One God

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to the Met Church podcast. Here at the Met, we are all about connecting people to God and one another. If you have any questions or want more information about what's happening here at the church, then head to our [email protected] we would love to stay connected with you throughout the week through social media, so be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Now enjoy the message. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Good morning everybody. It's a good day to be in church. Amen, you guys. Oh my goodness. I'm a little emotional after all that we have been through these last few weeks. It's been tough, hasn't it? But it's a good day to be in church because this is where we get to come and we get to be filled up by God. We get to be with other believers. We get to be with people who encourage us, who tell us that God's still on the throne. And sometimes in the world that we live, we start to wonder, don't we? So I want to tell you today that God is. And he is at work and he is moving and in uncertain and stressful times. You guys, we need to press into him. We can listen to all the. And I like you, I was scrolling and listening to all the crazy things and finally just went, oh, I got to turn to God. This is making me a little anxious and a little. It's a little nerve wracking, isn't it? So I don't know about you, but as we walk through today, I'm gonna challenge you to do some new things that you may not have done before. I'm gonna challenge you to dig deep. I'm gonna challenge you to whatever. Maybe you're seeking God, maybe you don't even know Him. I'm gonna ask that you pray and accept Jesus today. Right? That's the first big thing. Maybe you've been walked away from God for a little while and you're thinking, man, I need to come back. I haven't been in church in a while. Or maybe you've just been a little bit apathetic and we get busy in life and we forget how much we need God. And I'm gonna ask you as we move forward today in this service that I want you to go in with that lens. I want you already thinking about what God is calling you in your specific personal life to do. So let's pray. Heavenly Father, we love you so much. God. Ephesians says that you're able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we can ask or Think, Lord. So that's what we're praying today. God, would you show up in a real way in our lives? Would you speak to us the words that you have for us today? And all God's people said, amen. Amen. You guys, today we're gonna talk about how we can live with confidence, peace, purpose, despite our circumstances, right? Because we can easily be shaken by what's going on around us. And it might be the outside world. It might be your house. It might be there's a little crazy going on in your house right now. Mine has been that way before. And it is hard, isn't it, to keep ourselves anchored to Jesus? And that's what we're gonna look at today. How do we do that? This is the last week in our series, Sevenfold. And Pastor Bill has been taking us through what it looks like as a church to be unified. These seven elements as a church that unify us. But also Pastor Bill's been challenging us to look at it in our personal life as well. Our scripture focus for this series has been Ephesians 4, 4, 6. In case you haven't been here, we're gonna read it right now. And it says, in Ephesians 4, there is one body, one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all, and an all. Did you catch those four alls? When things are repeated in scripture, there's always a reason. And they're talking about the alls. And theologians agree that those alls that they're talking about is believers. It's not all humans, not all mankind. He's talking about believers that God is the father to all who believe. Scripture says in John 1:12, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. Galatians 3:26 says, so in Christ Jesus. You are all children of God through faith. So God the Father is the first person of the Trinity. You guys hear us talk a little bit about that. The Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, he serves as the functional Godhead. And Jesus regularly taught about God the Father. He said God is a father who deeply loves his children. And when Jesus was about to go to the cross, you guys remember, he went and prayed and he prayed. Abba, Father. Abba signifies the close, intimate relationship that he had with God. It's like that of a childlike trust. Jesus was saying, I don't want to do this, but God, I trust you and not my Circumstances. And when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, we. We talked about this a few months ago in our series on the Lord's Prayer. He began with the words Our Father. Of all the things he could have said, he began with Our Father. Those two words. That's pretty comforting, isn't it, that God is not just saying, call me, O Lord, Master of the universe. He's saying, call me, Father. That brings me a lot of comfort, to know that this holy and righteous God, who created and sustains the world that we know, loves us enough to call us his children and ask us to call Him Father. So I have a question for you. Today. We're talking about God the Father. And if somebody in your sphere asked you today, hey, I've been watching your life, and I want to know about this God that you talk about. How would you describe Him? That's my challenge today. AJ Just said, you have a lot of slides. I said, how do you describe God, A.J. i can't do this in one or two slides. So you're gonna see some slides quickly rolling by. Because I think the best way to be able to really know God is to look at his character and to know who he is. That's how we're gonna get to know Him. So we're gonna look at some specific things and some specific words today to help you really grasp the depth of who all that God is. We don't just trust in God's works, although they are really great, aren't they, when we look at the universe and the creation and all the things that God has done. But we trust in his character because who God is matters more than what he does. And I would say the same for you and me. Who we are and how we're attached to Jesus is more important than coming to church or whatever we might do to try to find favor with God. Really. Who we are is shown by how we behave, but our character as well. The Bible says God is infinite, which means meaningless meaning, meaning limitless or endless in space. I had a lot of list there. Impossible to measure or to calculate, which simply means God is far above creation and he is independent. We are the created. He is the creator. You guys probably get that right. And he's beyond our ability to comprehend who he is. Many have tried. I have tried. You have probably tried. Our brains just go on shutdown, don't they? As we try to really understand who God is from beginning of the universe till the end. The really great thing is God does reveal Himself to us. He graciously did this for us. And he's done it in two ways so we can really know Him. One is general revelation. Revelation. We'll talk about that. And special revelation. General revelation refers to the way God reveals himself in creation to all people at all times, everywhere. Apart from Scripture, God's existence and power can be clearly seen through observing creation. The order and wonder of creation speak to the existence of a powerful creator. I think that sometimes. Do you? When I say, step out on our farm out in the middle of nowhere, and I see the most beautiful red auburn sunset, and I'm like, oh, my goodness, Lord, you're just showing off today. This is crazy. This is so amazing. I know that a God and a creator created this. And when we see his beauty, it inspires us to want to know him, doesn't it? To want to be like Him. Special revelation. The other way he reveals Himself to us is how God reveals directly and personally in the Bible and through Jesus so that we can truly know him and we can know his plan for salvation. We're without excuse, right? It's in His Word. It tells us how. How to live, how to know him, how to ask Jesus into our lives. Scripture's really clear. The word of God includes everything that humanity needs to know about him and expects of them. Jesus, the living word of God, reveals God as well when he was here on the earth, because he is the exact representation of God. Scripture says the Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being. God became a human being in the person of Jesus Christ to identify with us, to set us an example how to live, to teach us, to reveal himself to us and to provide salvation so we can know God. But knowing about God is not exactly the same as knowing God, is it? You know about a lot of people, but it doesn't mean that you actually know them. When we want to know somebody, we need to spend time with them, to learn about them, to see their character, to see their words align with their actions. And the character of God really is the way that we can get to know him and he reveals who he is to us. We have to spend time getting to know people, and we have to spend time with God to get to know Him. I remember when I started getting to know my husband, Derek. It's been a long time. We've been married 38 years. We met in college, our junior year, actually, of college of Texas A and M. Whoop. I always have to throw that in. Yes. So it's really one of those things. I don't know how we didn't meet before. We actually did. We went to the same church, we. We served in the same ministry. His roommate and best friend, since they were in junior high and I were super good friends, spent a ton of time together. I heard a lot about Derek, but I never saw him. Every time I'm like, who? There was four of them. Who's that other roommate? What's his name again? Where is he? He was always in the lab. He was an architecture major. So you guys know a little bit who had that background. It was a lot of time in the lab. So I just thought he was some crazy person who spent all of his time at school. So I didn't really know. I knew about him. I'd seen pictures of him, I knew a little bit about him. And then one day we had a big get together with all of our friends and he came and I actually met him. And all the things that people were kind of saying to me, who he was, he was a caring person, he was a loving person, he was a hard worker. All of those things revealing about his character. I started watching because I wanted to know if it all actually lined up with what they were all saying. Ended up, we graduated from college, got married, had some kids, we're still together. But I'll tell you what, and if you ask Derek, and I know some of y' all are gonna ask him, he has a different story about this. I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you. Cause he's already said it to me. He says we met a few months before and I was on another date. I don't remember any of that. I guess God just knew when my eyes needed to be open, right to see him. I don't have a memory of it, but to be honest, I dated a few guys to this point. Really good guys. Really, honestly, they were great guys. I have nothing against any of the guys, but they weren't in the trajectory following Jesus as I was gonna. God had already had a call in my life. I knew I didn't know what I was going to be doing in ministry, but I knew that I would always be in ministry. Even if I had a full time job, I would be doing something in ministry. I led a Bible study on the floor in my dorm. I was just so attracted to know Jesus and I felt like everybody needed to know him. So if the guys I was with weren't really heading that way, a restlessness grew inside of me. I don't know how else to describe it, but to Say that. And then I met Derek. And he was in his own Bible study with his own group of people, godly guys. He was going to church. He was reading his Bible. In the summers. He worked at a camp in the wilderness teaching high school kids about Jesus. And all of these things that I started seeing about his character were true. And it takes time to see that. And just a quick blip to my single friends. Don't settle. Compromise. You wait for who God has for you. And I talk to a lot of people who say, I'm tired of being single. I just want to marry somebody. Oh, no, you don't. I promise you. I talked to people who did that too. And that does not go so well. So you wait and see who God has for you. Because he's going to bring the right person that's going to help you take your life and your calling to the next level. Because you can't make people want to know God. Only God's spirit does that. And I think that's the restlessness I saw. Do I want the rest of my life? I'm either going to church by myself or if he's got something else going. Church is like the last thing on the totem pole. I thought, is this the life that I want to lead? And I knew that it wasn't. So don't settle. But graciously God reveals his character to us. In scripture. We can see it. Just like I could see Derek's character. I could see when we went out to eat how kind he was to the waitress. And I was like, oh, oh, he's nicer. He's really nice to people who don't even know him. But we have to see God in action as well if we wanna know his character. And I believe it's very important what you think about God's character. I believe how you evaluate God is gonna say a whole lot about your whole relationship with him. It's gonna shape your faith, your prayers, and actually your daily walk with him. You're gonna wanna spend time with him when you really love him so much that you can't wait to see what he has in store to talk to you about. You're gonna really wanna spend time with him when you're going through a difficult time because you want somebody else to shoulder this burden with you. When we talk about the character of God, we're describing his nature, who he actually is. And like I told you, we got 10 of these. I'm gonna go through these really quick. And most of these you're gonna probably know, but just so you can have them under your belt. When you start feeling like the world's a little bit out of control or you're feeling like, hey, I'm going through something really big. God, I don't think you can handle this one. I want you to think back on his character and to know that he can. The first one God is holy. God is completely set apart, pure and without sin. That's the foundation of our of Christianity, right? We can't get to a holy God. That's why we needed Jesus to die on the cross for us. Isaiah 63 says, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory. Number two God is loving. His love is unconditional, sacrificial, and everlasting. First John 4. 8 says, Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love love. Number three God is faithful. God keeps his promises and he never changes. Even when we are unfaithful, God remains faithful to us. Lamentations 3:22 and 23 says, because the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. God is righteous and fair in all that he does. Even if we don't see, even if we feel like this isn't fair, God is fair. We have to trust his character that. Psalm 33:5 says, the Lord loves righteousness and justice, and the earth is full of his unfailing love. Number five this is one of my favorites. God is compassionate. He shows compassion, forgiveness, and undeserved kindness. Psalm 10:38 says, the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love. God is good. He's a good father. Everything he does is good, right and for our ultimate good. Nahum 1:7 says, the Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble, and he cares for those who trust in Him. Number seven God is patient, unlike people, unlike me. He does not lose his temper quickly. He withholds judgment to give us time to turn to him. 2nd Peter 3:9 says, the Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance. Number eight God is omnipotent, which means all powerful. Nothing can keep his divine purposes from being fulfilled, and nothing is impossible for him. Luke 1:37 says, for nothing will be impossible with God. God is omniscient, means he's all knowing and knows everything that will happen, and he even Knows everything that won't. And nothing takes God by surprise. And no one can hide sin from him. Psalm 147. 5 says, Great is our Lord and mighty in power. His understanding has no limit. And number 10, God is omnipresent. He's everywhere, all at the same time. And there is no place you can go to escape his presence. Psalm139.7 says, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? Everywhere we go, God is there. Everywhere we're not. God is there. He's everywhere. This is part of his character and who he is. I'm thinking about when our son Garrison was 5. I have a vivid memory. Cause he was in kindergarten. And we had talked a lot about truth. And the Bible was God's truth. And if you ever had questions, I'm like, you can always come talk to me. And a lot of things you hear are not true. Only things in the Bible are true. And the truth that will stand for the test of time, Even things we think are true. Science. And some different things, they figure out it wasn't exactly true. So, right. Only God's word is truth. So Garrison came in one day, and at school, they were talking about Christmas and Santa Claus. And we didn't. We talked about Santa Claus. We took a picture with Santa Claus. I mean, wasn't that big of a deal. And he said, mom, you know what? Santa Claus is as big as God. I said, oh, really? And he said, yes. And. And he said these three things, and not in those words, but he said, he's omniscient. He knows everything. If you've been good or bad, he's omnipresent. He could be everywhere handing out the presents all at one time. And he's all powerful. And I said, oh, no, no, no, no. Santa Claus is not on the scale with God, Garrison. He's not. And he said, tell me the Bible truth, Mom. Oh. I said, can we just be happy about this thing and ignore this question? And he said, no, Mom. I want to know the truth. And I said, do you promise me you won't tell your sister? And he said, yes. And she told me later he did go tell her. So there's that. But sometimes even figurative things that we put our faith in, we may think they're comparable to God, but they are not. Our jobs are not comparable to God. Our marriages, our relationships of any kind are not comparable to our churches are not comparable to God. God is above all things that we can ask or imagine. Right? God's character tells us who he is, and it assures us of his trustworthiness. It shapes our life. It secures our hope in him. And when you know God's character, you can live with confidence, peace, and purpose. And that's our goal in this life. So here's what I know for sure. If you do not get to know God and spend time with him, you're gonna easily be shaken and anxious, and all the crazy things about the world are going to rattle you. We are all rattled at times. But we can step back and say, okay, God, I know you're on the throne, and I don't understand this. I don't see how you're gonna make good out of this. Right? We can say that to God, but we have to put our trust and faith in him and his character and who he is. Moses, one of God's chosen people that spent a lot of time with God. Actually, he's a great example of someone who always wanted to know God more. He really astounds me. He lived to be 120. He walked with God for about 80 of those years. The first 40, he was in Egypt, remember, in the palace before he killed the Egyptian? There's that. But besides that, the killing the guy, he really was seeking God and wanted to know God more each and every day. So he asked God if he could see him. I would like that. How about you? That's a really good question. I'm going to read you some verses in Exodus, and I want you to just listen to the dialogue and the closeness of this conversation between God and Moses. And this is what we all desire in our time with God. He's Moses said to the Lord, you've been telling me, lead these people, but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You have said, I know you by name, and you have found favor with me. You are pleased with me. Teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people. They had been a lot of problems. I say this to my husband sometimes as your son, right? He's saying, these are your people. And the Lord replied, my presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. So Moses is saying, teach me. God, continue to teach me. 80 years into this thing, he's still saying, God, teach me. He's not saying, okay, I know what you're gonna say. I know who you are. He's saying, God, teach me. Then Moses said to him, if your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me, with your people, unless you go with us? What will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth? And the Lord said to Moses, I will do the very thing you have asked because I am pleased with you and I know you by name. So not only do we know God's name, God knows us by name, individually, each and every one of us. He knows our names. And Moses is continuing to ask God to show up, to be there. I do that sometimes when I'm praying or reading my Bible. God, I'm gonna need you to show up here because I really. I have nothing left, and I need some words from you. And I think when we go to God with desperation, not saying we have it all together, but showing our need for him, he does show up, and he speaks to us. Then the end of the dialogue here. Then Moses said, now show me your glory. And the Lord said, I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But he said, you cannot see my face, for no one can see me and live. Then the Lord said, there is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. And when my glory passes by, I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back. You're gonna see where I've been and all the things that I've done, but you can't see my face. Moses is also continuing to ask God to reveal himself to him. Teach me, God. Yes. Be with me, God. Yes, but reveal yourself. I want to know you, the living God, the God who created all of the universe and all of the people and all these things. I want to know you. And God loves us enough to listen to us and tell us no. Sometimes God knew it wasn't best to give Moses what he was asking for, because he would have seen him, but he would have died, right? So he tells Moses, you're finite. You're morally imperfect. You can't see me and live. And basically, you can see where I've been. You can see the great things I have done. You can see my character. You can see how much I love you. But I am God and you are not. I am holy and you are not. And I love you enough to Tell you no, sometimes God does that in our lives. A lot of times God does that in our lives. And I'm telling you, I'm far enough down the road that I can tell you I can look back at a lot of those things that I prayed for and God said no that I thought were horrible. And now, right, hindsight's 20 20. Now I'm like, oh, thank you, Lord. Thank you for the no's as well as the yeses in my life. But every time I read this passage, I'm so struck by Moses, passionate plea and desire to know God. I always wonder, how can I be this close to God? How can I be as close to God as Moses that I just want more of him? What does that look like? And how do we get that? Yes, we already have asked Jesus into our lives and yes, we have a relationship with him, but we want this relationship to grow. We want to know him, we want him to teach us. And how do we do that? To be dependent. Passionately, Passionately. Passionately pursuing God, it was the most important thing in his life. Friends, as we close today, I believe God wants to take you somewhere for his kingdom, just as he did Moses. But to do that, we're going to have to make God a priority. We're going to have to spend time in His Word. We're going to have to sacrifice some things of this world to know God as Moses did. This is how we can see his glory, his love and his joy is by spending time with him and getting to know him. We have an opportunity, you already heard Amber talking about it, to spend some time with God over the next three months. Actually, it's October 1st. We're 10 days away from the New Testament Bible reading plan. It's 20 minutes a day. I believe reading God's word every day is one of the most powerful habits that you can have as a believer. It's gonna change your life. I believe especially you can do it whenever you wanna do it. Morning's best for me because it kind of changes my attitude a little bit sometimes, right? If I'm driving into work and I'm hearing God's word, it's hard to be mad at people and not let people in. Even though we've been in line and they just came up, I'm like, go right ahead. I'm listening to God's word. Help yourself. Get right in front of me. It's okay. It's hard to do that, you guys. But God's Word changes us, teaches us about the nature of God. The character of God. We need to spend time with him. I know this is a big ask. I started this journey on January 1st of reading the whole Bible through. I've never read the whole Bible through. I probably have pieced it together, went to seminary, you guys, for a few years. But I've never read it from Genesis to Revelation. Cause I would always get caught up in the really bad things I didn't really want to hear or the genealogies. But this plan is so easy. So this plan starts January 1st through September. The end of September right now is the Old Testament. And then the New Testament starts October 1st to December 31st. And let me tell you, the New Testament's going to be so exciting. I've already looked ahead and listened to some of it. It's really going to be good. And I believe it's an easy ask. It's 20 minutes a day. So I'm not asking you to add 20 minutes onto your day. I know you're tired when you go to bed. I'm not even asking you to get up 20 minutes early. I'm asking you to. To not scroll for 20 minutes. Does everybody in here scroll for 20 minutes a day? Let me see your hand. Yes. You're on your phones. You're streaming on YouTube. Maybe it's TV. Whatever. Whatever it is for your thing, we're just gonna not do it for 20 minutes. I promise you, if you look ahead to December 31st and you do the Bible plan, you're gonna know God better, You're gonna feel more secure, you're gonna feel more. More confident. Christmas is gonna mean so much more to you because you saw the whole life of Jesus than if you didn't. And you just keep scrolling for the next 90 days. Right? I don't think. I don't think you're gonna regret it at all. So we have a challenge. It's called the New Testament Bible Reading Plan. We have a QR code. You can get your phone out during church, and you can take a picture of that QR code and it's gonna register you on the Church center app. And once you do that, then we're gonna email you all of the stuff of how to actually pull this thing off. And I'll tell you, there's a written version that you can do. And it's a book like this. And remember, I told you it's the whole. It's the Old Testament and New Testament. So we're not reading all this. We're starting on page 274, actually, is gonna be where the New Testament starts. And it's chronological. So we're actually starting with Luke. We're going to read Luke 1 and John 1. And you have like a page to read every day. So if you like print format, you can buy the book. It's on Amazon, it's at Mardel, I hear it's at Walmart, or we have some out in the lobby if you want to purchase them. There's also a kids book. There's like a couple of kids books that go ages 8 to 12. There's a coloring one for a little bit younger if you want that. We have a few of those in the lobby as well if you want to do it as a family. And there is a. For your Bible reading part, there's a chart that looks just like this. I wanted you to be able to see it. And it tells you each and every day. Day one. So October 1st we're gonna read Luke 1 and John 1. It tells you what to read in just your normal Bible. You don't need to buy a chronological Bible. In fact, don't, because it might be a little bit different. You're gonna read it and then you're going to. If you're doing the print version, you're gonna read it in your Bible and then you're gonna read the commentary. It's kinda like clip notes and it's so awesome. All the things you were wondering or you didn't even know you should have been wondering, she explains to you. So it makes it all applicable. Now I'm doing the digital version, which is audio, because I'm an auditory learner. This has been so great for me. I think this is why I've been able to complete this is it reads it to me on my way to work. I listen to the Bible and on the app you'll see it when you do it. There's a little button at the bottom. You can read it along with it. Unless you're driving like me. I'm just listening. I promise I'm not looking at it. And then you can listen to the auditory recap or commentary. So you can do it, read it, you can listen. You can do a mix of both. What I like about the app also is you get to choose your version of the Bible you want to listen to and the voice. And so you can kind of listen through some different ones. What you can listen to, what encourages you? So as Amber said, when we have 565, I believe signed up as of this minute, our goal is a thousand Pastor Bill and I were talking about this. We talked about this a while ago when God laid this on my heart at the beginning of the year. And I knew then the whole Bible would be a big undertaking for people. I just like the New Testament. That's it. This is not a lot to ask. Literally everybody can read through 20 minutes a day. We can all do 20 minutes a day to know God. So join our challenge. I believe God's calling us as a people, as a church, to step up and do something we have not done before. As Pastor Bill always says, to go somewhere that you want to go, you got to do something you haven't done before. So that's what we're challenging each and every one of you to do. When you walk out, you've probably seen with the balloons out there, there's a table for you. Or the get connected counter can help you. If you have already signed up and you are having problems with your app, just go ask those people. They've all been doing the plan. They're going to be able to help you. I know it sounds confusing, y'. All. If I can do this, everybody can do. Gets really easy. After about the second day, you're going to figure all that out. I also want to tell you, there's no shame here. If you miss a day, it's okay. You're right on time. Just either catch up. I've done that before. Derek and I went on vacation and life got a little crazy and I had three days to catch up and I went, oh, I can do it while we're on the airplane. So I did. If that's too overwhelming in your life, just skip ahead to where we are. It is okay. Any time in God's word that you do is better than not doing anything at all. Give yourself grace and peace. It's okay. Don't stress out over all the small things. And then I'm gonna encourage you to invite some friends to do this with you on the app. You can invite people to be in your group, and then it has a tab at the bottom called talk it over. So after you read it, maybe it's your family, maybe it's your co workers or some friends that you could say, oh, my gosh, today was really great. I love how he described the Trinity. What did you think of that? You know, you can kind of talk it over. There's accountability. Everybody can see if you've done your work or not. So if you're the competitive type, this is the way for you, because I know you're gonna actually do it and complete it. So join us. I really feel like God is. God is doing something in our world, calling his people to stand up, to speak for him, to lead other people to him. I haven't seen the world quite this shaky since 9 11. People really looking to God, hungry for God, showing up at church and buying Bibles. All the crazy stuff that's happened because of the unrest around us. So let's take advantage of it, invite friends to do it. You never know. You have a spirit fear of people that you might just change their life by encouraging them to read the Bible with you. So remember, God wants to take you somewhere and use you for his kingdom. I know that's true. I know each and every one of us God can use to further his kingdom. Next weekend, Our senior pastor, Dr. Bill Ramsey, is starting a brand new series called A Life that Matters. We're gonna. We're gonna be talking about for the next few weeks, how do we live a life that matters? And how does God call us to be an agent of change in the world that we are living in? So you guys stand up with me as we close today. I know you guys have been sitting for a minute. I wanna stand. And I want us in our standing posture as we pray to dedicate our lives to God today. And if you need prayer, our prayer team's going to be coming forward. Please feel free just to come on up. People will move over, they'll let you out. Maybe you want to ask Jesus into your life. Maybe you want to rededicate your life and say, I've been away, I need to come back. Or maybe somebody's sick in your family. Maybe you're sick and maybe you just need to touch somebody that's going to pray for you and care about you. They're coming forward. Please feel free to come as we pray. All right, let's pray. Our Father who's in heaven, we. We pray that you will strengthen each person in this room today. Each person that is going through more than they think they can handle. God, we know that we can handle anything with you. And we ask your guidance and leadership as we commit to deepen our faith, to be disciplined in spending time with you. Help us to make you a priority as we breathe in your word each and every day. May we excel just your character and your kindness and your love to those around us. And God, we ask you to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we can ask or think in these next three months, would we look back at December 31st and say oh my goodness, what a revolution that has happened because an entire church sought God and spent time in his word. Everybody every day. And Lord Jesus, if there's anyone here or watching online that has not trusted you as their Savior, I pray they will do that right now with this prayer. Lord Jesus, I want to have a personal relationship with you. I know I'm a sinner and I believe you died on the cross just for me and my sins. I turn from those sins and I put my faith in you right now to be my Lord and Savior, my God and friend. Thank you for hearing this prayer and coming into my heart and we pray all this in Jesus name. Amen. [00:37:52] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week. [00:38:08] Speaker B: Ra.