The Community Church: Sermons and teaching

In this podcast episode, Harry reflects on various false gospels and idols that can distract us from the true message of Jesus. He discusses how these false gospels, such as the secular gospel, therapeutic gospel, and gospel of sin management, can lead us away from finding true fulfilment and purpose in life. Harry encourages listeners to examine their own hearts and identify any idols or false beliefs that may be hindering their relationship with God and emphasizes the importance of seeking refreshment and renewal through wholehearted pursuit of Jesus. 

What is The Community Church: Sermons and teaching?

In this podcast, we share our sermons and teaching from our Sunday Celebrations + some other additional teaching content.

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Thank you for, just informing us. Just just to make sure that we did know that you cannot speak Portuguese, Jeff. That was a really helpful demonstration for us.

for those of us that went, to Lancaster last weekend, we had a fantastic time. It was a really, really good time. I was really blessed by all being together. Real sense of a joint hearts and a joint vision and a joint mission that we're going out into the world to, to see his kingdom come. And, it was, very interesting listening to Carrie as well.

I found Carrie, he shared, from, two Kings four. Carrie Jones is, an apostle, a leader to us here in the church. And he was sharing from a passage in two Kings four where he's talking about, a widow going to Elijah, the prophet of God, the man of God, and wanting a miracle because she was destitute and seeking more.

And what what ended up happening was, she had one thing left, and she wanted to to get that over. She consecrated that. It was it was a flask of oil. And the miracle that took place was that Elisha said to the widow would go and find every vessel that you can find in your village and bring it back and pour out from this tiny little flask, and all of those vessels will be full.

And lo and behold, every single vessel was filled. Carry to your house. I know these things that you just never see before, Carrie said. Small flask, big vessel, long miracle. You could have been, a long time. A long, long time. And, there was a thing at the end that he said that that kind of really stuck with me.

And it's something that I just would like to unpack a little bit more with us today. And he said that, that when the vessel was full, that is when the oil stopped, when the vessel was full, that was when the oil stopped. And Carrie went on to explain how when you when you look in the scriptures, when you look in the Bible, whenever the Bible talks about the oil, it's often referring to the Holy Spirit.

And so what he said is that when the vessel is full, there is no more need for the Holy Spirit to be poured out because the vessel is full. And then he went and he said to the churches, there is need for a pouring out of the Holy Spirit in our time, in this moment, in our season, a time of refreshing.

In the spirit. And it really struck me because, there's been things that have been happening all over the world where the spirit is just being poured out in new and fresh and dynamic ways. I heard a story of, a meeting that happened in Saint Old Dates in Oxford. Saint all dates in Oxford. Is that the kind of biggest Church of England church that's there, led by a good man called Stephen Foster, who was, formerly the director of Alpha.

And he said that we had a we had a meeting where all of, the guys that were kind of in Gen-Z, they went, invited their friends, and they each like invited ten of their friends that like 80 of them. And they all came like 800 people came to the church that evening to hear the gospel. They preach the gospel.

And basically everyone came forward to receive Jesus. And what they said, the people at the front that were that were leading people in repentance and leading people to Jesus, they said that we lost count of how many people gave their lives to Jesus. So many people came forward, and so many people receive Jesus that it broke our systems, it broke our systems.

It didn't have any stuff to give them so that it could go on in discipleship. They didn't have anything to that. They just ran out of things because the Holy Spirit was coming in that place and moved their time of refreshing. What then happened, the following week with, was that people came back and they just consecrated themselves to Jesus.

When you consecrate yourself, it means that you give yourselves wholeheartedly. You say that this vessel, this person, this body, is only to be used for the service of Jesus. And these people came back, and that was that confession. And so for anyone to say that God is dead, for anyone to say that there is there is no hope.

And the church is is down in the dumps. I defy you because God is moving in this nation.

And what what kind of really? And it wasn't concerned me, but really was just pressing upon me was was just really simply this I don't want to miss out. I don't want to miss out on what the Holy Spirit is doing. You see in the scriptures how, times of refreshing would come on people that were just whole hearted for God, whole hearted for Jesus.

Peter said that when the when, when the spirit came upon, he said, these are that this is what the prophetic word is being fulfilled, that it's what was written in Joel. And he said, I will pour out my spirit on all people, your sons and daughters. They will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions.

Even on my servants, both men and women. I will pour out my spirits in these days. And this was on a group of 120 people that said, we are wholeheartedly just seeking God and boom! The Holy Spirit comes and instant all dates in Oxford. A generation of people come forward and say, I have searched and I've searched and I've searched and I am restless and I cannot find anything to give me meaning and to give me purpose.

And we've we've been there. We've gone through all of the TikTok feeds and Instagram feeds and we just can't find it. And they come and they receive Jesus. People that are whole heartedly chasing after him. And he got me thinking about the nature of the gospel. And I was reminded of, in the in the last conversation that Jesus has with his disciples and before he, before he's, he's crucified.

And, what the Bible does is when it when it wants to bring emphasis on particular moments, it slows down time. Okay. So things take longer to explain it. Slowing down time. And, in the in the Gospel of John and the last conversation of Jesus, it's stretched out over a number of chapters. And so you should immediately be thinking, whoa, this is really, really important.

And, he's having this conversation in Jesus, this and crazy things. He he washes the disciples feet and humbles himself in a way that nobody in that society has ever been before. He washes their feet. It was the job of only slaves. And even then the lowly of the lowliest slaves. And, and in this conversation that he's having with his disciples, he says, I'm going to bring you a new commandment.

And that word new in that, in the Greek it means brand spanking new. It has never been said before. He's never been taught before. It's never been revealed before. Brand new. And so you can imagine, is Jesus is going to come and bring me the ultimate revelation, the ultimate commandment, and all the disciples. There's a deadly silence that falls upon them.

There's a there's a leaning in, what is it? What is? And Jesus says this love each other as I have you now. The commandment to love one another, that that is not new. But what is new is to love each other as I have loved you. And if you want to reduce the gospel down into one simple sentence, it would be that love each other is I have love.

And Jesus goes on to to demonstrate what that love means, how that love manifests itself.

He goes on to say that by this everyone will know that you are my disciples. If you love one another. And it it starts and it shows this radical community of people that is multi-generational, multiethnic, multi-class, multi, diverse in every sense of the word. And they come and they live together in unity, not in uniformity. That'd be boring, but in unity together.

And it shows a demonstrate, shown of God's love in a new and profound way. When you look at the historians and the sociologists that look at how Christianity grew over the first hundred years, it it is incredible to see how quickly it grew from a group of 120 people to 33 million, 33 million people over the space of 50 years, all because of this diverse group of people that came and genuinely showed sacrificial love for one another.

And I just want to kind of talk a little bit about this morning and some of the the counterfeit gospels that are out there, some of the counterfeit ways in which that we come and we we live our lives which take us away from the truth and the radical love of the gospel. And it leads us down a description.

And I believe that that what's taking place in the church is a is a re grasping, a rekindling of the mission of Jesus Christ. And that as we kind of lay Ahold of this mission and as we as we lay a hold of Jesus, and as there's a refreshing of the spirit, there's going to be a new urgency for us to live by the power of the gospel.

We're moving together with what the spirit is doing.

Tozer said, what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about. It's the most important thing. That's so what we find ourselves in this Western moment, in this Western society, is a predominant worldview that is called, moralistic therapeutic religion or days, I'm sorry, moralistic therapeutic days. And no, don't don't worry, I will explain what that means.

this is a worldview that essentially says that there is a god or a cosmic force, and it exists and it created and it ordered the world. And in this, this God, this cosmic force is kind of present. It watches over human life on Earth. And, and it wants people to be good, and it wants people to be nice and to be fair.

And you can find kind of truths about how to be good and to be fair in all of the worldviews that are out there. and, it says the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about yourself. God doesn't need to be kind of particularly involved in somebody's life, except when God is needed to resolve a problem.

And that's where the idea of God as therapy just comes in. It's not that therapy is a bad thing. Therapy can be a really, really good thing. It can help you to to discover things that, of a kind of out of kilter in your life. But then if you're going to your therapist, just, to help you in dealing with that particular issue from in yourself and not looking to Jesus as the ultimate source for that help, then that's that becomes a really big issue for us.

And finally, it believes that good people, whoever they are, go to heaven when they die. Okay, that's moralistic therapeutic deism. And and what we find, generally speaking, when you go and talk with most people out, they hold and subscribe to this kind of view is there's something out there, there's something more. And I think that if I'm just good, then I'll be able to go to heaven and I'll get to see my family and my dog and my friends.

I've spoken with so many people where generally speaking, that is that is kind of what they believe, and there is no reason at all for them to believe that very often. And when I ask people why they believe that, they go, I just it just seems right, just seems to I just think that's the right thing about it.

And I say to them, you have more face than I do. Because I have good, solid reasons for why I believe in Jesus. As far as you're describing to me, I have no idea why you believe what you believe, other than it's just what you kind of feel in the culture and society around us. So what? What then comes through that, several different kind of strains of gospel, you might say.

The first is what's called a secular gospel. And this is the idea, is that if I can if I can find all of the fulfillment from within myself, then why do I need Jesus? Okay. If I'm successful enough, if I'm, if I'm fulfilled enough, I can find fulfillment through individualism, through my success, through my power, sometimes through sexuality, sometimes through my family and the way that we are together.

Why on earth would I need Jesus if I can find my salvation, if I can find my fulfillment in that? And this is this is what our culture offers. Its trying to save us from a life of insignificance. save us from a life of loneliness, from boredom, from from meaninglessness. And it promises, I think, falsely. It promises to give us a new identity that is affirmed by the world around us, by the people that we work with, by those that we're in relationship.

And, and this kind of secular gospel is largely rooted in the pursuit of pleasures, pleasures which might last for a day. My lust for a week might last for a couple of years. comfort, you might say, as well, but. But this kind of pleasure, this kind of comfort, this kind of fulfillment never truly brings satisfaction. And we were talking with a family friend and not too long ago, and, we we found out very shortly that, one of their kids who, is a teenager, she attempted suicide, very, very sad, very, very difficult for them, understandably.

And when they talked with her, she just said that there was just no point to life. I've searched, I have looked, I've been in school, I've got my friends, I've got my family. Never experienced any kind of big trauma. And all they could say was there's just no place. Why? Go on. Why go on? And what this kind of worldview it produces?

an exhausted, tired group of followers who are always striving to keep up for the fear that their life will become irrelevant. And in the end, when it's all reduced, when it's all said and done, all you're left with is a gospel that promised you more than you could have hoped for and delivered less than you expected. When the good looks fade, the sect stops and the fame disappears.

It turns out that people are still dying. What is the point? What is the purpose?

And the danger of this is that we find this kind of seeping through into church culture. This isn't just a gospel that is believed out there, but it's a gospel that is believed in him because our ultimate satisfaction, our ultimate fulfillment, is found in the fact that we're comfortable. It's found that all of us, not just our needs for our wants, are provided for.

It's found in that I can actually find fulfillment in the success of my job and in the money that I'm earning in the family that I've got that that classic new kind of family setup. Look how fantastic we are. The Instagram curated life, and it seeps its way into the church and we can go, oh no, it's just out the people.

It's here, it's here.

The gospel of sin management. This is something that a guy called Dallas Willard coined. The gospel of sin management basically says that, that the point of life is to deal with your sin. And, you know, the danger here is that there is an element of truth in this, because sin is something that is is really, really dangerous, that does need to be dealt with.

But if all our life is just to deal with sin, we are. We are missing the beauty of the vision of the Gospel of Jesus. Because the cross isn't the gospel. The cross is the means to get into the gospel. Life. And Jesus died on the cross so that we could come into the kingdom. It is the gateway.

It is the door for us to come and live life together with Jesus and the gospel of sin management. It leads us into this legalistic lifestyle where we are taking off or trying to counteract all of the ways in which we're broken and we're messing up and all of that kind of thing. And there is so much more to life than that.

And what it ultimately does as well is it reduces the the, the danger of sin because sin isn't just about doing that's, sin isn't just about kind of fixing the brokenness itself or the brokenness in life. Sin is a it's like the worst kind of rebellion possible. And so did you guys hear about the the oil protesters that went and chucked soup at the Van Gogh painting and chucked soup at the the Mona Lisa sin is a little bit like that.

It's seeing God's creation, whether that's in yourself and somebody else or in the world. And it's like chucking a can of soup over the masterpiece and saying that I it's like an active destruction, an active, wanton way of trying to to degrade and to diminish the creative masterpiece of God that that is the nature of sin. And and what, what ends up doing is sin corrupts us in such a way that we end up doing things that we know are like this.

It's like throwing soup on the painting, and it's like once it's done, we go, I cannot believe that I've just done that.

Soup related painting. But that's where the power of Jesus comes in, because Jesus comes in through what he's done on the cross, and he's taken the punishment for all of our sin so that it's not just dealing with the sin, it's not just taking the punishment of the sin, but he was removing the power of sin in our lives forevermore, so that our confession now can be that we are the very righteousness of Christ, the very righteousness of Christ.

It's an astounding thing to say, to say that as Jesus is with God, so am I. I was speaking with a student a couple of weeks ago, and they've been going through a bit of a tough time, and, they were really regretting some of the sin that, that they had kind of partaken in in the first year at university.

And they said to me, they said, Harry, I'd really love to get baptized. This fantastic if you've been baptized before. She said, yes, I have been baptized, but I just really feel like I want a fresh start and I really want to do it again. And I told her story of, when I was in the Philippines and, this, this young guy, 17 year old, came up and he was in an exactly the same situation.

And I was young, I was fresh, I knew nothing at all. It was remarkable that I was even in a place where I could counsel this youth. And, he said, I'd love to be baptized again. I just want to start start afresh. And Nora came. I went to Nora because I was like, no, please help me. I don't know what to say.

It seems like a nice sentiment. What what do we do? And Noah came over and he listened very patiently to this story. And, and he just said and said, we don't take up the dead. What's been dead has been buried. And you live by confession and believing in what Jesus has already done for you. And so if you're here in, in, just in me talking about sin and you thinking, I feel it in me, I want you to know that because of what Jesus is, that you are the righteousness of Christ.

And what the Bible tells us is, if we come before God and we ask and we confess our sins, he will forgive us. And the Scripture say that he he will forget it, and he will move us in from us. As far as the east is from the west.

And so if there's something that you're you're dealing with this, something that you're struggling with the patience for us to pray with you later, just ask for forgiveness. You are the very righteousness of Christ. That is the confession of your lips. You're not a sinner. You are the righteousness of Christ.

Another kind of gospel that's out there is something called the therapeutic gospel. and this is the idea that the fall is seen as a failure of humans to reach our full potential. And sin is primarily about us, is it robs us of this sense of fullness. And, what it then kind of says about Jesus is that Jesus Jesus's death proves our inherent worth as human beings and gives us the power to reach our full potential.

And then the church helps us along in our quest for personal happiness and vocational fulfillment. And it's so dangerous because there's many aspects of that which you like. Yeah, that's true, but if that is your entire picture of the gospel, then it is far, far less than what Jesus has shown us, because it's not just about us and the therapeutic gospel.

The problem of it is that it puts us in the center of the world, and Jesus is there to help us to to step into our full potential. But if that is the vision of your gospel, then it's only ever going to be about you, and you're never truly going to see your full potential. Because Jesus's vision is for the world.

And Jesus comes and he says to his community of people, let's go and save the world together.

It diminishes suffering.

Because if our quest is just for personal happiness, then whenever we're walking through stuff we're constantly seeking, why am I not happy? Why am I not happy? Why am I not happy? And God always uses suffering to help refine us, to be the people that that we want to be. And very often, you know, it always strikes me that when Jesus was on the cross, any moments, any moments, he could have just said, I'm done, I'm going.

I don't need to do this. I can just step down from this. He was offered. He was offered a painkiller that would have basically dulled his senses. The wine in the myrrh. And he said, no, I need to be fully present to what God is doing. And now and this therapeutic gospel, it.

It can rob us of reaching everything that God has for us.

As many more in that I'm not I'm not going to go through each and every one. But we can. You can come and talk to me if you're interested. But. But what? These kind of, what these false gospels kind of speak to is, are the idols that are in our hearts that Paul writes to two Timothy Carey, read it a couple of weeks ago, and there's a verse in there where he says, where Paul says, for the time will come when people will not come, will not put up with sound doctrine instead to suit their own desires, to suit their own idols that they have in mind.

They will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. And when the most famous set of laws in history are the Ten Commandments and the first two laws deal with with idolatry, it says that there shall be no other God apart from me. And then the second law is, do not make any idols, and all of the other laws that kind of flow from that flow from this idea of idolatry that's in the heart don't have any idols.

And the rest of the laws find.

Because if you start envying somebody shows that there is a an idol in your life where you want something that it does not belong to you. This idol of greed, of power, of desire, whatever it is.

And for us.

I just really kind of want to draw us to a moment where we. We give God and give the Holy Spirit the space just to reveal if there's any idols that are very often any idols that kind of feed these, these false gospels so that we we don't grasp the true nature of the gospel of Jesus. And Tim Keller, a famous pastor was teaching in New York.

He sadly passed away last year, but he he had some great questions to ask on this, and I'll just read some of them for you here. What do we fear the most? What if we lost it? Would it make life not worth living?

If our counterfeit idol a counterfeit gospel, our counterfeit God is threatened in any way, is our response complete panic?

Do we do we say, what a shame. How difficult? Or do we say there is no hope? This is the end.

Is the what happens, when your your thoughts are effortlessly going. He says the true God of your heart is is what your thoughts, effort, lives effortlessly go to when there's nothing else demanding your attention. What do you habitually think about to get joy and comfort in the privacy of your heart? Oh, that's a big one. I went through a time a few years ago where, honestly, for me it sounds ridiculous to say it, but honestly, for me it was winning the lottery.

I'm not joking. That's what it was, where my heart would continuously just go. my life would be so much better. With those millions of pounds that the nice big house, the comfortable life, not having to to worry about, the bills that are coming in and all that kind of thing. Honestly, that that's what it was to me.

God dealt with that. Thankfully, it wasn't fun, but God got dealt with it. But what do you habitually think about what is your real daily function or salvation? A good way to discern this is how you respond to unanswered prayers and frustrated hopes. When you pray and you work for something and you don't get it, and you respond with explosive anger or deep despair, then you may have found your real God.

And, Tim Curry says this A final test works for everyone. Look at your most uncontrollable emotions. Look for your idols at the bottom of your most painful emotions, especially those that never seem to lift and that drive you to do things you know are wrong. Ask is there something here too important to me? Something that I must have at all costs?

Am I so scared because something in my life is being threatened that I think is a necessity when it is not? Am I so down on myself because I have lost or failed at some something I think is a necessity when it is not? There's, a story in Genesis of a guy called Jacob. Jacob is one of the patriarchs.

He's the son of Isaac, and he lived his life being the unsaved son. And Isaac favored his older brother Esau, and, what you find in this, in this story is how Jacob is, is constantly just looking for his father's affirmation. And it comes to this ridiculous episode where Jacob decides to dress up in all of the fittings and trimmings of Esau to to hear his father's blessing.

And you know, what you read in the scriptures later on is that, you know, you could think that Jacob was after all of the money and all of that kind of stuff, all of the inheritance and that might have been part of what was going on in Jacob's. But the reality was everything went to weasel, because Jacob left the poor man to go and serve another man in a different area.

And he was just desperate for his father's blessing, just desperate for his father's approval. And so what then happens is that Jacob goes off and he goes and visits a man called Laban. And when he when he goes there, he discovers a lady, Becca. And she was gorgeous. And the way that the scriptures describe it is that Jacob was literally lovesick, completely and utterly lovesick.

And so this approval side of things that he's been wanting is now being shifted across to Rebecca, and he comes up with this completely ridiculous promise where he says, in order to get Rebecca, I want to lay down a dowry worth seven years wages, seven years wages in order to get her hand in marriage. If you look at the average wage in the UK now, it's like 30,000 pounds, 31,000 pounds.

So he's offering 210,000 pounds for this lady's hand in marriage. And, after the seven years are up, the Bible is quite explicit. Jacob basically goes to Laban bearing in mind that this is the father, and he says, my seven years are up. I'm desperate to see your daughter naked. Please. Now, can I marry her and sleep with her?

That is literally the kind of reading that is there. So much was this idol in Jacob's heart.

At Laban and tricked him. And he ended up, how? I don't know, but he ended up sleeping with, with the older sister and not knowing that he slept with the older sister and ended up in that culture, marrying somebody that he didn't want to marry. And he then worked another seven years for Rebecca's hand in marriage of Rachel.

Thank you, thank you. Julia. Rachel. And, so you end up then with 420,000 pounds worth of money as a dowry for this one woman. And in marriage, he's lovesick, completely and utterly lovesick.

And he ends up having Rachel. He he and has Rachel and starts this family. And he ends up wanting to go back to his his, his home. And he's very concerned about seeing this. So because of the way that he portrayed him, because the way that he tricked him and, Esau has an army of people and they're coming to meet Jacob.

And so Jacob, what he decides to do is he's traveling back. So he says, I want some alone time to think about how I'm going to deal with this. And so, Jacob goes and he goes for a walk and he comes across this man who. Just a taxi and wrestles with him and takes him to the ground and fight him there for hours and hours and hours.

And suddenly the realization comes upon him that this person is God, this person is God, and God touches his hip and his leg is dislocated immediately. This God that that just with a simple touch could have destroyed him. And he was resting there for hours and hours and hours. And Jacob, suddenly in that moment, realizes he got everything wrong and the approval that he was seeking for him, his father, to his wife, he just needed to look to his self.

And he said, please come and give me that blessing. No, it doesn't say what that blessing is, but I wonder if it was very similar to when Jesus was baptized. And when Jesus was baptized, the sound of heaven came. It says, this is my son in whom I am well.

Jesus never had any idols in his heart. He lived a life knowing who he was, in that he lived a life knowing that he was. Chosen, purposed. Loved completely and unconditionally.

Wherever it is that we we go to look for our fulfillment will. We'll never find peace, will never find satisfaction, will never find rest unless we come to the source of it all and come to Jesus. The price of looking for those waters and never drinking it. It's just a restlessness. It's going to be there forever.

The gospel of Jesus is incredible. Because the good news of Jesus is this. That I've come to save the world, but not hurry. I just want to make that clear. I have come to save the world, and I will literally stop at nothing to ensure it's salvation.

And I will do everything that I can to help you come and be part of that restoration, the reconciliation and the renewal of the world. And I want you to be a part of that. His vision is enormous.

And his strategy is me and you. Stephen Foster says that that the church is God's plan for the salvation of the world. There's no plan B, and God is going to build his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. God is putting all his eggs in the church basket.

And it it it's remarkable that we find ourselves in a place where God has put so much trust in us. It's like the complete opposite of cancel culture. God is unbending in his will and his desire to draw all people to himself, no matter what, no matter what. He he sees people. He he truly sees them. He truly knows them and doesn't just say to that person that that's the one who I want to uniquely fulfill the purpose in what I've got for the world.

But he says, I love you. And his commitment to us, to our liberation and our transformation is not into who we think we are, but into who he originally intended us to be. There's no canceling. There's no plan D, all of God's cons are on the table, and it's right here in this room. And the consequence of God's radical decision is that we play this huge part in the way that the world perceives Jesus and perceives the church.

And so.

My encouragement to you is simply this what gospel do you follow? Go away. Think about it. Are you about to allow the spirit to talk to you? Am I here? The encouragement to you be? Are there any idols in your heart that just needs to be torn down and stripped away? Because God is moving in this nation, God is moving in this world, and a time of refreshment is upon us.

A time of refreshment is upon us. And if we if we don't deal with these questions, and if we don't wholeheartedly seek and pursue Jesus, we will miss out. And we want to say, not on our watch. That is not what we are here for. That is not what we want to see. So I'm going to invite the worship team just to come back up.

And it might be that you don't even need to go away and think about it. You don't even need to go away and pray about it. You know that there are idols in your life. You know that, you've been following one of these false gospels, and you just want somebody to stand with you in prayer. Well, during this song, please just come forward and we would love to pray with you.

It might be, that you're just really seeking refreshment. You've got thirsty bones, you've got a thirsty, so you've just lost your way. You've come away from the shores of the river. And if that's the case as well, then come forward. And we would love to pray for you. And if you're here and you've never received Jesus as your Lord and Savior, but you want to talk and you want to ask some questions, and you can come forward to this, we'd love to pray with you.

Jesus says, come all who are thirsty. Whoever believes in me as Scripture say, rivers of living water will come and they will flow out of their heart. Province says the light of the eyes, it rejoices the heart, and good news refreshes the bones.

We live in a time of good news because Jesus is alive. I just going to invite you to stand and we'll pray.

And just as I'm praying, if this if there's any sense in this, this that I've talked about, you just want to come forward for Christ, please take that step of faith, come forward and we will pray with you. Father, we thank you that you sent Jesus down to us, that you so loved the world, that you gave your one and only son, that whoever believes in him might have eternal life.

And Lord, we come, and we stand before you with open hearts and open minds and open spirits. And we say, Lord, we want you to come and to clean out anything that is polluted, that is corrupted, that is is fogged up our vision of who Jesus is and what your good news is. Lord, if there are any idols on the altar of our hearts, father, we pray that you would come by your spirit and topple those down.

Lord, we declare that we want to live whole heartedly for you because we want to see a refreshing in your spirit. Father, we want to see an outpouring of your kingdom. We want to see miracle. We want to see side. We want to see wonder. Father, we want to see people coming into your kingdom by the tens, by the hundreds, by the thousands.

Why not? Because we want bums on seats too. Because you love the world and we love the world.

Father, may it be that we live in such a way. Be obedient in such a way that as we hear these stories, that the outpouring of your spirit, father, that we would see them here to.

And know that as we go out for this day.

That the power of the gospel would always is. Jeff said that it's going a slow declining. And so Sunday that gets us that we would find a life. Those attractions of people.

Because you are our strong foundation. You are our strength. You are our security because of who you are and what you said. So Lord, we just pray this day in the mighty, wonderful name of Jesus. Amen.