What Happens When I Die? | Come Alive

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Good morning, everybody. It's really great to see you. I hope you're doing well. And I have a question for you as we get started on part three of our Come Alive series. Question is what's your favorite place you've ever been? And as we get started, I'm going to give you a chance to tell your neighbor. What's the favorite place you've ever been? Tell your neighbor, I want to hear some some some talking. Share what's the favorite place you've ever been before that you uh would want to go back to. Some place you'd want to go back to. Shout it out so I can hear. Who's got one? Jamaica. We heard Jamaica there, Italy, Fiji, Antarctica. Alright. Alright. Alright. Greece. We got a Starbucks over there, Pastor Ken said. Okay. Yeah. Hey, um, I think it's really important as we focus in on today's topic to think about where we're going. And we've we sang about it at the beginning of our service. We sang about we're made for heaven. And you know something? Um, I actually have a brochure for Disneyland in my Bible because I was thinking about places that we want to go, right? And I remember the first time we took our kids to Disneyland, it was crazy town, right? I mean, you we had to mortgage our house, and we went to, you know, for one day at Disneyland, we got a second mortgage on our house. But we went there, the kids loved it. It was so much fun. And this brochure, it does a really good job of showcasing that. This is actually called a guide map, is what it is. And it tells you what the rides are and it explains how things work. And you know, now you see the lay of the land, and it's it's done in a way that you're like, oh, I really want to go on Pirates of the Caribbean, and you get all these things, and even the front, Donald Duck. I mean, how could you beat it, right? Because it's very descriptive. And it's so descriptive that people will pay ungodly amounts of money to go to Disney. It's like every time they raise the prices, they just have more people go. Isn't that weird? It is literally, I guess, the happiest place on earth. And uh, but I want you to know that sometimes we don't have that sort of vivid image of where we're going. If you're a follower of Jesus, Jesus has promised us eternal life. And we don't always have, we're not always sure what that looks like. And it's honestly not all our fault. I'll be I'll be quite honest about that. I think our culture, even Christianity, has painted a picture, I think that doesn't do it justice. And we've got to figure out how do we have an accurate view of our long-term future. Because if you've ever been in a situation where you had a vacation planned, in fact, there was a Disneyland commercial on TV a long time ago, and the and the commercial showed a kid who couldn't sleep. And the parents were like, you know, it's gotta go to sleep. And the kid said this phrase that got repeated around the world, and it was, I'm too excited to sleep, right? And that's like when you have something coming, it changes. Did you know your future reality of heaven should be the number one thing that changes your now, your present. It can be. Because if you if you knew how good it was gonna be, if you knew that it actually has that God has already set it in motion, um, if you knew what God had planned for you, you'd be like, I'm too excited to sleep. You know, you'd be like, nothing's gonna discourage me. There's no circumstance in my life that's gonna discourage me. Look what my future is. How could I be discouraged if I know what's coming for me and even what's actually started for me? I'm a little bit of a future thinker, just by nature. I like to think about the future. I'm not real great always. I'm not real great at staying like in the present moment. And uh that's a weakness that I have to fight, you know? And I've got some people around me that can kind of help me to stay tethered a little more and not to not to always be only thinking about the future. But when I think about heaven, I think about my eternity with Jesus, there's been in my life some gaps that kind of came from what I think was maybe popular teaching about heaven that was not not totally inadequate, but missing the emphasis, which we're gonna point out today as we look at the question, what happens when I die? It's a question that all of us are asking, and we can avoid it if we think that we're not sure what it is, because you know what it is. Like, if I if I if some of you might have said, you know, what's heaven gonna be like? And you might have made a joke, or you know, you might have said something that you've heard, or you might have said something you know the Bible says, but most of us have had this image planted in our head of heaven is when you get taken away from earth and you get placed on a cloud and given a harp and you float forever. And all of us are like, please no, that doesn't sound, I don't want to do that, you know. That is not what the Bible teaches. What does the Bible teach? What happens after I die? How good is it? I'm telling you, it is so good. It is irresistible. And I wanna I want to press into you that this is what God has for us. We started this series on Easter, and it was it was super fun. And in fact, this has been a really great season. God's been doing some great things, church is growing, it's really fun. Easter, we talked about the resurrection of Jesus, obviously. The week after Easter was last week, we talked about how he's made us alive for the first time. When we believe he's like, I've I've raised you up too internally, like I've given you new life. Today we're gonna talk about what happens to us after we die, and next week we're gonna talk about what is our now supposed to look like when Jesus said, May your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, what's that supposed to look like? But I want to press into the question, what happens when I die? And I want to remind you that Jesus himself said, at the tomb of Lazarus, he said, I am the resurrection and the life. He said, I promise you I'm able to give you eternal life. And lest you think that that means you get dragged off to some ethereal place you can't describe to do something you wouldn't want to do, anyways. Um, let's get into the to the nuts and bolts of it today. So I want you to know your hope starts now. There are four realities of what's gonna happen. If you've been saved by Jesus, if you have believed in Christ, if you have accepted his grace, if you've said yes to his leadership in your life, you've invited him to be your savior, then you've been given eternal life. Jesus paid for it. It's a gift, it's a free gift that he gives. And I want you to be infatuated with it. I want you to be obsessed with it. I want you to carry the brochure around and you know be like, this is what's happened. This is my future. And I think if we will do that, it's gonna change how we live every single day. So here's four realities. The first one is resurrection. Write that down in your notes if you would. If you didn't already pull your notes out, do that. But write that down in your notes. Resurrection. He's gonna raise you up from the dead if you're a follower of Jesus. He said he was gonna do that. He was raised from the dead, and just like then he went to the tomb of Lazarus and he raised Lazarus from the dead, he said, I'm gonna do this for you too. That's the hope. Somehow, don't forget, it's not just about your soul being separated from your body when you die, it's about Jesus ultimately raising you back up to life like he did Lazarus. Now, I know that's a weird thing to think about. It's hard to even imagine. Almost feels a little creepy, really. But when Jesus was in the Gospels of John, when he was talking to his disciples, they were in the upper room. He was trying to tell them, hey, I'm about to go and give my life for you, and I'm gonna be buried. And he even said, and I'm gonna be buried, and I'm gonna raise again on the third day. I mean, he said all this, and they were troubled. And he said, I want you to not let your hearts be troubled. He he said these words. He said, Trust me. He said, Trust in me. And he and then he said three phrases that I'm just gonna tell you, they're not in your notes, but he said, I'm going. He said, I'm gonna go. And sometimes we put a period there, like Jesus, he's going. And he said, I'm gonna go, and I'm gonna prepare a place for you. And sometimes we put a period there that the place he's preparing for me is somewhere else. But then he says, and then I'm gonna come back here and you're gonna be with me forever. That's what he said in in John chapter 14. He's talking about what's to come after what's next. And I'll get into all that because I feel like if we could have an accurate view of this, you guys, it's gonna change everything. The next time you get bad news, it's you're gonna you're gonna compare it to eternity. Imagine that. Imagine you get the worst news in the world. It's not going to even come close to the best news in the world, which is that God's gonna raise you back up, that you get eternal life with God. I think the way that we see our eternity totally changes our present. I want to show you in 1 Corinthians 15, there's a passage of scripture that I think we should look at because Paul the Apostle, this is really called the resurrection chapter of the Bible, okay? 1 Corinthians 15. It's in your notes. And it's and Paul's talking, he says, Christ has been raised from the dead. Everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life. All who belong to Christ will be raised when he comes back. I mean, Paul's like, get this in your head. You're gonna come back to life physically because you believe in Jesus. I don't know if there's anybody in here, and please don't tell us if it's you. But that would be like, no, I don't want that to happen. That's that's that creeps me out. Like, what how does that work? You know, you look at the the ground and you think of somebody coming back to life. What's that gonna be like? I don't know. I know it might be a little bit alarming, but can you imagine the fact that Jesus tells you death is a doorway, death is a doorway. It it is it is then new life comes. Death is a doorway to new life. And one of the things that I think that we can see here is that his resurrection is really a preview of yours. He rose from the dead, and the Bible says, as the firstborn among many brothers and sisters, so that he would then raise us up to new life, and then we'd be with him forever. And when you read in John chapter 14, he said, and then you'll be with me forever, he's talking about here. So I want to explain this a little bit more, but I want you to get out of your mind that image of the cloud and the harp. That is not from the Bible. That is that is not our future. Uh we we we do get to, there, there are clouds, there are clouds talked about. It's not the full picture, and and so let's talk about that a little bit more. Um, one of the things that I love about the early church, so the early the first believers in Jesus, um, they they talked about sleep. So they referenced physical death in terms of sleep because it was temporary, and they knew that the person that they were missing now was gonna wake back up. Uh, in fact, if you think about favorite places you've been, I'll say one of mine. Mone of mine absolutely is the city of Rome. I love the city of Rome. Try to, I want to go there as many times as possible. My son lives there. Um, and one thing that I like about Rome is all the history, you know. If you've ever gone to a place in, you know, whether it's in America or whether it's across the sea, and there's history, it's so fascinating. Well, Rome, you know, you turn around every corner, you're like, wow, that's 2,000 years old, that's 3,000 years old. And you get to go into this place called the catacombs. The catacombs were a burial ground where uh people would just have cemeteries. So you go, it's kind of like anybody been to the Oregon Caves before. You like you go down, it gets cold, it's a little bit dark, gets kind of narrow. That's what it's like in the catacombs. You're going down these flights of stairs, like three levels down, and they have all these graves. And they were like tombs that were inside of room, inside of rooms. But that was a powerful sneeze over there, I'll say. I want to sneeze like that. Okay. You're underground in these tombs. And and and so the their their rooms. Well, you know that the early church couldn't worship in public because they were persecuted. They had to go underground. They went to the tombs to worship. They made them into chapels. Did you know this? And if you go look at the catacombs, they've painted the gospel on the top of the rooms because not everybody could read. And so they wanted to have everybody to know what the story of the gospel was. So you could look up at the top of a room and you could see the whole story of the gospel that somebody had painted. It's beautiful. And then there's the tomb, like a cutout in the wall. And they would have like an image, they would have the whole picture of like Lazarus being raised from the dead. Because they weren't under the illusion that that person was actually gone forever. They knew something. They knew that Jesus said, I'm gonna bring you back. And so they would not refer to them as it wouldn't say goodbye. They'd say, basically, we'll see you when God wakes you up. We'll see you when God wakes you up. That's the reality. When Jesus says, I'm gonna raise you from the dead, that's what he's talking about. And so when we sing a song like we were made for heaven, we're saying we're gonna trade this world for a better place. Yes, we are, because we're gonna be raised back to life. He's gonna come and he's gonna make it all new. And that's listen, I mean, you might be like, dude, I stepped into the weirdest place on Sunday and I was listening to this guy talk about the weirdest stuff, and you know, yeah, it's weird, but it's true. And Jesus proved it by raising his body from the dead and then offering us new life. Number two in your notes, check this out restoration. Restoration. So resurrection is something that's part of your future if you're a follower of Jesus. Secondly, is restoration. Um, we live in a broken world, yes or no. Yeah, we see it everywhere. It's everywhere. It's it's it's around us. Unfortunately, it's inside of us. We all experience it, you know? Sometimes you're dealing with a mental health struggle. Sometimes you're just angry. Sometimes you're literally physically broken. And we experience it because we live in a broken world. But he said he's gonna come and he's gonna renew it. Look what it says in Revelation chapter 21. If you want to go all the way to the end of the Bible, here it is. It says, Then John the Apostle is seeing this vision. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. Look, God's home is now among his people, he will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them, he will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things, he says, are gone forever. And I love this phrase from Jesus. Look, I'm making everything new. Wow. He said he's gonna make a new heaven and a new earth. And if you have ever been a part of a natural disaster, I just talked to somebody who said their house caught on fire and they've and you know now they finally get to move back in their house. I mean, these things happen, right? Imagine all of that never happening again. Imagine there's never gonna be another earthquake, never another tornado if you've ever lived through one of those, right? Never another flood or fire that destroys things. Ever. New heavens, new earth. And here's what I want you to know. What does the Bible say happens when we die? It says to be absent from the body is to be present from the Lord in 2 Corinthians chapter 5. That's the Apostle Paul. We know for a fact that if somebody is a follower of Jesus, they've been brought into God's family and He's promised them eternal life, which means when you die here and now, your body goes into the grave. But your spirit is instantly in communion with Jesus. We know that. That's what Scripture says. However, that is not the final place. That's temporary. That's like the waiting room. Is it gonna be perfect? Yes. Is it gonna be awesome to be in Jesus' presence? Yes. Is it the final state? No. It is the final state. New heavens, new earth. He comes back here to set up his kingdom. And he's with us. And we're new. And this is this is so absolutely amazing. God at home with his people. He's not distant, he's near. He wipes away every single tear. So every pain, every sorrow, every regret, every bad memory. You are restored and you are made new. And this is such a beautiful picture of our future. And what we know is that those who believe in Jesus, he says he's gonna give us his spirit. So if you're here and you've trusted Christ as your Savior, whether you know it or not, you have God's spirit living inside you. Now, many of you, you're like, yeah, I know, because that's what gets me up in the morning, that's what encourages me during the day. That's that's how I know what's way to go sometimes in a decision. That's how I, you know, I feel that presence when I'm under pressure or when I feel alone and I and he just comes beside me, and I'm like, oh, thank God for his spirit. He says he's the comforter. That's what Jesus called him, the comforter. But did you know he's also in you as the Bible says, you are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world. So he wants to begin this restoration. He already started it when he poured out his spirit into your life. And uh and so there's a way that he's restoring around us, but he's also restoring in us and then through us. So something about this is to go, well, if my destiny is eternity with Jesus and He's with me now, and He's planning to come back here, then I can start now participating in the restoration he wants to do here. The absolutely fantastic invitation that God gives us to partner with him in restoring the things around us. I don't think he wants to wait until the end of the world to start. We uh Melissa and I got a chance to go last month to uh El Salvador. I keep saying Ecuador is El Salvador, and that's why I'm wearing their uh football jersey. I said I would represent their football team. But we got to go and be a part of a Compassion International mission trip where we got to go see two uh different programs in different centers where kids get sponsored. And um, what this is is like child sponsorship that makes uh such a difference in these kids' lives. It provides food and it provides clothing and it provides education and it provides community and resources that really, really make a huge difference for these kids. They can start when they're six years old and they can go all the way through 22 years old. So we were there and we got to meet some children that didn't have a sponsor. This is one of them with Melissa right here. That's my wife, and then she's just hugging this little girl who doesn't yet have a sponsor, which means that she she really has some needs in her life. In fact, we're gonna be bringing next weekend uh a bunch of packets here, and compassion is gonna come here. I'll talk more about that in a little bit, but you could actually get involved in this next weekend if you want to. We've been sponsoring kids for years because we know it makes such a difference, and um, and and and what I want to tell you though is if you this girl is we're gonna have one of the packets is gonna be hers, and some other kids that we got to meet, and then like 150 packets. But one of the people in the world that went through this program, I want to introduce you to his name is Jose Piña. Jose is uh a doctor now. He was born in the Dominican Republic, and he was in a in a really tough situation, violent, um, happened to live in like a floodplain, so a lot of instability in his home, and needed some education, needed some support, compassion came along, he got sponsored, went through the program, and was so encouraged that he decided to pursue his dream of being a doctor. And he did so well in school that he got a full ride scholarship and he got and he went through, and now he is he is not only uh serving as the city counselor of Santo Domingo, but he also manages a hospital emergency room. And he's gonna be here next weekend in all four of our services to share his story, and then he's gonna do a QA lunch after our last service. I want you to know God is restoring now in real ways. And when he puts his spirit inside of you and he reminds you that you have a future forever for him, it wakes you up in a way that makes you want to participate with him. And so I want to invite you to be a person who's on mission in restoration right now. The third thing in your notes I want you to write down is part of your future. If you're a follower of Jesus, embrace it. This is part of your future. It's renewal, renewal. He is going to renew, he's transforming us both now and in the future. And it says in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17, it says, This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone. A new life has begun. I mean, when you believe in Christ, I know sometimes you don't see the flashes of light. You don't always, you know, the ground doesn't necessarily always shake. In a few minutes, I'm gonna give an opportunity for anyone who wants to become a believer in Jesus today. We may or may not see the angels, you know, descend from heaven and the light shine around. No, I'm just kidding. It's a quiet moment sometimes. But inside your soul, God's going, I just made you new. And if you talk to anyone in here who's experienced radical transformation in their life, they're gonna tell you, it's real. It's real. I mean, because we would look at this and go, you know, uh, five years ago me would have done this. Well, five years ago, me would have said this. Five years ago, me would have made a different gesture on the freeway, right? You know, when somebody cut me off. And there's something in me that's like he's trans, he's changing me, you know, he's making me brand new, he's giving me. The power and the desire to do what pleases him. That's what the Bible says. So he changes us. The old life is gone, it says in 2 Corinthians 5.17. A new life has begun. And your future is so securely written. It's so securely written that he starts now on it. So he's working on you now. I mean, it makes you fight sin differently, it makes you approach problems differently. You're new on the inside. And we see it, and other people around you are seeing it, and it's making a difference. And many of you, you're the reason why God is working so actively in this community and around our city, is because you're allowing that to happen. It's beautiful. But it's not just for now, it's also for what he wants to do later. There was a guy named John Newton. He was a slave ship captain from England. And I can't even imagine when he received Christ, I can't even imagine the regret and the shame he felt for the way that he lived his life and what he allowed himself to be involved in. He did thankfully repent of that. And what he said was, I'm not what I ought to be. I'm not what I wish to be. I'm not what I hope to be, but I can truly say I'm not what I once was. And by the grace of God, I am what I am. Yeah. By the grace of God, I'm not what I used to be. I know I got a little work to do. You know, God's got work to do on me. He's not done, but he is renewing me day by day. And there will be a day when I see Jesus and I'm like him in character. I can't wait for that day. When the temptation comes, sometimes we're pulled away. There will be a day or there will be no draw away from Jesus as the center of your universe. There will be no pull away from Jesus. Isn't that going to be an amazing thing? Yeah. But it's also for the future. Check it out. Philippians chapter 3, verse 20 and 21. It says, but we are citizens of heaven. It says, we are currently citizens of heaven. It says, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives, and we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. Let me remind you what it says. It says, Jesus went away, right? He's in a place called heaven. But he's not staying there. He's coming back here. It says we're waiting eagerly for him to return as our Savior. He will take, look at this, our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control. Friends, you get an upgrade. Does anybody else have quirks in their body? Like, I think about cars this way. Like, you know, somebody, like if you ever buy a used car, they'd be like, well, the door kind of squeaks when you open it. And you know, when it starts, you gotta let it it takes a little while to actually get like, you know, so and you know, you gotta like in the one of the tires gets low pretty often, and you gotta refill it, you know. This is like the way we describe our bodies after a while, you know, like, well, you know, there's a little creek over here, and then kind of I get a little flat tire over here sometimes, and um, there's coming a day that's gonna be done, you guys. He's going, no, I'm gonna give you a new body, brand new. He said, our weak and mortal bodies are gonna be changed into glorious bodies. Wow. Did you know that we are currently in a rehearsal? This whole thing is a rehearsal. Did you know that? This is the warm-up act. We're just getting ready. We're rehearsing for eternity. And he says, Oh, there's coming a day where you're gonna be made new. And every every act of obedience is preparation for eternity. Every act of obedience is preparation for eternity. I'm so glad that he allows us to touch eternity now. What does Jesus say in Matthew chapter 6? He says, I want you to lay up the treasure in heaven. As though somehow you can right now impact then. He's like, push it forward. Think about something more important than you know some of the minute decisions that we make now. I'm not saying that we should be careless now, but he's going, but I want your focus on eternity. I want your perspective on eternity. When you make decisions, don't have that hedonistic viewpoint that says, eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. The Bible would say that's for non-believers to talk like that. If you say you believe in Jesus, he said you're having an eternity that's going to be absolutely amazing. And don't act like it's not true. Don't act like the most important thing is here and now, because it is not. This is the warm-up, this is rehearsal, right? And he's going, so have that eternal perspective and and store up treasures in heaven and make decisions now that you're not going to regret later. And he's like, That that is what's coming. Yeah. The last one here is reunion. Reunion. I love it. Reunion. I don't have to ask for hands on this one. I know everybody in here has lost somebody. And it hurts. It hurts because you miss them. Some of those events maybe were like my my grandparents who who lived a long time. They were faithful, not always in their life. They made some changes. They were saved by Jesus. They totally twisted their whole priority system around. They started serving the Lord. My grandpa was the greeter. They called him the doorman at the church. Only thing, I don't think he smiled very much. And that was one of the problems with my grandpa's. I don't think he knew that you were supposed to smile as the greeter at the church. But he was so faithful. My grandma, they were so faithful. They lived a long time. And I miss them. But I'm also really glad that they had a long, full life. Then there's other people. I remember my friend Russell, he was 22 when he got in a car accident. He's my best friend. And he died. And I remember having to go to his funeral and see the open casket and just wrecked me. Because it was like, man, his life was cut so short, you know? But I know that he believed in Jesus. We shared that in common. It was our bond. And what the Bible tells us is there's going to be a reunion. And it says in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, it says, We want you to know what will happen to the believers who've died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope. Paul says, Man, look, yeah, we experience loss, but it's temporary. It's temporary. He says, when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died. Wow. How does this work? Their body is in the ground. Their spirit is with Jesus. He's bringing them here. And he's going to raise up their bodies. I'm telling you, this is a scientific marvel to me. But he says, so encourage each other with these words. We should be regularly telling each other, death is not the end. You will have a reunion. There's coming a day. You're going to see those loved ones again. They're coming back with Jesus. It's not over. It's just beginning. Hope is here. Death is a doorway. There's nothing that we could. How could we be afraid of anything if we know that Jesus is going to raise us back to life and he's going to bring all things together and he's going to make all things new, and we get to spend eternity with him? And it's not on a cloud with a harp. He's talking about streets of gold. He's talking about him being the center. He's talking about there's no need for lights. Like light switches are going to be a thing. There'll be no light switches. Why? Because Jesus Himself will light up the whole place. How cool is that gonna be? I think it's easy in life to get discouraged. Jesus said this. He said, Anyone who believes in me will live even after dying. There's nothing that can stop you. If you're a follower of Jesus, nothing can stop you. Could somebody take your life? Yeah. They're not taking your eternal life. In fact, they're only temporarily taking away your life. And that's why the Christians in the Bible, they were so bold. You know, they're like, oh, you want to chop off my head for sharing about Jesus? Go for it. I know he's bringing me back. I mean, what could you be afraid of? Somebody threatens you online? It's not gonna ruin my life, right? What if we were so fixated on the promise of eternity that we were undiscouragable? Like nothing, nothing would get us down because, like, this world is temporary. He's bringing us something that's powerful and permanent. I think something that I want to challenge you is if somebody shares with you that they've lost their loved one who is a believer, and and maybe you're, you know, we all get this phrase kind of fed to us. Oh, they're in a better place. The truth is, that's not all that comforting because, yeah, but they're disconnected. What we need to remember is, and he's bringing them back, and we get to have a reunion. That's what it is. That's what he says is your future. The reality is that there are two eternities painted in Scripture. One with Jesus forever. And he's called everybody. He said in the scripture, he said, I want everyone to believe and no one to be left out. But the reality is that that has to be a choice because there's one more eternity that's painted. That's the eternity forever without God's presence. And the name that's given to that eternity is called hell. And the Bible makes it super clear that that's real. And that we have a choice to make while we're here. This is the warm-up act. The Bible says in Isaiah 55, it says, today is the day of salvation. Don't put it off. Oh my goodness. If you don't know for sure that your soul has been forgiven, that God has brought you into his family, that your future is eternity with Jesus, if you don't know that for sure, I am begging you to make sure today. Scripture says, make sure of your salvation. Can I have you bow your heads with me right now so that we can just look, it's time to do business with God. I I couldn't possibly do a message, a whole message on heaven, and not invite you to be a part of it. Some of you are online and maybe God's touched your heart right now. Heart's beating a little faster. You kind of feel like he's talking to you. Some of you in this room, same thing. You know God's been chasing you your whole life. You can see it, his fingerprints are all over your past. Maybe you thought you were too bad to be forgiven, but you know what? You're not. His sacrifice on the cross is more than enough to pay for your sins. And he's invited everyone who will believe to become a follower of Jesus, to know his salvation, to know his forgiveness, and to experience eternity with him. Father, I thank you for my friends who are here. I pray that those who are already believers, Lord, that you would strengthen our hearts. In fact, if you're a believer in Christ, would you be praying right now for those who need to make this decision today? And I pray, Lord, for my friends who are believers that you would give us that eternal perspective so that we don't get so fixated and so fascinated with the temporary that we miss out on the power of the eternal. Give us that eternal perspective. Make us undiscourageable, that we'd be people who we just always rise back up because we know what our future is. Lord, I pray for those who are ready to say yes to you today. That for the first time they're they're gonna open that door. You said you were knocking at the door in Revelation chapter 3. I'm knocking at the door. I want you to open it. If you're here today and you've never opened the door of your heart to Jesus, I want to ask you to do that. He said, if anyone believes in me, I'm gonna give them the power to become the children of God. He's gonna save your soul. He's gonna give you his spirit, and he's gonna bring you into his family. He's gonna give you an eternity with him. If you're ready for that, I'm gonna lead you in a prayer right now. You can just tell God this in your mind and heart. You can say, Jesus, I give you my life. Thank you for saving me. I believe in you and your life, your death on the cross, and your resurrection. Forgive me of my sins, fill me with your Holy Spirit, lead me, and teach me to follow you in Jesus' name.