Not My Jesus: Participation Trophy Jesus

Well, good morning. Welcome. Good to have everyone here in the room and everyone joining us online for part four, I think, in our series, Not My Jesus.

Last Sunday, Pastor Corey Stout ministered, and how many say he did an awesome job? Great guy and friend of ours, and we would love, we’ll have him back and have him preach some more. For those of you that are not Thursday night people, I just want you to know that you missed out on Pastor Casper. He was here on Thursday night. He’s actually going to be back in, I don’t know, two or three weeks from now. He’s pastoring a church in southern Missouri. He was our former youth pastor. You’re like, who is he? He was up here all the time. He’s like 6’7″. You can’t miss him in a crowd. But anyway, it’s great to have him back with us as well.

My wife and I had a nice break this week because our oldest son got married off. And that leaves us three down and one to go. Evan’s married. Hallelujah. Except for the one to go, but the rest of it’s a hallelujah. No, we’re fine with that.

As we get into this series, there’s churches that I’ll call them truth adjacent. In other words, they sound a lot like they preach the truth. They just never are specific about it. It’s like, we preach the truth and we preach the word of God and we tell it like it is. It’s like, okay, so tell me something that’s like it is. Well, we tell it like it is. What do you tell like it is? Tell me something. What? But they just want you to feel like they do that without actually doing that.

So, I want to tell you today, I’m going to tell you the truth, and it’s specific, and it’s offensive to our culture about a specific area. Not every area. Different weeks we’ll cover different areas. But in this series of messages, whenever we walk through this, I feel like as a pastor, I have to inoculate my church against cultural lies. And how do you inoculate your church against cultural lies? With biblical truth, right? And sometimes that biblical truth is a little bit challenging because it feels so countercultural.

And I want to tell you something you’re going to feel today, and it’s natural, and it’s what I see all the time with even conservative, biblical, Bible-believing Christians in America today. They have a guttural reaction against biblical truth. They have this feeling of like, oh, he said that. Oh, should he do that? Oh, is that okay? And so everyone gets real quiet whenever you say strong biblical truth, because they’re like, we are told you can’t say those kinds of things, and that’s offensive, and I can’t believe he’s doing that, and I would never say that. But then if I were to corner you individually in the lobby, you’d say, “I totally agree with that,” right?

And it’s interesting. So, all I’m saying, I’m not trying to down on you. I just want you to notice the feeling. Notice that twinge of guilt and nervousness whenever I say certain things, because I only want you to reflect on that to say, have I been affected by the cultural lies? And do I need a greater inoculation with biblical truth so that I have a reaction against the lies, not a reaction against the truth? Right? Amen. So, we want to have internal reactions against lies, not internal reactions against truth.

And can I just encourage all the parents in the room here? This was very challenging to do. Our kids were raised primarily in the Lee’s Summit School District, all four of them. And so for us, there were a lot of cultural lies they were adopting from social media, from friends, even sometimes from a class, or a teacher here or there would have some thoughts that are very anti-biblical and very non-conforming. Not a lot of good solid Christian teachers in school. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying there’s both, right? There’s both. And so they get both influences. So, we had to parent our children to where they had a reaction against the lies rather than a reaction toward the truth.

And we would recognize in our children, here’s a good indicator, when they’re in junior high and you say something that is a biblical truth and you can tell they’re squeamish and upset and stressed that you told the biblical truth to them and it bothered them, warning bells should be going off in your head big time. They really should. To the point where you start saying, are we going to let them stay in public school? Are we going to pull them out? Are we going to homeschool them? Are we going to have to get them in youth group every night? Are we going to have to become a youth sponsor? Are we going to have to read some apologetics book with them? Are we going to have to start at-home Bible studies to teach them this? Am I going to have to find out every day what they’re getting taught at school so that I can read books that actually give a biblical perspective and start doing book studies with my teenage son or my teenage daughter, so that we can grow and they’re not going to adopt all these cultural lies? Amen.

And so I want to tell you on the front end all of that stuff, and then I’m going to get into the message here, because I want you to process the message through that lens. This is what it means. This is how important it is. By the way, if you don’t do this with your teens, you’ll discover that you have a non-relationship, or a halved, or a quartered relationship with them as an adult. Because if you cannot talk about what you believe and what you value, how many of you know you’re eliminating a lot of the important conversations that you have with people that you identify with as friends? How many of you know when you have a friend, you like to be able to talk about the things that you highly value, right? You want to be able to talk about your religious values, your moral values, your political values, your cultural values openly with people that are close friends, and have some agreement. Why would you want to lose that, to where you don’t have that relationship with your kids when they’re adults? How many of you know that that is a halved relationship, a quartered relationship? You might be a three-quarter, but how many of you know you do not have a full open dialogue with your children if you can’t talk about parenting and morals and values and spiritual values, right?

And so, I’m just going to tell you, it is worth you doing everything to protect that relationship with your children. You’re like, I’m protecting my relationship with my children by not confronting them on their values. No, you are saving your own backside right now, and you are losing the relationship later. That’s all you. It’s lazy parenting, or it’s culturally influenced parenting. You’re just caving into the culture of our world.

I am preaching way too long on this. So, let me get into the real message. Okay. So, today I’m going to call it Trophy Jesus. This is why I’m calling it Trophy Jesus. There’s this concept. When the kids were growing up, my four kids were in the era where everyone got a medal, everyone got a trophy. End of the season, everyone walked away with something. How many of you have boxes of junk trophies that you’re like, I don’t even think you won anything? I don’t know what I win with that one. It’s probably nothing. I got a medal for all this stuff. And some kids, yes, some of the trophies count, some of the medals count. And you’d say, “Oh, they all count.” Not really. I mean, when you lose, the medal to me doesn’t count. But whatever. You can feel good about that if that makes you feel good, but to me it doesn’t. It’s just fake. I got trophies when I wasn’t something. I got a blue ribbon and a red ribbon, and I don’t know what the other one was. What was it? Yellow. Yeah, something like that. Green or yellow or whatever. Now, I don’t know, because I didn’t keep those. If it was below a red, I didn’t want it. I want a blue or a red, or I don’t want that. That’s it.

So, what we have is this idea spiritually. It’s like, hey, everyone wins at the end. Like, no matter what you believe, no matter what your religion is, no matter what your background is, if you’re a good person and you’re really sincere, everyone gets to God and everyone gets to heaven. Everyone gets the trophy. Everyone gets the crown, because you tried hard. You put a lot of effort in. And if you don’t believe that in our culture, you are narrow-minded, and you are prideful, you are arrogant, and it’s everything that you don’t want to be as a Christian.

It’s so manipulative of Christians’ morals. Christians have good morals generally. They’re taught to. Not that everyone practices it, but at least they have a value for being humble, a value for being loving. And if you have a value for being humble and a value for being loving, how many of you know you can play on those values and make people feel guilty pretty easy, right? And let me tell you, the secular world has figured that out. Christians are easy to prey on because of those emotional values, those character values that they have.

And it really comes from a root word. We’ll just call it postmodernism. Which is basically, there’s no real such thing as objective truth. It’s just, you have your truth and I have my truth. And I give you the example all the time. You say it’s day and I say it’s night. I say the lights are on, you say they’re off. I mean, who’s really right? Well, I am. The lights are on, right? And how many of you say it is not prideful? If I told you the lights were on, I’m not actually being prideful to say the lights are on, right? That’s not pride. That’s just, the lights are on, right?

So, whenever we talk about spiritual realities, we live in this wonderful universe that God has created where certain things are true and certain things are not. How many of you know that one plus one equals two, and gravity works, and God made men to be men and women to be women? Right? Okay. So, some of you, that was your first test on the nervous internal reaction. Okay, I just wanted to see. I want to give you one.

So, we look at these things. We try to understand these things. But we can work from a place of truth. And why can we do that? Why do certain things equal certain things? Because a God of order and truth created the universe we exist in. And he created it with physical laws that govern the order of his universe, and spiritual laws. He didn’t orderly create the universe and disorderly create spiritual realities. He didn’t say, oh, I need to be really structured about the laws that govern the universe and totally haphazard about the spiritual laws that lead people to me. He’s the same God. It’s the same ordered structure in the way he operates. And so if there’s an ordered structure, then it would behoove us, there’s a nice word for you, old-fashioned, it would be a really smart idea for us to figure out what those ways are.

So, interesting little side note. In America today, those who call themselves Christians, 56% of them say, you know, I think that there’s a whole lot of religions that lead toward God in heaven. 56% of Christians in America. Now you’re like, yeah, but that includes everything. There’s all sorts of liberal versions of Christianity that don’t really hold to the Bible very much anymore. You’re right. So, let’s narrow it down to just evangelical, Bible-preaching Christian churches. Well, then that number drops to 44%. 44% say, yeah, a lot of different religions will probably all get you there. That’s interesting.

Now, I don’t think that’s true at Eagle Creek Church. If it were true at Eagle Creek Church, you would have left a long time ago. I probably would have offended you by now. I don’t have a goal of offending, but I don’t have a goal of making everyone happy. I just have a goal, and I don’t say this to get applause, I do really just try to preach God’s word, so that, once again, I’m inoculating. I’m responsible to God for the church that I present to him on the day that I die. I’m responsible to him. And so in good conscience, I have to tell the truth, and sometimes see people walk out that I love and I care about, and I want to see them grow in faith. I’m not trying to throw red meat out to the crowd to get rah-rahs. I really am not. I want to persuade people toward truth, because I believe God’s truth is a saving kind of truth for our individual lives and for our culture and for our families, that it is that valuable. So it should be shared. Amen.

Okay. So, that’s my motive whenever I’m doing these things. But I do want you to have a realistic picture that it is a little over four out of ten evangelical Christians that just don’t believe the things I’m talking about right now. And so, as we get into this, I’m just going to handle a few of the truth claims of Christ and walk you through these. I’m not going to walk you through every moral truth claim. These are going to be more the spiritual truth claims of why Christianity is exclusive, and also incredibly inclusive. Exclusive has one connotation, and inclusive has another. It’s very inclusive, and it’s incredibly exclusive simultaneously. So I’m going to walk you through just three of those truth claims of Christ as we walk through these understandings.

The Broad Claims of Christ

And the first one I want to walk you through is this, just the broad claims of Christ. The broad claims of Christ. The disciple Thomas, he comes to Jesus and he says to him, you know, you’re going away to your Father. We don’t know where your Father is. How do we get to your Father? Have you known me so long and you don’t know this, Thomas? And then in John 14:6, he says, here’s how. Jesus said to him, and it’s one of the most exclusive statements in all the New Testament, that nearly everyone who’s a solid Christian for a ton of years can quote, John 14:6, he says, “I am the way.” You can read it out loud with me. “And the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Now I want to pause and just state right now. People will use this contrast. Jesus was so loving and accepting of everyone, and I’m cool with Jesus, but I don’t like the church, because the church has become so judgy and so narrow. And I get, there’s a feel to that where that can be true in certain environments with certain people. I get that. By and large, I don’t think that’s true. But I do understand that concept.

But can I just say, if most Christians said to someone who didn’t know the Bible verse, who wasn’t a Christian, said to them, “Do you know that Christianity, Christ, is the only way you can get to God?” How many of you would say, well, that Christian sounds really judgy? But Jesus said it. Did you know there’s only one spiritual truth, in a total truth, that is truth in all the world, and it’s the teachings and the way of Jesus Christ expressed in the Bible? You’d say, well, that sounds really narrow-minded of you. Well, that’s actually not me. That’s Jesus Christ. So, this really loving, accepting person is one you now reject as narrow-minded. So Jesus was narrow-minded?

Did you know there’s only one way to have zoe? That’s the Greek word. It’s eternal spiritual life, the life of God. There’s only one way. And did you know the only person and the only people that get that are followers of Jesus Christ? That is so arrogant of you. And then you say, well, that’s actually not me. I didn’t say those words. That’s what Christ said himself, who’s so loving and accepting. You’ve just called him prideful and arrogant and narrow-minded. Okay, that’s what you’ve called Christ.

And he says, because what does he say? No one comes to the Father except through me. Now, every time he uses the word “the,” I am the way, I am the life, or the, all these things, this is what it is. It’s the definite article, meaning it’s not, I am a way, I am a truth, I am a life, a form of it. He says, I am the exclusive way. I am the exclusive truth about spiritual matters. I am the exclusive life of God.

And then he says this. He says, unlike every religious leader who preceded him and followed him, of every great world religion, unlike them, it’s very, very different. Everyone gives a pathway to God. Jesus does not give a pathway to God. Jesus says, I am the path. What do you mean you are the path? Aren’t you going to show me the way to go? No. I’m going to show you the way to me. Abide in me and I abide in you. Then the Father and I will sup with you. You’ll become one with me. I will send the spirit, and the spirit will dwell within you. He breathed on them and said, “Receive the spirit. Receive God into your life.” I am the way. You enter into me, into my rest, and then you have life. I am the truth. The Holy Spirit of God who comes within you will show you all that I have taught you, whatsoever I’ve taught you, he’ll remind you of. I am the truth incarnate, come unto you. I am the life of God. And whenever the life of God comes into you, you become the children of God, adopted. When the spirit of God dwells within you, you cry out, “Abba, Father.” Now you have spiritual life within you.

Jesus is not a way to something. He is the something. Do you understand that? That is unique outside of all other world religions, and so it’s not comparable to others in any way, shape, or form.

Now in 2026, we value acceptance so highly that a lot of times we don’t have antibodies to the lie infections in our culture. And so I want you to understand, that is one of the antibodies to the lie infection in our culture.

In Matthew chapter 7, verses 13 and 14, I want to read this. Jesus’ words. Everyone say Jesus’ words. Okay. Is he wide open and accepting? “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are” how many? Many. A lot of the world and the world religions, you name it. “Many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life.” Zoe, once again, the spiritual eternal life of God. “And those who find it are few.”

Jesus, why would you say that? You’re closing the door on so many people when you say that. I think the only reason Jesus would say something like that is because it was true. I don’t think he would say that with any joy in his heart, with any pride in his heart, with any arrogance in his heart. I think it’s a warning from someone who deeply cares about humanity, to say, I’m trying to open a gate. I’m making a way for humanity. No, you’re closing off all your other ways. And he’s like, there aren’t any. There really aren’t. I’m telling you, there aren’t any other ways. There’s no other options. I am that way that you have looked for as humanity. I am that gate. I’m opening it. I’m saying, come in. That’s inclusive. Amen.

The Narrow Plan of Christ

And then I want to branch from that into the second thought, the narrow plan of Christ. When Jesus says those words, I am the way, I just want to hit that again. He’s not eliminating all the other options when he says, I am the way, because there are no other options before he came. He was stepping into our burning building and offering himself as the way out. He’s saying, there is a way out, and it’s me, and I’ve come to finally provide a way out for mankind from the judgment that they deserve because of their sin.

In fact, John 10:9 tells us this. He says, I am what? The door. I am the way, the truth, the life, the gate, the door. How many of you say Jesus is trying to send mankind a message? And I don’t know how much more you need to hear to say Jesus was unequivocally clear. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved. By me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture, find peace, find connection. That person will have life, and have life in me.

And to say that all roads lead to God does not make you more loving than Jesus is. It makes you less honest than he was. Jesus’ honesty got him killed. Jesus’ honesty resulted in his trial going through and his execution on a Roman cross. Jesus’ honesty was so loving that he gave his own life for other people. His honesty wasn’t arrogance. His honesty was love.

And so I want to give a different message to you, Christian in America in 2026. Your honesty should never come from a heart of arrogance. Your honesty should always come from a heart of love. But your honesty should always come out of your mouth. You have to be honest with the world if you love the world. And it will cost you something. Is the narrow road easy or hard? It’s hard. And only a few are willing to speak up and to follow it and to share it with others. And that’s reality. And Jesus knows it. And he tells us in advance, not a lot of people are willing to go down this road and to speak up for it.

So why is there only one door? Why not many? Well, because one plus one equals two. Because my sin plus God’s justice equals my eternal judgment. My sin plus God’s justice equals my eternal judgment. One plus one equals two. He’s a God of justice. He’s a God of order. He’s a God of moral order, a God of spiritual order, a God of physical order. And my sin plus God’s justice equals my judgment eternally.

And because of that, there can only be one method of salvation for all of humanity. Someone who is sinless must pay for someone who is sinful, or the justice of God will never be met. There has to be a minus one to the equation. There has to be something that subtracts. My sin subtracts God’s judgment. Actually, that’s a minus two, isn’t it? It subtracts my sin. And whoever subtracts my sin cannot have sin himself. Jesus was the only sinless person who ever lived. And why was he sinless? Because he was God, who was sinless. And God came to earth and became a man to take our sins and to take God’s judgment. That’s the minus two. And that puts us at zero payment for our sin. That’s it. It’s the justice equation of a just and righteous God.

That is why there is only one gate. There is only one door. There is only one truth. There is only one life. There is only one way, and it’s Christ himself. 1 Timothy 2:5 tells us this. “For there is” what? “One God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” Only one mediator, one who takes the hand of God and the hand of man and brings the two parties together in reconciliation. And how does he do that? He does that by giving his sinless life for the justice God demands and for the sin that we’ve committed. He takes it all on himself, thus bringing man to God. There is no religion that does this. There is only Jesus Christ that does this. Amen.

And I think it is so incredibly important that we understand the equation of heaven, because this equation is what saves all of mankind. I know people that so deeply love their children. One of Sherry’s family members in particular has passed away now, her grandmother, so deeply loved her children that she caved on her own spiritual beliefs, because her children deconverted to other things, and she wanted to make a way for everyone, in her mind, to get there. Can I just tell you, caving in on your own beliefs so that you can mentally try to believe people who are not getting there will get there, may soothe your emotional state for now, but it does nothing for that person’s spiritual state for all eternity. And so, rather than soothing your own emotional state by convincing yourself of something that’s not true, why not pray for the reality of salvation in their life fervently and continually, and see if God won’t do a miracle in their life? Why not be a messenger of salvation, even though it’s hard and you’re rejected? Why not do the real thing that really makes an impact? Don’t soothe your own conscience or your own emotions about this. I understand the need for that. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it clearly. But that’s not the way to handle that.

Good Doesn’t Earn a Ticket to Heaven

Three, and the final thought is this. Good doesn’t earn a ticket to heaven. And I know I’ve been saying that in a variety of ways, but I want to be specific in the way I say that. The concept is, if you’re mostly good and you didn’t do any really bad things, you know, like Hitler kind of stuff, you didn’t do that kind of stuff, you’re probably good enough, and you’re probably going to make it, especially if you’re sincere and you’re well-meaning.

Well, here’s what the Bible teaches. John 3:36. Jesus Christ says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.” Amen. “Whoever does not obey the Son,” that would be a response to the obedience or the belief. I believe, therefore I obey. So now he’s speaking responsively. “Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but” what? “The wrath of God remains on him.” The equation is not complete in his life. The one who takes the wrath has not taken the wrath, because you’ve not believed at a level that produces obedience.

It’s interesting, this equation Jesus makes. I can kind of tell who really believes in me, because you can see it in the way they live. Because when you really believe, you start to follow. It’s like he’s saying, I can tell, it’s sort of obvious. I can sense it by the way you’re living your life. And Jesus says these words once again. How many of you say, boy, I didn’t realize Jesus was so narrow-minded? I’ve just read quote after quote from Jesus Christ over and over and over again. I’m reading what Jesus says.

So this is a critical thing I want you to understand. Heaven’s not a reward program for moral achievement, like I was so good that I deserved heaven. Heaven puts us in the presence of an infinitely holy creator God who judges the living and the dead. Our problem is not that we haven’t been good enough. It’s that sin does not just need to be forgiven. Sin needs to be completely paid for, for justice to be met, atoned for. Justice must be met. Not just God wave the hand and say, oh, you’re forgiven. But was there any just payment for sin? So justice must be met for us to be in heaven with a just God. God has to look down and say, these people can be here because justice has been met. I don’t have a bunch of sinful, criminal-acting people here. Justice has been met.

Here’s the good news. 1 John 2:2 says this. It says, “He is the propitiation.” Everyone say that nice big word, propitiation. Okay, here’s what that means. It means that he is the wrath-absorbing sacrifice. That Jesus absorbed the wrath of God when he gave his life sacrificially for us. Amen. Someone had to absorb the wrath of God for our sin. Judgment and wrath. And that’s what Jesus had just said. They are under the wrath of God. What do we do about the wrath of God? We can do nothing about the wrath of God, because we deserve it for our sins. Our sinful lives can only pay for our sinful lives through an eternal death and separation from our creator. And for heaven to be a possibility, someone else has to absorb the wrath of God, giving their life as a sacrifice.

I want you to understand how loved you are, and everyone you love is loved. He is our wrath-absorbing sacrifice. Jesus has absorbed the wrath of God through his sacrificial death for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. Everyone is, it’s open. It’s the most inclusive faith in the entire world. All mankind can come to him and believe and be saved. Amen. Amen.

The door is open. The way is clear. The truth has been shared. The life is available. The gate is, it’s narrow, but it’s there for anyone who will believe, for anyone who will believe in Jesus Christ and his grace for us.

You know, in the last week or so, you saw this, and I understand there’s a little controversy around it, but not about this moment. There was a failed attempt on President Trump on his life. And that failed attempt resulted in one of the Secret Service being shot in the vest. But here’s a moment that stands out to me. There’s a couple of moments that stand out. I watched the replay of it, and one of the moments that stands out is when the shot is fired, a guy who’s about 6’4″ literally climbs up on the platform, sits on the table in front of President Trump, and grabs both sides and is willing to take the bullet for him. I’m like, dude, I don’t know your name, I don’t know who you are, but you’re a stud. You’re pretty cool. Because to see it in the moment, to say, dude, shots are fired, they’re probably coming for that guy, and you’re not just fake saying, I’ll take the shot, you’re there, you’re doing it.

And I think about what Jesus did. I mean, he took the shot. He took it full on, head on, hands and feet nailed to the cross, spear pierced to his side, crown of thorns on his head. He took the shot I deserved. He gave his life for me.

We desperately need Jesus’ payment for our sins, because every deed of my life is recorded. Every single one of them will be opened up before God. Revelation 20 and verse 12 tells us, “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne,” the throne of judgment. It’s called the great white throne judgment. “And the books were opened, and the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done.” And it wasn’t this cancels out that. And then it says, “And another book was open.” And God says, I know everything you’ve done. And another book was opened, the Lamb’s Book of Life. And anyone whose name was not found written in that book was thrown into the lake of fire. Thank you, Jesus. But for everyone whose name’s in that book, you have no fear of judgment. And how does your name get written in the Lamb’s Book of Life? The Lamb who sacrificed his life for you writes your name in his book. Amen. Amen.

This is the hope of salvation of the world, and it is the only hope of salvation of the world. In Revelation 21:27, the last verse, it says, “But nothing unclean will enter it,” speaking of heaven, “nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.” Your name can be written there. Your child’s name can be written there. Your son’s name can be written there.

My mother prayed for my brothers for years and years and years while they ran from God in different ways. She loved them, and she wouldn’t quit. And now and then she’d give me a call, and she’d say, pray for this one, pray for that one. That’s just her, you know? She’d get on the phone, say pray. I want to encourage you, don’t give up. You keep praying. You keep believing. You understand and hold to the truth. And you keep believing, and you keep praying. Amen. Amen.

These are not easy things to hear. But how many of you say a truth inoculation is due in the church today? Amen. We all need this truth, and the world needs this truth. That’s why I want you to be so convinced of it that you can share it openly, that you can share it lovingly with people, that you don’t hold back on truth. We’re going to keep doing this. We’re going to keep growing in the truth of God, Church. Amen. We’ve got to be a light in the darkness. And so, you got to hold on to the truth that brings life to people.

I want to pray over you right now. And maybe you’re not yet a Christian today, and something about this triggered some faith in you, or desire in you, to say, I need God to forgive me of my sins. I need to believe on Jesus as a sacrifice for my sins. I want to believe on him. I’ll tell you what, I’m going to lead you in a prayer in just a moment, and right where you’re seated, I won’t have you stand or come up, I’m just going to let you pray right there to God. And I’ll invite everyone who’s a Christian, we do this where when we pray this prayer again, we reaffirm our own faith. That’s a good thing. It’s always good to repray this prayer, reaffirm your faith. That’s not meaning you’re not a Christian, you’re a Christian, it just reminds us of our faith. But if you’re not a Christian, when we pray that prayer, I hope that you will totally commit your life to Christ, that you’ll believe on Jesus to save you of your sins, because he will actually do that. He will come into your life and start a fellowship, start a relationship, start connecting with you. You start to sense more of God working in you, growing you, changing you. He starts working in every believer that believes in him to change him, to grow him toward what he’s created them to be, to empower you to become all that God created you to be.

And so in a moment when we pray, I’ll ask you to raise your hand and say, Pastor Matt, I am confessing Jesus as my Lord, he’s in charge, my Savior, the one who died for my sins, and I’m following him, and I’m asking him to forgive me. Let’s bow our heads right now. If you’re here and you’d say, Pastor Matt, I’d like to go ahead and pray this prayer with you this morning, I’m raising my hand to confess that Jesus is my savior. Amen. Hands are going up already. More people just keep doing that, responding across the room. Hands going up. Go ahead and raise your hand up right now and just say, this is my moment. I’m giving my heart to Christ. I’m believing in him. Amen.

Church, would you just pray? Let’s pray out loud. If you raised your hand, you could put your hand down now. But let’s pray together. And I want to lead you in this prayer. Let’s all pray out loud together right now:

Jesus, I thank you that you came to earth knowing my name, knowing my sins, and you chose to die on that cross to pay for every one of my sins. Please forgive me. Forgive me. Clean my heart and help me to follow you for the rest of my life. Thank you for loving me, for giving your life for me. I believe you are the Son of God who gave his life for my sins and rose from the dead to give eternal life for all who believe. I believe in you. Amen.

Amen. Would you give a hand for those who prayed with us this morning? Amen. Amen.

Okay. So, here’s your assignment this week. First of all, recognize moments at work and with friends where you kind of get bashful about truth and nervous and stressed and like, oh, I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to say this, this is stressing me out. And notice that, to say, wow, I need more truth inoculation on this topic. I need to understand the Bible. I need to be stronger on truth. Recognize that when you’re talking with family. Now, I’m not pushing y’all to go out and be mean to everyone and start cramming and being preachy and down the throat. There’s a good way to do things. But you should be convinced of the truth, and you should be really good about the way you handle people, right? You can do both sides of this. So, do that.

And then be back next Sunday. I have about three or four more weeks that I want to cover on very important subjects along these lines with the church. I got to keep inoculating you guys. So, come back next Sunday. Let’s do that. And reach out to people that you know need faith in Christ. Maybe they’ll show up with you next Sunday. Maybe you’ll have an opportunity to share faith and open a relationship with them. Let’s see what God will do with your life. Let God show you one person maybe this week, just one. And say, this is one person I could begin to pray for, maybe reach out to. Let God show you someone. Amen.