- I have recognized that I have to be in God's word first thing in the morning for me has been really important. On those days when I haven't done that, there's just such a tremendous difference in how my day goes and I feel it, and it's almost immediate. So I have to have that personal time with God in the morning and being in God's word because, for me, that's how he speaks into my life, speaks into my day for the rest of the day. So being in God's word, being in prayer, and fellowshiping with other people, which, you know, that's been a struggle for me at different times in my life, you know, because people will hurt you sometimes. And so it's easy when you're feeling hurt to start to want to disengage, but to remain engaged with other believers. My small group has just been, it's just amazing that like pushing through those trials and continuing to be engaged with those women has been a critical habit for me. We started meeting over three years ago, and we've met nearly every Wednesday all of that time, and that is a really important habit is to be connected with other people of faith and do life with them. They've taught me how to really trust other women, how incredibly important it is to stay connected with a group of believers, not like-minded people but a group of believers because that's what we have in common is our love for Christ. And, you know, God has put me in this group I think to really challenge and speak into some of the places where I was hurting. And you know, it's not always easy, you know, when you're in your small group. You know, we go through things. We go through things together. We laugh together. We cry together. We speak truth to each other, which can be difficult sometimes, but it is so incredibly necessary, and it's through that truth, it's through figuring out who I am in a community with other people that really helps me grow. When we're by ourselves, we can't. I thought I could by myself grow in my faith walk, you know, but there's things about me that God reveals to my relationships with that group that's important for me to understand. So truth and love is something that they've absolutely offered me. So I just absolutely feel at my core that God is on the move in this church and in my life, and we've all been through so much, and so many people are absolutely ready to ReEngage. So my name is Cheryl Clayton, and I am ready to ReEngage.
- Well hey, everybody, and thank you to Cheryl, just an incredible person that is using her gifts every day for God's kingdom. Let me welcome all of you here, those of you in Bluefield and Marion and Bristol and here in Abingdon, out in chapel and cafe and country. Man, we're so grateful for you, and those of you that watch us online and TV every week, hey, thank you as well. It was funny, on my way here, I got a prayer request from a couple, a Highlands couple that's camping in a campground in Key West, Florida, all right? Now it's cold, and they asked me to remember them in prayer, and I'm thinking, "You need to remember us in prayer, all right?" Sort of needs to be the opposite there. We're envious of you, so when we think about you, you need to pray for us cause we're wanting to be where you are. But anyway, I hope in Key West you're incredible, you're enjoying it, it's fun. We miss you, and we look forward when you get back. So we've been in a series since the first of the year that has really created a lot of momentum in our church. As Cheryl was saying, we see, you know, people wanting to ReEngage. We've been through a difficult season and so many of us coming out of the gate in a new year with new opportunity. There's passion. There's an excitement. There really is an exciting time for our church. So I thought I wanted to start out 2023 by reminding all of us, wherever we are, that our mission is important. So we need to all be on the same page. This is why we exist as a church. We've been looking at this for the last couple of weeks now. So let me remind you about it. I want you to know this. I want it to be core in your life, all right? So here's the reason Highlands Fellowship exists. We exist to help people experience life with Jesus. Now we believe this is the mission of Jesus. We know when you experience life with Jesus, your life gets better, your marriage gets stronger, your kids get better. Everything gets better in their life when we experience life with Jesus. So beneath that, we've sort of looked at three things. We're people of truth and love here at Highlands. We teach the truth out of God's word unapologetically, but we do it in love. We don't beat you over the head with it, and today, I'm talking to you about we're a place to belong, and then next week, we'll wrap up the series with the idea that we are a church with purpose. God has called us to accomplish certain things, and we're moving forward, taking new ground to actually see this happen. Now here's what we know. Every human being, every one of us is looking for truth, belonging, and purpose. I mean, it's our deepest human needs, and we believe here that those basic needs are only met in Jesus Christ. We can only find those needs in our creator, in Jesus. So we're calling our series ReEngage, and I'm asking all of you, whether you've been with us for a long, long time or whether this is your first Sunday or you're brand new with us over the last few months to actually engage on a deeper level and those of you that have been with us for awhile, maybe to ReEngage, and we're just saying, we believe God's about creating movements, and we want you to join the movement by becoming more engaged, and some of you, I wanna encourage you to become an actual member here at Highlands. Now we all belong, okay? So let's get that out of the gate. Everybody belongs no matter where you are in your spiritual journey. If you're not a believer yet, if you are a believer, if you're brand new, if you've been a seasoned believer for a long, long time, all of us can belong. This is a place where we can belong. But when you become a follower of Jesus, it's really clear from scripture that he wants us to actually take a deeper dive and actually join a local church, actually become a member of a local church where we become accountable, where it becomes a priority in our life, you know? I hope you're not here today because you looked out. "Well, it's cold. You know, I can't go to the lake, and I can't do this," and said, "Well, maybe I can get to church today." No, I mean, it needs to be a priority. It's a priority in my life, and I know I'm the preacher, but hey, if I wasn't, I would still be here. I wanna give the first part of every week to the Lord, and I've just learned when we do that, when we make coming to church or joining us online a priority in our life, our whole week is better. So I wanna encourage you to ReEngage. I want you to see this as a place where you belong. We call Highlands home. You'll see it. When you come to one of our in-person locations, you'll see it on the walls. You'll hear it at the welcome centers. You'll hear me talk about it, and we welcome all people to join us, no matter where you are, every time we meet together, and we hope from day one that you actually feel like this is a place where you're valued, you're cared for, you're loved, you belong. Now while we are all involved in these amazing things that we've been involved in over the last several years about, you know, serving our communities, you guys have knocked a home run, 100,000 people in our communities, one of the things we've sort of lacked in is we haven't actually asked you or invited you to join our church, to become a member here at Highlands. So as we face a new year, we believe that we have a really bright future, that we are ready to take some new ground for the kingdom, and we want you to be a part of that. So today, you can go to our website, and you can check out everything our church believes in, our values, and you can actually see our membership covenant that we're asking you to pray about, seek God's favor in, and actually sign and join, and you will know everything. When you sign your name, what you're committing to as a believer in Jesus Christ is the church where God wants me to be this church. Well, I hope it is, and I want you to be more in the process of being a member here at Highlands. Now last week we looked that we are people of truth and love. So again, just so in case you missed last week, we teach the Bible. We believe it's the foundation of truth. We unapologetically believe, as Paul told Timothy, that it has been God breathed. So God breathed his word into existence. It's what we stand on. It's what everything is born from here. It is our absolute truth, God's word to us, the 66 books that are all compiled that make up the Bible, and we do this in love. So if you missed, go back, watch that. We don't have time to get back into that, but today, I wanna talk to you about that, in order to be the church that God wants us to be, we have to be a place to belong. We wanna be a place to belong. Now I'm gonna share a scripture with you, and I've been doing this for a long, long time, as many of you know, and it's really unusual, not so much in the Old Testament, in New Testament to actually find the passage I don't think I've ever spoken on before. And today, I want to use a passage outta Mark chapter three that I can never remember sharing a message about, and it is pretty crazy story that we find here in Mark chapter three. It's a really interesting conversation that Jesus has with his mother and his brothers. And let me give you a little background here in Mark's gospel. Jesus has come up against some opposition now. You know, he is beginning to sort of arrive in his teaching and he's teaching things that his mom and his brothers are like, "I'm not really sure where that's coming from. You know, where did that come? He didn't find that here in our family." And as he's out in the crowds, he's beginning to get some opposition from the Pharisees because he's gaining influence. They don't like this. The Herodians all of a sudden are coming against Jesus, and right before this story, some are accusing Jesus of losing his mind, all right? And they're saying that he's possessed by demons. So we know from day one the demons are opposing him. So Jesus has come under quite a bit of opposition when we find him here in this teaching setting, causing quite a stir. And lots of folks are thinking, you know, "By the things he's saying, he's having some kind of mental episode here. He is sort of losing his mind." In fact, we will see here in verse 20 that his family comes for him and because they're thinking he's in trouble, you know? He's saying some things, he's having all this opposition, and so his family begins to hear about this, and they come to find him. And we find that they come to get Jesus, and we find Jesus in a house with a bunch of people sitting around him in this house. So let's pick up in verse 20 and see what it says. "Then Jesus' mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him and they told him, 'Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.'" Time out just real quick, all right? So Jesus is teaching inside a house with a bunch of non-family folks, okay? His mother and his brothers are there outside the house, and they come to find him to call him out of the house, all right? And so they tell him, "Hey, your mom, your brothers are outside. They're looking for ya. They want you to come out." So notice what Jesus says in verse 33, and you can figure out here fairly quick while people think, "Well, he's had a mental breakdown." So he says, "'Who are my mother and my brothers?' he asks. Strange question. "And then he looked at all those seated in a circle around him, and he said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother.'" Now you might think after hearing that, "He did have a mental episode." This story has so many ironies in it. For example, usually a home, you know, when we think about a home, that's where family is, and yet Jesus is here in this home in Capernaum, right on the side of the Sea of Galilee with a bunch of his followers, but everybody around Jesus, as he's teaching, they are non-blood relatives. His immediate family is not in this home. And his blood relatives, his mother and his brothers, are outside this house. Now that's interesting that his non-blood relatives are inside the house and his blood family is outside the house when we think normally of a home being where the inside blood relatives would be. And his blood family comes looking for Jesus, and we know that he has an earthly family, his mother, Mary, who I believe was one of the, you know, greatest, strongest examples of faith in all the scriptures. He also had brothers. Later in the New Testament, we see his brother James becomes one of the leaders in the New Testament church, and, you know, I've thought about this. By the way, when you think about it, could you imagine growing up in this home with Jesus and being the brother of Jesus? Can you just hear Joseph and Mary saying things like, "Why can't you be more like Jesus, you know? Why can't you get good grades like Jesus gets good grades? Why can't you walk on water like Jesus walks on water?" Blah, blah, blah. You know, I think it'd be really hard. In fact, I think one of the greatest evidences of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the fact that even his own brothers, James and the others, became believers in Jesus Christ. They received him not as a brother but as savior and Lord of their life, right? And that's one of the strongest evidences Jesus Christ is who he claims to be, but at this point here in Mark chapter three, James and the other brother haven't got there yet. All right? They're still thinking Jesus needs a little help. "He's crossed the line here, he's gone crazy, and we're gonna come and get him and rescue him." That's what families do. I mean, I hope there's time in my life where I go crazy and lose my mind. You know, I hope Brenda and the kids, I hope they come try to rescue me. You know, that's what really good families do. And yet Jesus uses this as a teaching moment like he always does, and this is pretty cool. I want you to see what he says. He says here, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" Now quick time out because many of you might think, "What in the world is he saying?" Jesus is not dissing his family here. We have to understand this. Jesus is very pro-family. You remember when he was on the cross, he entrusted the care of his mother into the care of the disciple John, and he said, "I give you my mom. I want you to take care of her." So Jesus taught that he was pro-family. He taught on the fidelity of marriage. Jesus is definitely for the family unit, but the point of the text here is not that. The point is to say that "My family, my family," Jesus is trying to help folks go deeper here, "is actually different than you tend to think it is." And he looks around in this house with all these people sitting at his feet and he says, "These people that are standing around me that are doing my will, these are my mother, my brothers, my sisters," which is an interesting point, isn't it? So hear me on this. Did you know that you are actually closer to non-blood relative believers in Jesus than you are to your own blood relatives if they are not believers in Jesus Christ? Now this would be sort of foreign for many of you today. Now it's not to say that you shouldn't love your family or care about your family. No, I'm not saying that at all, but in our world, most of us believe like that there is nothing closer than blood relatives. Well, Jesus would say, "Not so fast." In his family, that's actually not true. If you have a sister or a brother who is not a believer in Jesus, you're actually closer to the person beside you if you're at one of our in-person locations in this room, assuming that you're both believers, than you are to your unbelieving sister, mother, brother, or anyone else who is not a believer because, in Jesus, when you trust Jesus, we're family, we're family. Now I think that is an incredible, beautiful truth that we sometimes miss as followers of Jesus. Now, I love the gospel. I mean, I've given my whole life to sharing the gospel, this idea that Jesus has forgiven us, that he has forgiven us of our sin, and he came and he died on the cross, and when he died on the cross, he took our place and he took our sin and he paid our debt in full so that we might be given the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and he was raised from the grave so that we could have hope of the resurrection. And when we receive him, he indwells us, we learned this last week, with his Holy Spirit, and although salvation is an individual encounter in Jesus, you can't be a follower of Jesus 'cause your mom and dad were, your grandparents were. Salvation's an individual encounter, but the beautiful thing is that once you are saved and we surrender our lives to Jesus, he places us in a family. We're truly brothers and sisters in Christ, in his family, and if you've never given your life to Christ and today at the end of the message, I'm gonna give you an opportunity and invite you to make the best decision you will ever make in your life and actually become part of Jesus' family. Now this idea of family is actually taught throughout the entire New Testament. We don't have time to go through all of 'em, but let me give you a few illustrations, scriptural references today because here's what we have to come to the conclusion. I know probably when you got up today, you were thinking, "Well, let's go to church or let's get online or let's, you know, tune into the TV program." And I don't wanna try to change that in your mindset 'cause I still want you to go to church and those kind of things and watch, but here's something we have to understand. Church is not something you go to. Rather, church is a family you belong to, and it's a huge difference. The church is not this building or that television. It's a family, all right? And it's something that when you give your life to Jesus Christ, you belong to the family of Jesus, and it's an incredible opportunity, and we see this all throughout the scripture. Paul tries to teach this over and over and over. In Romans chapter eight, verse 15, he says this. He says, "The spirit you received does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again. Rather, the spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship or to a daughter in Christ, and by him, we cry, 'Abba Father.'" So when you invite Christ into your life, you become adopted as a full heir with full privileges in the family of Jesus. It's pretty incredible what Jesus does. When you're adopted, you become a full legal heir in right standing with a holy perfect God. Here's another passage that he teaches the Ephesian church in chapter two verse 19. He says, "Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers." Again, we're a family we want you to belong to. "But you are fellow citizens with God's people, and you are members of his household." Do you see the language here that helps us understand we are a part of a family of Jesus? In I Timothy chapter five, verse one and two, Paul says this, "Do not rebuke an older man harshly." Remember this, young people, when you're talking to me, "but exhort him as if he were your father. "Treat younger men," this is to us as old guys, "Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, with absolute purity." So there's a lot of family language. We want to be multi-generational here at Highlands, but hey, at the same time, we honor each other. We respect each other. We empower one another. I love that we're a multi-generational church. In the family of Jesus, we're all equal, equal standing in his family. And then this last one, Romans chapter 12, verse four, Paul says this, "For just as each of us has one body with many members and these members do not have all the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others." So if you're believer in Jesus Christ, and there are probably a couple thousand or so of you in person are watching listening online today, I'm not even sure how to explain how this happens. Although we are many, somehow in God's sovereignty, he makes us into one, and he says, "We all belong to one another." Isn't that interesting? We don't just belong to God, although we do, but we belong to one another, and we want this place, we want our church to be a place of belonging, a place where it's a priority for you to get to. You wanna be here because when you're here or when you're watching, you're gonna get better. You're gonna be able to experience life with Jesus and with each other, and your family is gonna mean something to you. Such a huge part of growing in our spiritual life, isn't it? You know, most of the time when we talk about our spiritual growth, we talk about all the disciplines that we are to do. We're to read the Bible and we're to pray and we're to fast. We're doing that right now, and all those things are good. We're to meditate. You know, it is great to journal, and that's awesome. All those things are great, and we have a list, and, you know, obviously these things are good to do, but sometimes we dismiss the whole other side of spiritual growth that in my mind is just as important, and you know what it is? It's what I would call the relational side of spiritual growth. When you understand the family and the relationship that we have to one another, that is huge in knowing your identity in Jesus Christ. We understand this, don't we? I mean, this relationship side is extremely important to all of us. We all have this deep desire to belong. It's like when you're invited over to somebody's house and you walk in and you smell the aroma of an incredible meal that's been cooked for you and your family. That's awesome, isn't it? Or you walk into maybe one of our in-person gatherings here and you see the smiles on people's faces, and you're just drawn to that, right? You pull into the parking lot. Somebody's waving at you. "Man, we've been expecting you. We want you here. We value you." Here's reality. Spiritual formation is actually rooted in both believing and belonging. It really is. Believing is all about the truth. We looked at that last week. Belonging, it's all about people, it's all about family, and both sort of fit like gloves in our spiritual growth. So what does it look like to be a place of belonging? We think a lot about this as a church. We got lots of feedback from you over the years, and I think there's tons and tons of ingredients. We wanna get better at this all the time, but I know in order to create belonging, you gotta have four things, all right? You have to, and and we really desire for this. If you guys ever that are on TV and online, if you ever make it to an in-person gathering, you'll see this 'cause this is what we focus on. Four ingredients that help us to know we're a family or in your small group, as Cheryl was saying in the video. You gotta have these things, and it is a sure way to measure a place of belonging. Here's the first one, joy, all right? I mean, it's gotta be a place of joy. I love what Paul says in II Corinthians chapter four, verse six, what he says. He says, "For God who said, 'Let light shine outta darkness,' made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ." Joy is actually in the face of Christ. Now think about Jesus, guys. Now it says that the kids love Jesus. When I think about Jesus, I'm always thinking about, you know, he had a robe, but I mean, kids just swarmed Jesus, and I'm thinking, "What was it about him?" I think he had some candy in the pocket of his robe, you know, and these kids would come. I could just see Jesus giving, you know, some candy outta the pocket of his robe. I mean, kids loved being around Jesus. You think if he was an old sourpuss, kids would like, "No." You know, and I think when we come to church, and I get pushback on this all the time. "Well, needs to be a place of reverence. Needs to be a place of reverence." Well, we have a reverence for God. I'm gonna tell you something. If you wanna belong, you don't want a belong to a place of reverence. You wanna belong to a place of joy where there's some excitement, you know? Where you see joy. You say, "Oh, well, I'm a follower of Jesus. I know Jesus, preacher. Yes sir, I know him." Well, notify your face, all right? I mean, smile about it. He has saved you from hell, all right? I don't know about you. That oughta give you some joy in your life because you have been transformed. You have been forgiven for a debt you could not pay, and that oughta make us all joyful, and when we get together as a family, man, let's praise God and let's be glorious to God who loves us. You know, I was thinking about this idea of joy the other day, and I just think that smile at each other, all right? I mean, just smile. I mean, that changed the whole outlook for some of us. Just smile. And sometimes I look at you guys and I think, you know, I know you've come to church. I know you may been beaten up all week long, and I know you got a frown on your face, but hey, you're at a place of belonging. You're at a place of value. You're at a place where we really care about you and other folks care about you. Just smile and see what happens when you begin to smile in your Christian journey. Here's second thing, love. Now, that's a word in the Christian church, we throw it around all the time, don't we? I mean, we talk about it all the time, but let me remind you that Jesus said something very interesting about love in John's gospel 13, verse 35. Catch what Jesus says about it. This is what he says. "By this, all people," not just those of us that are gathered together today, "all people will know that you're my disciples," if you have what? "If you have love for one another." Love in the Bible is what I would call attachment. Now I'm not always great at explaining things to you, but sometimes if I can see it visually, then I can get it better. For Christmas, Martha, my oldest daughter, her and Tyler, they know I love coffee and they got me this mug, and you can't see it, but it's a mug of all the national parks in America. And I don't know, there's a bunch of 'em on here, and we've been to a bunch of 'em together, and so she knows I love national parks. I've drug Martha all over the west going to these places. So it was a cool gift, right? I was excited about it. So the week after Christmas, I'm having coffee and, you know, we got two Schnauzers that we struggle, right? And Oreo, he's the oldest. He loves things that are not good for him. Like he loves coffee just like I love coffee, and he loves chocolate. We've had to pump that dog's stomach three times because he loves chocolate, and, you know, I'm convinced Oreo, he's not crazy about dog food, but, you know, if I was a smoker, I could see going home one day and Oreo having a cigarette. You know, I mean, that's the kind of dog he is. He likes things that are bad for him. So I leave a little bit of coffee, the phone rings, in my cup, and Oreo jumps up and he's drinking outta my cup, and then I yell at him, and as he tries to get away from me, he jerks the cup off my stand, my little table there, and you can't see it, but it broke, the whole handle broke. So I didn't wanna tell Martha about it, you know? So I get super glue and I'm trying to glue this handle back on, and as I'm gluing the handle back on, I noticed that those of you know Super, my finger, my fingers, I mean, they're stuck. They're stuck completely together with the handle. And, you know, I'm there by myself. All Brenda and the kids are gone to work, and so I don't know what to do, you know? I'm thinking, "What in the world am I gonna do?" So finally, I pry off, leaving some skin on the handle, and I pry my fingers apart, but I thought, you know, as I'm thinking about that, I thought, "That's really what love in the church is." It's a stickiness. It is an attachment. We really belong to each other. I mean, that's to me what the church is all about, and one of the ways I think that our region will look at our church and see that we're people of Jesus is do we love one another? I mean, we can say it. It's easy to be a friendly church. It's entirely different to be a loving church. Here's third thing. There has to be some vulnerability, all right? This idea that we can be honest with each other, that we don't have to have it all together, and I would just say, if you've been coming to Highlands very long, you know. I'm the first one to say I'm a work in progress, all right? I was an evil person that was redeemed by God's grace and forgiven by his mercy, and today, I am who I am only because of the grace of Jesus Christ. I was a broken person, and somehow, God, you know, he super glued me back together in his love and his mercy and his grace. And you might think, "Well, you need to be better than that if you're gonna be the preacher." I'll tell you, you're in the same boat I am. You were broken, too. You had evil ways, too. We're all broken, all right? And that's the reason we need Jesus, because we can't do this on our own. We have to be vulnerable. I love what the scripture says in James chapter five, where James says this. He says, "Therefore, confess your sins one to another and pray for one another that you might be healed." Now it's interesting, not confess your sins to God, although we're told to do that, all right? I'm not saying don't do that. We're told to do that in other places in scripture, but we're instructed here to confess our sins to each other. That requires some vulnerability. Let me just ask you. You got any friends you can confess your sins to? I mean, really? Do you? How long has it been since you confessed your sins to a friend? Well, you need some people like that in your life. And you might think, "Well, I just could never do that. Well, they just think I'm," hey, they're in the same boat. All right? None of us got it together. And it requires, if we're gonna be the church that Jesus wants us to be, to come in here and just be real, all right? You might not like what you get, but I'm gonna be real. I'm just who I am, and God made me that way, and I am a work in progress, and we're on a journey, and I am never gonna be complete until he calls us home, and neither are you, but hey, we can cheer each other on. We can pray for one another. We can encourage each other, and we can hear one another when we failed, when we've messed up. Here's fourth thing. I think we have to have this idea of hospitality. Jesus created places of hospitality wherever he went. I love in Hebrews chapter 13, verse one and two, this is why the author of Hebrews says, "Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing, some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it," and I love that verse. I used to pick up a bunch of hitchhikers. I don't do it near like I used to 'cause I'm afraid I might be killed, and I'm not saying you should, but I used to do it all the time, and I did it because of this verse. And I don't know. You know, a lot of people in theological circle say, "Well, that was for a different time back in the Old Testament. That's not for today." But hey, what if you entertained an angel and you were unaware of it? That'd be pretty cool. I don't know how you think about it. I think that'd be pretty cool. So when I think about these qualities that make a place of belonging, these are the characteristics that Jesus desires for his church. These things show that we truly belong to each other, that we're passionate about creating a place that others belong. Highlands is home, it's a place of belonging, and we believe that belonging is a basic human need that is only met when we experience life with Jesus. Now we try to create places of belonging in our campuses. I encourage you to create places of belonging in your homes. We have been intentionally trying to create places of belonging in our communities. We want our communities to know that we are for them, and you know what? We are crazy enough to believe that God is giving us opportunities as a church to provide a place of belonging for God's people all over the world. It's the reason we partner with guys like Wahid and we're in the midst of the Ukraine and Pakistan, creating places of belonging for people all over the world. So I'm just asking you, would you ReEngage with us? And would you move from maybe belonging as a believer in Jesus Christ to joining, becoming a member, helping us take new grounds, serving, seeing church as a priority in your life? Because that is your family that you're gonna live with for all eternity. So let me pray for us. Lord, thank you so much that you created a family, and God, it was big enough for people like me, and often, Lord, when I look in my life, I mean, there is nothing, there is absolutely nothing I have ever done to be able to be a part of the family of Jesus. I've done a lot of things that should keep me out, but because you love me and you died for me on the cross and I saw my need to trust ya, Lord, you gave me the opportunity when I became a follower of Jesus to be a part of your eternal family. It's been transforming in my life, and I pray today for those that have never trusted in Jesus and you're here, and maybe, you know, I mean, maybe other folks think you're a follower, but you know down deep you're not a follower of Jesus. It's been something of convenience for you. It's been something that, "Yeah, I'll go ahead and go with the family, but I'm not into this Jesus thing," and you've been running from Jesus. I wanna tell you today that, until you experience life with Jesus, you'll always be on the run, and you'll be trying to fulfill the deepest needs that you have of truth, belonging, and purpose outside your creator. And today, I wanna give you an opportunity to invite Jesus Christ into your life. And you say, "How do I do that?" He says, "If you'll just speak with your mouth, believe in your heart that Jesus died on the cross for you and that he paid your sin debt in full and that you would accept him into your life and surrender your life to him and repent of your sins, then you can be a part of his family. You can belong to the family of Jesus." And so I pray right now that you would make that prayer, those of you watching on TV. If that's you, man, just click your little raised hand button right now. And at all of our in-person locations, if you pray to receive Christ today, let us know, man. Grab somebody on your way out, and Father, for the rest of us that you've drawn here by your Holy Spirit, we believe, God, you're building your church. You're growing your church. Help us to engage or to ReEngage if we've sort of gotten a little cold and maybe our fire has moved down to an ember. Lord, may we put a few more logs on the fire today and may we ReEngage with your family. Thank you for being able to be a part of belonging in the family of Jesus. Have your willing way now. In your name we pray, amen. Hey, we're getting ready to sing. I want y'all to stand up wherever you are, and let's just worship the Lord today, all right? Let's stand together.