Ridgecrest Baptist Church is located in Dothan, AL and exists to Reach the lost, Build the believer, and Connect people of God to the mission and purpose of God.
You know, we're talking about the word faithful as we begin 2025. It's a word that I pray will shape your commitments this year and shape your behavior and really your faith and your legacy. Now when it comes to being a faithful Christian, there are many areas that we could talk about. But in this series, what I've tried to do is talk about a few that rise to the top, at least for the coming year and for us and our congregation. Now last week we talked about the faithful Christian and the faithful Christian's
pursuit of God in the coming year. And today I want to talk with you about another life-directing area of faithfulness, and it's this matter of worship. Now, I think we do it well here. I think we have good leadership between both of our services in terms of helping us worship. But worship is not just in music, though that's a substantial part. Music is so important
because it prepares our hearts to receive God the truth of God. It gets us in the right frame. And that's why it's so special to us and so important. I don't know that anybody does it a lot better than we do around here for sure. And I'm so grateful for Aaron and both of our guys, Bradley and the second service and their
leadership. But worship is what I want to talk with you about this morning. There was an article that occurred some years back in the Wall Street Journal titled David Foster Wallace on life and work. And it quotes Wallace, who was an award-winning journalist and novelist and an intellectual who was at the time at the top of his profession and then committed suicide. And in the article before his death, it quotes him from a famous graduation commencement service
he gave at Kenyon College, and it's worth reading. But I want to give you just an excerpt of what he wrote before he died. And he wrote about a person spending their life worshiping the wrong things. And this is what he said. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there's actually no such thing
as atheism because everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough. If you worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure, then you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing... you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you
in the ground. If you worship power, you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. If you worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, and always on the verge of being found out. And so on it goes. You know, he's right about this. Everyone worships, don't they? Everybody worships something or someone,
and that's why the object of our worship is so important. Well, we've just come through the Christmas season, and we celebrate, of course, the birth of our Savior and worship Him. So we decorate like many of you, and this year we added a little nativity scene. a tabletop nativity scene. In fact, the Lewis boys over here, they're the ones who built it with their dad. And then Alice and I, we
bought one from them and set it up on our table. And then one day during the Christmas season, my wife looks at that nativity scene and she says, where's baby Jesus? And I said, I looked at it and he was gone. And I said, I don't know. I didn't do anything with Jesus. And she said, well, I didn't do anything with Jesus. And so we went on this
search to find the baby Jesus. Somewhere in our house, we assumed. She said, surely we didn't throw him away and, you know, with all the stuff that you got. I said, no, he was on the table there. I said, we put him on the table there with the rest of the nativity. And we couldn't find him. We couldn't find him, and Lewis says, I can tell you we did find him. So my wife asked
Wyatt and the boys, could y'all make us another baby Jesus for our nativity? Well, we found him when we were packing up Christmas. Baby Jesus was with all the Christmas cards. I don't know how he got there. We have a Christmas card display thing, and that's where baby Jesus was. He was with the Christmas cards. Maybe he
was reading them. I don't know. I You know, maybe it was an elf on a shelf kind of thing. He just moves around a little bit. I don't know, but we found the baby Jesus. But I had this thought, you know, you don't really have a nativity if you don't have Jesus. Because the whole object
of the nativity is Jesus, right? And those wise men that came, came to worship Jesus. So the object of worship is very important, isn't it? If you don't have the right object, well, your worship is probably not going to be very satisfying. The fact is that you're designed to worship. When God created you, he created you to be a worshiper. And so that's why
everybody does worship. And David Foster Wallace had that much right, though he didn't find the ultimate meaning of worship, did he? But worship is what you and I were created for. It's one of the things that God put us on this earth to do. And if you worship anything other than God, you will never be satisfied. You see, the object of worship is so important.
2,000 years ago, God birthed the church. Now, the church has several God-given tasks, and we talk about those here. Ridgecrest, to reach others with the good news. That's one of the tasks of the church. By the way... I hope you'll be here tonight for part two of Tell Your Story. We're going to work through the second section
of that. If you didn't come last week, it's okay, come on. But we exist to take the gospel into the world. We exist to build and equip believers to carry on the work of God on earth. It's part of our task as a church. And then we exist to connect the saints of God with their specific role in God's work. These are the three things that make
up our task of the church. But let me add something to you, and that is one of the greatest tasks of the church is to help us worship and experience God both individually and corporately. Because of that, we must be faithful worshipers. And in fact, it's the reason the writer of Hebrews said, let us not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. He says that's
the custom of many. You know, it's interesting how COVID kind of weaned out a lot of worshipers, didn't it? But the writer of Hebrews says, let's not forsake the assembling of ourselves. We need to assemble with one another. In fact, he says, all the more as you see the day approaching. He's talking about the return of Christ. It's one of the tasks that
we need to practice and practice faithfully. I want to encourage you in this new year to make worship, the gathered worship, a priority in your life. Now today we hear a lot of people saying things like, well, I'm trying to find authentic worship. This word authentic has become very popular in modern language today. I'm trying to find authentic worship. There's nothing wrong with
wanting authenticity in worship. Nothing wrong with that at all. But often that really means something more like this. I'm looking for something that I like. And it's really often more about me than about worshiping God. But biblically speaking, now listen to this, biblically speaking, Worship is never about us. Worship is about God. The fact is, we are
not, as we sometimes confuse, we are not the audience, and God is not the orchestrator. The fact is, biblically speaking, God is the audience, and we are the worship offering. The focus of worship is not on us. The focus of worship is on God. There's a song we sometimes sing that captures this idea. It says, I'm coming back to the heart of worship
because it's all about you, Lord. It's all about you. I'm sorry, Lord, for the thing that I've made it. When it's all about you, it's all about you. That's a great song to remind us that worship, we get blessed in worship. But worship is to be focused upon God. So in 2025, how can we do worship right? How can we do it better? How can we be the faithful worshipers
of God? Well, that's what I want to show you this morning. If you're physically able to do so, stand with me as we read from Psalm 100, a short psalm, five verses. Follow along with me. The psalmist says, Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into His presence with singing. Know that
the Lord, He is God. It is He who made us, and we are His. We are His people, and the sheep of His pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him. Bless his name. For the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations. Father, thank you that you are faithful. In fact,
Father, the scripture reminds us that even when we're unfaithful, you remain faithful because you can't deny yourself. Thank you for being a faithful God. In 2025, Lord, cause us to be faithful worshipers. Thank you, Father, for the message of this psalm. Would you use it now in our hearts? Speak to us, Father. Teach us and instruct us. Convict us, Lord.
Change us and challenge us with your word. We are listening, Father. Speak into our hearts now. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you. You can be seated. Now, this is one of a sequence of psalms of praise and worship. It's sometimes even referred to as a Psalm of the King.
And this psalm, as you can tell, it starts with a burst of energy. It's focused on a shout of loyalty to God. It's jubilant. It's an invitation to worship, and it's a call to praise God. In fact, one commentator said this, that this psalm expresses the essence of worship. It's only five verses long, as I said, but this psalm powerfully
summons us to worship God, and it does that with a series of imperatives. You know what imperatives are. They're commands. For example, in verse 1, it says that we're to shout. That's an imperative. That's a command. We're to worship. In verse 2, that's a command. Verse 2 says, "...come into his presence." That's a command. Verse 3 says, "...know."
That's a command. Enter into his gates. That's a command in verse 4. Give thanks, verse 4. Command and praise in verse 4. These are all commands. They are not suggestions. They are commands about worship. And these commands are used to move us, not just in individual worship, but in corporate worship together. Now, I tell
you, worship is not a spectator sport. It's a participation event. And to help us be faithful in the coming year, I want to talk about three of these commands. We're not going to talk about all of them, but I want to talk about three of these commands that will help you and help me to be more effective worshipers, to help us to be faithful worshipers of the Lord Jesus Christ. The first one we see is in verse 2 when he says to us, Worship the Lord with gladness. Worship the Lord in gladness. This is the first of the commands that
I want us to look at. This is about the joy of worshiping. You know, have you ever seen somebody that came in to worship and they look like they've been sucking on green persimmons? And there looks to be no joy. I want to tell you something. When the joy of the Lord is in a place, the joy of the Lord will be on your face. And this is about worshiping the Lord in gladness
with joy. And it says, come into His presence with singing. Notice that kind of gladness, that joy and joy. singing are all connected. They're all tied to one another. Because there's something about music that just elevates our joy for the Lord, isn't there? And by the way, because we're talking about worship today, I hope if you
look, Aaron will take you up here in this choir. And did you notice how this thing starts off? Make a joyful noise. It didn't say you have to sing good. Because I've heard some of these. I didn't tell you what I heard from them. I heard them making joyful noises for the glory of God. But you can come and help him fill this thing up. You know, the choir
helps us. And it's a way that you can express your joy in the Lord. There's a table set up out in the worship center for both of our services, by the way, to become a part of the music team that helps us worship. It helps prepare our hearts for the Word of God. So I urge you to stop by there seriously. You say, well, I don't have any training. I can't read music, all that. You don't
have to be able to do all that. All you have to do is say, here am I. Tell me what you need me to do, and I'll sing, and I'll praise God with my voice. Use it for his glory. It's said that George Frederick Handel, y'all know who Handel is. He composed his famed musical, The Messiah. And The Messiah, he composed that in three
weeks. It was apparently done at a time when his eyesight was failing and when he was facing the possibility of being imprisoned because he couldn't pay his bills. Handel, however, kept riding the Messiah in the midst of these challenges, which concluded with, as you know, the Hallelujah Chorus. And Handel later credited the completion of
his work to one ingredient. You know what he said what helped him? It was the joy of the Lord. He was quoted as saying that he felt as if his heart would burst with joy at what he was hearing in his mind. Similarly, in the midst of the many challenges that he faced, including chains, imprisonment, and slander, the Apostle Paul, filled with the joy that Christ gives, could say in
Philippians 4, rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, rejoice. You get it? Worshiping God is not a chore that we carry out. Worshiping is not something that we have to, it's something we get to do. It's a joyous activity that we get to participate in. Psalm 122 and verse 1, David said this, I was glad when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord. I was glad. Psalm
122 is a psalm that we call a psalm of ascent. I told you this psalm comes from what we call a psalm of praise or a psalm of worship, a psalm of majesty or of the king's royalty. But Psalm 122 is part of a series of psalms we call Psalms of Ascent. And they were songs that God's people sang as they headed up to Jerusalem. I don't have time to explain that, but
Jerusalem sits above sea level. And so as they went up, that's why Jerusalem is a city set on a hill, they would say. But as they ascended the hill into the holy city, they would sing these songs, and this was one of those songs. I was glad when they said, let us go to the house of the Lord. That's where they're headed, to the house of God, to the place of God, to be where God's word and the glory of God were put
on display. That thrilled David. And the psalmist David was overwhelmed, not merely with the place, you know, as in where they worshiped, though it was magnificent, but with what took place in the worship of God. And there are a couple of things that I want to give you here about worshiping the Lord in gladness. Jot these down. I'm going to go pretty quick with these. First of all, I would say, worshiping
the Lord in gladness is not dependent on your feelings. Don't confuse joy with happiness. They're not the same thing. The feeling of gladness is wonderful. I'm all for it. But listen, expressing gladness is also an action. It's an act of discipline. Did you know that? That's why he would command us to be glad. to worship with gladness. Sometimes, listen,
you're going to say, well, I don't feel glad. It doesn't matter. Practice gladness. Gladness isn't dependent on your feelings. Number two. Worshiping the Lord in gladness is about understanding who God is and what He's done. And so I can express gladness because I know what He's done. He has created us. Do you notice it says there
in verse 3, it is He who made us and we are His. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Guess what? I understand what God has done. God has created me. I belong to Him. He has saved me so I can worship Him with gladness. Number three, it's an attitude we adopt. The psalmist writes in Psalm 118, verse 24, This is the day the Lord has made.
Let us rejoice and be glad in it. This is an attitude that is practiced. This is the day. That's a fact. The Lord has made. That's a fact. I will be glad. That's a fact. And I will rejoice in it. That's a practice. That's a practice. I'll be glad about
it.
And that leads to the second command that I want us to look at this morning, and that is we must worship the Lord not only with gladness, we must also worship the Lord with gratitude.
Another command there in verse 4 where he says, enter his gates with thanksgiving.
The practice of gratitude is a powerful influence on your life.
In fact, there's a growing body of research that has tied an attitude of gratitude with a number of positive emotional and physical health benefits.
In an article in the Wall Street Journal, they summarize the research this way.
Adults who frequently feel grateful have more energy, more optimism, more social connections, and more happiness than those who do not, according to the studies conducted over the past decade.
They're also less likely to be depressed, envious, greedy, or alcoholics.
They earn more money, sleep more soundly, exercise more regularly,
and have greater resistance to viral infections.
How about that?
That's the physical effects these researchers have discovered from living with an attitude of gratitude.
And that's all good news.
But listen, more than just the physical effects of gratitude, there are the spiritual effects of gratitude on your relationship with God.
If you're a parent, you think about this.
You think about how you feel when your child says, Thanks, Mom.
You think about when your child says, thanks, Dad.
There's just something about gratitude, isn't there?
And thanks endears our relationships.
I brought something this morning.
I keep this in my office.
Actually, people think it's there for self-defense.
It's not.
It's a hammer.
It lays right there in my counseling office, and it lays right there on the table, and people always say, what's that for?
I say, we'll see.
But I have this.
This may be my favorite gift that my daughter has ever given me.
She gave it to me a few years ago on a Father's Day, and she had it engraved.
I don't know where she found this, but they engraved it.
You probably can't see the message, so I'm going to tell you what it says.
It says, Daddy, thank you for helping me build my life.
Love, Karis.
Now, I love, I cherish this gift.
She's given me a lot of pretty cool gifts, but I cherish this one.
It lays there on display because why?
It was an expression of gratitude.
It is the engraving that means more than the hammer.
The hammer is a symbol, but the engraving is the message of gratitude.
Thank you, Daddy, for helping me build my life.
We all love that, don't we?
We love when people say that.
Here, Chuck.
you'll take that for me I wish you could have seen his eyes and Robert too you was afraid he'd miss weren't you Robert now I say that but then I say that to say this in the same way God loves it when his children say thank you father
Thank you, Father.
Thank you for helping me build my life.
Thank you, God.
I couldn't build my life without you.
Thank you.
And there are two things about worship and thanksgiving.
And I don't know if you picked up on this in the passage when he says, enter his gates, but thanksgiving starts before you get to church.
It doesn't happen after you walk in.
I hope it does.
But I hope that only exacerbates it.
I hope that only generates more thanksgiving and praise for God and gratitude for God.
But thanksgiving starts before you ever get to church.
Enter his gates.
That means go in.
Already with an attitude of gratitude.
It starts not after you gather, but before you gather.
And let me prove it to you.
Why else do you think the devil tries to create such discord in your home on Sunday morning or in the car driving to church?
Why do you think the devil does that?
He wants you to enter grumbly.
He wants you to enter stressed.
He wants you to enter pouting.
God says, the psalmist says, enter his gates with thanksgiving.
Let it start before you ever get there.
Secondly, thanksgiving is offered with praise.
Come into his courts with praise.
Enter into his courts.
I was glad when they said, let us go into the house of the Lord.
I entered into his courts with praise.
Come into his courts with praise.
Praise is the natural byproduct of gratitude.
It's the natural byproduct.
There's an old song we used to sing.
Now, Aaron, I like that song we did, you know, the hymn.
I like that.
There's another old song, though, that we sing sometimes, Count Your Blessings.
Remember that?
Count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will...
surprise you what the Lord has done.
And I told our staff this past week, I was giving them some seven things that the Lord had put on my heart to share with them as we move into 2025 that I hope will characterize each of us as your staff and in the ministry that we have.
But one of them I said is remember to praise God for something every day.
remember to thank God for something every day.
Every day, find something.
Say, this is a blessing.
I'm going to praise God for this.
There may be 15 things that are challenges for me, but here's 15 things I can praise Him for.
Here's something I can say thank you for.
Here's something I can express my gratitude in.
The faithful worshiper then worships in gladness, worships with gratefulness,
And last, the faithful worshiper worships the Lord for his goodness.
That's number three that I want you to see this morning.
Notice that he says in verse 5, for the Lord is good.
In other words, because of what I've just said, you worship him because he's good.
God is good.
This final verse explains why we should worship and why we should praise God.
Our worship is to be prompted by the goodness of God displayed toward us.
And God has been good to us, hasn't he?
I was thinking about it on my drive in this morning, early this morning.
I was thinking about the goodness of God.
I was thinking about where He brought me from.
I was thinking about all the challenges of my past and where God had brought me.
And I thought about what the psalmist says, the boundary lines have fallen to me in pleasant places.
It's a great line.
And what he's saying is God has been good.
The boundary lines have fallen in pleasant places.
I can look and say, are there heartaches?
Are there pains?
Are there difficulties that I wish had not been in my life?
Of course.
But there also, there's this sweet boundary that God has put me within because God loves me and God is good.
And the psalmist is reiterating, worship Him because He is good.
Our worship of His goodness is manifested
when we come into His presence, when we come into His house.
When the devil tries to get in your brain and in your head and calls you to think, oh, this is horrible, this is horrible, I'm going through this, I'm facing this, why don't you stop and count your blessings?
Remind yourself, remember, but what can I find that's good?
How can I find the goodness of God?
Ask God, God, show me your goodness in the midst of whatever it is I'm facing or I'm going through.
The goodness of God, the psalmist says, is manifested in a couple of ways.
He said, number one, through his steadfast love.
Did you notice that?
Verse 5, the Lord is good.
His steadfast love endures forever.
God never stops loving you.
You know, the Bible says we're talking about faithfulness.
The Bible says God is always faithful even when we're unfaithful.
Why?
Because he says he can't deny himself.
He can't deny his own nature.
His nature is one of faithfulness.
And so God remains faithful even when you and I are not faithful.
Why?
Because his steadfast love endures forever.
God never stops loving you.
You are never beyond the love of God.
His love endures forever.
And it's not circumstantial love.
God doesn't love you because you look a certain way.
God doesn't love you because you've done a certain thing.
God doesn't love you because of this.
That's conditional love.
He just loves you.
He loves you in spite of you.
Maybe that will help us.
He loves me in spite of me.
He knows me.
He knows all about me.
He knows all about you.
The hairs on your head are numbered.
He knows us.
And He loves us.
Isn't that remarkable?
I've had people in counseling sessions before say, well, if people really knew who I was, they wouldn't love me.
That's not true of God.
Because God doesn't love on the curve.
He doesn't say, well, you're lovely to others, so you're lovely to me.
God says, no matter who you are, I love you.
I created you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
And I stretched out my arms and died for you on a cross.
That's how much I love you.
He's a good, good God, isn't he?
And He wants us to know that He manifests His goodness in His enduring love.
No matter what you've done, if you're listening by television or live stream, on radio, wherever it may be, in this live audience, and you think you're beyond the love of God, you've believed a lie.
Don't you believe it.
God loves you and will always love you.
You are His creation.
Go back to verse 3.
It is He who has made, put your name in there, it is He who has made me and I am His creation.
And I belong to him and I'm a sheep of his pasture.
Personalize it.
His steadfast love endures forever.
God also manifests his goodness by his faithfulness to all generations.
God has always been and always will be faithful to his word.
What he said he will be faithful to and what he's promised to his people will happen.
His faithfulness.
endures forever.
His faithfulness is to all generations.
From one generation to the next, God remains faithful.
We often misunderstand the nature of God because God is righteous.
Many people believe that He is a mean and angry God.
Now, can God be angry?
God can be angry.
God is angry when righteousness is flaunted and when righteousness is mocked and when righteousness is defied.
The Bible makes very clear that he has a righteous kind of holy anger.
But his essential nature is a nature of love.
The Bible even says it this way, God is love.
It's not very complicated, is it?
His essential nature is love.
I like what Jeremy Treat wrote a few years back in an article titled, God is not out to get you.
In the article he said this, many people view God and believe that he's a grumpy old man who has to get his way and that when he doesn't, he will shame, guilt, and scare people to get and bring them back in line.
Although most wouldn't say it out loud, deep down many believers, he writes, think of God as the God who is out to get me.
But that God is waiting for us, and that God is waiting for us to mess up so he can mete out his divine quota for punishing sin.
He writes, perhaps this comes from a particular teaching or some form or bad experience with a church or a Christian.
But either way, this is how many people functionally view God, that God is waiting for an opportunity to get me.
But when you look deeply into the Scriptures, what you find is often a very different kind of God.
You find the God who delights in His creation.
You find the God who sings, the God who saves.
The Lord your God is with you, the mighty warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you.
And in His love, He will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.
The prophet Zephaniah wrote, He's good.
He's a good God.
And so we worship Him.
We worship Him because of His steadfast love.
We worship Him because His faithfulness to us is throughout time and is unconditional and He is good.
He is a good loving God and He's good toward us.
Now don't allow the goodness of God to minimize His awesomeness.
He's still the awesome mighty God.
He's not some great big buddy in the sky.
He is the awesome God but He's good.
In the series, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S.
Lewis, it's a wonderful kind of children's, but really it's good for adults too, series of fiction that Lewis wrote to kind of express who God is in kind of euphemistic terminology.
And in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, part of that collection is
There's an occasion where Susan and Lucy, two of the main characters, come across Mr. and Miss Beaver.
And they ask Mr. and Miss Beaver to tell them about Aslan.
You need to understand who Aslan is.
Aslan in this story is a lion, but Aslan is the Christ figure in the novels.
And so Susan and Lucy ask Mr. and Miss Beaver to tell them about Aslan the lion.
They ask, is Aslan a man?
And Mr. Beaver replies, Aslan a man?
Certainly not.
I tell you, he is the king of the woods and the son of the great emperor beyond the sea.
Don't you know who is the king of beasts?
Aslan is a lion, the lion, the great lion.
Oh, said Susan, I thought he was a man.
Is he quite safe?
Because I'll feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.
That you will, dearie.
Make no mistake, said Mr. Beaver.
If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly.
Then is he safe?
asked Lucy.
Safe, said Mr. Beaver.
Don't you hear what Miss Beaver tells you?
Who said anything about safe?
Of course he isn't safe.
But he's good.
And he's the king, I tell you.
Do you get it?
He's the king.
And he's good.
And one day, every knee will bow in worship.
And every tongue will praise and confess his name.
So until that day comes, our responsibility is,
is to faithfully worship Him here and now.
Do you know what the greatest act of worship is?
It's giving your life to Him.
The greatest act of worship is to give your life to the King, to recognize who He is, and to understand what He's done for you.
He loves you, and He died on the cross for you.
And He wants to walk with you.
He wants to be your God.
He wants you to recognize that you're the sheep of his pasture.
The greatest act of worship any of us can practice is to give our lives to him.
And if you've never done that this morning, I want to invite you to give yourself to him.
How do you do that?
Well, you call on him.
The Bible says, as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God.
You have to receive him.
He's a gentleman.
He won't force himself upon you.
The Bible says, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.
Lord, save me.
You say, well, I don't know how to pray those kind of prayers.
Listen, call on the Lord.
Lord, save me.
Lord, I'm a sinner.
I need you.
Lord, I need forgiveness.
I call on you.
Come into my life.
Forgive me.
You know what the Bible says?
He'll do it.
If you've never put your trust in Him today, start worshiping.
You say, I want to worship in 2025 better than I've ever worshipped.
Give your life to Christ.
If you've been distant from Him, just come back.
Say, Lord, I'm going to get back where I need to be in worship and worshiping.
I surrender myself afresh to you.
I thank you that you've saved me, but I need to surrender again.
You know, surrender is not a one and done thing.
Have you all noticed that about yourself?
That surrender is in the present tense.
I surrender right now.
I'll surrender tomorrow.
I'll surrender the next day and the next day and the next day.
I surrender to you.
It's an act of worship.
Surrender is an act of worship.
If you've not trusted him today, I invite you to invite him into your life.
If you've wandered away from him, I invite you to surrender anew for 2025.
Not a better way to start the year than surrender and acceptance.
Would you bow your head, close your eyes?
No one's looking about in this place.
Maybe you're watching by television or you're in this live audience and you need to give your life to Christ today.
Right where you are right now, why don't you say, Lord Jesus, thank you for loving me.
I know that I'm a sinner.
I know that I need you and I want you in my life.
I want to worship you.
And so I invite you to come in.
Forgive me and be my Lord and Savior and Master.
For those in this place or watching on live stream or television that say, you know what, it's time for me to surrender afresh to God.
I've been doing life my way again, and I want to walk in His way in 2025.
Lord, help me to walk behind You.
Fill me with Your Holy Spirit afresh.
I surrender to Your Lordship.
Now, Father, would you hear these prayers?
I know you do.
Thank you.
And now, Father, would you move in our hearts before we leave this place to obey you, make whatever the decision might be that we need to make for your glory and our good as an act of worship in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, I'm so glad that you have tuned in to the broadcast today.
I hope you've been encouraged by God's word.
Sure has been a joy to share it with you.
And even now, people at Ridgecrest are making decisions for Christ.
Perhaps as you've watched this broadcast, you've recognized the need for your own decision for Christ.
The prompting of the Spirit has caused you to recognize that you need Christ as your Savior.
And the good news is you can receive Him right where you are.
The Bible says, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.
Right where you are, you can call on Him.
Say something like this from your heart to Him.
Lord Jesus, thank you for loving me.
I know I'm a sinner.
And I know that you came into this world and died on the cross for my sins.
And right now, I invite you to come into my life.
Forgive me and be my savior.
I can assure you if you'll call on him, based on what God has already told us in the Bible, that he'll hear that prayer and he'll answer that.
And he wants to begin this new journey.
in your life with you, transforming you into His image.
We'd love to help you with that decision as well.
You'll see a QR code on your screen, and if you would scan that, or you'll see contact information, or if you'll contact us about your decision today, we'd love to help you take next steps.
There are no strings attached, no fees involved.
We'd just like to help you begin that journey with Christ.
You may be watching this broadcast today and say, I need a church family to belong to.
I already know Christ as my savior and I'd like to be a part of the Ridgecrest family.
Also, if you will scan that QR code, that'll take you to a location and we'll be able to help you make those kinds of decisions like becoming a member here or if you've never been scripturally baptized, those kinds of things.
So contact us through that QR code or through the contact information on the screen.
Well, again, it's been a joy to have you with us today.
And I hope you've been encouraged by God's word.
Whatever decision we can help you with, by all means, contact us.
May the Lord bless you.