Dead Works and the Living God: Abiding in Grace Instead of Earning It

Good morning and thank you. Man, I was still I was still caught up in worship. I don't know about you guys. That was awesome. Pastor David, thank you for that that ending prayer and that reminder. I don't know where you went, but by faith you're hearing this. Uh such a great reminder that all of this that we do is about Jesus. All that we do is about Jesus. And so, uh I love that you are a church that recognizes that and who walks by faith like that. Um, my name is Rich and uh before I get too much more into introducing myself, I'll introduce myself and my family. My wife is here with me. But before I do that, I just want to say that I love your pastors. Your pastors are amazing. Pastor Keith and Kara, um, just amazing people. Yeah. Yes. [applause] My wife Hillary and I got the chance to

meet them a couple months ago at an event, an event where it was a gathering of pastors. And you know, a lot of times when a bunch of pastors get together, uh, unfortunately, the conversation can kind of break down to, well, how many people are in your church? And, you know, how many how many services are you doing? And do you own your building or are you renting it or whatever. Uh, but your pastors were just so full of compassion and humility and kindness and the joy of the Lord and all that was coming out of them is, man, God is so good. What he's doing in our church, he's so good. People are getting saved. People are getting baptized. We're so grateful for the hand of God on our church and it's just so clear how earnest they are for the the things of God. And so, one more time, can we just honor them? Pastor Keith, Pastor Kara, you guys are amazing. [applause] Amazing. Amazing.

I don't think you guys will be able to find better spiritual leaders than the ones that you guys have. So, uh you you're in good hands. This is actually my first time ever in Oregon. So, thank you all for being here for this momentum occas momentous occasion with me. Uh first time in Oregon. I live in a place called Vakavville, California. I believe you guys had Pastor Jude out here last weekend. Uh he's a good friend of mine. His youngest daughter and my youngest daughter are best friends, but um I think he he may have mentioned that we're from Vakavville, and the only claim to fame we really have is an outlet mall. Uh and it's not really even that good. So, [laughter] but I I took a walk this morning and I'm just admiring the majestic snowcapped mountain peaks. And as I'm doing so, no joke, guys, it was like I was in a

movie. I'm just admiring the mountains in the distance and a flock of geese in V formation flies over me about 30 feet above and I can hear their honking and their wings flapping. I just thought, "Wow, so this is Oregon. This is amazing. You guys live in a beautiful, beautiful place. God was good to you when he set you down here. Uh my wife Hillary is over here. Hillary, would you stand up just for a moment? She loves this. I know it. [laughter] We have been married for almost 12 years now. She is one of the strongest people I know. She is my best friend and uh I just love you very much. She is also an amazing amazing uh communicator, preacher, amazing student of the word of God. And so she's awesome. This is our family. We have a picture. Here we go.

Here we have three girls. Um, just so you know, I I cropped my own feet out of this picture. That was for you. Just no one needs to see that. Um, so this is this is our family. We have three girls. On the left, that is Millie. She's our youngest. She is spunky and feisty and very direct. She's our she's our truth teller. Whether you want her to tell the truth or not, she will tell you all about it. Uh, in the middle there is Haven. Haven is our [snorts] sweet, compassionate, thoughtful, sensitive, artistic child. She's an amazing, amazing girl. And on the right here is Jane. Jane is our oldest. She is also sweet and peaceful and amazing. Um, she has special needs and she's blind. And

we are going to talk more about her a little bit later in this sermon. But this is my family. I love them so much. And uh yeah, at at the father's house where we come from, um I am an associate worship pastor and my wife and I also lead our leadership college program which is a two semester disciplehip program for young adults. So that's what we do and I'm just very excited to be able to join you guys here today. Before we go in, oh, let me also greet anybody who's watching online or watching on TV. That's amazing that you guys broadcast to the city. That's incredible. So, welcome. Thanks for joining us. Uh, let's just take a moment and pray real quick. Lord, thank you for your presence that is here in this place. Thank you for the amazing honor and privilege that it is to be able to come to your house and to be where you are. God, it's it's

an amazing thing that you allow us as broken people to come into the presence and the house of a holy God and you welcome us with open arms. I pray that today you would help my mind to be clear, you'd help me to speak clearly and I pray that more than just sharing words, you would help us to uh get a fresh understanding of your heart for us through your word. Help us to get a fresh understanding of the heart of the father for his children today. We give you all the glory and all of the honor and praise in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Have any of you ever read through the book of Hebrews before? Okay. Yeah. Good. It's an interesting book. And if you've ever spent any time reading through the book of Hebrews, you'll see

pretty quickly that there is a theme that emerges and develops throughout the book. And I'm going to save you a whole Bible class right now and tell you what that theme is in three simple words. Okay? The theme of the book of Hebrews is this. Jesus is better. That's the theme of the book of Hebrews. Jesus is better. You go through the book of Hebrews and just categorically the writer says Jesus is better than the angels. Jesus is better than Moses. Jesus is better than the priests. Jesus is better than the tabernacle system. Jesus is better, better, better. And this is pretty easy for us to digest, I think, because we understand, okay, Jesus is God. So, it makes sense that he's better than all of these created things. But then you get to these couple of verses in Hebrews chapter 8, and if

you're reading through them slowly and you're really thinking through what you're reading, they can be a little alarming at first glance. Hebrews chapter 8:6 says this. But now Jesus, our high priest, has been given a ministry that is far superior to the old priesthood, for he is the one who mediates for us a far better covenant with God based on better promises. If the first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no need for a second covenant to replace it. Now, if I remember correctly, the first covenant that's being mentioned here was given to Moses and the Israelites at Mount Si in the book of Exodus. And that first covenant was created and given by God. So, God is perfect and flawless. No doubt about it. Okay? If he wasn't, he wouldn't be God. God is perfect and

flawless. But how is it that God being perfect and flawless was able to create a covenant that his own word says was flawed? Again, if there was if it wasn't flawed, we wouldn't need a second covenant. What What's the deal with all of this? The answer to this question lies in juxtaposing the old covenant and the new covenant. And so today, for the sake of context, I'm going to give you a brief breakdown of the old covenant and the new covenant. But for the sake of time, I'll just hit the highlights. I'll keep it brief. Okay. Any people who just like, man, I love studying the Bible. I love theology. I love getting into Okay. Well, the next couple minutes is going to get a bit dry. No, I'm just kidding. I I'll keep it brief, but I'm going to give you some theological stuff on the front end, and then I'm going to give you some practical stuff on the back end. Okay.

Um, starting with the old covenant, I actually have to start at the very beginning of time. I know I said it was going to be brief, but we're going to start at the beginning of human history. It's going to be okay. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve sinned. Most of us know this. This part is review. They sinned. And because of that sin, their sin nature spread to the rest of humanity. Psalm 51 says that we are born in sin and shaped in iniquity. That means every single person who is born has been born into sin. That means you. That means me. That means Mother Teresa. That means even as difficult as it is to believe, Pastor Keith, who is serving the saints in Uganda right now, sinful at birth. I know it's tough to believe. We were all born in sin. And the Bible says that there is a penalty for sin. In Romans 6:23, it says the wages of sin,

the price for sin is death. And so, in order for sin to be atoned, something has to die. And in the old covenant, if you didn't want that sin and death to come down on your own head, you would sacrifice a bull or a goat. So here's how it would go. You would commit a sin. Oops, I'm in trouble. You sacrifice a bull. The blood of that bull then atones for your sin. Bullet dodged. You're in the clear. You're good. Except that system didn't really solve anything. We we look at Hebrews chapter 10 verse 1 and it says the sacrifices under that system were repeated again and again again and again year after year but they were never able to provide perfect cleansing for those who came to worship.

If they could have provided perfect cleansing the sacrifices would have stopped for the worshippers would have been purified once for all time and their feelings of guilt would have disappeared. So this is telling us that these sacrifices that they used to make they brought some temporary relief but they weren't able to eliminate sin or its power in their hearts. Okay. So year after year the people of Israel they lived distant from God afraid of failure and carrying their guilt. Distant from God afraid of fa failure and carrying their guilt. I won't make you lift your hand, but has anyone in the room ever felt like [snorts] that represents your life? Distant from God, afraid of

failure, carrying your guilt. Maybe you you feel like I God is like a stranger to me and I'm just kind of waiting for the day where he eventually judges me. And I I I want to be able to please him. I want to be able to do well, but I don't really know how to do that. So, the best I know how to do is to try to do more good things in a day than bad things. and then hope that at the end of my life the good outweighs the bad and God takes notice. But I I don't really know. And and because of that, I'm afraid to mess up because I'm afraid that maybe maybe if I mess up one too many times, that'll be too much. Maybe that'll cross the line and I won't be able to achieve redemption if I if I mess up too many times. And so I'm I'm I'm scared to sin. I'm scared to get

things wrong. I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm just trying my best out here. Or maybe you're in you're in the room and you feel like, "No, I know exactly what I've done." And what I've done is I have done too many wrong things. I've said too many wrong things. I know that there's no redemption for me. So the best that I can do is try to bury the guilt that I carry because of it. And so maybe you turn to distractions like entertainment and hobbies and relationships or alcohol or substances. But have you ever noticed that no matter what you do on the outside, it doesn't ever fully feel like you're confidently clean and pure on the inside? God knows that God's original plan was the Garden of Eden. That was his original plan.

Perfect relationship with him. No separation, no sin, no shame, no guilt. just perfect relationship with God. We were the ones who messed that up. The old covenant was God's merciful way of taking our mistake of sin and doing his best to make the best out of it until he could find a more permanent solution. So the old covenant was actually never his plan. But that's why as it says in Galatians chapter 4, Paul says this, "In the fullness of time, at just the perfect point in history, God sent Jesus to do what the blood of bulls and goats could never do." It says this in Hebrews 10:5. That is why when Christ came into the world, he said to God, "You did not

want animal sacrifices or sin offerings, but you've given me a body to offer. You were not pleased with burnt offerings or other offerings for sin. with his own blood, not the blood of goats and calves, he entered the most holy place once for all time and secured our redemption forever. And since we have a great high priest who rules over God's house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts, fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ's blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water. So when Jesus went to the cross, he did away with the old covenant and he established the new covenant. Now, let me give you an even more brief breakdown of the new covenant. And we're going to get out of

all of the word nerd stuff here in just a moment and get into the practical stuff, but this is important for you to understand. The new covenant was inaugurated and is mediated by Jesus. And under the new covenant, guys, this is like the best news ever. We no longer have to make offerings to atone for sin. We no longer have to be separated from God. We can be forgiven of sin and free of its power in our lives. We can be transformed on the inside to know and love God and his word. We can be washed and purified free of guilt. It's all by grace through faith. You see, the flaw in the old covenant was never on God's end. It was always on our end. God will always be faithful to keep his end of a covenant, but sinful humanity never could.

[snorts] This is why the new covenant is infinitely better than the old covenant. We were removed from the equation entirely. Isn't that great? Jesus, God the Son, in the form of Jesus, a man, made a covenant with God the Father when he went to the cross. He was perfect priest and perfect sacrifice on our behalf. Jesus did all of the work and we get all of the benefits for it and all you have to do is believe and receive. Isn't that good news? This is the gospel. This is it's as simple as that. The whole Bible can be wrapped up in this. We couldn't do it on our own. So Jesus did it for us. So believe and receive and you are good with him. Isn't that great? That's great.

[applause] There you go. Let's go get breakfast. I'm just kidding. [snorts] Uh, so it's it's simple, but I have to ask the question, if it's that simple, why do we even have the book of Hebrews in the first place? See, because this letter, the book of Hebrews was originally a letter that was written to the the church and and this letter was written decades after Jesus had already died on the cross. So Jesus had died. He had made the new covenant official. He did away with the old covenant. And yet decades later, the writer of Hebrews is saying, "Hey guys, we don't need to sacrifice bulls and goats anymore. Why is this a problem?

Why? Like why are we still talking about this?" I'll tell you why. Grace is really easy to hear about. It's far less easy to receive and walk in. And maybe you've experienced this in your life. For these first century Christians that this letter was written to, even though the spotless lamb of God had already been slain for their sins, many of them continued to stay slaves to an antiquated system that God no longer even acknowledged. And whether it was out of this sense of, you know, a false sense of self-reliance or self-qualification, or maybe it was just because, hey, this is what we've always done for hundreds of years, and so we're just going to keep on doing it because this is what we do, so we're just going to keep doing it. It was kind of a traditional thing. I don't know what it was. But the point is they kept on making these sacrifices and and the

writer of Hebrews in in a moment, we're going to get to a verse where he refers to these misguided religious actions, these misguided and unnecessary sacrifices. He refers to them as dead works. And I want to just take a moment here and and define for you what dead works are. Dead works are religious nothingness. Dead works means going through the motions, religious motions, uh hoping that it achieves something, but really it just achieves no value, no life. Dead works is doing a bunch of stuff that God never asked us to do from a posture that kind of scorns humility and says, "No, I'm not going to accept the free gift of grace. Instead, I'm

going to pursue self-righteousness and self-qualification and self reliance, dead works. And the the truth is that this wasn't just a first century Christian problem. I don't know about you, I've experienced this myself. Many of us modern-day believers can have a habit of finding bulls to sacrifice metaphorically to try to work our way into God's favor and good graces. And so over time, we've we've learned to sacrifice the bulls of good deeds and sacrifice the bulls of church attendance and sacrifice the bulls of reading our Bible enough and praying hard enough and sacrifice the bulls of volunteering and serving and sacrifice the bulls of, you know,

tithing and giving enough money and and listen, none of these things are bad things when done from a place of faith and obedience to the Holy Spirit. These are wonderful things to do. You should read your Bible. You should come to church. You should tithe. should do all of those things, but none of those things is going to earn you favor or right standing with God. And if we continue to go through these religious motions thinking that we're helping God or impressing him or earning points on some kind of heavenly scorecard, that's deception. The book of Isaiah tells us that our righteous deeds are like filthy rags before a holy God. And so the noblest, kindest, most generous thing that you could ever do is still filthy and useless. Apart from the grace of

God, you can't lift your hands high enough. You can't sing loud enough. You can't read your Bible enough or pray enough or give enough money to earn God's favor. There is only one sacrifice that the father delights in. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the only way to God. He is the narrow road. He is the spotless lamb of God. His name is Jesus Christ. and he came and he died on a cross and he shed his blood for you to save you from your sin when you couldn't save yourself and it's not because you impressed him and it's not because of anything that you did. It's simply because he chose you to be a recipient of his grace. It's all by his grace and only by his grace. And if anybody tells you it's anything else, it's all just bull. That's my one clever joke uh of the morning. So if you didn't think it was funny, I'm sorry. That's as good as it gets.

double meaning. [snorts] So, okay, I get it. God doesn't need my help. Got it loud and clear. But if you're like me, I like to think these lines of think these lines of thought all the way through. And I start thinking, okay, if God doesn't need my help and if my actions don't produce anything, then what's the point of the rest of my life after I get saved? Why am Why am I here? Have you ever wondered that? Like, why doesn't God just beam us up to heaven after we pray the sinner's prayer? I'll tell you why. Because Jesus didn't just save us for the sake of escaping hell.

Jesus closed the relational gap between you and God for more than just salvation. Heaven is not just about escaping the fires of hell. Heaven is about spending eternity with our friend and father and the one that we love and the one who we feel overjoyed to serve and to worship. God is inviting us now into a new way of serving him. Hebrews 9:13 says, 'For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a hepher sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Then Jesus said this in John 15. He said, "I am the

vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing. There you go. You've got it again right there. Jesus said it. Hey, apart from me, you're not going to accomplish anything of value. By this my father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. So here's how it goes. We turn from dead works to serve the living God. We serve the living God by bearing fruit. We bear fruit by abiding in Jesus. Now, what is this this fruit that we're talking about? The Apostle Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament in Galatians chapter 5, he uses very similar language when he lists what he calls the fruit of the spirit. Let me just see does anybody

can anybody list by memory the fruit of the spirit on the spot? Sir, you got this. Ready for in front of God and everyone? Yeah. Right now. joyace. He got it. Hey, that was awesome. Hey, you win a prize. You get VIP parking next Sunday. I can make all the promises I want. I'm not going to be here for you guys to get mad at me next week. No, that was awesome. Yeah, he got he got all of them. So, so fruit is the display of the power and the grace of the living God in our lives. Fruit is the evidence of your dynamic personal relationship with God.

So, good fruit here's let me let me just address what I said earlier about like so the rest of my life does do I just like do nothing and that's totally fine. This is where we tie it all together. Good fruit can and should result in good deeds. But those deeds will only be fruitful to glorify God if they come from a place of true relationship with him. And that means abiding in Jesus and allowing his spirit to renew and to transform you and make your life fruitful. So that what is growing in you is evidenced to the people around you and they see that and they recognize there's something different about you. There's something appealing about the way that you live your life. What is that thing? And then that opens up a door for God to be glorified through your life. So this in

case you've ever wondered, has anyone ever wondered like how do I know that I'm living in the will of God for my life? I used to wonder that like every other day until I came upon this revelation. Here's how you measure if you are living in the center of the will of God for your life. Is your life bearing fruit? [clears throat] Is your life bearing fruit? Do you love people a little bit more today than you did a year ago? Are you a little more patient with your co-workers today than you used to be maybe a couple months ago? Are you more gentle in how you deal with your family and your friends than you used to be? If so, guess what? You're bearing fruit. You are glorifying God. You are in the center of God's will for your life.

Jesus said, "This is how my father is glorified, that you bear fruit." So, when you're bearing fruit, you're doing the will of God. But if you do that internal inventory and you realize, uh, there's not as much growth there as as I would have hoped, that's okay. But it just means that you may need to check your connection to the source. You may need to check and see how well you are abiding. And so for our last couple of minutes here today, we're going to go over quickly three ways that we abide in him. Okay? Three ways to abide. The first way is this. Abide in his word. abide in his word. Psalm chapter 1:es 2 and 3 says, "They," meaning the righteous, "they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and

night. They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither and they prosper in all that they do." The Gospel of John tells us that Jesus is the living word of God. So when you abide in the word, you are abiding in Jesus. You are yielding your mind and your spirit to him to be transformed and renewed and be turned into good soil to produce fruit. So what does this mean? This means prioritize the Bible in your life. Prioritize the Bible. It's more than just an ancient book. It is the very living and active word of God. And so get the app, get a paper Bible, get on a read plan, read it, but don't just read through it. Let it read you. Let it reveal the heart of God for you.

Meditate on it. memorize it. And as you do that, God's promise to you is that you will be fruitful in every season of your life. That sounds like a pretty good life to me. Being fruitful in every single season. Next point is this. Abide in his house. Psalm 92 says, "The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord. They flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age." I'm going to keep this one brief. Prioritize being in the house of God. Prioritize. And guys, look, you're here. Okay, I get that. You made it today. Good job. You're already doing this. So, keep coming back. Come back to pursuit tonight. Get in the house as often as

you can. Be in the presence of God. Be around the people of God. There's something that happens when the body of Christ comes together to build each other up and each part is nourished by the head that is Christ Jesus. until we grow into the fullness of love and maturity in him. So, it's important that we prioritize the house of God. And listen, when you make his house a priority, he will make your house a priority. You will see that not only you, but your family begins to flourish and grow as you prioritize the house of God. So, let's prioritize his house. Amen. Awesome. Point three is this, and I'll have the band join me on stage. Abide in the power of his grace. Philippians 1:6 says, "And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the

day of Jesus Christ." This is to say, don't forget how the new covenant started. We don't work to earn salvation. It was a gift of his grace. And in the same way, we don't work to earn fruit. fruit comes by his grace. So here's what that means. The pressure is off of you to make that happen. The pressure is off of you to produce fruit in your life. The when and the where and the how of the fruit being produced, it's not up to you. It's up to God. Here is your one job. Your one job is to come to him with a soft heart of soft soil over and over

again and you say, "Lord Jesus, have your way in my life." And then the rest is up to him. You just be obedient and you walk in faith from that point on. I'm going to get a little personal, which means that I need to sit down. So, I'm going to bring this chair over. Wasn't that a smooth transition? You guys like that? Oh, I guess sorry. I don't mean to get right in your business, sir. Just want to make sure everybody can see me and hopefully I don't fall off. Okay. I mentioned earlier that my wife and I have three girls and our oldest daughter's name name is Jane. Jane is almost 10 now [music] and when she was first born, she was born totally healthy. We had no reason

to think that anything was wrong with her. And then at 3 days old, she had two grandma seizures that just ravaged her brain and left [music] lasting damage. The first month of her life, we lived in the hospital with her. And we have a couple of pictures [music] that'll come up on the screen and you can see a little bit of what our life looked like at that [music] time. And from that point on, it was blood draws and medical tests and MRIs [music] and specialist visits and ultimately bad report after bad report after bad report. They told us she's going to have seizures for the rest of her life. The seizures have caused brain damage, which she will have for the rest of her life. She's going to need special education. you're going to need to take

care of her the rest of her life. She'll need a wheelchair. She'll need a feeding tube because she won't be able to feed herself. And the the seizures and brain damage have caused her to also go blind. We were completely ambushed by this. No reason to expect that any of this would happen. And so I I'm kind of an all or nothing person. And when I realized that we were getting thrown without warning into a battle that was going to tax [music] us mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually every single day with no [music] end in sight, I knew I had two different options I could choose from. First, I could succumb to the despair.

or secondly, I could dig my heels in and do my absolute best to muster up as much of a faith response as possible. So, I chose [music] faith. I grew up in church. I know how this stuff goes. I know that sometimes you hit valleys and then God is the God of the valley and the mountaintop. I believe in healing. [music] We have a pastor at our church who had a heart attack in our pursuit meeting. you should still come to yours. [music] But in our pursuit meeting, she had a heart attack and she was clinically dead [music] for 28 minutes and then came back to life. No damage to her heart or her lungs or her brain. That is a miracle. God still heals. So I believe in healing and I knew, okay, I'm the priest of my home. I set the tone of the atmosphere

of my house and the atmosphere is going to be an atmosphere of faith. And so I'm going to dig in and I'm going to pray and I'm going to fast and I'm going to worship and I'm going to rebuke the powers of darkness and I'm going to declare scripture and I'm going to just show God I'm going to show God that [music] I'm going to be faithful with the things that you've given me. I'm I'm going to be faithful and and you're going to see that I'm going to work hard and I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to have enough faith. I'm going to have enough passion. And I was praying and worshiping and fasting [music] and and and then nine more years of that passed. And I continued to pray and fast and worship and try [music] to push down the disappointment and the disillusionment of not seeing her healing over and over and over and over again. And then this year, I went on an

extended fast, the longest one I've ever been on personally. And when I at the end of that fast [music] didn't see what I was hoping for. I hit a wall. I felt completely drained, completely exhausted of all vision and passion. I just thought, "God, she's almost 10. I've been running at this pace for nearly 10 years now. She's [music] going to be a teenager soon. I don't know if I have another 10 years of this in me. God, I don't know what I'm going to do. And in that low, broken moment, God [music] was there. And he he gently clarified something for me that many of my intense faith

responses were really bulls that I was sacrificing, trying to earn [music] a favorable response from him. And when I realized that after that point, every time I tried to muster up enough faith or muster up enough passion, I'm going to do this, I could almost feel the Holy Spirit himself just gently resisting me and keeping me in a place of rest and trust and surrender [music] to him. And so I still believe in healing. I still believe I'm going to see my daughter healed. I still pray for her every day. And there will still be times for me to dig in and to get loud and get passionate when I'm praying for her, [music] but never if I'm if I'm trying to work something up in my own strength.

It has to be as the Holy Spirit leads. Paul says in Galatians 5, if we seek to follow the spirit, we need to walk in step with [music] the spirit. Stay in step with him as he leads and as he guides. What I'm saying is if you've got something that seems impossible in front of you, don't put all the pressure on yourself to try to manifest the miracle [music] or win the battle because you could muster up enough faith. Don't carry something that God never intended for you to carry on your own. Allow him to take [music] that thing. And yes, there will be times to get passionate and to get loud and to get intense and to worship hard and to pray hard. But we have to remember.

[music] It's not in our own strength. It's all by his grace started this. His grace is going to sustain this. Let's not forget [music] the God that we serve. He is the God of grace. He's the God who saw the tears of Abraham and Sarah when they couldn't get pregnant on their own. And by his grace, he brought forth the miracle child, the promised child, Isaac. He's the God who heard the cries [music] of his people in Egypt when they couldn't break free of slavery on their own. And by his grace, he opened the Red Sea and he escorted them to freedom and drowned their enemies behind them. He's the God [music] who saw us in our darkness, in our sin, our brokenness, in our bondage. And when we couldn't save ourselves, he [music] came and he died on a cross to defeat our sin. And then he rose from the grave to defeat death itself by his grace.

Isn't his grace amazing? [music] Isn't his grace beautiful? And it's for you today. So if you're in here and you feel like you've been taking it all on your own shoulders or maybe you feel like, man, I have been. I've been distant from God. I feel like I'm distant from him. I feel like I'm afraid of failure. I feel like I'm going to mess up too much. I feel like I'm carrying my guilt and my shame. He comes to you today to tell you, "Let those things drop off of your shoulders. I have already paid the price for you to walk in freedom and to walk in victory without guilt, without shame, no longer bound by your sin or [music] the damage that it wants to wreak in your life." Would you guys pray with me today? Lord Jesus, we thank you so much for your grace. I thank you for every wonderful person that's here in this room. I thank you that your heart is for them.

Right now, [music] I I I want to extend an opportunity some to some people in the room. If you're here and you do feel like you're distant from God, you feel like you want to start a new beginning today and say, "I want to give my life to Jesus. I want to experience this grace that you've been talking about, experience this forgiveness that was purchased by Jesus dying on the cross for me. I just simply want to [music] agree with you as you make that decision." And so just very simply with no one else looking around, if you want to make this decision and say, "Today, I want to give my life to Jesus and experience his grace." Would you just lift your hand so I can agree with you, his grace is for you. Thank you. God loves you so much. He loves you. He loves you. He smiles over you today. [music] His heart has been broken, that you have been distant from him, and he is running to you now. The

arms of the father are open to you. His love and [music] his grace, his compassion and kindness are for you today. Anybody responding online or over the television program, [music] God is for you. He sees you. I may not see your hand, but God sees you. [music] Today, just a as a as a unified response, if you guys are comfortable, I want to lead you in a prayer. And if you [music] would just repeat these parts after me, uh, if you're making this decision, and if you're not making this decision, let's pray this [music] prayer with them. Say, "Dear Jesus, thank you for your grace. Today, [music] I choose to repent and walk away from my old ways. And by your grace, I will follow you. Come and be the Lord of my life

from this day until I see you face to [music] face in Jesus mighty name." Amen. Amen. Come on. Would [music] you stand to your feet and give God some praise today? We're going to go into one last song of worship. Come on. [music]