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

Welcome to Memorial Day weekend.

We have been in a teaching series over the last several weeks, titled Things That Jesus Never Said.

And we're gonna continue that thought process today.

And Pastor Jared, he told me about this shirt that, yeah, come on.

It's kind of things I never said and Jesus putting his hand over his head.

So thought I would sport that shirt a little bit today.

So again, we are glad you're in the room.

And today we're gonna talk a little bit about this idea of our heart.

In our culture, we love to tell people, hey man, just follow your heart.

And that's something that Jesus never said.

Jesus didn't tell us just to follow our heart.

And so we're gonna learn what that really means today.

But our heart is a really, really important thing.

Our heart being our emotions in today's culture.

Our heart being the very core of who we are.

It's very common for you to hear that, hey, just follow your heart, follow your emotions, follow what you think.

And again, we think of our heart as our emotions because we love to say phrases like this, whenever someone doesn't have emotion, we just simply say they are, what?

Heartless, right?

And if they show a lot of emotion, we say that person wears their heart on their sleeve.

And if someone just acts like they don't care, right?

We say that person is just so, what?

Heartless and they don't care.

Thought a lot about this over the last couple of days about our heart and think about all the songs that have been written about the heart.

Have you ever thought about that?

I mean, Adam Levine says his heart is like a stereo.

Billy Ray Cyrus has an achy, breaky heart, come on.

And then, you know, we got that new girl singer.

What is it?

Laney Wilson, the country singer.

She says her heart is like a truck, come on.

Like a truck.

And I think a lot about these songs that people write about the heart, about their emotions and how they feel.

And I'm sure all of us have emotions and we feel with our life too, and we should feel with our life.

But we gotta keep in mind that our heart can deceive us.

Our emotions can deceive us.

And Jesus never told anyone, hey, just follow your heart.

Jesus actually said, follow me.

And when you follow me, God can change your heart.

And when God changes your heart, you can make some good decisions in life and do incredible things with your life.

And so Jesus invited us not to follow our heart, but to follow Him.

And today we're gonna talk a little bit about what that means in our life and how it can really change our heart.

It can really change some things about our heart.

And when our heart is changed, our life can change, our alignment can change, and then we can move forward with great joy in life in spite of the circumstances.

But if we're driven just by our emotions and our heart, what's gonna happen is circumstances are gonna come into our life and we're gonna become defeated.

We're gonna become deflated.

But Jesus says, hey, you know what?

Follow me and I'll change your heart.

And if I can change your heart in spite of the circumstances, you can begin to do incredible things with your life and you can have a heart full of incredible joy and peace.

And the Bible says in John chapter 15, verse seven, Jesus said this.

He says, if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you can ask for anything you want and it will be granted.

Now, I know oftentimes my heart wants some things, but it may not be the things that God wants.

And so what Jesus's idea, when he's teaching on the vine and the branches and their life producing something great here in John 15, he says, if you remain in me and I remain in you, you can ask for anything in my name and I'll give it to you because you're gonna be producing things that God wants in your life and wants to work through your life.

In other words, Jesus says, if you remain, you can ask.

And so I wanna encourage you to ask God as you remain in him to fill your heart with who he is.

And when he fills your heart with who he is, we can begin to walk in it and accomplish great things.

Jeremiah was a prophet that spoke to the people of Judah.

And he says this in Jeremiah 17, verse nine.

He says, the human heart is the most deceitful of all things and desperately wicked.

Who really knows how bad it is?

Now that sounds a little harsh.

Jeremiah tells these people of Judah, you know what?

Your heart can lead you astray.

And the human heart can be desperately wicked if you're not paying close attention.

And it can begin to lead you down paths that's gonna destroy your life.

And what happens here in Jeremiah 17 is the people started listening to their heart, their own emotions, instead of listening to the voice of God in their life.

And they find themselves in some very difficult, difficult spaces and places.

You know, that's what happened when we follow our own heart.

We find ourself in some very difficult spaces and places, but you know what God can do?

God can still speak into those moments, change those moments and do amazing things in your life if you learn to listen to his voice first.

Come on.

The people of Judah were following their own heart and they were destroying their life.

And the Lord speaks wisdom through this prophet in Jeremiah 17.

I wanna read you what he says in the above verses above this verse nine.

He says this in Jeremiah 17 verse five.

He says, this is what the Lord says.

Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans who rely on human strength.

Look at this.

And he says, and turn their hearts away from the Lord.

He says, those people were cursed.

He says, they are like stunted shrubs in the desert with no hope for the future.

That's what a person who turns away from the Lord turns their heart away from the Lord and just trust in their own human emotions.

He says, they become like stunted shrubs in a desert with no hope and no future.

You know anybody like that?

Their life is just stunted.

It seems to be dried up.

There's no hope, there's no future.

They're just trusting their own human heart.

And God says, turn your heart back towards me and I can begin to change that and do amazing things in and through your life.

He goes on to say, they will live in barren wilderness in uninhabited salty land.

Basically, Jeremiah is using imagery to show what a person's heart looks like when it only relies on its human strength and turns away from the Lord.

He uses this analogy of something being dried up, something being barren, something being uninhabited, and something being very, very dead.

He says, that's what a heart that only trusts its own self begins to look like if it turns away from the Lord.

He says, but blessed are those, in verse seven, those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and their confidence.

They are like trees planted along the riverbank.

Come on, somebody.

He says, with roots that reach deep into the water.

Such trees are not bothered by the heat.

Come on.

By the troubles of life, by the heat, and are worried by the long months of drought.

The economy's bad and I'm falling apart because I'm trusting only my own human heart, my own emotions.

And I'm worried so much about the resources that I'm beginning to dry up.

God says, turn your heart towards Him.

And He says, when you do, you know what?

Things are gonna begin to prosper in your life and through your life.

And He's not just talking about tangible, physical blessings.

He's saying, you will begin to have a freshness about you.

He says, their leaves will stay green and they will never stop producing fruit.

This passage here in Jeremiah is the prophet Jeremiah speaks to the people about their heart.

Has so much to say to us today about our own life.

And we can either go through life worrying about everything and dry up and wither and be barren and be unproductive or we can be like a tree planted by a river stream.

And when the heat and the droughts of life come, we draw off of something that you can't even see or feel, but we begin to produce with our life in difficult moments.

See, if I trust only my heart, my feelings, my own emotions, when things get difficult, what do I do?

I stop, I quit, I pull over to the side, I throw in the towel.

And if you only follow your heart, chances are that's where you get in life.

But if you learn to listen to the voice of God and let him change your heart, in spite of the circumstances, you can begin to press in and press through these difficult moments.

So today, what I want us to do is I wanna look at what it really means to follow Jesus.

And follow Jesus instead of just following our heart.

Because following Jesus is incredible.

Jesus says, if you learn to deny your own self and follow me, he says, I'm gonna do great and mighty things in your life.

And again, we're all human, right?

So this is a very difficult process.

It's a very difficult process to deny how you feel about something and lean in and trust God.

And go to him first and ask him how he wants you to respond, get wisdom from him and how he wants you to respond.

That's a difficult thing to do.

Because if it hurts, come on.

I wanna say, ouch.

If you come at me, I wanna respond with my emotion.

But the Bible says that, you know what?

We can begin to have God feeding our life instead of just the outward things feeding our life.

And when we do, things can begin to change.

We can begin to have victory, come on, over the circumstances and letting, instead of letting the circumstances have victory over us.

So today we're gonna learn how to be these people who don't just follow our heart, but we follow Jesus and let Jesus change our heart.

And when Jesus changes our heart, we respond with wisdom and we see great and mighty things happen in our life and through our life.

So I invite you today to kinda jump in with me here as we talk about following Jesus.

And how do we do that?

I mean, practically.

And the first thing I wrote down in my journal is this, I have to study the word, the word of God, the Bible.

If I'm gonna follow Jesus, I gotta learn about Jesus.

And I'm glad you're in church today.

I'm glad you're coming to hear about a Jesus who can save you from your sin, a Jesus who resurrected from a grave.

You know what, a Jesus who did something incredible, forgave you of sin and he wants you to walk with him and trust him, but it's pretty impossible for you to know the fullness of who Jesus is without going to the word of God.

Come on.

And I invite you.

And we always put the words of God's word up on the screen when we're reading them here at Valorous Church, but I wanna encourage you to get you a copy of God's word.

And many of you probably have, one of you don't.

The bookstores are full of them.

They're on apps and all kinds of things.

You can even get a free download of God's word, the Bible on your smartphone.

Come on.

It's amazing.

And practically that's how most of the time I read God's word.

I read it off my phone.

I carry my phone everywhere I go pretty much.

And it's a great thing to do.

But I wanna encourage some of you, you know what?

If that is not engaging with you and you need to write some notes and those kinds of things, get you a paper copy of God's word.

Bring it to church with you, open it up.

Come on.

I just wanna share with you, if you do come to church here at Valorous Church, we're gonna use the word of God, the Bible, every single weekend.

Come on.

We're gonna use some other resources to teach God's word and come alongside of God's word.

But the word of God, studying the word of God has changed my life.

And again, I've been a student of God's word now, you know, for well over 25 years.

The first, let's call it 25 to 30 years of my life, I would kind of pass by the word of God, read some phrases when I was in trouble.

I remember when I played high school football, they said, hey, you need a memory verse.

We had fellowship of Christian athletes.

And I like this one, you know what, Philippians 4.13, I remember it from back in the day.

I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.

Come on.

I love that verse.

But what I discovered is sometimes there were some tough things in my life and I couldn't do those things, come on.

And I was taking that verse out of context, I was making it say something and when it didn't work, come on, I began to give up and quit.

This is why it's so important for you not to just pass by and read a couple of verses every now and then, but begin to digest it because when you digest it, what God, through the power of his Holy Spirit who lives in you, believer, he will do is he will illuminate his word in difficult moments, come on, and he will help you, help you recall the things in the word that your life needs to connect to and draw wisdom off of in that moment.

So again, I invite you to study God's word.

Look what 1 Timothy 3, verses 16 and 17 says.

It says, all scripture is inspired by God.

It is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives.

It says, it corrects us when we are wrong and it teaches us to do what is right.

My heart is deceitful, it can be wicked is what the Bible tells me in Jeremiah.

God uses the word though to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.

And here, the apostle Paul is writing young Timothy and he's saying, Timothy, don't just follow your heart but trust the word of God.

Listen, that he said, Timothy, you've been taught since childhood.

He says, it will give you wisdom in every single circumstance.

This is why I think it's really important to begin to teach children at a young age.

It's what we do here at Valorous.

It's what Valorous kids are all about.

Again, we were over there having fun with those kids.

We do all kinds of events with kids.

We want kids to love what happens there.

But it's really important to begin to deposit the word, come on, of God in those kids at a young age because Timothy was deposited this word of God in his life at a young age.

The Bible tells us from his grandmother and his mother and they deposited that word in young Timothy's life.

And here Paul is calling him to lead in a church that was being hostile towards young Timothy.

And he says, Timothy, you know what?

Don't trust just your heart.

Don't trust just your emotions.

He says, trust the living word of God that was deposited in you since you were a very young child and that's gonna get you through and that's gonna begin to do amazing things in and through your life.

We're never too late to learn.

And so I wanna invite you today.

You know what?

That wasn't your childhood.

That wasn't your teenage years.

You can start now.

Isn't it amazing?

I remember when I was in seminary, I got saved when I was about 32 and I went off to seminary.

I felt like God was moving my life to know more about his word.

And I thought, well, shoot, maybe I need to go to graduate school.

I need to go to seminary.

And that was back in 1999, 2000, you know, some 25 years ago.

And I got to seminary and they began to tell me to read God's word and do all these kinds of things.

At that particular time, they did an assessment on me and I was reading at a seventh grade level.

And they said, you know what?

Some of the folks there said, well, we don't know if you can make it.

So we're gonna put you on probation.

And we'll let you get in here.

And I began to pray about that thing.

And then I began to have some people in my life speak into my life and say, you know, I know you're reading on a seventh grade level, but if you'll learn to follow along, because that made you read a lot, okay?

And they said, if you'll get used to back in that day, the Bible on tapes and you begin to listen to it, follow along with it, it'll push you through it.

And you'll begin to learn to read, but understand it's not just about reading it.

It's about beginning to let God put it in your heart and change your life.

And listen, one of the professors says something remarkable to me.

He says, quit trying to retain everything you read.

He says, what we're doing here is we're putting tools in your toolbox.

So when that tool is necessary, you're gonna know where to go in the toolbox, back to the tool, pull it out, use it, come on, and it'll change your life.

And I remember we would get to, because I was kind of embarrassed.

I didn't know all the books of the Bible, where to locate them in the Bible.

And we were a lot of spiritual people there.

And we would go into chapels, rooms like this, large rooms, and whoever was speaking on stage would say, hey, pull out your Bible today and turn it to the book of Titus, and the book of Titus in chapter one, verse three.

And they were expecting you to start looking it up in your Bible.

And I could never find the book of Titus.

I remember this just like it was yesterday.

And I was trying to dig through it and look in the table of contents, and everybody was turning, and my friend back in the day, his name's Todd Fleming, he's a pastor down in Sumter, come alongside of me.

He said, hey, bro, it's right over here in the back.

And he helped me get there.

And see, it wasn't about demeaning me.

It was about helping me learn the process of learning from God's Word and how to find it.

I want you to know this is a church, that we're gonna be that kind of church.

We're never gonna demean you for what you don't know, but we're gonna commend you for how you're learning, how you're growing in the Word of God.

Shapes who we are.

But see, some people are so afraid that if they begin to study the Word of God about what everybody else around them's gonna think, I'm here to tell you today, God's Word will change your life.

If you'll be courageous enough to begin to get in it, do something, discipline with your life, it will begin to change you.

I wanna connect one more thing here while I'm here.

So here at Valorous Church, most of the time people ask, what English translation do you use to teach from?

And I use a lot of variations of English translations to teach from here off the platform on the weekend.

But the main one that I typically grab hold of and dig in and read on a regular basis is the New Living Translation.

It's a good translation of God's Word.

It's a good English translation of God's Word.

There's multiple good English translations.

The New King James Version is a good one.

The KJV is a good one.

Come on, you know, the NASB is a good one, okay?

New American Standard Bible, that's what those letters stand for.

But get you one that you can begin to read.

And then as you begin to read it, begin to study more.

Man, we live in a day and age where there's so many tools that you can begin to read God's Word on your own and with a group of people.

And you can grab hold of the tools off the internet and begin to study it.

And some of you are so highly intelligent.

If you were studying God's Word, you'd be doing remarkable things beyond what you see others of us doing.

Because the fact of the matter is God's Word gives you incredible wisdom.

And God's Word begins to do amazing things in your life if you'll take it and apply it to your life.

So what I'm saying here is I wanna invite you to get a copy of God's Word and get you a translation, an English translation that you can read and begin to understand.

And then if you do, get a paraphrase version, like the message.

I realize it's a paraphrase version, but it's okay sometimes to read a paraphrase version and begin to dig out of it, but then go back to a literal translation, come on, and begin to compare that to it, walk through it with the literal translation, and you can begin to get something out of it.

But I'm trying to give you some tools about beginning to process God's word.

We live in an incredible, incredible age where we can follow Jesus, we can study God's word.

There's multiple tools for us to do that with, but we need to get in the Bible.

And I invite you to do that.

We have Bible studies here at Valerie's Church.

All kinds of Bible studies going on, but it's so that we can get into God's word, because it's God's word that will begin to shape your heart and change your life with his Holy Spirit.

You wanna follow Jesus, follow God's word.

Look what it says in Hebrews chapter four, verse 12.

It says, for the word of God is alive and powerful.

Wow.

It says, it is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between the soul and the spirit, between the joint and the marrow.

It says it exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.

So don't be surprised when you get into God's word, that it begins to reveal some things to you about your heart.

And you begin to see some selfishness and some wickedness and some deceit and some bitterness in some of those things going on in your life, because it opens that heart up, come on.

And when it opens the heart up, it begins to tell the truth to you about your need.

Come on.

Your need for a Jesus and a savior to move in and change your heart and change your life so your destiny can be changed.

That's what the word of God begins to do.

Show us what's wrong and teach us what is right.

If you really want to succeed in life, I invite you to begin to study God's word.

The second thing I wrote down about following Jesus is begin to pray.

Everybody say pray.

Praying is very, very incredible because what does prayer do?

Prayer aligns my heart with the will of God.

A prayer begins to align my heart with the will of my heavenly father.

And so when I begin to pray, I have to begin to understand that when I enter into communion with my heavenly father, my heavenly father is probably going to speak into my life about some things I need to tweak and align so I can achieve the amazing things he's designed me to be and do.

And oftentimes when I go to the Lord in prayer, it's not just about getting something for myself, it's about God, I need you to align me.

You know, some of you want your car aligned, some of you don't have your car aligned, you wonder why it's all over the road, come on.

You've been hitting too many bumps and you're jacked up.

And really that's the case with our life a lot of times, we've hit so many bumps in life, we're jacked up.

And God's like, come, let me align you.

And when I align you, does it mean that you know what, you're going to always run a smooth life that you're not gonna hit no more bumps.

But what it does mean is that you can begin to get on the right path and begin to get a download of God's wisdom.

I love how our Lord Jesus prayed in the garden before he went to the cross.

And when we look at this passage, we see how persistent he was in his prayer.

And I wanna read it to you today because this is right before he went to the cross, right before he was getting ready to be nailed to a cruel Roman cross, right before the pain and the death that he was going to experience.

And he goes to the Father in prayer.

And this is what he says.

The Bible says in Matthew 26, verses 36 through 45, Jesus went with them to the olive grove called Gethsemane.

And he said, sit here, he's telling his disciples for a while, while I go over there and pray.

He took Peter and Zebedee's two sons, James and John, and he became anguished and distressed.

That was his human heart speaking to him.

The Bible says, he told them, my soul is crushed with grief to the point of death.

Stay here and keep watch with me.

He went a little further and he bowed with his face to the ground, praying, my Father, if it is possible, let this cup of suffering that I'm about to experience be taken away from me.

Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.

God, I need your will because right now, my heart could deceive me and destroy me, but I want your will, not my will.

Look what it says, then he returned to his disciples and he found them asleep and he said to Peter, couldn't you watch with me even one hour?

Keep watching, pray so that you will not give in to temptation, for the spirit is willing, but the body is weak, is what he tells Peter.

So then Jesus left for a second time and he prayed.

The second time, my father, if this cup can not be taken away, unless I drink it, your will be done.

He says, when he returned to them again, he found them sleeping, for they couldn't keep their eyes open.

And the Bible says, so he went and prayed a third time.

He went and prayed a third time, saying the same thing again.

This is Jesus, our Lord and Savior.

And the Bible says he goes three times to the father, because he understood in his human nature, it could deceive him.

How he was feeling could deceive him, but he needed the will of the father and what God needed him to do.

And so he was drawing on the father's love and who the father was in the midst of what he was about to face.

He knew, Isaiah, he knew that the wrath of God, he wasn't fearing death.

He knew that the wrath of God on sin was fixed to be taken on his shoulders.

He knew he was getting ready to wear the weight of your sin and my sin on his shoulders.

And he says, I don't know if I can handle this humanly, but God, if it is your will, let your will be done and not my will.

And he denies his own heart, his own emotion.

He says, God, if this is the way it needs to happen, for sinners like sitting in Valerie's church in 2025 can connect with you, guess what?

I'm willing to surrender and come underneath your will so that those sinners can have a relationship with us in all of heaven.

The Bible says, so he went and he prayed a third time.

And then he came to the disciples and he said, go ahead and sleep.

If all y'all can do is sleep, go ahead.

He says, have your rest.

But look, the time has come.

The son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

Up, he says, let's be going.

Look, the betrayer is here.

So the night before Jesus goes to the cross, he understood that spiritual victory requires spiritual wakefulness.

The disciples were sleeping, but Jesus was wide awake to who God is.

And Jesus was praying to this God, understand that the Bible says that some of us are asleep spiritually.

And what God wants to do is wake you up.

But if you're not willing to wake up, guess what?

We're to keep moving forward and be wakeful to the things of God and what God wants to do in us and through us.

And what we're to do as a church is do our best to invite people to spiritual wakefulness.

Jesus was awake.

And my friends, this means that, you know what?

He wasn't occupied with the latest Facebook post.

He wasn't occupied with his week.

He wasn't even occupied with the sins of the world fixing to be placed on his shoulder.

He was occupied with God, what is your will?

And your will be done here on earth as it is in heaven.

My friend, I invite you to pray that prayer every single day when you wake up.

Begin to connect with your heavenly father.

As a matter of fact, the Bible tells us, Jesus says, you wanna know how to pray?

Here's an example, Matthew 6, verses nine through 13.

He says, pray like this.

Our father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.

May your kingdom come soon.

May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

May we bring up there, down here.

Give us this day the food that we need.

Today, you're gonna provide for us.

And forgive us of our sins as we have forgiven those who sinned against us.

We wanna be a reflection of who you are in the world.

And don't let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.

The Bible says, if we take the light in the Lord, Psalm 37, verse four, he will give you your heart's desires.

So we gotta study God's word if we're gonna follow Jesus.

We gotta look at Jesus as our example to pray, and not only the example he gave to the disciples to pray, but the example he prayed in the garden when everything was coming against him.

Jesus was persistent and he believed that, you know what?

The spirit of the living God was stronger than his flesh.

My friend, your flesh is weak, but God is strong.

My flesh is weak, but God is strong.

My flesh will give in to a moment, but God will come in and save me for a lifetime.

If I will learn to listen to his spirit, listen to his word, and commune with him daily.

Prayer is about communing with your heavenly father, connecting with him, beginning to understand who he is, aligning your life with him, beginning to ask him clearly, God, how do you see me?

What do you want me to do?

How do you want me to be involved with your work here on earth as it is in heaven?

When you begin to pray those bold prayers, God begins to radically shift your mind.

He begins to radically shift your heart.

He begins to radically say, hey, I want you a part of what I'm doing in the world.

And can I tell you what that is?

It's called the local church.

And I know when people are radically praying to God, what happens is God leads them because the work God is doing in the earth, He's doing through the local church, come on.

So I know when people are praying and aligning themselves with the Lord God and who He is, guess what?

They're making themselves available to the body of Christ to do what God's doing in the world.

See, prayer is all about aligning you, my friend.

It's all about you knowing the heart of God so He can change your heart.

And when we pray to God, I can tell you right now, He realigns us.

He realigns us.

He takes care, He gives us provision, and He realigns us on the journey.

But daily, my flesh is weak, but God is strong.

And this is what it means to begin to say, God, not your will, not my will, but your will be done.

Lastly, I wrote this down.

It's, again, I've alluded to it, but if you really wanna follow Jesus, get involved with God's purpose.

Get involved with God's purpose.

What God's doing in the world, He's doing through the church.

His expectation is for every man, woman, boy, and girl in this day and age, after the cross and before the return of Christ, after the ascension of Christ and before the return of Christ, the Bible says God poured out His Spirit on men and women alike.

Slap your neighbor and say, God's poured out His Spirit.

Go ahead and tell them, let them know.

Okay, let them know.

And He did it so we can come together as a body.

The Bible in the New Testament describes the local church as a body.

It describes the local church as a house.

It describes the local church as a vine that produces something great so other people's life can be a change.

And I can tell you right now, God will align you with the local church.

This ain't the only local church, but God will align you and He will give your gifts to that church to further His kingdom in this earth.

Come on.

And so I invite you to get involved.

See, that's the challenge.

There's an old proverb, not in the Bible, but it's a proverb that says, the idle mind is the devil's workshop.

And literally what that means is sometimes, you know what, if I'm just idle with my time, my energy, and my resources, it's a workshop for the devil to begin to get in there.

This is why it's important to serve in the local church, to be a part of the local church, to be a part of God's mission in the world.

Look what it says in Romans chapter 12, verses one and two.

He says, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you.

Let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind He will find acceptable.

This is truly the way to worship Him.

It says, don't copy the behaviors and customs of this world, but let God, let God, let God, let God, let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

You will then learn to know God's will for you, which is good, pleasing, and perfect.

That's a beautiful passage of scripture.

It comes as a forefront of God speaking to the church at Rome through Paul about being the body of Christ.

And he says, offer yourself up as a living sacrifice.

Connect yourself to the local church and begin to let God work in you and work through you.

This is why we strive to say, hey man, we wanna connect you.

We don't get it right all the time, I understand, but we wanna connect you, we want you to be a part, we want you to do something because if you're just a person that has put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sin, I need you to know today, Jesus well forgave you on that cross, but Jesus wants to heal you.

He wants to heal your broken heart, he wants to heal you of that sin.

And the way you're healed is by trusting God's word, going to him in prayer, aligning with him over and over and connecting yourself to a body where you can carry out and execute the work God's called you to do in this world.

And as you begin to do that, God begins to do amazing things in our life and through our life.

And so again, open his word, bow in prayer and rise in service.

God is ready to do something incredible.

Maybe you're here today and you've been following your own emotions, your own heart.

And the question is, maybe it's left you in a dry and desolate place, a wasteful place, a barren place, a place that's unproductive.

I invite you today, if that's you, come to the Lord, bring and begin to follow him and see what he wants to do.

Because my Bible says, those who plant themselves in the house of the Lord will flourish.

We will begin to be like big trees on the side of a stream, and we'll begin to produce with our life and do great and mighty things in this earth for the kingdom's sake.

And so I do believe God's calling his church in this day and age, in this moment, to trust him, to trust him, to step in and make a difference.

And my friend, if that's what God's calling you to do, I'm gonna give you an opportunity to respond.

In just a moment, we're gonna sing our altar a song and our prayer partners are gonna be all around the front up here.

They're gonna be over by the crosses.

And again, we're gonna spend about five minutes worshiping God in here.

And maybe you need to come to this altar and just kneel and pray and surrender your life to God.

Maybe you need to start a personal relationship with God through Christ Jesus.

Maybe you wanna talk to one of our prayer partners over by the crosses.

And they can lead you in a prayer and begin to tell you how to do that.

You know, I don't know how God's gonna move in your heart and your life, but this moment, this altar call moment is a time of worship.

And again, I know that some of you may have an emergency and you may need to leave, but I wanna encourage you to stay.

And the reason I wanna encourage you to stay over the next five moments is because God does miraculous things in this moment.

And it's an opportunity for people in our midst to respond to what God's doing.

And God heals broken hearts in this moment.

How could we not celebrate that as a church?

How could we walk out of here and not celebrate the change of what God's doing?

And so we're a church.

At the end of our services, we allow room to respond.

And again, I don't know the work that God's doing in your heart as the band's gonna come out and sing this song, but after I pray, you move forward.

Maybe you need to come pray with a prayer partner.

Maybe you need to kneel at one of the kneel benches.

Maybe you need to come over to the cross and surrender your life to the cross and the resurrection of Christ.

And then when you leave today, we make a copy of God's word available to everyone who says, hey, you know what?

Today, I put my personal faith in Jesus Christ.

There's gonna be prayer partners out front.

They're there to just simply hand you a copy of God's word and hand that over to you so you can begin to study God's word.

It's a very important thing for you to have a copy of God's word.

So if you don't have one, we as a church, we buy them and we give them to new believers.

And again, you know what?

If you wanna go buy your own copy, that's perfectly fine with us.

But we wanna make those available because we don't want to leave people with room and excuse why I just didn't have one.

So we make that available to you on the way out.

So today I'd love to pray for you and you move as God moves.

God, I thank you so much for the opportunity to step in and make a difference with your word.

Jesus, today I pray for all of us to learn that our heart can be deceitful.

It can fool us.

But God, your spirit can speak to us and begin to change our heart and align us with your will to do great and mighty things in this life.

So God, if there's one here today that is stalemated because they are following their own heart.

God, I pray today that they would step in and begin to follow Jesus.

And Jesus, you would begin to transform their life, transform their heart, realign them, and begin to show them the direction they are to head in.

God, you're an amazing God.

You have a purpose and you have a plan for every single individual in this room.

God, there is no person that is here today that has gotten so far off track that you can't step in and change it.

God, I pray today by your spirit, you would step in, you'd begin to touch hearts and change lives.

People would surrender their life by faith to you, Jesus, begin to walk in the fullness of that and begin to experience the fullness of who God is in the world around us.

Jesus, we thank you for salvation that you gave to us through shedding your blood on that cross.

We thank you for the resurrection and the power that elevated you from the grave.

God, I pray we would all learn to begin to live by that same power.

It's in your name we pray.