mat, he says, your sins are forgiven. And so when somebody in your life says, hey, it's not going well. Somebody at the office, somebody at class, somebody that you do life with or that you work with, they say it's not going well. That's the cue for you to speak up. You don't have to be a theologian. You simply just have to have a story, like these testimonies that we heard this morning. And then there's the third knot that says it says we're we're not prepared for something. We're not prepared for something. We're not prepared. Something that's new in our life. Maybe it's a transfer at work. And we really weren't prepared for that. Or maybe it's losing a job and we weren't prepared for that. Maybe it's um it's uh it's a blessing. It's something new that's a blessing, but you realize, man, I'm not prepared for that. I mean, like, and I've been joking about Jonah and Reese, they've got a brand new little baby rocket, man, and he is he is so precious and so beautiful, and and and Jonah's always prepared. So I know this doesn't apply to him, but for a lot of you that have a baby, you you you take that baby home and you realize, woohoo, whoa, ho, I wasn't prepared for this. And when you hear, I'm not, I we just, we weren't prepared. It ought to be a cue, it ought to be a reminder. Hey, this is somebody that I need to invest in and invite in and see, hopefully see the Lord work in their life. And the person that filled that chair last week was Nicodemus. Nicodemus was uh at the top of the hierarchy of Jewish leadership. He knew everything from the Old Testament, the law and the and the writings and the prophets. He knew it all, but but he heard about this Jesus and he wanted to hear more, and so he goes in the middle of the night to begin to ask Jesus, what's different about you? And and listen, Nicodemus would have been the one person who would have been prepared for eternal life because he had given his life to ministry, to the God, to the truth of the Torah and the writings and the prophets. He was an expert in the law, he had all the head knowledge. I love part of the testimony we heard, head knowledge, but not heart change and transformation. And so Nicodemus, Jesus tells Nicodemus, You listen, you've got all this knowledge, but you must be born again. And Nicodemus, I promise you, was not prepared like he thought he was. And then he hears the truth and he sits down and he listens and he feels that empty chair. Now there's a fourth chair up here. Who's that chair for? That chair is not for, it's not for Nicodemus, it's not for Zacchaeus, it's not for the man who was paralyzed. It wasn't, it's not for somebody that comes from 2,000 years ago in the stories that we read out of scripture. You know what who this chair is for? It's for the one person in your life that comes to mind right now when you think about somebody that needs Jesus. That's who this chair is for. Who's your one? Who's your one? I mean, don't even get overwhelmed with, well, like everybody. I mean, you think about everybody you go to school with, or everybody you work with, or everybody in your neighborhood. I mean, there's a lot of people. I love Friday night football. I went to a football game Friday night, and I just, I mean, I saw so many, many people that I know, but I looked out across the crowd and I'm just like overwhelmed by how many people I don't know that live in my community. And I guarantee you, 80 to 85% of those people are not in church today. And so God's here, here, here, here, listen, here's what we want you to see throughout this series. There's people all around us that are far from God, and we need to be proactive in investing and inviting people ultimately to lead them to understand the good news and to put their faith to repent and believe, like Jesus said. And this morning, that fourth year is what I want to focus on. And so I want you to imagine who is it? Who's your one? Write it down, write it in the margin of your Bibles, write it down on your prayer list, write it in your in something that you take notes on and you put that name somewhere and you pray over that name. And here, here's the big idea. Here's the truth. Majority of us in this room have put our faith in Christ. We were lost one time at one time, but now we are found. We're in the kingdom of darkness at one time, but now we're in the kingdom of light. And here, here's the truth. Here's one of the, actually, it's one of our our it's one of the values that we have for our church, and it's this that found people. Say it with me, find people. Found people, find people. Let's say it together. One, two, three.

unknown 15:45

Found people.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Found people, find people. Found people, find people. That's the truth. And that's that's my my prayer is that God would would would would show us, remind us of somebody, and help us to understand. We're gonna be in John chapter one here, we're we're um, and that's easy to find. John chapter one, it's the fourth book in the New Testament, uh, the fourth gospel. And and and and Jesus has really not made his appearance yet. And the Gospel of John records it. It starts with a character by the name of John, but it but it but it's not the same John that that wrote uh the book of John. It was a different John. He went by the name John the Baptist. He's not in the temple, he's not in a building, he's not in a synagogue, he is way out in the wilderness by the Jordan River, and he is preaching the good news about what is to come. One will come. And the crowds part, and here comes the Messiah, Jesus. And John the Baptist sees him and he says, Look, look, behold, behold. Which means, look. The Lamb of God who will take away the sin of the world. And so Jesus comes and and and they have this little conversation, and and and John says, Jesus should baptize him. Jesus says, No, uh, to fulfill uh the prophecies, to fulfill uh what is written, you baptize me. And so Jesus comes out uh of that of the water and and the Holy Spirit descends on him in the form of a dove and and and there's another, there's a beginning, a new chain that's in, that's set in place. And so John 1 is where is where we see uh the beginning of the story. People begun begin to follow Jesus. Look at verse 35 in John chapter 1. It says that the next day, John was standing with two of his disciples. So the ministry has already begun. Jesus is beginning to preach, beginning to teach, and they they they know who he is, and and he's standing with two of his disciples. He's already called them to follow him. It says in verse 36, when he's when he saw Jesus passing by, he said, Look, the Lamb of God. The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and noticed them following him, he asked them, What are you looking for? I think there's a lot of people looking for something in life. Everybody's looking for something. And they may not know exactly what it is, but you know what it is? They're looking for a sense of peace. Hope, purpose, significance. What is this life about? This is a messed up world that we're in. There's a chaos and there's confusion. In the middle of the chaos and the confusion, there's this voice that comes. The voice that comes through the power of the Holy Spirit that whispers, Jesus. Jesus. So what are you looking for? And they said to him, Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying? And then Jesus says this come and you'll see. Come and you see. Some translation just says, Come and see, come and see. So they went and they saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, and it was about four in the afternoon. And here we here we see names. Verse 40 Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard John and followed him. We're gonna see a chain here. We're gonna talk about this chain reaction and how one relationship influences another and another and another. And it continues down through history. And it says in verse 41, it says he first found his own brother Simon and told him, We have found the Messiah, which is translated the Christ. And he brought Simon to Jesus. Do you see it? That was his one. That was his one. That was the one who could fill the empty chair. That was the one. That was the person closest to him. And he brought Simon to Jesus. When Jesus saw him, he said, You are Simon, son of John, you will be called Cephas, which is translated as Peter. I believe he's the one. He's the one that has been prophesied about. He recognized that Jesus is the Messiah. Andrew, being one of the first people to see Jesus as the promised Messiah. But what's the first thing that Andrew does? He goes and finds his brother Simon, whose name Peter. You see this multiplying impact of the gospel message. One person tells another person who tells another person or two, and then they continue on, and all of a sudden, you begin to see this community grows. And so here's the question. I wrote down in my notes, what if Andrew had just decided to keep Jesus to himself? Now I know I know that God is sovereign. But just imagine with me for a second how if Peter had not been reached, if Peter had not been invited, if Peter had not been been been asked to come and become a part, we miss out on what? Just so many significant aspects. Peter was one of the pillars of the early church. On the day of Pentecost, um, the Holy Spirit comes, and Peter is the one that stands up and gives the sermon, the first sermon preached as the church is born. 3,000 people are saved in a single day. Peter is willing to stand up against religious leaders like the Sanhedrin, the same people that had condemned Jesus, and he boldly says, We are unable to stop speaking. Speaking about what we have seen and what we have heard. Peter is the one that God sends to the Roman soldier named Cornelius that initiates the good news and the gospel being taken to people that are outside of the Jewish faith, which are known as in that time would have, they would have been called the Gentiles. And so through Peter's account is where we get the gospel of Mark. And I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that without the life of Peter, we may not be sitting here today. I mean, listen, I know that God is sovereign. God can, if somebody, if Peter hadn't responded, God is going to see his purpose fulfilled. But just imagine for a second how different it would have been if Andrew had not invited his brother. We know we don't really know a lot about Andrew. The only one he only shows up a few times in the gospels. But every time we see Andrew, he's bringing somebody else to Jesus. He's not famous. We don't know if he ever wrote anything. We don't know if he ever published or spoke or preached. But God used him in a dramatic way to reach one person that has influenced the last 2,000 years? Peter now certainly has a place in heaven. Listen, let me give you an example of this chain reaction. In 1934, a 24-year-old farmer named Albert McMahon. How many of y'all ever heard of Albert McMahon? Anybody heard of Albert McMahon? Anybody? Not one person? Albert McMahon. He was determined to get local teenagers in Charlotte, North Carolina to this tent revival in his neighborhood, 1934. He filled his truck up with young people every night, but one specific 15-year-old boy in the community flatly refused to go. I'm not interested. He didn't care about religion. And he dismissed this idea of going to hear this traveling preacher. He called it, he called it tabloid speaker, is what he called him. And Albert did not argue. Instead, he used a little clever strategy based on what he knew about this boy. So the bait was, he said, we know he knew the teenager was absolutely obsessed with cars. Boys and cars. Right? Love cars. And so he offered him a deal. Albert says, hey, I'll let you drive my truck to the meeting. I'll let you drive my truck to the meeting if you will agree to come and sit with us. And all of a sudden, the boy who has no interest is like, man, I get to drive the truck. I don't care about going to the big tent thing, but I'll go if I get to drive this truck. And so the offer to get behind the wheel was too good to pass up, and the reluctant teenager finally agreed to go. Albert had no idea that this simple, practical invitation would change history. He he just so desperately wanted to see more people come to know Jesus. He wanted people to know what he knew, which was a relationship that would transform you, give you peace and hope, and change your life and give you something to live for. And that night, the boy who only came to drive the truck ended up walking down the aisle and he gave his life to Jesus. Now I just asked if any of you knew who Albert McMahon was. And I didn't see one hand go up. But that teenager's name was Billy Graham. Now, how many of you have ever heard of Billy Graham? Probably preached to more people than any other single person in the history of the world. And so you see the chain. Billy Graham would go on to preach and he would advise presidents, and he he would he preached and he went to he was willing to preach behind the iron curtain. He was willing to go to places where people would criticize him. He was a man who had integrity. He lived his life to share the gospel. Listen, we don't know the impact that a simple invite can have on a person's life, the power of the one empty chair being filled by one invitation that literally would change one life, but ripple, have a rippling chain reaction. There's always an impact. There's always a chain of impact, and we can't overestimate it. Let's go down, look at history just a little bit from way back to modern days. 1735, a man by the name of John Wesley and his team traveled to a colony, at the time it was a colony called Georgia to become missionaries, particularly in the area that we now know as the coastal area around Savannah, Georgia. In 1746, Jonathan Edwards appeals for prayer for world missions, and out of that comes the first great awakening. In 1787, a man by the name of William Carey is ordained in England and soon begins to urge and pray for worldwide missions to be undertaken. In 1845, at the first Baptist Church in Augusta, Georgia, there's this denomination that is formed called the Southern Baptist Convention. In 1836, seven people in a little town called Social Circle start the first Baptist church of Social Circle, 1836. Then 1993, a little over 150 years later, Social Circle, First Baptist Church, would plant a little church called the Summit in Loganville, Georgia. Summit Church would exist for 14 years and then would plant by sending money and families and staff to a little community called Walnut Grove where there would be a new church birthed in 2006 called Church at the Grove. And five years later in 2012, Church at the Grove would start their second campus back in that town called Social Circle. And shortly after that, we would plant another church in Aradia, Romania, through the obedience of Joy and Pat Harden. Now I could, I could, I could tell you, I could, I could continue that story, but I hope you you get the gist of what I'm talking about. I could tell you about the church that we've planted in Pennsylvania, and pastored by Joseph Villarde, who has become one of the most influential leaders in that area and one of the fastest growing churches in the northeastern part of the country. I could tell you about all the other churches that we've either given money to, we've sent people to, or we've literally helped start. I mean, the change reaction continues on. We still have vision about who we're gonna see reached in communities around us and even where we're gonna continue to do ministry worldwide. And so go back to the text here in verse 43 that says the next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. He found Philip and told him, Follow me, follow me. Now Philip was from Betheda, the hometown of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathaniel and told him, We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law, and so did the prophets. Jesus, the son of Joseph, from Nazareth. And he asked this question. Nathaniel asked this question about Philip, can anything good come out of Nazareth? I mean, I kind of feel like maybe Nazareth and Walnut Grove are kind of similar. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? And here's what Philip says come and see. Come and see. Come and see. And so Jesus now meets Philip, a man that Andrew and Peter probably would have grown up with. Philip goes and gets Nathaniel, but in the process of telling Nathaniel about Jesus, Jesus process of telling Nathaniel about Jesus, he messes something up. Philip calls Jesus the son of Joseph, which is not the case because Jesus is the son of the heavenly father, not Joseph, the man. When Jesus wasn't Joseph's son, remember he was born of a virgin. He also says that he was from Nazareth when Jesus was actually born in Bethlehem, which is what all the prophets have pointed to in the Old Testament. Philip is working off one day of information. So his theology is thin, but his heart is right. Which means you don't have to get everything right. God will still use you. You can mess up the gospel presentation, and God can still use you. Which leads to this. Listen, I want you to look at a observe a couple of things. And the first one is this you don't have to have all the answers to be used by God. You don't have to have all the answers to be used by God. This is one of the main objections I hear from people when they when they're when we preach hard about you trying to invest and invite people. Listen, I get nervous when I talk to people about Jesus. I still get nervous because I don't want to be rejected. I don't want people to blow me off. I struggle with the same struggles that you struggle with. Because we can come up with all kinds of objections. And you don't have to have all the answers to be used by God. I believe the tool of the enemy, Satan, is to is for you to believe that God could not use you, or because maybe something isn't perfect in your life. It's not about being perfect, it's not about having all the answers perfectly answered. It's really just about being open and obedient to what He says he calls us to do, which is to go and make disciples of all nations. I mean, listen. People can argue with you about theology, people can argue with you about creation, people can argue with you about religion, but they can't argue with you about your story. It's one of the most powerful things. Tools that God gives us as our testimony, our own personal story. And I can't, I'm telling you, the person that I admire that blows me away, that is so bold and is faithful, is Pat Hardin. Man, Pat will talk to a stump. And he's gonna talk to Jesus, to that stump. He's gonna talk about Jesus to that stump. I mean, he'll talk to anybody for any length of time. And I say all that, that's, I mean, and so you know, the testimonies you hear typically that it's like, what was my life like before Jesus? How did I encounter Jesus? And how has my life been changed by Jesus? And so we realize this that so we don't have to have all the answers, but we realize that God is already at work in your one. God is already at work and you're one. Listen, God is already at work. God is working in somebody's life long before you offer the invitation. Then Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him and said about him in verses 47 and 48, here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. How do you know me, Nathaniel? Jesus answered him, Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. That's kind of spooky. But you know what it is? It's the Holy Spirit, it's the power of God. It is the holiness, it is the God of the universe. He can't, he, he knows, he knows your past, he knows the present, he knows the future. He is already at work. A.W. Tozier, one of my favorite writers, he says this before a man can seek God, God must first have sought the man. So God is already working in somebody's life. The Holy Spirit is already working in somebody's life. And you know what? There's a mystery about how the sovereignty of God works in somebody's life, but also works in such a way to give us the chance to be a part of it. And the reality is somebody has to be moved by the Holy Spirit. And sometimes you don't know how the Holy Spirit is working until you offer the invite and get into the conversation. And they may even reject you at that point. And God may use that conversation weeks, years later. And listen, what you've done is you've sown a seed, somebody else might water it, somebody else might get the credit, somebody else might actually lead them to Jesus. And so we we see the sovereignty of God at work there. Where God is already working on your one that belongs in that empty chair. Henry Blackaby, some of you probably know who Henry Blackaby is, wrote a book called Experiencing God. It's just a simple one. Henry Blackaby never had pastored a megachurch. He never was a famous, you know, traveling preacher. I mean, he's he's now known worldwide because of that workbook that he wrote called Experiencing God. But he says, here's what he says. Here's one of the major themes that Henry Blackaby would share. And he says, watch to see where God is working, and then simply join him in his work. See, God's called us to be a church that is aware that there are people that we're gonna come across our path that are far from God, and he's called us to be a part of seeing people come to Christ. And and but and he could do it himself. He could do it without us, but he gives us the privilege to be a part of it. And so we come into this room, as I said early, you know, we we see growth in a church, and we we want to talk about, you know, church people get together and talk about how how have you seen this church, how big this church is, and how many people they have on a Sunday and this. We don't, you know what? God, here's what I've learned God does not take attendance by counting who's here, He takes attendance by counting who's not here. And He cares about every single soul that is either on a ball field this morning or they're they're they're out on a lake somewhere this morning, they're on a on a vacation, and and by the way, if if you take a Sunday off, you're not gonna go to hell or anything. But but but I'm telling you, there's people out in our community, you drive by ballparks, you see the parking lots packed. Somebody shared Jesus with you. And you were a part of the chain reaction, and our heart should be broken for the people that were like us before we knew Christ. So would you bow your heads with me? Can we just pray for a second? Not rush through the end of this service. But let's take a moment and reflect on what God has said over these last few weeks. There's people we're gonna come across paths. Our path, people are gonna come across our path, and they're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna, they would tell us that they're not in church. Or they'd say, and things are not going well. You know what? This happened in my life, and I and I'm I just was I'm not prepared for it. And when we hear this, these statements, it ought to trigger a response of compassion and love, and for us to speak out and to verbally engage. Hopefully, they see our life, and that's so important that our lifestyle matches what we would share verbally with somebody, but at the end of the day, it's more than just a lifestyle. You've got to proclaim, you've got to say it, you've got to pronounce it, that Jesus has changed my life. He was born and he came and he lived a sinless life. He he surrendered his life to die on a Roman cross. And because of his blood spilled for me, I now experience redemption and forgiveness. And he proved that he had power to forgive sins and defeat the devil by coming out of the grave and he was bodily resurrected. Jesus began to teach, he began to do miracles, and he began to reach out to these disciples, and he and he began this chain reaction that really is summed up in this idea that what I have witnessed, I cannot keep to myself. I've witnessed this morning three lives transformed. And the stories and the testimonies and their life, it is something that we witness that we see it. Some of you have stories where God has intervened in your life through a healing, through a deliverance, through a miracle. Somebody showed up to help you in a tough situation. Money came from somewhere that you just couldn't even account for to help you. And you say, I've witnessed it, I've witnessed what God can do, I've witnessed what how He can change my life. And as a result, I can't keep this to myself. And may God, may you fill empty chairs in this place yet still. We celebrate, we we're about to come to 20 years of celebration, and it's just the beginning. The best is yet to come. Thank you, Jesus. And so if you've never put your faith in Christ, this morning, I want I want I want to just give you a second, an opportunity to say yes to Jesus. And you say, Russ, how do I do that? You you simply just say, Jesus, I want to give you my life. I I repent and I believe in what your gospel, your good news is. And I turn and put my trust in you. And if that's you this morning, I'm just for a second, I'm gonna just give you a second. If that's you this morning, lift your hand up. Say, Russ, that's me. I'm giving my life to Jesus. Raise your hand up. So that's me. I see that over here. Anyone else? That's me this morning. Raise it up. Thank you. I see it, I see a few over here. Now listen, listen to me. Don't you leave here without telling somebody. You tell the person that brought you, you tell somebody in your family that I'm you're giving your heart to Jesus. Now I want you to all look up at me. Everybody look up. This is for the rest of us. Church, believers, those of us that say we know Jesus. My prayers that we'll be challenged. We'll come back next week, we'll begin a new series. But let this one settle, let this one rest, let this one churn up something in your heart. Let this stir up and awaken a passion and a desire to see more people experience what you say you have experienced. And let's be a church. When people hear about church at the grove, man, that is where God is working. You know what? Because I'm seeing it, I'm witnessing it. Amen. Hey, would you stand with me? Let's close this time together, celebrating what God is doing.