God, Can You See Me? | God, Can You Help Me?

Welcome to our 11am service at Westside! Engage in the chat and Follow along with message notes at https://www.westsidecommunitychurch.com/notes-resources

Join us as Gabe Kolstad brings us a message about the question, God, can you see me? 

#godcanyouseeme #godcanyouhelpme #thegodwhoseesme #Jesus #fullservice #fullchurchservice #christian #sermon #worship #westside #church #2026sermon #churchonline #gabekolstad

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Welcome everybody. How you guys doing today? It seems like you're doing really good. Uh thank you for being here. In the middle of the summer, you're packing the house, and you know what? You created a problem today. We ran out of our programs. We ran out. You guys made that happen. So hey, if uh if you want to share, just you know, share with your neighbor in case your neighbor didn't get one, all right? But thank you for being here. I'm excited to be kicking off a brand new teaching series about the names of God. Specifically, we're studying for four weeks who is God based on his names, and that leads to the question, God, can you help me? We know the answer is yes, but we're gonna find out why that's true, and we're gonna dig deep into scripture to really, really, I hope this repositions your whole life. I hope in the next four weeks your whole life is repositioned because you realize all of a sudden, oh, God can help me. Not only can he, he wants to. And and we get to look at that today. Question to start us off, though. Have you ever met anyone famous? Let me see this. Okay, have you ever met anyone famous? Let me see your hands. Have you ever met a famous person? Okay. Does anybody want to share who that might have been?

unknown 1:19

Dog the bounty hunter.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

What is it? Dog the bounty hunter. Wow, that's a good one. Okay. I'm kind of jealous of that one. Okay. Okay, right up here. Blake Shelton. All right. Did he go like this? Yeah, okay. Okay. All right. Who was it?

unknown 1:36

John Glenn.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

John Glenn, the astronaut. Wow, that's amazing. Okay, over here. Right here. Yeah.

unknown 1:43

Is it not me?

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Yeah, you.

unknown 1:45

Yeah, I met Elvis Presley.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

What? You met Elvis Presley. Okay. Winner, winner, right there. She's the winner. Yeah. Okay, this is our third service of the weekend. Winner. You just won. Won the grand prize. I don't have anything for you, but you won. Okay, so that's amazing. What is it about the prospect of meeting a famous person that gets us all excited? Think about that for just a second. You're going to connect with somebody who's important. They might be rich, they might be famous, they might have some super skill. And there's something about that moment where you think maybe by connecting with them, you absorb some of that importance. In a way, it's about being seen. That's what we're going to talk about today. The question, the the today's message is actually, God, can you see me? Because I think before we can understand whether God can help us, we have to understand, does he even see us? And I remember when I was in college, I had an opportunity, I got invited to this political rally, which is funny that I said yes, because I'm not a very political person, and I couldn't have even told you what these people represented. You know, what were their values? I couldn't have, here's why I went. I wanted to meet the vice president of the United States. Right? So I get in this long line and I'm standing there and I'm just going down, you know, waiting, waiting, waiting, finally get to the place. The vice president of the United States looks me in the eye, reaches out his hands, and I shook his hand. And I was like, oh my gosh. I'm never washing my hand again. You know, say I felt like suddenly like some power like went right from him to me. Like now I'm maybe, could I be a vice president? You know, like it changes you. It doesn't change you. There's something that we hope happens in that moment, but it's not, it's not a reality because the the bottom line is what we're asking is, do I matter? Right? Every human being on the planet is on a constant search for that meaning. And we get sometimes we get it, but it leaks, doesn't it leak? You could even get in a place where your your relationship with God is so strong that you your tank is full for 24 hours, and then it leaks, right? And then the next day you could go off and like look for a vice president's hand to shake because you're like, man, my tank is low. And and what we have to understand is this the ultimate human pain is invisibility. Feeling invisible. Nobody knows me, nobody cares. And I want you to understand that is why Dale Carnegie said in the book uh How to Win Friends and Influence People, he said, the sweetest sound to any person in any language is the sound of their name. Their name. Because why? Because I got seen, because I was known. And that's a really important thing. I believe this. I believe that your opinion of God's opinion of you is probably the most important thing about you. I'll say that again, because it's a little bit of a mouthful. Your opinion of God's opinion of you is probably the most important thing about you. Because it it colors everything you do, it colors how you respond to people, it colors what you think is possible in your life, it colors whether you feel like you can approach God or not. Your opinion of God's opinion of you is probably the most important thing about you. And I hope that that changes today as we look at God's word. Because whether you think you are invisible to God or whether you think you are invaluable to God, you're right. That is a self-fulfilling prophecy. So getting on the right side of that equation is really important. Understanding the truth about what God really thinks about you is really, really important. We get to look at the passage in Genesis chapter 16 today. So get your notes out if you would, if you didn't already. And if you're online with us, welcome. Can we say a big hello to our online crew that's online watching today and participating? Hey, everybody. Yeah, it's so cool what God is doing. We have a whole team running that right now, so thank you, online team. When you look at Genesis chapter 16, we're jumping into a narrative, an account of some people named Abraham and Sarah. But they were they were not called Abraham and Sarah yet. They were called Abram and Sarai. And you know God has this habit of renaming people, right? And so he's always upgrading people's names. So he did that with them. But before he did that, they were Abram and Sarai. And Abram had been met by God, and God said, Abram, I'm gonna bless the whole world through your offspring. AKA, you're gonna have a baby. Right? And so he's like, Hey, Sarai, we're gonna have a baby. And she's like, sweet. So they wait. And they wait. 40th birthday party goes by. They're starting to wonder, you know, the clock's ticking, right? 50th birthday party goes by, they're like, oh no. Boy, we are gonna be tired when our kid graduates from high school, you know. They're like, this is gonna be hard. Then they retire, they're starting to collect social security, they're like, this is never gonna happen. And so Sarai goes, I got an idea. She's like, Well, God's clearly not paying attention to what he said he was gonna do. It's way too late. She's like, my anatomical clock has broken. And so um, I got an idea. Abram, you sleep with and marry my maidservant Hagar, the Egyptian maidservant. She's like, I'm gonna re kind of rework God's plan. That's okay, God, we got this. I'm gonna just set this up so that you can actually, so we can have the kid that he promised us. And so, like, sometimes you gotta help God. So, God, we're gonna help you, and we're gonna do this in a way that makes sense to us. And it's funny because Genesis chapter 16 is sort of a parallel to Genesis chapter 3 when Eve short circuits God's plan by trying to get something that she thought she needed in a way that wasn't part of God's strategy. And so Sarai here does the very same thing. It was a scramble, listen to this, it was a scramble for significance. You and I do that all the time, don't we? We just want to feel seen. We just want to feel importance. And so we go after whatever it is that we think is gonna make it happen in whatever way we have to get it. And if it's a detour, sometimes we go, well, the consequences of taking the detour might be worth it. So I'm gonna do it anyways. That's what happened here. So, question for you have you ever tried to hijack God's control? Yeah, probably all of it's like, give me the wheel, God, I got this. Okay, Hagar, by the way, was this Egyptian maidservant. She was the surrogate mother to Abram's son, and she shows up here in this account stranded in a literal desert. And here's where we pick this up Genesis chapter 16, verses 7 through 11. It says, The angel of the Lord found Hagar beside a spring of water in the wilderness along the road to Shur. Okay, a little more backstory here. So Hagar and Sarai weren't getting along because Sarai was mistreating Hagar, and then Hagar gets pregnant, and now Hagar is like holding that over Sarai's head, like, ha ha, I'm pregnant, you're not. And then Sarai starts mistreating Hagar really bad, like so bad that Hagar runs from the situation. And that's where she is now. She's along the road to Shur, means she's on her way back to Egypt where she was from. She's like, I gotta get out of there. It says, the angel said to her, Hagar, Sarai's servant, where have you come from and where are you going? I'm running away from my mistress Sarai, she replied. The angel of the Lord said to her, Return to your mistress and submit to her authority. Then he added, I will give you more descendants than you can count. And the angel also said, You're now pregnant and will give birth to a son. You're to name him Ishmael, which means God hears, for the Lord has heard your cry of distress. So I want to talk to you about what is happening. When you feel invisible, what can you do? What can you understand? What can you know about God? Because I believe that Scripture teaches us He sees us. In fact, we just read that in that passage. That He does, He sees us. So when you feel invisible, when you are in that scramble for significance, here's what you need to know. First, God finds you in your pain. Would you write that down? God finds you in your pain. He finds you. I love it. In this passage, again, there was a really important promise. And so some people did some things to kind of hobble together their solution to what seemed like something God had forgotten about. And now it's kind of crumbling, and Hagar's on the run. And God is finding her. I mean, if you notice when we read, it she didn't organize a search party for God. He organized a search party for her. He's like, I'm coming to you. And it says, the angel of the Lord found Hagar. Some of you would say, I remember when God found me. I remember when I was running and God found me. I remember when I was in a scramble for significance and God found me. And I think it's so important for us to recognize that we all get in this place of hiding. In Genesis chapter 3, the same passage where Eve and Adam, they, you know, they took the fruit and they sinned and they lost their relationship with God because of that. And then, thanks Adam and Eve, they handed it down to every generation since then, that brokenness. And so we're all born in something called sin because Adam and Eve sinned right there. When they realized what they'd done, they they hid, it says in Genesis chapter 3. We've carried that pattern along till today, right? You if you and me, if we cross, if we violate our own conscience, what do we do? We like hide, we run, and that's what Hagar was doing here. But God goes to her, even in that, in her pain and her shame. And I think it's interesting, like you can hear someone from a distance, but you have to get up close to see them. And that's what God did here. In fact, when it says the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament, sometimes it's referring to the actual person of Jesus Christ. Before he came as a baby, born of a virgin, before that, he visited people from time to time. This is one of those times. Jesus shows up and meets Hagar in the wilderness at a well. She was kind of at the end of her rope, and she needed help. And I think uh what I love about Jesus when he shows up, we see this in Matthew chapter 9 in the New Testament, when he when it says Jesus looked on the crowds and he felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And you can think, oh, compassion, that's nice. It's like, uh, but that's not what that word actually means. When when we see that in the New Testament, that compassion that Jesus had because he saw that, it's the it's the word, okay. I'm gonna teach you a Greek word. I don't always do this, but I want you to just, you know, we'll we're all gonna leave here a lot smarter today. You ready? Here's the Greek word it's splagneeds of my. Anyone want to say that with me? Splog needs am I. That's the word compassion in Matthew chapter 9, where Jesus sees the crowds. And what it means is not, huh? What it means is a punch in the gut. It means to be sick to your stomach because of what you saw. It's like the difference between hearing about extreme poverty on the news and going and seeing it. And going and smelling it, and going and walking in it, and going and sitting with somebody who's living in extreme poverty. It's a whole different thing. There's no words to describe it. All you know is I gotta help. I got I gotta help. I cannot leave here until I help. That's all you know. And that's what Jesus feels for us in our pain. And I love that. Does he see you? Oh yeah. You are seen. You know what the Bible says? It says that we have a high priest named Jesus who, in every way like us, has been tempted and tested but never sinned. He's gone through every emotion you've ever experienced. All the good ones and all the bad ones. Every pain you've ever felt, every betrayal, every loneliness, everything. And he gets it. And so then he comes to us with this compassion that goes, I get God I help you. That's how he shows up to Hagar. And I think that's the cure for invisibility. He walks into your mess and he sees you. But he does it when you're tired. When you're sick and tired of running. She came to this place where she's like, I'm thirsty, I'm tired. She goes to this well and she stops. And I think it's funny how Jesus has a pattern of meet meeting people at a well when they're thirsty and tired. Because you can see this through scripture. Question for you. Are you ready to stop? Are you ready to be done? Running? Yeah, that's that's where Jesus is gonna meet us, right? When we say, okay, recognize all the things I'm trying to weave together to get your will done in my way aren't working. And so I'm stopping. That's where he's gonna meet us, is when we just go, let me just surrender, let me just release control, let me just acknowledge that I have a need. Maybe you're here and you've never said yes to Jesus. You you don't actually know the God we're talking about in an intimate, personal way. That Jesus says, I'm the door, I'm the place to, I'm the on the entryway to a relationship with God. And today, in just a few minutes, if you've never said yes to Jesus, I'm gonna give you an opportunity to do that, to welcome him into your life, to receive his forgiveness, to know the God who sees you personally every day, and he'll be with you. Number two, in your notes, talking about your pain, he asks you to name it. I don't care for this part. Because he's like, Okay, now I want you to talk about it. You know, he's gonna come to you in your pain, he's gonna be like, tell me about it. And you're gonna be like, I don't want to, I don't want to talk to you about it, I don't want to talk to anybody about it. I don't want to rehearse it, I don't want to remember it, I don't want to deal with it, I just want you to take it away. And he and there's something about God that requires us to be a part of his solutions. Isn't that interesting? Like, he's gonna say, No, you gotta admit it. The the great pastor Rick Warren would say, revealing your feeling is the beginning of healing. Something about that. God wants you to express your need to him. It's why we pray. Because I always thought, well, he knows anyways, right? Like he obviously knows what I need. Why do I have to actually ask him for it? If you're a parent, you probably understand this. It's like, well, there's something healthy about, you know, coming to the place where you're willing to admit that you have a need. If you're a parent of a child and they're like, can I have help with blank? And there's something help healthy about that, right? And and so that's the relationship of care and love that God wants to have with us. So he comes and asks us to name it. He says to Hagar, there in the wilderness, where have you come from and where are you going? Oh, brutal. And this is an intervention. Like he's he's going verbalize it. Hagar, tell me about it, talk to me about it. And I wonder if she started out going, well, it's all started back when I took that stupid job with Sarai, you know, like it's gonna be great, you know, you'll make a good wage, and we'll give you insurance. And P.S. You gotta have Abraham's baby, you know. And then I participated in that, and now I'm everything's wrecked, and I'm here in the wilderness. I got nothing, no future, and my past is a mess. And this is the kind of stuff, you know, if you read the Psalms, that's basically how David talks the whole time is he's like, God, my life sucks. My enemies hate me, you know. Um, I just want to eat worms. Like, that's the Psalms in many of them. You know, you're just like, wow, it's okay to express yourself to God and share your real feelings. He's asking for it. He asks you to name it. She said, literally, I am running. I am running. Here's why I think God wants us to verbalize this because before you can fix a detour, you have to admit it. It's like the words need to come out, I was wrong. That's the whole thing about coming to faith in Jesus, is going, I need forgiveness. I've I've sinned. I mean, I've gone my own way. And there's a price to pay for that, the Bible says, is for the wages of sin is death. That's eternal separation from God. That's what we inherited from Adam and Eve. And it's you might say, well, that's not fair. Maybe, but it's true. That nobody is born and then has to be taught how to sin. You know, I never had to, we never taught, we never took our kids to sinning class. Like never had to do it. Just like, oh no, they already know that. Great. You can skip that class. Same for me, right? And you know, that's that's that's why he asks you to name it. I am running. Something I think we should all remember, though, as we do this, as we just, as we live life and as we get these truths, and can we be very, very gentle with people? Because everyone you talk to every single day is fighting a battle. And you just never know how how deep it is and how brutal it is. They they don't wear it on their sleeves all the time. And so be let's be very gentle with people, let's be very patient with people, let's be very understanding that we all have pain and that we need to not try to be the solution to that for people, but to invite people that, hey, God sees you and he's gonna meet you in your pain, and he's gonna ask you to name it. Something also I think that is really important as it relates to this whole thing about detours and about sin and about help and healing, is that the confusing question comes up sometimes. You look at this and go, okay, so Abram had a wife named Sarai that God had given him, and then he took another wife named Hagar. And so, does the Bible promote polygamy? And the answer is 100% no. Because if you just rewind from Genesis 16 to Genesis chapter 2, this is where God lays out exactly what marriage is supposed to be: one man, one woman for life. And that's the standard that he uses all through scripture. It never changes. And it's the standard then, it's the standard now. It'll be the standard when he comes back. That's God's standard. We don't create that standard, he gives it to us. And so I think we we have to understand the standard is the standard, and we all deviate from it. It's what the Bible says. All have sinned and fallen short of God's glory, right? So there's nobody in here who's exempt from going like, yeah, me too. We're all rotten and in need of God's grace. And it's why he asks us to verbalize our pain. But this is the beautiful part. Number three in your notes is he resets your course. He he resets your course because God has a path, he has a plan, he has a way, he is the healer, he is the redeemer. I mean, we're going through a series on the names of God because we want to know who he is and what he can do. And can he help you? Yes, he can. I just remembered Bob the Builder from when my kids were younger. Yes, he can. He resets your course. I mean, when when you're lost, he resets your course. It says here in Genesis chapter 16, return to your mistress and submit to her authority. That might not have been what you would expect for a course reset for Hagar. She's like, I gotta get away from these toxic people. Look what they made me do. Look at how this worked out. This is a mess. Now I'm here all by myself, no help. And she had to acknowledge that she needed a course reset. But God's like, I want you to return to your mistress. In other words, in our society, we have this thing about cutting out all the toxic people, right? And we want to create only affirmation around us. And while that feels good, it's not always helpful. It's also not a place where you could be on mission. And so God's like, here's what's gonna happen. You're gonna go back now as a person who's seen, known, loved, and valued. That's a whole different that's a whole different thing. Now she's going back transformed, floating back because she just shook the vice president. Its hand. No, because she got encountered the God of the universe who gave her a gift that nobody else could give, the meaning and the significance, like God sees you, and he knows you and he loves you and he values you. And now you can be in any circumstance, and you'll be undiscourageable because you have this fullness that comes from a relationship with your creator where you're getting your actual sense of meaning and significance from him, from a God who never changes. So he's not gonna love you one minute and not the next. He's constant. And she knew it, and that changed her. But the problem is, this wasn't like a warm fuzzy hug from God, going, like, oh, let me give you a real easy thing to do. This would be the hardest thing she'd ever done. Go back to that scenario. And so he came with that redirection. Redirection is the same as repentance. I mean, repentance is actually a Bible word, right? If you're not familiar, maybe you didn't grow up in church, you didn't have a lot of faith experience, and you might hear the word repent and think of only one image, a bullhorn on a street corner yelling at you, right? Repent. But repent is a Bible word, and it literally just means turn the other way, change your mind. So God's telling her, I want you to go the other way. I want you to go back, back to Egypt. Excuse me, not back to Egypt, back to back to Sarai and Abram. And I want you to return to the situation that you were in. Um basically it comes down to this repentance is this it's God's will, God's way, and God's time. That's really important because if we try to take the wheel from God when the time isn't happening, like we think it's not my clock, it's God's clock. And aka, by the way, he's not gonna tell us when it's gonna be. So Abraham's looking at his watch, going, like, I'm old, dude. And my wife is old too. Like, I don't know what is gonna happen. Panic sets in. You try to take control. And God's going, you have you need to learn to trust the God who sees you. You need to learn to trust that he sees how bad it is right now. That he knows what your finances are like right now, that he understands what situation your married marriage is in, he gets it, he sees it. He's been through all the tension, all the tension you can imagine, everything you experience. He he's been through it and he sees it, and he knows you and he loves you and he values you, and he's here for you. And he has a way and a will and a time, and he wants to work that out. And so, really, repenting means submitting, surrendering to that, to go, okay, I'm not gonna try to control it. The worst words a human can hear, right? Don't try to control it. And that's what God's asking for from you and me. The awesome thing that happens next with Hagar is that he declares a blessing. He declares a blessing. Okay, so he gets Hagar alone at this well, and he comes and he makes her verbalize her pain, and then he says, I'm gonna make you do the hardest thing you've ever done. And you might almost think, like, wow, is he trying to punish her? Like, what's the deal here? This seems really hard. Is he mad at her for being a part of a detour from his plan? Is she paying the price for, you know, she was really the victim of somebody else's detour? And what you now can see is, oh, he didn't come. He didn't come to punish her, he didn't come to hurt her, he came to bless her. That's why he shows up. He declares a blessing. And Hagar, by the way, represented not like the friends of God. She represented the Egyptians. Does that ring a bell? I mean, they weren't exactly the people who served God's purpose. So what happens is he says, I will give you more descendants than you can count in verse 11. I'm gonna give you more descendants than you can count. Wow, that is a huge blessing coming to her. And maybe you're here and you're like, I don't think God likes me. Because I've made some choices, I've participated in some schemes. Like, I'm not that person that God's just gonna be like, oh, come over here. But look how he treats people, even people who have gone the wrong way. Here's the thing Hagar listened, and God blessed her and gave her more descendants than she could count. She said, He said, I'm gonna give you a son's name's gonna be Ishmael, which means, by the way, God hears. One more reinforcement that she's not alone, that she's in God's hands and in God's care. There's this passage in Psalm 17, there's a phrase that says, uh, the apple of your eye. You ever heard that? The apple of your eye? You're like, hey, you're the apple of my eye. It's a phrase that gets thrown around almost like you're somebody I like. But in Psalm 17, we see that it says, that David says, God, keep me as the apple of your eye. And he's referring to a very, very important concept in the Bible that really is talking about the pupil. So he's using a reference to biology. He goes, keep me as the apple of your eye. He's talking about the pupil. And the the the concept is that David's referring to what happens when you're so close to somebody, when you're literally so close to somebody. I remember this because my my uh firstborn son is sitting right here in the front row, is back from Italy, just got in on Wednesday. Dawson and Audrey are here. And I have a picture in my hallway where I'm holding Dawson as a as a newborn baby, and I'm just bawling. I'm just like overwhelmed with this amazing, like, wow, I have a kid, and he's right here, and his face is just right next to mine. And David's referring to that intimacy, that closeness where you could see the reflection of the other person, of you in the other person's pupil. You're so you're looking so close. You could see yourself in the other person's pupil. That's what the apple of your eye means. So God is going, here's what I do. I come, I'm I see you so close. This is the relationship God wants to have with each one of us. I see you so close that I see my reflection in your pupil.

unknown 28:36

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Like he sees himself in you. That's how close he wants to be with every one of us. And that's why he does all this work. It's why Hagar's story is Hagar's story. He's going, I want, I want to be near. So Hagar calls God a name. She gives him a name, El Roy. That's the name. El Roy, not Elroy, like if you ever watched the Jetsons before, but not that. El is the name for God in the Bible, and and Roy is the description of his character. And this is why this is important. This is why this series is important for your life. You can count on God's character because it's the essence of who he is. He is the God who sees you. And he always will. And he'll never stop looking for you, and he'll never stop meeting you in your pain, and he's never gonna stop asking you to name it, he's never gonna stop giving you a redirect, and he's never gonna stop giving you a blessing. That's the God of the Bible. I think the one thing I would ask for everybody to consider today, just the one step everyone could take, would be this. Would you be willing to look at yourself and see yourself the way God sees you? Just look at yourself and see yourself the way God sees you. Don't look at your don't look at the parts yourself you, you know, this this way of kind of hating yourself sometimes. He's going, oh no. You are seen, you are known, you are loved, you are valued. And he wants to come near. That's the God who sees me. You're seen, you're known, you're loved, and you're valued. And I think, I think this. I think if each one of us would say, you know what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna start looking at myself the way God looks at me, how are you gonna do that? You gotta, you gotta look here, because he already said it. He already said it all. You gotta look here, you gotta remember what he said, how he feels about you. And read this over and over and over again if you need to. You are already seen, knowed, loved, and valued. We have something here that we do, and I want to just kind of show you how this works for your spiritual journey. So we always ask this question: what's your next move? And why we do that is because we know we're all on a different place in our journey. We might be at the very beginning where we're we call that the Jesus mountain. We need to meet Jesus. It's the start of it all. He said, I'm the door. Like, in other words, you've got to come through this way. This is how we get to know God. He's we got a mountain called the Community Mountain, meaning, man, maybe some of you have already said yes to Jesus, but you haven't, you're still alone. You're still kind of doing it solo. And that's really hard. The difference it can make to be in a community of support and friendship and spiritual direction is crazy. In fact, there's an opportunity for you today in just a few minutes at 1215. We're having the nude Westside lunch. This is the fast track to community. I mean, if you're tired of being alone, I hope you come to lunch because this is a place you can you can really take some steps. The mission mountain, that's the third one. It's like Carly said in the video earlier, she's like, I'm found my mission. You know, I'm out here making a difference. Man, that fills the tank, doesn't it? Because it's not something you created, it's something God gave you, and now you're filling a gap and you know you're of service, but God's also empowering you. And wow, what an amazing thing. There's another, hey, there's two lunches today. Did you know that? We just like food. There's two lunches today. One is called New to West Side. One is for our good neighbor project. There's a thing in your in your program. We go out and serve the community on August 16th. We're canceling our services, going, taking our service to the streets. And uh if you want to be a part of the Good Neighbor Project, planning and leading that, there's another lunch, and you could be a part of that. It's right after church, right here in this room. And so my my hope is that as we look at ourselves, we go, oh, I know how God sees me. And I choose to see myself the same way. It's it's a gift. And he wants to give it to us. And you know, there's different reasons why we get into a space where we don't feel that way. We forget. But today it's time to remember how he feels about you. Would you bow your heads with me right now and ask God, Lord, Lord, would you just remind me that you're the God who sees me? Maybe you've been in just a very difficult circumstance. In fact, if you're here and you're just going through a really hard time and you want prayer today, would you just lift your hand up right now? You're just going through a really hard time and you just want some prayer. Father, thank you that every person who's lifting their hand and every person who's too scared to lift up their hand right now, you see us. Lord, would you just rush your help to each one of us who are lifting our hands up right now? We just we get so tired of carrying the burden alone. So thank you, God, in advance for the way that you're gonna move and work and we surrender to your way, your will, your time. God, would you just have your have your will in our lives? Maybe you're here and you've never yet clarified your relationship with the Lord. You don't know that if today if you died, you don't know that you'd have a home in heaven. You're not sure that God hears your prayers when you pray. You don't know whether you've been forgiven or not. And if you're not sure and you want to make sure of your salvation, as the Bible says today, I want you to say yes to Jesus. And I'm gonna invite you to do that right here and right now, whether you're online or in this room, I want to invite you to tell them, to admit it, to verbalize. You can do that by saying these words back to God in your mind and heart. Tell him, Jesus, I give you my life. Thank you for saving me. I believe in you. 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.