- Guys, I want to welcome you today. We are going to have an awesome time together. We are kicking off our summer at Highlands, which is always fun, summer time's amazing. So if you're at a campus, if you're online, if you're on TV, you tuned in on a perfect day. So we're kicking off summer and I love summertime and I hope you do, too. Because this time of year is just so amazing. We get to go back outdoors. We get to have all this fun. And after last year being all jacked up with all my friends and all that stuff and everything, social distance, I'm looking so forward to this year being able to bring all my friends and hang out and do some stuff together. One of the best times that I really like in the summer is hanging out in the backyard. Man, this is just fun. I love hanging out in the backyard. I love hanging out with my family. I love going out messing around with a ball and having fun, kicking it around, throwing some stuff. I love sitting there. And we have a projector, and I love projecting a movie on our garage door. Kids love it, they invite their friends over and we'll watch this movie on the garage door, it's having fun. Or we might build a fire. We'll build a fire and we'll sit there and we'll make some s'mores. I don't know a young 'in yet that doesn't love s'mores. So we have all this fun stuff at summertime. And I love the fire, you think about fire. If you go to a big box store right now, I guarantee they will have a truck load of fire pits. It's something about a fire people love. It's almost like mesmerizing when we get around a fire pit, isn't it? And I think about all the fun times I've had around a fire pit with my family. I think about all the times we've told stories to each other, we told all these embarrassing moments. My kids will do that, and it's something how we can go years later and my kids will still come up and go, "Dad, dad, dad, hey, share that story you shared one time about this." And it was four years ago. And it was something dumb and goofy, but it was a moment with them, it's just something. And I love how we get into those moments when we I have a fire. I've got a ton of stuff. I've got a gas fire pit on my back deck. If you go down from the bottom of my house, I've got a big old area where we do bonfires. And I actually have two portable fire pits. 'Cause we like to hang out around the fire. And I've learned out of all these years and all the hanging out that we do, as we sit there and hang out with that fire and it gets kind of later with my friends or maybe it's even early morning with my friends, it's always interesting how the conversations go. It's like they change. And they become almost like more vulnerable, you might say, and there's things. And it's crazy because if you think about it, being outside in the wide open skies, it's kind of dark or dusky dark, you're out in the elements and all this stuff's all around you, but somehow the fire makes you feel safe. You don't feel vulnerable. We're used to locking our doors and pulling our blinds and everything else, and then we feel safe. But in that moment around that fire, it does something and we feel safe. We feel like we can have a conversation. And some of the best, real conversations I've had, it's been around a fire pit, it's been around a campfire and having those discussions. So today I want to talk about a time Christ was with seven of His disciples and He was hanging out around a fire. He was having some hangout time with these guys, but then he had a real conversation, a real moment with a disciple named Peter. And if you know anything about Peter, everybody usually remembers, oh Peter, he's the one that denied Jesus three times, oops. Or he's the one that was really emotional. He drew that sword and he whacked the ear off that guy that was trying to arrest Jesus. We can relate to Peter. We mess up a lot, don't we? We can react with our emotions at times and do some dumb stuff. But gosh, man, I love this conversation that Jesus has with Peter in this moment. And I think that Jesus, the moment that He has with Peter right here is the same conversation that He desires to have with each one of us that say we are a believer in Jesus. I think He desires to have this same conversation. He wants to sit down with you and I and have this same conversation. So I think it's very important to notice it today. I want to ask you this, if me and you were sitting beside the campfire and we kind of stayed in that late night and all of a sudden I threw out a question to you and the question was this, what does He want from you? And you're going, "Who, or what, or Jesus?" Yeah, what does Jesus want from you? So your first gut reaction, if you've known Christ, if you've been hanging around at a church for most of your life or for a little while, you were probably thinking about the great commandment and great commission. You want to love the Lord with everything you got and you want to love your neighbor as yourself. And then what does He tell us? "Go, go to all nations, making them disciples, boys. Baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and teach them everything I've commanded you." If you'd look at your everyday person, your everyday believer, do you think there's a struggle in that? Do you that that's awesome, that great commission is awesome but gosh, Jesus, I'm just struggling to do my own little walk. Am I really going to all the nations? Is your average person going to all the nations, your average believer? Are they baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit? Are they teaching everything I've commanded you? Boy, it's hard, ain't it? You're sitting there thinking, "So what does Jesus want from me? What does He really want from me? If I'm struggling, this is so far out there. How can I bring it down to where I can sit there and start my journey with Him, that I can walk with Him?" He brings us up to this conversation with you. There's two things I want you to see as we walk through this today, there's two things Jesus desires from us, one is love. Boy, it always comes back to that love. It always comes back to that relationship. We have to begin to love. Love can't fail. We want that in our lives. We desire that in our lives. We want to be able to lead with that love. And the second thing, the second thing is He wants us to follow Him. Man, follow Him. Here's what we've got to think about just a little bit. What does that really mean to follow Him? How do we sit there and follow Him? If that great commission is so far out there for me, how do I sit there and truly follow Jesus with my life? For one, you've got to understand how much He loves you. We call that grace. Boy, I've had a whole lot of grace in my life. He's loved me a whole bunch 'cause of all of the mistakes I've made in my life. And the second one, just as important, is called obedience. Obedience is a little tough word for our today. We don't want to hear that part. I'm all about the love and the grace, but obedience? Obedience is called living out His truth. Can we sit there and live out His truth? 'Cause if you're gonna follow Jesus, it is called living out His truth. It's taking that love that we need, that grace, and applying it and say we want to follow Him. In our obedience, living out His truth in love. That is what we want. There's a discussion that takes place, and it's after Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. And this is when He meets the disciples. He's already appeared to them twice. And this is the third time that Jesus appears to His disciples. So you've got seven disciples and they're out there. And this is in John chapter 21. And I'll kind of paraphrase the story as I walk through. They're waiting on Jesus, the resurrected Jesus to come through. They're at the Sea of Galilee, they're hanging out. Peter, you know Peter's not gonna hang around for too long. He wants to do something. So he's like, "Man, let's go fishing. You boys want to go fishing?" They go, "Yeah, let's go out and do a little fishing. We know how to fish. Before Jesus came along, this is what we did for a living. Let's go out and do some fishing." So they're out fishing and they fish all night, and they're not doing too good. And as the sun is starting to come up, they notice a man's on the shore. And this man cries out, "How's the fishing going?" Well, it's not too good. He must have been at the South Houston. "Yeah, not too good," they answered. It ain't really happening. And then the man sits there and tells them, "Try the right side of the boat." So they've been out all night trying to fish and had nothing, but here's this cat telling me, "Hey, try the other side of the boat." And they're like, "Well, buddy, we've been all over this Sea of Galilee. There ain't nothing out here. But hey, it's almost morning, why not? Throw it down one more time, let's see what we've got." Well, all of a sudden their nets are full. When those nets get full, all of a sudden, John, the disciple Jesus loves so much, John recognizes it's Jesus. He's like, he has that moment of going, "I think this has happened before. I mean, something's happened like this before in our past." And he recognizes Him and he said, "Hey, that's Jesus." Well, Peter hears this, you know Peter, full of emotion, what's Peter gonna do? Well, he's gonna jump in the water. I'm gonna get to Jesus before anybody else comes. Man, I love Him so much. I'm gonna beat all those disciples. So he's swimming to the shore, getting to there. And here the disciples are slowly coming with the boat. They're bringing in the net. They couldn't even get the net in the boat, there's so much fish, so they're coming to there. I always wonder, when Peter jumps in that water and he's swimming to shore, what was going through his mind? Because if they are two or 300 yards off the side of the coast, out there fishing, you know he has to get in those points as he's swimming back, that it hits him, "Well, how in the world did John know that was Jesus?" And he has those times, he has to be running those stories through his mind, "Yes, I remember." You ever had deja vu where you sit there and all of a sudden you're in this moment? I've had it several times. It's kind of crazy, a little bit creepy. And you sit, then you have deja vu, and all of a sudden for a second you're looking at something and you're like, for a half a second you knew what was gonna happen. That person's gonna walk from here to here. And I'm like, "How'd I know that?" Now, they got some medical terms. I have no idea what they are, what they call that, how your body and your mind's functioning. But Peter's having some deja vu. He's like, "This has happened before. I remember Jesus borrowing my boat. I remember Him sitting there preaching and He wanted to get off to the side of the shore to preach to the people, and then we went out, we took the boater out." And I want you to sit there and know this story. I want you to remember it here, it's over in Luke five, we can find this, and we'll start at verse four. "And when they had been fishing, He said to Simon, 'Put out into the deep and let your nets down for a catch.' And Simon answered, 'Master, we have toiled all night and took nothing, but at your word, I will let down the nets.'" So here it is, they've been out all night fishing. They haven't caught nothing. But here this man sits there and tells them to put the nets down, deja vu. He'd already done this once before. So they come back, "And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish with their nets and their nets were breaking." So again, this is not South Houston. They signal to their partners on the other boats to come and help them and they came and filled both boats so they began to sink." That's what I'm talking about, a fisherman's dream. Boy, the boats are sinking you got so much fish. That's what you like. "But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down to his knees, saying, 'Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.' For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of the fish that they had taken. And so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, 'Do not be afraid, for now you are going to be catching men.' And when they had brought their boats to the land, they left everything and followed Him." Who are the fishers of men? I love that point 'cause it helps remind me in that point, from day one, when Luke met Peter, he wasn't wishy-washy about nothing. He says, "I want you to follow me." From day one, when I sit there and accept Jesus Christ, He wants me to follow Him from day one. Not maybe in a year or two, maybe when I figure out some stuff, maybe when I learn and I grow up. Man, I want you to follow me now. Day one, drop it and follow me. That's a big ask that He's doing in our lives, but He wants us to do that with our lives, He wants us to follow Him. And if you sit there and read in the gospels of Matthew and Mark, you'll see this echoed, same place, this story, follow Him, follow me. So all this is turning, all this is turning through Peter's mind as he's swimming to shore. He's got all that. So he gets to the shore, and you have to realize, when he gets to the shore, he's there for a few moments with Jesus before the boat gets there. What happens when Peter gets to the shore and he's right there with Jesus? We have no idea, scripture doesn't tell us. It's kind of crazy, 'cause all of a sudden, you're like, you're watching, you're watching, all of a sudden the commercial comes on and you're like, "Dang it, what happened? I missed it," and it goes on to the next thing. And I'm wondering what happened in those moments. Did Peter sit there and understand all that? Did he fall to his knees again when he met Jesus? Did he acknowledge, oh man, Jesus, I'm still screwing up? I'm still messing up, I still need you in my life. When you're not here, we're off fishing or something. We need you to guide us constantly in life. We need Jesus constantly in our lives to walk through it. Is He giving him that reminder? I'm wondering if he's stunned, what he sees right there on the shore. Because we are told this in scripture, that when rest of the samples get there, it's in verse nine, John 21:9. "When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place and the fish laid out on it and bread." Jesus said to them, 'Bring some of the fish that you've just caught.'" So here they are, these guys have been out all night working, fishing, if you want to call it that, 'cause they ain't caught nothing all night, they was just riding around. But finally they got their catch in the morning and they're coming in, and I love this part how Jesus reminds us of that love piece one more time. If you sit there and you've had a hard day, if you've had a hard day, you're doing all your stuff, it's been a Monday, been one of those Mondays, and you're sitting there like, "I'm ready, I'm going to the house, I'm ready to go home," what do you want when you get home? Yes, dinner, I just want dinner. I just want some peace, I want some quiet, and can I have that dinner? It's been one of those days. That's what we want. Heather has taken before, she's drove home. Heather goes to work early in the morning. She's in the medical field. So she goes way early in the dark every morning, even in the summer it's dark when she leaves going to work. So she gets off early and she'll call me on her way home. And I can tell on certain times she's had one of those Mondays. And she'll go, "Well, yeah, it's this, it's good, it's okay, anything in the house?" And if I can hear that in her voice and I go, "Hey, you know what? Why don't you go home, take a nap, just take a nap, and I'll get us something to eat. When I get off, I'll take and grab us something to eat and bring it home." And then her reply almost every time I've ever done this is, "That would be great." You hear it in her voice. Why do we do things like that? It's because we love someone. We want to show them love for them, that we understand where they're at in their life, in their journey, in their stress of that day. We love them. Jesus is sitting there showing His disciples, "I love you." He could have spoke, the fire would have came, the fish would have came, the bread would have came. But He wanted to prepare it. He literally wanted to serve those guys one more time. Let me serve you, I love you. I want to show you love, I want to show you that I have this heart as a servant. I want us to be able to lead this way in our lives to you. So they hung out. Jesus tells the guys to come on over, have some breakfast. And this is the ultimate campfire. You gotta think, for one, you're hanging out with Jesus. You've got your buddies, it's all good. You got breakfast coming. It's all great, it's been a long night, so you're tired, but it's great to hang out with some friends. You got a fire on the beach. I've never had a fire on a beach, it sounds awesome. But they've got a fire on the beach, how good is that? And can you imagine the stories that they're telling? Can you imagine how many times they're making fun of Peter. Peter done that again, remember? Jesus had to correct them. But they're cutting up with each other. They're just a bunch of guys, so you know it's crazy. Hanging out, fishing all night, telling stories, having breakfast. It's a good time, it's a good moment they had. Then after they hung out a while and breakfast is over, here comes one of those moments, here comes one of those questions. Jesus throws out the question this time, and it's in verse 15. "After breakfast Jesus asked Simon Peter, 'Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" Holy smokes, we're having fun, we're having breakfast. We're chilling out, we're having a good time. And Jesus throws that out there? What in the world? You know Peter's going, "Where'd that come from? I just swam to the shore to meet you, Jesus, while everybody else there wanted to stay dry. I'm wet, I wanted to see you, Jesus. I'm the one, remember, I cut that ear off, I cut the ear off that guy's head. Come on, you know that I love you. What is that?" And Peter's sitting there, probably turning back, he's like, "I even said this, remember this, Jesus? Even if everyone else deserts you, I will never desert you." I know all that's going through Peter's mind. And as he goes through that in his mind, it probably hits him right then, and he went, "Oh shoot, I did desert Him. I denied Him three times. Three times I denied you, Jesus." Maybe Jesus is trying to get Peter to take that deeper look inside his life. Was Peter still full of pride of thinking how much he loves Jesus? Man, I can jump in the water, I want to get there before everybody else. Is he still full of that pride thinking, "I've got this," knowing that he screwed up, knowing that he makes mistakes? We can't come to Jesus with pride. We come to Him with humbleness. We come to the Father with humbleness in our heart. He doesn't want pride. See, we can say a whole lot of stuff in our lives, what does our actions say? How do we sit there and live that out in our lives from there? "Yes, Lord," Peter replied, "you know that I love you." You know that I love you. Peter is realizing when he looks at this because of the wording. In Greek there's some different words that you can use for love. There's different levels of love. There's agape love, this is what Jesus is asking Peter. This agape love, "Do you love me unconditionally in my life?" And Peter replies with a phileo. This phileo, it's a great, deep friendship love. And he knows that. And Peter, the reason he's sitting there saying, "Yes, I love you as this deep friend, as this deep brotherly love I have for you," because he knows he can't say he loves Jesus unconditionally. I've already blown all that so many times. He's on a journey, he's learning, he's growing. But right there in that moment, he can't tell Jesus, "I love you unconditionally, I don't." The thing we have to be on guard today, even as a church and as the body, is that word unconditional. That word unconditional can get so twisted in today's society to honestly be like a sword against the church from that. And it's a thing that we watch and be on guard on. Because it is so popular. Culture has marketed this idea that if you love me, truly love me and you're truly following Jesus, then everything has to be okay, that you have to accept me unconditionally. You have to love me unconditionally. And that's a great marketing tool. The only problem is we throw out the other half of what Jesus desires, to live in truth, obedience. It's not something that we separate, it's something that we have together. Jesus says, "I love you so much, I desire to be with you so much, I want you so much that I pray that your desire is to follow me, to live in truth, to understand that." That is what He wants. Man, I want the grace, I want that love. And at the same time, He wants us to desire to be obedient to Him, to live out that truth in our lives. What truth does Jesus tell Peter in this? 'Cause He tells him some truth. He says, "Then feed my lambs." Jesus told him, "Feed my lambs." Jesus wanted action. Don't just tell me that you love me, that you accept my grace, give me some action. Show me how to live out that truth, be obedient, feed my lambs. Jesus didn't condemn, He didn't condemn him that morning. He didn't tell him how much He was disappointed in him denying Him. He actually puts him in charge of caring for those who cannot care for themselves. That's the love of Christ. He loves him that much. We are not to beat down people far from God with His Word. We're to love them, we're to love them and give them all the grace that we can. But we are called to love them in truth. This is truth, not what the world tells me, not what society tells me, this is the truth that I am to love them in. That's what He has called me to do. If we go on to verse 16, Jesus repeats the question. "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" And again, it's that agape love. Do you love me unconditionally? Did you notice this time too that this is the second time that Jesus didn't call him Peter? He calls him Simon, son of John. Simon, if we go back a little bit, we realize Simon means in Greek, it means listener, listener. So it's Jesus, Peter is the rock, but Jesus is not calling him a rock right now. He's calling him the listener. Does Jesus want him to listen again? Does He want him to step back and be like, does Jesus say, "I need you to listen"? Peter might be going, "Hey, have I screwed up that much that I'm not the rock anymore? Are you not going to build the church upon me?" Jesus is like, "No, I'm not telling you that. I just need you to listen, son." We get sometimes so caught up. We can be believers so long that we get focused on our agenda for Jesus and not Jesus' agenda for us. We get it upside down, we get it backwards. He calls us to follow Him, not us. Not what my plan is, His plan for my life. That is what we gotta do. He's telling us to be a good listener. He's telling you and I to be a good listener. Listen, I've got something to tell you. Sometimes we need to be still and know that I am God. Sometimes we need to sit up here, and I can't change the world, but I can point people of the world to who can change it. That is what He's called us to do as followers, to point them to Him, that's where change takes place. "Yes, Lord," Peter said, "You know that I love you." What's he telling Him, what's his action? "Then take care of my sheep," Jesus said, "then take care of my sheep. Not your passion, I want you to take care of my passion." Jesus' passion, not your mission, but the mission Jesus has commissioned you to. That's what I need you to do. Jesus is letting Peter know, "Hey, you've made some mistakes, but I'm not kicking you out. You're still a rock, you are, you're still Peter." But Peter is entrusted with the care of the church even with his imperfection. Jesus is still using him to make that impact and that difference. We go to verse 17, "A third time he is asked, 'Simon, son of John, do you love me?'" This time, if you notice, is a different word in Greek, He goes to that phileo, "Do you love me? Do you just love me as a great friend, as a deep, close friend?" And listen to Peter's reaction. "Peter was hurt that Jesus asked this question a third time. He said, 'Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you with this deep, brotherly love.'" Peter was hurt. When we sit there and look at obedience in our life, when we are revealing this truth sometimes in life, guys, it's gonna hurt, it's gonna hurt. Here Jesus, our Savior, when it comes to love, He's all love, that even in this moment it still hurt Peter, speaking the truth in love. It still hurts. We can do everything we can, we can give the most love we can, but at times when we speak the truth, it's gonna hurt. Here's the thing that we have to guard today as a church. As we move forward in today's culture, we are going to be accused of hurting those far from Christ when we sit there and follow Him in love and we follow Him in obedience at the same time. That is not our heart, our desire, that at times, even Jesus shows with Peter, sometimes that truth hurts from that. So as a church, what we do? We have to love the best that we can. We have to understand how much love He pours into us. And, boy, we better be sitting there pouring it out the best we can to others, pouring it on as heavy as we can. Love them, love them, love them, but do it in honesty and in truth. Be truthful. If someone is drowning, be truthful and help them. Don't allow them to sit there and drown in their life. Throw them a life preserver. Help them in that moment in life. Jesus gives another challenge, this plan of action. Jesus said, "Then feed my sheep, feed my sheep, tell them the truth, tell them the truth." This is the good news, Jesus knows how little our love is for Him, He already knows. Gosh, there's at times I journey, I struggle in my own life. I can't sit there and say I love Him unconditionally. I know as a pastor, you might go, "That's a shock!" If I did love Him unconditionally, I wouldn't have left the church for 15 years. I made those mistakes in my life. I'm learning, I'm listening, I'm growing, I'm moving toward Him, I'm trying to that. And just like Peter, Peter got to that point where he was a follower, he died a follower. I want to be on that journey in my life just as I want you to be on that journey in your life, to follow Him the best that we can. And He accepts that, He accepts our love where we're at, just as Peter, He accepts our love. If we were just to love Him with everything we could muster up right now in this moment, and He's okay with that. Man, love me with everything you've got. I can't make you give me something you don't have. But love me with everything that you got. That's the good news. Peter wasn't kicked to the curb because he didn't have unconditional love. He was actually commissioned to build the church. God used him to make change. You're not rejected because you don't have enough love for Jesus. You're acceptable to Him because of the love you do have for Him. That is what I want you to understand. If we go into the verse 19, toward the ends there, Jesus gives Peter this simple reminder that He gives every single one of us. "Then He said to him, 'Follow me. I want you to follow me.'" He's called us to walk with Him. And if we accept that call, not just talk about it, if we accept that call and say yes, I want to follow you for the rest of my life the best that I can, then by granny, do it. Follow Him, get up and have action in your life and follow Him, that's what He wants. Don't try to stand on the shifting sands of culture. Boy, it's gonna let you sink. It'll let you go all over the place. You stand on His truth, His grace, His love. That's what we stand on. That's what gives me my foundation. Don't try to change His truth to fit your life. Change your life to fit His truth. That is what He's called us to do. Change our life to fit Him. If you've failed like I have, then you understand you can be restored, Peter was restored. He developed this unconditional love. God used him in a mighty way just as He wants to use you. Today Jesus asks, if we love Him, then we give Him all the love we have available. That's all He asks, that we live in His truth, even when it hurts, even when we sit there and culture and society tells you it's wrong, even if it goes against your own desires, He asks you to live in His truth. That's what He wants, that's what He desires, to be honest with ourselves, to live in that truth. This is what you need to ask yourself. Do you love Jesus? As a believer, most of us can say yes. And if so, can you ask yourself honestly, are you following Him, are you truly following Him? Even when it hurts in our own lives? I want to give you three steps, action steps I want you to take home today with you to get you on that path and get you on that journey. First one is pray, talk to God. If you are not spending any time with Him just sharing with Him, telling Him about life, He already knows, He just wants you to say it out loud, so you sit there and you're telling yourself, you're acknowledging that, talk to Him. The second one is, read your Bible. Simple stuff, not rocket science, read your Bible. Why is it so important to read your Bible today? Because the sifting sands of culture, all the stuff that's out there is fake and unreal. It's just crazy. I sit there and I was looking at a thing about the Secret Service, which I thought was interesting. One of the things that they do, Secret Service, is they sit there and they protect the president, which everybody usually knows that they do that, but they also work with the Treasury. They work for the Treasury and everything else because they identify the counterfeit money out there and they stop these rings who are making all these U.S. notes counterfeit. And how they do it, this is the part that I think if we were ever gonna learn anything from government, this would be one thing that we could learn from the Secret Service. What they do is they get a real U.S. note and they study it, they study this U.S. note, and they'll sit there and they look at it, look every detail, and they study the front, they study they back, they try to note everything all about that so when someone tries to pass off a fake, they'll spot it in a heartbeat. They know because they've studied the truth. See, as a believer, when we study the truth, when we study the front of the page, the back of the page, when we meditate on it, when we digest it into our lives and when we grow into this, when someone tries to pass off that fake to you, you can spot it a mile away. When someone tries to pull out a couple verses of scripture to fit their agenda, guess what? You go, "That's not what this thing, in context, that's not what God's Word says." When I look at His whole Word, He paints a certain picture for my life. And when someone tries to pull scriptures out to fit their lifestyle, then I can call out a fake, and that's not real. I want you to understand He is a God of love and the same God of obedience. He wants the best for you. He wants you to live out His truth. That's what He desires from you. That's what He wants. The third one is I want you to take action. Just as He told Peter, "Go feed my sheep," I want you to live out this truth that He's called you to. I want you to have an action with your life. I want something moving and taking place in your life. Let God use you. Don't sit in the seats. Don't say, "I'm gonna get ready. I'm gonna wait two, three, four, 12 years," of your life. Do something with that. Pray, read His Word and make an impact at work. Make an impact in your community. Make an impact in your church. Something, move, let God move you and do those things in your life. This morning I want to close service in this way. I'm getting ready to pray with you. And I want you to close your eyes. I want you to close your eyes with me this morning because I'm getting ready to pray. And this morning as you sit there and close your eyes, you're sitting on the beach. Oh, it feels good, don't it? You're sitting on the beach. You're in this moment because Jesus is wanting to talk to you, you're in this moment right now, sitting on the beach with Jesus and His disciples. And you get to listen to all the conversations. They're cutting up, the fire's just so nice. You can feel the heat off it. It's a great moment. And as you're sitting there looking around, all of a sudden you catch the eye of Jesus. And when you catch the eyes of Jesus, you're looking at Him eye-to-eye right there in the moment. This is what I want you to ask. Jesus, what do you want from me? That's every question that all of us need to ask. You're eye-to-eye with your heavenly Father and you're saying Jesus, what do you want from me? Do you want me to sit there and forgive that person that's hurt me so bad? Do you want to sit there and allow me to forgive you, Father, because of the lost ones I've lost in my life? Do you want me to sit there and get past my anger of losing my job? Do you want me to sit there and be able to get this understanding of why I have cancer? Do you want to sit there and get to this point of why my marriage failed? What I need to do, Jesus? What do you want from me today? Heavenly Father, we just come to you with this in our hearts, what do you want from me? Give me the strength and the courage to be able to follow you through all of it, God. Let me be able to lead with love in my heart. And God, let me be able to live out your truth, even when it's uncomfortable, when it's not my desire, when it hurts, God, give me the strength to do it. Surround me with people around me that can help me on that journey, to help to have this understanding what I don't understand. God, be in those moments with me. Father, I need you, I need you there. I need you to challenge me, God, to follow you. Let me have that courage today to follow you, Father. And if I don't know you as Lord and Savior, if I don't know, if I've never looked at you in the eye and go what do you want from me, I'll tell you, He wants you. He wants your love and He wants you to follow Him. Just from day one when He asked Peter, "Come follow me," how do we do that? We sit there and acknowledge we made mistakes in our life and we're gonna make more, but we've made mistakes in our life, Jesus. He died on the cross so my sins can be forgiven, that I can have this peace in my life, that I can be forgiven and I can live a life trying to follow His truth in my life. Let me do that, Father, for the rest of my life. I accept that free gift of salvation. Be with me, allow your Holy Spirit to stir inside of me through my walk, through my journey as I take these actions in my life, Father. I thank you for that gift. I claim you as my Savior today, Lord. Be with all of us on our walk, Father. When it's hard, let your light be able to lead me, let your fire keep me going when it's so hard. We love you, we praise you and we ask all of this in your name, amen.