Live and Love Like Jesus pt.1 | Entrust Your Whole Life To God | Marcus Donalson

Can you really trust God with your whole life? In a world filled with uncertainty, broken trust, fake headlines, failed promises, and painful relationships, that question matters more than ever.

In this powerful message, we explore what it means to entrust your life to God and why surrendering to Jesus is not a blind leap, but a faithful response to the goodness, love, and character of God. Through Scripture, this sermon reveals that God is a perfect Father, a faithful promise keeper, and a secure Savior who will never fail you.

If you have ever struggled with trust, fear, control, surrender, or uncertainty about your future, this biblical message will encourage you to take the next step of faith.

In this message, you will discover:
 • Why trusting God can feel hard in today’s world
 • How God proved His love by sending Jesus to die for us
 • Why God’s promises never fail, even when life feels uncertain
 • How your security in Christ changes the way you live today
 • What it means to surrender to God willingly, not fearfully
 • Why entrusting your life to Jesus is the most important decision you can make

Key Scriptures:
 • Romans 5:8
 • Romans 6:23
 • Numbers 23:19
 • Proverbs 19:21
 • John 10:28
 • Philippians 3:20
 • Revelation 21:4

Whether you are new to faith, returning to God, or learning how to trust Him more deeply, this sermon will help you understand that God is worthy of your trust because He gave His life for you, keeps His word, and secures your future forever.

If this message encouraged you, be sure to like, subscribe, and share it with someone who needs hope today.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Marcus Donalson

Pastor at Daybreak Church in San Diego, CA

What is Daybreak Church Podcast?

Weekly messages from Daybreak Church in San Diego, CA — helping you take next steps to live and love more like Jesus through biblical teaching, encouragement, and real-life application.

HOST: 00:01

Hello, and welcome to the Daybreak Church Podcast. We hope that wherever you are, you're encouraged by this message.

Marcus Donalson: 00:12

Man, it is good to be with you guys this morning. I'm excited to, start this new series. We're gonna be talking about something that's pretty near and dear to my heart as of late. As we were preparing, you heard the four decisions, and the first one is entrusting your life to God. And I believe that this can be one of the hardest, but also one of the most crucial decisions we can make as Christians, as we follow Jesus.

Marcus Donalson: 00:33

And if you think about it today, trust is a really difficult thing to come by in the world that we live in. So many of the things around us, you would deem them and you would hope for them to be trustworthy, but it's really difficult to find trust in a lot of the things that we experience day to day. You think about AI, it was like cute when it first came out. You know, it was like helping people do their homework, and it was doing small little things here and there. But if you look at AI videos now, the the difference between what's real and what's not is so small.

Marcus Donalson: 01:01

It gets better and better by the day. The twenty four hour news cycle telling us what's going on in the on the earth. And, depending on what channel you watch, you're like, I don't know who to trust. Who do I believe? Trust is a hard thing to come by.

Marcus Donalson: 01:14

And the line between what's real is getting smaller and smaller. But I think where we really get into, like, our Batman, Bruce Wayne levels of trust issues, or if you're not a nerd like me, like Taylor Swift if she saw Kanye coming out an award show level trust issues. It's like it would probably be like in our relationships, I would assume. Right? It's it's really easy for us to trust the people that we know, our spouse, our friends, our family.

Marcus Donalson: 01:44

It's really simple to trust those people. Maybe you got a couple people in your family you don't trust, but we won't talk about that today. But it's easier to trust those people than the people we don't know. I think we can assess this same principle to God. If you don't know who God is and you have a pastor who might be standing up here right now wearing all black with glasses, I'm telling you, it's important to entrust your whole life to him.

Marcus Donalson: 02:08

You're like, I got some questions. Before we do all that, what do you mean? Who is God? Maybe you've heard of him before. We've read about him in the Bible.

Marcus Donalson: 02:17

Maybe you've seen a few things here or there. You've seen the ancient Instagram. Right? We've got, like, stained glass in the Sistine Chapel. We've seen pictures, but we don't actually know who he is.

Marcus Donalson: 02:29

And I believe it's very difficult to lean into trusting somebody with your life without that kind of relationship. But today, I'm excited because we get to lean into the character of who God is, how much he cares about us, how much he loves us. And we're gonna take something that seems like a giant leap. You need me to entrust my whole life to God, and we're gonna turn it into one small step. Let's pray this morning.

Marcus Donalson: 02:51

God, we ask that you would move in this place today. We don't wanna leave the same way we walked in. We wanna trust you more. So, God, would you speak to us through your word? Would you do as only you could do in your precious and holy name?

Marcus Donalson: 03:03

We all said, amen. Alright. So we wanna know who God is. And I always believe it's smart to start with what we've heard before. I grew up in church.

Marcus Donalson: 03:12

My dad was a worship leader for a long time. And so I used to hear all the time that God is our heavenly father. Right? Our father who is in heaven. There's songs written about him.

Marcus Donalson: 03:23

He's a good, good father. As I was preparing this, I was thinking about, well, who's my, like, earthly dad to me? And I was thinking of this story back in the day. I know I don't look it now, but I was an athlete when I was younger. Right?

Marcus Donalson: 03:35

I was playing Pop Warner football when I was, like, 10 years old. And I'm not gonna lie. I was pretty good, like, on the back end of my career. At the beginning, I was short and small and weighed, like, fifty pounds. So it wasn't a good look at the very beginning.

Marcus Donalson: 03:51

And I always had this problem when I was playing Pop Warner. I didn't like contact. And I was playing the wrong sport because football is a contact sport. I didn't have that screw loose in my brain yet that said that was a good thing. So I would avoid contact like the play.

Marcus Donalson: 04:04

And so I didn't get a ton of playing time, but I remember my coach sent me in. Somebody must have got hurt or something. They must have been down to, like, the last straw. They were like, you gotta go in. I was like, me?

Marcus Donalson: 04:13

They were like, you. And I was like, okay. I get in. I'm excited. I'm in the backfield.

Marcus Donalson: 04:18

The play is coming to me. I'm getting the ball, and I'm like, alright. Here we go. I'm sitting in the back. I get the hand off.

Marcus Donalson: 04:23

I don't know what came over me. It must have been the presence of God. Because all of a sudden, some moves I had never practiced before started just coming out. I hit them with one of these. I had the strength of the Lord.

Marcus Donalson: 04:35

I, like, ran through a linebacker. And you talk about me, like, 50 pounds soaking wet. I ran somebody over. I can't believe it either. I'm speechless too.

Marcus Donalson: 04:43

This is happening, and I see the end zone. No one's in front of me. I'm thinking about my touchdown dance, what I'm gonna say to all my teammates when we get on the sideline. All of a sudden, time stops, and I feel my jersey get pulled from the back. And I'm like, oh god, please.

Marcus Donalson: 05:00

No. Not right now. I look back to my right, and I'm watching someone strip the ball from my right hand. Ball's on the ground. Everything is in slow motion.

Marcus Donalson: 05:09

Team picks it up, runs it the other way, scores the game winning touchdown. Yeah. It's not a good look for me. Not great for my confidence at the time. And I remember we lose the game.

Marcus Donalson: 05:21

I'm sitting on the bench, weeping, crying. My teammates won't look me in the eye. They're like, bro, you blew this for us. My coach is, like, trying to make me feel better. He's like, we'll get him next time, bud.

Marcus Donalson: 05:31

Walks away. And I remember I'm sitting on the bench distraught, and my dad comes out of the stands, and he's like, son, I am so proud of you. And I was like, you don't gotta lie. Like, I just ruined the game for everybody. You're not proud right now.

Marcus Donalson: 05:48

He was like, no. Listen. Like, all the stuff that we talked about, we've been sitting at the house and practicing all your plays, and we've been talking about running hard, and I watched you do that. That was the best run I've ever seen you make. And it was in that moment that I realized, man, my dad really does love me.

Marcus Donalson: 06:04

Regardless of what I do, regardless of my failure, he was still there to pick me up. And maybe there's some of us in the room, that's the picture of our dad that we have. Picking us up in the bad times, there to celebrate with us in the good times, probably telling really bad jokes that aren't really funny to anybody but him. But he's there. But I think there's another group of people in the room today, and maybe you're thinking of your dad and you're like, well, that's not my experience.

Marcus Donalson: 06:32

Maybe your dad was absent. Maybe he wasn't around. Or maybe he was there, but he wasn't doing any of the things that or making any of the sacrifices or making decisions that would deem him a good father in today's time. And I think what's really important as we unpack this today is I think at times, we can take our earthly experience with people who are imperfect, and we can begin to apply that to our heavenly father. But here's what's so important, and here's why you can trust your heavenly father regardless of the experience that you've had with your earthly father.

Marcus Donalson: 07:08

And I encourage you to take notes today and write this down. It's we entrust our lives to God because he gave his life for us. We entrust our lives to God because he gave his life for us. Little Christianity one zero one, for those of you that might be new in the room, Adam and Eve. Right?

Marcus Donalson: 07:25

Probably heard this story. We know Adam and Eve were in the garden with God. Everything was amazing. They could eat pretty much whatever they want. They could go wherever they wanted.

Marcus Donalson: 07:35

The birds were chirping. Everything was beautiful. They have one job, and they blew it. God was like, just don't eat from this tree. They were like, this tree?

Marcus Donalson: 07:46

He was like, this tree. They were like, I'm a find out what it tastes like. We're gonna see what happens. And when they do this, they disobey God, and they introduce what we believe to be called a sin nature. If you don't know what that is, that's just our inherent nature to disobey or go against God.

Marcus Donalson: 08:07

Inherent nature to rebel against who he is. And then we read in the Bible, Romans six twenty c 23 says, for the wages of sin, our nature is death. We're like, thanks, Adam and Eve, for introducing that for all of us. Now we all have family issues going all the way back to our great, great, great, great, like times a thousand grandparents. But watch how God flips this.

Marcus Donalson: 08:35

Romans five eight says, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. While we were still sinners. While you were still a mess, Christ died for you. To put it plainly, when God sent Jesus to die on the cross for us, not only did he assess worth to us and show us how much he loved and cared about us, but he also gained our trust in that moment.

Marcus Donalson: 09:02

Because I don't know about you, but any father that's willing to die for me, knowing that I'm gonna make mistakes, knowing that I'm gonna fall short, knowing that I'm not gonna meet the mark. Well, man, they've got my trust and they got my attention. Entrusting your life to God becomes less of a risk when you understand how much he loves you. It's not a risk anymore. It's actually a response to the greatest love we have ever known.

Marcus Donalson: 09:30

The greatest example of sacrificial love we have ever experienced. And maybe you're in the room today and you're like, yeah, man, but you don't know what I did. You don't know my life. You don't know how broken I am. And maybe your earthly father would respond to you with, yeah.

Marcus Donalson: 09:48

Well, I can't really fix that. I can't do anything. I don't have grace for that. But I'm here to tell you this morning that your heavenly father chooses you every day and twice on Sundays, So much so that he sent his son to die for you and for me so that we can have hope for a future with him in heaven. I don't know about you, but that's something to celebrate this morning.

Marcus Donalson: 10:08

I'm excited about that. So we know that God loves us. We know that he's a good father. What else do we know? What else have we heard?

Marcus Donalson: 10:19

Have you been a part of church for, like, longer than fifteen seconds? Or maybe you got a Spotify playlist, you've been doing a little exploring to hear what worship's all about? You've probably heard the song firm foundation. Christ is my firm foundation. The rock on which I stand right.

Marcus Donalson: 10:36

We've all heard it before. Probably the most recognizable part of that song is he won't fail. He's not gonna fail us. Or or maybe you've heard the song, a way maker, that he's a miracle worker and a a promise keeper, that he's the light in the darkness. Right?

Marcus Donalson: 10:55

We'll hear these things. We'll sing these things over ourselves, but then there's a voice in the back of our head that's telling us, yeah, but that's that's really not my experience. I haven't actually seen that. I haven't seen God make a way for me yet. Just just by a show of hands, who in the room has been lied or betrayed?

Marcus Donalson: 11:12

One, two, everybody. Okay. Sick. If you didn't raise your hand, come find me afterward. I wanna be friends with your friends.

Marcus Donalson: 11:22

Maybe your story is like you shared something really personal with somebody, supposed to be just between the two of you, and they ended up going behind your back and telling everybody. And you felt betrayed in that moment. Or maybe it was a a business partner. You guys had something really great going. The relationship was awesome, and then all of a sudden, they make a decision to get themselves into a higher standing, and it costs you something.

Marcus Donalson: 11:49

I don't know what the story might be for you, but we've all been in a place where we've been betrayed or we felt lied to. But I love God because God's built different. Look at what it says in Numbers 23. It says, God is not a man that he should lie. God is not a man that he should lie.

Marcus Donalson: 12:10

He doesn't know how to do it. He can't do it. It's just not in his nature, which leads me to believe this. And this is our second point today. We entrust our lives to God because he always keeps his word, and his plans never fail.

Marcus Donalson: 12:25

We entrust our lives to God because he always keeps his word, and his plans never fail. We read that he's a man that he should not lie. He cannot lie. Well, God's made a lot of promises to his people over the years. Like, that's kind of a lofty thing to claim.

Marcus Donalson: 12:42

But look at this. The Bible says in Deuteronomy thirty one eight, he'll never leave or forsake you. He promises to keep us in perfect peace in Isaiah 26. This one in John 16, though, always got me. This gave me cause to pause.

Marcus Donalson: 12:59

John sixteen thirty three says, in this world, you will have trouble. That no Vilgray. I don't want him to keep that promise. I don't know about you, but I see trouble in my life daily, every single day. It's right around the corner.

Marcus Donalson: 13:16

But I love how he ends this. Watch this. He says, in this world, you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world. God wasn't lying when he said life wasn't gonna be easy, that you weren't gonna face trouble, that everything was gonna go smoothly. He wasn't lying when he said, you will see problems.

Marcus Donalson: 13:37

But I believe he told us the problems that we would face because he knows he's bigger than them. He knows he's overcome all of them. If you've ever played video games before, you know, if you play them over and over and you start the game at the beginning and you know what's coming, you're real confident about getting to the end. You've seen that movie before. You know how this is gonna end.

Marcus Donalson: 14:01

I believe that's God's depiction of our lives. He's overcome everything, and he wants us to live a life within him where we can experience that too. But God is a gentleman. He's not just gonna, like, Bogart his way into your life. There's an invitation that has to be had.

Marcus Donalson: 14:19

And maybe you're hearing about all these promises today. And you've been in church for a while and you've heard this verse before. Psalm thirty seven four says, he'll give you the desires of your heart. And so maybe you're in the room and you're like, yeah, I read that God keeps his promises and all that, but, yeah, I haven't experienced that yet. There's some promises that I feel like and some desires that I feel like should have come to pass by now.

Marcus Donalson: 14:50

But God's promises to us weren't, I'll give you those pair of Jordans that you probably don't need. That wasn't for you. That was for me. I was preaching to myself. That wasn't for you.

Marcus Donalson: 15:02

Maybe it's a relationship. That boy or that girl that you like or maybe it's a promotion at your job. You really believe you deserve it. You put the work in. It's a big desire for you to step up.

Marcus Donalson: 15:18

If I could go a little bit deeper today, maybe there's a few of us in the room who've been waiting on that positive pregnancy test. Whatever it is, you could fill in the blank with whatever your desires might be, but God's promises to us weren't actually material things. And I love what a theologian that I love to listen to. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says this. He says, God does not give us everything we want, but he does fulfill his promises.

Marcus Donalson: 15:50

He does fulfill his promises. And if you back up just a little bit earlier in that verse, it says, if you delight in the Lord, he will give you the desires of your heart. If you delight in him, if you spend time with him, you get to know him. There's relationship built there. The Bible says once that kind of stuff happens, we actually become more like him.

Marcus Donalson: 16:13

Our hearts actually become more like his. Married people in the room, you probably understand this to a t. When you first get married, you're two different people. Right? She wants the toilet paper on the rack this way, you want it this way.

Marcus Donalson: 16:27

Or you want the couch to face this way because that's what's gonna make a living room look cool. She's like, no, I want it to go this way. Two different people. But then as you begin to spend more time with each other, as you begin to learn to love one another different, you take on some of the characteristics of your spouse. And I was thinking about this.

Marcus Donalson: 16:50

I was like, how does this apply to me though? And I was like, man, I know my wife really loves reality television, like a lot. And husband's in the room, you could probably back me up on this. When it's on, it's loud because a lot of stuff is going on. They're yelling at each other.

Marcus Donalson: 17:07

It's drama. This is good TV. So I'm downstairs. My wife has got reality TV on, and I'm making a little snack in the kitchen. And husbands, you could level with me on this.

Marcus Donalson: 17:19

Sometimes you'd be making your snack and you start to form opinions on what you hear on TV. You're like putting a little bowl of cereal together or you guys are way more healthy than me. I I don't eat like that. But like, you're putting your snack together and you're like, why would Sarah even and then you catch yourself, you're like, oh, hold on. Wait a minute.

Marcus Donalson: 17:41

What am I doing? You like pull up YouTube, you're like, put a football game on or something. I just this isn't me. This is not me. Couple of days go by, I'm in the same place.

Marcus Donalson: 17:52

Right? I'm making my little snack. I catch myself. I'm like, I'm a go upstairs. I'm gonna need this.

Marcus Donalson: 17:56

Couple days go by, I walk back downstairs. I'm making something else. I'm doing something downstairs, and my wife's got it on the TV again. Lo and behold, I find myself literally on the couch sitting down, and I'm like, again? You didn't hear him the first time?

Marcus Donalson: 18:12

Like, you just you gonna make the same? And I'm like locked into this show called Love is Blind. Maybe you've heard of it. I'm sitting there. I'm absolutely locked in to the point now, ladies and gentlemen, we're like, it's in our family calendar.

Marcus Donalson: 18:29

We're ten seasons in. I got the merch. We got the gold cups sitting around our house. It's different Because the amount of time that I've spent with my wife has made me love the things that she has now loved. Sickle people, you can probably understand this too.

Marcus Donalson: 18:45

Right? You ever spent time with your friends for, like, a really long amount of time? Like, you're with them for you go on a trip or something. All of a sudden, you start saying the same things. You start finishing each other's sentences.

Marcus Donalson: 18:56

You become almost the same person because of the relationship that's being built there. The same thing happens as we walk with God. The more you walk with him, the more you spend time with him, the more our hearts become more like his. And those desires that we had before, those material things, maybe it was money, maybe it was a relationship, maybe it was a car. Whatever it might be to you, that thing you thought was gonna fulfill you no longer matters anymore.

Marcus Donalson: 19:27

Because what the Bible says is now his desires have become your desires. Promise kept. We know that God fulfills his promises, and his ultimate promise is actually his presence. All the blessings that come on top of that are actually just icing on the cake because he loves us. But I love this verse in Proverbs, Proverbs nineteen twenty one.

Marcus Donalson: 19:56

It kinda sums up this whole point. It says, many are the plans in a person's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails. It's the Lord's purpose that prevails. Which tells me this, our plans, yours and mine, they depend on our circumstances. How cold is it outside?

Marcus Donalson: 20:17

Did I lose an hour of sleep last night? Are they gonna be here? God's plans depend on his sovereignty. Because he rules and he reigns over everything, because he has everything in the palm of his hand, He controls the circumstances. He's not worried about what could happen because he tells the world what happens.

Marcus Donalson: 20:43

He tells the universe what to do. He speaks it, it happens. And I think today we can understand that, man, we've got these trust issues because we're putting our faith and we're putting our trust in the wrong places and in the wrong people. I heard it said once, our favorite heroes are actually the worst saviors. Right?

Marcus Donalson: 21:10

You think about heroes. I'm thinking like Michael Jordan. Right? Huge basketball hero. Horrible savior.

Marcus Donalson: 21:18

He can't even save the franchise that he owns right now. Right? Whoever your hero might be, they're a terrible savior. Why? Because they are not perfect.

Marcus Donalson: 21:31

Imperfect people make mistakes. Imperfect people let you down. That's not in God's nature. But the minute that we realize that our trust is best placed in the hands of perfection, then as we discovered before, it's no longer a risk. It's a response to the greatest love we've ever known.

Marcus Donalson: 21:55

Okay. So we've covered that God loves us, sent his son to die for us, gave us worth in that moment. We've covered that he cannot fail and that he cannot lie. Every plan he has comes to pass. But I think there's one other thing that keeps us from really trusting God the way we know we should.

Marcus Donalson: 22:16

Fully leaning in, fully giving everything we have. And I think the other two points that we had kinda point to this a little bit. It's hard to have trust without security. And I think as human beings, security is one of our biggest fears. We have a safety team in this room right now because we want security.

Marcus Donalson: 22:40

Some of us have cameras at our house because we want security. You got a VPN on your Internet because you want security. But I love how God knows his people. Right? He knows this about us, and he answers our fear with the perfect response.

Marcus Donalson: 23:01

We know that we can entrust our lives to God because he has secured us forever. He secured us forever. Look at John ten twenty eight. It says, I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish. Watch this last part.

Marcus Donalson: 23:17

No one will snatch them out of my hand. The Bible says the enemy has come to steal, kill, and destroy. And God shuts all of that down when he says, no one will snatch them out of my hand. That should tell you this morning, you are covered. You are protected.

Marcus Donalson: 23:40

You are provided for. Philippians three twenty leans into this even more, but our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. You know that when your future is secure in heaven, it's a lot easier to surrender your present here on earth. Your future is secure in heaven. So surrendering your present here on earth, much simpler.

Marcus Donalson: 24:17

I don't know if you were as touched as I was earlier watching those kids get baptized. That is putting your trust in a place that you know is perfect. I wish I had faith like that at their age. They already have a heavenly perspective. They're exchanging their trust for hope.

Marcus Donalson: 24:51

And our hope doesn't end here. Right? This heavenly perspective gives us an idea of what things will be like when we are in heaven with the Lord. Look at what Revelation 21 says. Verse four, it says, he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Marcus Donalson: 25:07

There'll be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. Just take a second to think on that this morning. All the things you've struggled through in your life, the pain you felt, the losses you've had to endure. But when we get to heaven, that kind of stuff no longer exists. We won't be crying anymore.

Marcus Donalson: 25:40

We won't feel pain anymore. We won't have to experience these terrible things anymore because we'll be made complete in the Lord. But it takes a surrender now. It takes a moment to entrust your life to God now. But we hear those words, surrender and trust.

Marcus Donalson: 26:04

Right? And like a little light goes on in our head. We're like, woah. Surrender? That's a lot.

Marcus Donalson: 26:12

Surrender in our context today is not a positive term. It's very negative. It's attached to failure. It's attached to weakness. But the beauty of God and his nature is that in our weakness, we know he's strong.

Marcus Donalson: 26:36

In our failure, he is faithful. And I believe that there's a big difference between surrendering because you have to and surrendering because you want to. We believe as Christians, as followers of Christ, knowing his power, knowing his nature, that we willingly surrender. We willingly say, hey, God, whatever you wanna do with my life, you go ahead. Because we understand and recognize that the only secure place to put your trust and in turn your heart and the entirety of your life is in the perfect hands of Jesus.

Marcus Donalson: 27:18

The only place that's secure is in the perfect hands of a father who loved you first and loved you best. The only place to put your trust in your heart is in the hands of a faithful friend who cannot fail you and who will never lie to you. The only place to put your trust is in the hands of our wonderful savior who gave you hope for a future and secured you in heaven forever. When we break it down like that, it's just a step. It's not a leap of faith anymore.

Marcus Donalson: 28:08

It's a step because we know we're secure. Would you stand with me as we close today? I believe there's two groups of people in the room. And with every head bowed and every eye closed today, I wanna speak to those two groups of people. This first group of people, maybe you're hearing this message today and your heart's beating fast, and you're hearing about this heavenly perspective.

Marcus Donalson: 28:47

You're hearing about the peace that could come your way. You're hearing about putting your trust in God. You're hearing that there's heaven on the other side of all the things you've experienced, all the pain, all the frustration, all the anger, all that can be wiped away. But you're like, I don't I don't know how to do that. I'm I'm here to let you know this morning that your heavenly father is in the room.

Marcus Donalson: 29:22

He wants to encounter you, and he wants to call you back to him, restore you back to relationship with him, that sin nature that separated you from him in the first place. He wants you to come back to him. The Bible says that if we confess with our mouths and we believe in our hearts that Jesus is Lord, we will be saved. And if you're the person that I just described this morning, that's you in the room. It's just a simple prayer.

Marcus Donalson: 29:55

You could say it in the quietness of your own heart. God knows your thoughts. He can hear them. And you just say this prayer. You say, Jesus, I know I'm a sinner in need of a savior.

Marcus Donalson: 30:09

I believe that you died on the cross for me and that you rose again three days later, defeated death, and gave me hope for a future. Come into my life, Lord. Lead me for your purpose. I trust you, God. If you prayed that prayer this morning, every eye is closed.

Marcus Donalson: 30:37

Everybody's head is still bowed. You can if you would just be so bold as to just raise your hand today. If that was you, you prayed that prayer today. Yeah. I see these hands.

Marcus Donalson: 30:48

Yeah. Raise them real high. There's nothing to be ashamed of. You are now a part of the family of God. This is a beautiful day for you.

Marcus Donalson: 30:57

Praise God. Praise God. Yes. I see your hand back there. There's gonna be an opportunity for you to respond in just a moment, but I know there's another group of people in this room right now.

Marcus Donalson: 31:11

You've given your life to God. He's your savior, but he's not your Lord yet. And there's something that he's putting on your heart right now. You're probably thinking about it. You're running through the memories in your head right now.

Marcus Donalson: 31:26

You know you need to let this thing go. You need to surrender it to God. Maybe it's you're worried about your finances. Maybe you're a parent in the room, and you're worried about the future of your kids. Maybe you're waiting for healing to come, and you need to surrender this pain that you have to God.

Marcus Donalson: 31:49

As the worship team begins to respond, this is your opportunity. I don't want you to sing just yet, but I really want you to lean in and listen for what God has to say to you this morning. Won't you take the burdens that are on your shoulders today and lay them at the feet of Jesus? Allow him to exchange your mourning for dancing. Allow him to exchange beauty for your ashes.

Marcus Donalson: 32:24

He's ready to encounter you this morning. Just listen for it. Just begin to call on her. Yes. We know that when we call you answer, oh God.

Marcus Donalson: 33:00

Thank you, Jesus. Thank you so much

HOST: 33:09

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