(This transcript was generated by AI. Apologies for any inacuracies)

It's Easter time.

I love Easter.

Easter is my favorite holiday throughout the year.

I'm sure it's all of y'all's too.

It's the day that we get to celebrate that he's risen.

And we've been in this series called, Who is Jesus?

And I wanted to talk about a little different aspect because to really understand the significance and a big piece of who Jesus is, we've got to understand who John the Baptist is.

John the Baptist was Jesus's cousin.

Some of y'all remember in the Christmas story, a little bit before Mary has her encounter with Gabriel and the angel Gabriel, not my Gabriel, God's Gabriel, but so did Elizabeth and Zechariah.

Zechariah was a Levite and he had gone to do his duty in the temple when Gabriel came to him.

Now this is, here's a little Bible trivia for you.

There were so many Levites that this is probably the only time in Zechariah's life that he would have ever been inside the temple.

Probably the one time, he had one shot at service and in that time he meets an angel who tells him that his really, really old wife is gonna have a son.

Now Elizabeth, she had believed, so she got to keep on talking.

And Zechariah, he was really unsure and God stuck his tongue in the roof of his mouth.

I can't imagine if God shut my mouth.

I would just be flailing all the time and my wife says, you cut off my hands, I wouldn't be able to talk.

But John the Baptist was a miraculous conception too.

It's kind of crazy, herald by an angel, a miraculous conception because his parents were well beyond the years of being able to bear children.

And he was a Nazirite.

Everybody say Nazirite.

We're gonna get some Bible tribute today.

There are three named Nazirites in the Bible.

You have Samuel, who is the mouth of God.

You have Samson who really jacked stuff up, but in the end still ended cool.

And then you have John the Baptist.

Nazirites were people who were dedicated to God before they were born.

They didn't really have a lot of choice in it.

That's who they were.

And they weren't allowed to cut their hair.

They were never allowed to drink wine or eat grapes, anything from the vine, nothing like that.

Their lives were dedicated to God.

God used them as prophets to deliver really serious messages.

Samuel was the one who chose kings, right?

You remember he chose Saul.

Saul was a good dude, then Saul became a bad dude.

And then he chose David, who started out as a good dude, then was a bad dude.

What's important to understand is that none of the Nazarites were perfect.

But his message was a really important one.

God used Nazarites as incredible prophets to deliver miraculous messages.

John's message was repentance.

And that's what we're gonna talk about today.

That's why I want you to understand, I love your kids.

I want your kids in here, but I also want you to be able to get real with me for a little bit today.

And I don't want you to be held back by anything because I believe that God's gonna do a powerful work in this place today.

I'm not sure what it is yet, but we gonna see.

Repentance.

The Bible says in Matthew chapter three, verses one through three, if you have your Bibles, in those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.

This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah, a voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.

Prepare the way of the Lord.

He was preparing the world for what was coming.

Everyone say coming.

This idea of repentance has been preached for hundreds of years and often, if not mostly incorrectly.

Often, if not mostly incorrectly, repentance.

I ask kids all the time what repentance means and they say it's when you're sorry.

Repentance is not being super sorry, it's not about guilt, it's not about shame and it is not about punishment.

It's not about fear.

Hear me.

In 1 John 4, 18, it says there is no fear in love but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment.

The one who fears has not been made perfect in love.

Repentance isn't about fear.

Repentance isn't about lawishness, it's about a lavish and scandalous love that your God has for you.

Repentance is so much less about what I'm turning from.

The sin, the problem, we focus on the problem so often that we can't see the solution when what God says is turned from the problem and look at me, I am your solution.

It's my love that will change you.

But fear, it's a word that's used in the Bible a lot and a lot of us have been taught that Proverbs, right?

Proverbs 9, 10, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

And they usually stop there.

It's weird because there's another sentence.

And the knowledge and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

Second part, knowing God.

Repentance has far less to do with sin and a whole lot more to do with Jesus.

John was making straight paths, preparing a way for Judea to turn from what they had thought they knew their entire lives to the only hope that they would ever truly receive.

Now hear me.

So in this, all of these people had lived under the law for all of these years.

The law was what purified them.

The law was what made them a holy nation.

Holy means set apart.

Holy doesn't mean that I'm super, super godly.

It means I am different than the world around me.

They'd lived under that law for years and that's what they had. 613 mosaic laws that Jesus comes on the scene and turns all of them on their head.

We call it in Christianese an upside down kingdom.

He says that you have missed the point.

You focused on this law and this law that would purify you, but you never met the one who wrote it.

You didn't truly know the one who wrote the law because if you had, when Jesus spoke to the Pharisees and he told them, I wish you had known what I meant when I said, I do not wish, I do not desire, sorry, your sacrifices of bulls and rams.

What I desire is mercy, mercy.

That's really what repentance is about.

It's about mercy.

John was making the path straight.

Fearing God is not about shaking.

It's not about trembling.

That's not what that fear means.

Fear is about an awe.

Fear is about understanding how big and beautiful the God we serve is and how tiny I am and that even he would take time to sit high on his throne and look down at lowly old me and work things out in a way that I'll never understand because the fact that I'm here is a miracle because God is so good.

And I wanna paint this picture because I hear there's even books out now and there's a strange Christian culture that's kind of come around with like, don't talk about daddy God, daddy God.

Yeah, we won't get real.

Or we talk about how, well, you don't have this right.

What the Bible says is this and what you've done, what they've done is they've brought legalism back in a really strong way.

If you are sitting here and you're legalistic and you think that something that you're gonna do and something that you think is what's gonna get you into heaven, I'm telling you, you're wrong.

There is one way to heaven and only one way.

It's a man, you fall in love with him and his name is Jesus Christ.

There's no decision that you've made or not made in your life that will get you into heaven other than believing that God loved the world enough to step down off of his throne, put on an earth suit as Clay says, die on a cross for my sins, but he did not just die.

On the third day he rose again and that's what makes the news good.

I really believe that there are three types of Christians.

There are ones who openly talk about how they struggle with sin in their flesh daily.

There are ones who are quiet about it and then there are liars.

That's it.

All of us, because the thing is, is that our souls, that part that God owns, that six ounces that leaves us when we die, that science can't explain, it knows who it belongs to, but I'm stuck in this.

And I'm gonna tell you the only desire that I have to continue on in this earth suit because I'm sick of it.

I'm sick of it.

I am a pastor and I have problems and I struggle with my flesh daily.

The only reason that I still wanna be here is because of this woman, three kids, and because I wanna run my race.

I wanna see what God does with this.

But to truly repent, sorry, I just skipped a whole page.

I'm trying to use notes, I'm not good at this.

To truly repent, we first have to acknowledge.

Everybody say acknowledge.

Acknowledge.

Acknowledge, we've gotta get really real about this.

We've gotta get real about the things that we're struggling with and stop pretending like we're not struggling.

Like we've been to 15 Bible studies and now we're good.

And I've read through the Bible 10 times, cover to cover, and now I'm good, and it's not still a daily struggle, and it's not something that I'm bumping my head against a wall, and that there are not times when I feel like the closer that I get to God, the more ugly my sin looks, and I think that maybe I'm going backwards.

I don't even know what's really going on here.

I know that I love Jesus, and I know that he's there, and I know that he's guiding me.

However, somebody cut me off today, and the thoughts that went through my head ain't nothing like Jesus would have said.

But that's the real.

We can't pretend like we're not battling our flesh daily because it produces a lie to the rest of the world that makes Christianity seem unreachable, like it's something that's so far beyond.

That's why testimonies are important, because if I can tell you how far God has taken me, and believe me, you'll never be able to dig up any dirt on me because I'll beat them to it.

I will let you know you ain't gotta dig far to find my dirt, church.

I'll tell you about it myself.

Not because I want you to, you know, there's those people that are like, I wish I had a better testimony.

I wish that like, you know, I wanted to have been addicted to crack and have, you know, gone on and fixed my life.

No, you don't.

But I want you to know how far God can take you and how little of a person he can use, because listen, I grew up in Mountain View Trailer Park in Brandywine, West Virginia.

I have been trailer trash since I was born and not much has changed.

I live in a house now that doesn't have wheels.

We didn't take wheels off of it, but I'm proud of it.

I'm proud of where I came from.

In fact, I wear these things that remind me where I came from.

I wear this cross because that's my identity.

That's who I am.

There is nothing else on this planet that defines Jared other than the cross of Christ.

And then, thank you.

I wear this silver chain that my wife paid exactly $30 for so that I remember where I came from because I'm Judas.

I sold my Christ for 30 silver pieces.

And it's not about guilt.

It's not about shame.

Those are tools of the enemy.

It's about remembering how far God has brought me.

But that's how we'll get real about it.

I believe the healthiest church in the world is the one that is real about the struggle where not even the pastor pretends to be perfect and not wrestling daily.

We are a group of people, which means we're imperfect.

You won't find a perfect church because churches are not buildings, they're people.

You have not found one today.

This is not a perfect church.

In fact, Billy Graham said it like this.

Let's say you did.

Let's say you found the perfect church, perfect in every way.

The worship was perfect.

The prayer people were perfect.

The congregation was perfect.

Let's say you found it.

And then you joined it.

At that moment, it would become imperfect.

That's the truth.

But we're a group of people that have to be real.

We have people that love Jesus but are struggling with addiction still.

They're struggling with addiction consistently.

I remember when I used to do parking a few years ago and that's where I started in all of this journey.

And Clay, we'll take you further.

Jesus, we'll take you further.

But parking, and people would come up and be like, they were over there smoking cigarettes.

And I'm like, well, it was meth two weeks ago, so look what God's done.

I'm just saying, those are real conversations.

But some of us in this room, church, we come to church every Sunday and we're going to Bible studies and we are really trying, but this addiction has changed on us that have been there since the beginning.

They've been there since we were little and we just don't know how to let go of them.

And all of these things that we tell them that are like, just let go and let God, and all of these things aren't really what the answer is.

We have people in here right now that are actively cheating on their spouse.

Physically or emotionally, it doesn't matter.

I don't care if it's not even a real person.

Sometimes we're cheating on our spouses with people on TV.

Jesus talked about that.

Some of us in here are struggling with pornography, and that's a real struggle for a lot of people, and we can be real about it, or we can act like our shame is different, and my shame doesn't look like that, because that's a shame that's easy to hide.

Some of them are married, and they love their wives, and they love their kids, but as soon as their wives and their kids leave to go somewhere else, they're back on that computer again, back to the place, and they're in shame and guilt again, and they don't even feel like they can come to God, because they've come to God 500 times, and 500 times, they've fallen again.

How could I ask Him to help me again?

Some of us have built shrines to idols in our heart.

Yeah, some of our sin isn't that easy to see.

One of the biggest idols, especially in America, is what's in your pocket.

Yeah, that little electronic piece that you reach for the first, before you even get out of bed, that's in your hand, church, if that is you.

And you reach for that phone before you do anything else, it has become an idol in your life.

You wouldn't be caught dead without it.

Your whole mood shifts if it does.

Everything changes.

You're looking for the nearest gas station, I gotta find a charger, I gotta find a charger.

But it's because I need to stay connected with people.

No, what you need to do is you need to connect with the living God and He'll work out all your problems.

Twitter won't do it.

Instagram won't do it.

Facebook won't do it.

I promise they'll all cause more problems than you had when you started looking at it.

TikTok.

You see, listen, we have a student TikTok.

I really wish we didn't.

Thank y'all.

They're clapping because Corinne and Kayla, they run it.

And I scroll through sometimes to look for new trends.

Like, hey, what's something that some other churches are doing that's funny and cool and all of that so that we can get more students here because this is a way that I can connect with them.

This is about reach.

It's not about wanting to be on social media.

But as I do, I'm like, oh my golly, has the whole world gone stupid?

Did you really, you were a grown woman and you were just dancing like a fool?

Not for Jesus.

I'll dance like a fool for Jesus all day.

You were just dancing and somebody told you it was sexy, but they lied to you, baby.

They lied to you.

You need to lose that friend.

Our phones have become idols.

And under the guise of good stewardship, here's some real, our bank accounts have become idols.

That money, we gotta have it.

Listen, I get it.

Money is important.

You gotta have, you can't do anything without, we can't run a ministry without money, all of that.

But some of us have put that over the relationships that we were making the money to support.

A lot of us.

And I'm gonna tell you, your boss, if you die tomorrow, they won't mourn you, they will replace you.

But your wife would, your kids would.

They'd be stuck for months, thinking about the first time you held hands, the first time you kissed, the first time you made love, when you found out that you were pregnant with your first child, but they get the best of you because you need that money.

Some of us don't tithe.

Yeah, that's uncomfortable.

It's always uncomfortable when the pastor talks about money.

God forbid that we put our money where our mouth is with God and put our trust and our money in God.

I'm gonna make you uncomfortable.

God says to bring the whole tithe into the storehouse of the Lord, He will open up the treasuries of heaven and you won't be able to keep it all.

I'm gonna tell you, I'm living proof of it.

There have been times when I had $2.50 to put in the offering plate.

There have been times when I had $2,500 to put in the offering plate, but I'm gonna tell you every single time I did it, He blessed it.

Every single time.

You will not outgive God.

You will not go dry pouring from your cup.

You wanna see your finances change?

You tired of struggling and not get it.

Oh man, I can't even afford the light bill this month.

Believe me, I've been there many times where me and her spin the wheel.

Who gets paid this month?

All right, well, we'll take the money from the cars and we'll pay the mortgage and the mortgage is only one month behind.

So we'll take care of this.

I've been there.

And then I've been, I had years when I worked in corporate America where I didn't even look at a paycheck.

I made really good money.

And I remember when we were buying our house, that was the first time I looked at our bank account in a lot of years.

And I'm like, you know, at least five years.

And I was like, holy cow, we got some money.

And she was like, yeah, good thing you have me.

I've been squirreling it away.

I hadn't looked at a paycheck.

Thank God for women being better with numbers than men sometimes.

That's just the truth.

But listen, you will never fully enjoy what is not yours, what you have stolen and what you have held back from God.

If you are living on 100% of your income, it has become an idol to you.

If that is something that has come to you because God doesn't command us, but he asks us to put our faith in him, to believe in him because 100% of it came to him.

So it's not about, well, I wanna give my ties so they know that I got, I did that 10%.

It's because I know God's gonna take care of me anyway.

What do I look like worrying about money?

I'm a child of the most high God.

I ain't gonna worry about money, he'll produce it.

The math doesn't even math.

I've had so many times in my life where more was going out of that account than what was coming in and it doesn't make sense because God don't care about math.

Shrines, some of us have been Christian for a long time and we've become our own shrine, our own idol.

One of the biggest risks for Christians is self-righteousness.

Where you've hidden your sin really, really good and maybe you've come a long way and God will do that, that's the fact.

But you've hidden your sin for a really long time and you see somebody else and suddenly you start to look down that long nose of yours, thinking, well, my sin ain't like their sin.

I never did that.

Sin is sin, church, sin is sin.

All of it we are called to repent from.

Repent isn't about fear, it's not about guilt, it's not about shame, it is about a turn, turn.

Jesus said it like this, because to understand what I'm talking about, because I didn't come up here just to make everybody feel guilty or make everybody squirm.

While I say in the same breath that guilt and shame have no place in our hearts.

Jesus in Matthew chapter five, verses 27 through 30, after he's gone through a long list of laws that were widely held throughout the land and had been for centuries, thousands of years, said, you have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery.

But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away.

It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown in hell.

If your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away.

It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.

Jesus was using hyperbole here.

He didn't want a bunch of people walking around with eyepatches and swimming in circles.

The part that we miss is that in the first few sentences there, he tells you where the issue is.

The issue isn't in your eye.

The issue isn't in your hand.

The issue was in your heart.

Sin is a heart issue, church.

Jesus said, the second most important commandment was to love your neighbor as yourself.

If half of you love your neighbor as yourself, you would be hot garbage to your neighbors.

Yeah, you would never talk to another living being the way that you talk to you.

And sometimes we do this under this false sense of humility that if I beat myself down, that's being humble because I'm not getting too big for my britches.

That's not humility.

In fact, self-hatred is a form of selfishness.

Is it so self-important because you were so focused?

Do you know how much energy it takes to hate somebody?

I don't hate anybody because I don't have time to.

It's not just I'm a super nice guy, just I literally do not have the energy to facilitate all of the anger that I need to facilitate to hate anybody.

I'm way too focused on the love that Jesus has for me and the love that Jesus has for these kids, the love that Jesus has for this congregation and all of them across the world.

Billions of people who say Jesus is Lord, but have been taught incorrectly about this repentance that's so necessary.

That leads me to the second thing, you must humble yourself.

Self-hatred, guilt and shame is not humility, it's selfishness.

Fear of the Lord is humility.

It is understanding how big and wonderful your God is and that he loves little old you.

So I'm gonna ask you, what if?

What if you believed it?

What if you woke up every day?

Ladies, I know it's tough for you because before you've even finished your coffee, you've had 15 opinions that are telling you that you look wrong, you dress wrong and everything about you is bad.

Men, we don't even need that.

We have lives.

I'm joking, I'm joking.

It's tough.

It's really, really hard to do this but I wanna challenge you.

What if you woke up every day and truly believed not what the world has said about you, not about what your circumstances have said about you, not about what your life experiences have said about you but you believe what God said about you.

He says that you are a child of the most high God.

He says that you are a prize creation.

When he looks at all of the rest of the creation in the world, he sees his creation but when he looks at you, he sees himself.

You are the only of the creation that was made in his likeness and in his image, not even the angels in heaven are made in his likeness and his image.

In fact, we are princes and princesses of God almighty, even the angels stand while we sit.

Yeah, check up on that one, read about it.

It's crazy, this is what humility looks like because none of that was because I was worth anything.

And it's been millions of times of me telling him how worthless I am and him saying, that's not your choice.

Now I've been in real estate for a long time the only thing that decides worth is what someone is willing to pay for it.

I've had a lot of people that are like, my house is worth 850,000, your house is worth 425.

Because that's what someone would actually pay for it.

But God gave himself for you, he gave himself for you so that he could call you a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a set apart nation, something special, something different, something that he himself decided to come off the throne and live inside.

God is in me.

That doesn't mean that I'm God, that means that God is so good enough that he's decided to take up residence in my flesh because he knew I would need help if I was gonna turn from where I was to where I was going.

You are insanely loved.

And my wife's been reading this book, I love when she reads books.

I don't have to read the books that she reads, she reads them to me.

I'm not saying this is a joke, like it really is a huge benefit to me because I've read at least 14 books this year that I didn't have to open a page of, that's it.

And it's usually, it starts out, she's like, hey baby, come here, listen, this is what this one said.

And she cannot for the life of her read a sentence to me.

If we look up something and I'm like, hey, you know, it's something silly, like the baby's asking about sharks or something, I'm like, hey, you know, how fast do the shark's teeth regenerate?

She'll look it up, you know, like Google the AI, the first sentence, that's what I'm looking for, I have ADHD.

She reads the next 14 pages under it, or why that's that way.

But we've lived lawishly for all of our lives because that's what we've been taught.

It's the way we've been raised, it's the way our parents were raised.

And it wasn't that they were trying to teach us something wrong.

What we should be living is lavishly.

Not lavishly like we got a lot of money, but lavishly like the love, I could not escape it.

The Bible says, if I go down to Sheol, you are there.

If I go east, if I go west, if I go north, if I go south, I couldn't escape it.

And the Bible also says that nothing, not height, nor depth, nor principalities, or powers, things that were, things that will be, shall be able to separate me from the love of my God.

It's not my choice.

Amen.

God gave himself as a ransom for me, and I'm powerless apart from him.

Fear, guilt, and shame are tools of the enemy that Jesus came to destroy.

You're ruled by them because you keep trying to defeat them yourself and by your works.

You keep trying to keep up your end of this deal.

Church, it's not a deal.

It's not something that you keep up your end of.

There is nothing that you can do that will ever make God love you anymore because there's no sin that ever made him love you any less.

He wasn't worried about your sin and how much you deserve to be loved by Him.

He chose you.

But this idea that we get into when we're struggling with sin, when we're really trying to repent and we tell ourselves over and over and over again, I'm not gonna do it again.

I'm not slipping up again.

I'm gonna pull myself up by my bootstraps and I'm gonna turn from it and we're gonna do better.

I'm gonna stay on mission.

No, you won't.

You're not big enough.

You're not strong enough.

You're no match for the lowest demon in hell, but he is.

And if he's with me, who could defeat me?

If he stands with me, who can be against me?

When I wake up, the devil better shudder because I woke up because God goes with me.

That's what Emmanuel meant.

God with us.

He'll be with me in my darkest hour, in my best hour, when it's hard, when it's easy, when I'm up, when I'm down, he'll walk with me.

And because of that, everything that stands against me will be defeated.

He says he makes a table in the presence of my enemies.

You'll never defeat your flesh.

Only the love of Jesus can do that.

You'll never defeat sin.

It was only the love of Jesus that ever did that.

It leads me to the last thing that I wrote down.

Turn to him.

Stop turning away from the sin.

Don't mishear me.

I want you to turn away from the sin.

The way to do it is to turn to the one who loves you.

Repentance is not about turning away from it.

It's about who we're turning to.

Look at the parable of the prodigal son.

I really resonate with this story because I am that prodigal son.

This boy asked his dad for his inheritance now.

And he went off and he spent it all on lavish living.

He spent it on whores.

He spent it on drinking.

He spent it on drugs.

He spent it on everything that was selfish.

He spent it on his flesh until he had run out.

Then he gets hired by a pig farmer.

We raise pigs where I'm from.

And he finds himself one day at rock bottom.

Church, sometimes if you wanna be a good friend, you gotta help your friend find rock bottom.

Rock bottom is a good place because there's only one way you can go up.

Finds himself there and he says, even the servants in my father's house have more than enough food.

I'm starving for this pig slop here.

I'll go back to my father's house.

And I'll ask him, I'll say, Father, I've sinned against you.

I've wronged you.

I wanna be your servant.

And in Luke chapter 15, verses 20 through 22, it says, so he got up and went to his father.

It wasn't about the pig farm he left, church.

It was about the father he was returning to.

But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him and he ran to his son.

Threw his arms around him and kissed him.

The son said to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

But the father said to his servant, quick, bring the best robe and put it on him.

Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet.

And I hear myself in it.

I hear myself with Jesus on the cross.

And he ran, and I said, you ran?

Well, how did you see me so far off?

He said, because I was watching for you every day.

I was hoping that you would come back to me.

But do you know what I did?

Do you understand how many times I pushed you away when I could see you trying to, I know, baby, I know.

But I cursed you.

I pushed everyone else away.

I was so ugly.

All the good that you put in me, I used it for bad.

And he said, I know, baby, I know, give it to me.

You don't understand how many times I've sinned, how ugly and terrible I've been.

And he says, I know, baby, but I can't come back.

I can't be your son.

You can't put a robe around me and sandals on my feet because what if I do it again?

I'll still be here.

But what if I continue and just keep messing up and keep messing up?

I'll still love you.

I didn't care about all of that.

I just wanted you.

It wasn't about anything that you offered me.

It was just you.

And I wanted you to come home.

Church, I'm asking you today to come home.

Come back to the only love that you'll ever feel that's anything like this.

Now, when you walked in here today, they handed you a little index card and you'll find pens in the backs of these seats and you'll find pens in your wife's purse and you'll find pens in your wife's friend's purse.

What I want you to do is after this prayer, they're gonna play a song and I want you to respond.

They're gonna bring some crosses down to these aisles.

I want you to write down your sin and I want you to be real.

I want you to be raw.

I want you to tell the Father just how far you've fallen, not because it matters about how far you've fallen, but so that you can experience the unbelievable, scandalous love of Christ that he offers you freely.

You don't have to do anything for it, but say, I love you too.

There's nothing you can do.

And I want you to throw it here and I want you to walk out of here free, free, not weighed down by your guilt and your shame ever again, but I want you to walk out singing freedom.

Let me pray for you.

Father, thank you so much for today.

Thank you for this place, Lord.

Thank you for the opportunity to glorify your name.

Thank you for all of the people here that may come to you today.

God, I pray for the one that's here today that doesn't know how loved they are.

And I pray that today is the day that they experience you, God.

I pray that today is the day that they feel the love of Christ and that in everything in an instant changes for them.

God, I pray that they have found a place where people, other believers who have struggled in that way will put their arms around them and rally around them.

That's why we need the church to encourage one another.

God, you said that on this rock, you will build your church and the gates of hell will not prevail over it.

Father, I love you and we love you.

We lift all of these things to you and leave them at the foot of the cross.

In Jesus' name, amen.