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

This morning, if you came and your faith has been tested and your faith has been stretched, my hope and my goal is to encourage your faith because some of us just survived 2024.

We wanna thrive in 25, but if we're gonna thrive in 25, we're gonna have to preach to our faith.

We're gonna have to preach to our beliefs, to the things that we believe, and we're gonna have to free fall.

Touch your neighbor, say free fall.

You know, I've come to know that when you have a message that's truly from God, you can tell by how hard the devil comes at it.

Hear me again.

If you're not having a head-on collision with Satan every single day, you better check your feet.

Make sure you're walking with the right one.

This week, I had a gas pipe bust, and then they came to fix that, and when they fixed that, they busted my water pipe.

And they're like, well, that's not my problem, but there's one good kid down at Blossom.

His name is Brandon.

He said, man, I couldn't leave you like that over the weekend.

I went down there to Lowe's, I got a pipe.

Man, God is good all the time.

That's just a little bit.

Yesterday, some of y'all might not know this, but since October, I've been trying to grow my beard out.

And it's funny, because I'm from West Virginia, and I'm so ingrained with white trash DNA that it just grows in all white trashy.

But it had gotten real bushy, and some of y'all probably for the few weeks have been like, is that Pastor Jared?

No, honey, that's a homeless man.

So yesterday, I called a barber, and I'm like, you know, I'm gonna get stuff cleaned up, gonna look right.

So I go down, and he's a master barber, you know what I mean, he's the deal, and he's like, I got you, young fella, sit down.

So I sit down, you know, you can't see anything, but I feel like he's cutting a lot.

And then when I opened my eyes, I realized, I don't know if I did something to make him mad or what, but I got two different sides.

I'm like that guy from Batman, you know, Two-Face?

On this side, I'm 37.

On this side, I'm 14, you know what I mean?

I'm just trying to grow a beard.

I could go through the buffet line twice and not have to change hats, just change where I was looking, you know what I mean?

And then this morning, I overslept, so I couldn't even fix it.

But I'm here to tell you that you'll get used to him coming at you, but I tell you what, I serve a good God, and if you're gonna mess up my day, you had to get up a little bit earlier than that.

You gotta try a little harder than that, devil.

I am blessed to be a part of this family, and I'm also blessed to be from the great state of West Boggolly, Virginia.

There's a couple other hillbillies in here.

I hope y'all are wearing shoes.

No, I come from a little place called Brandywine.

It's a tiny little town where there's about 16 people living in the whole county.

I think 18, because two people just moved there.

But growing up, there really isn't a whole lot to do.

You can hunt, you can fish, and you can hunt and fish.

That's about what you got. 92% of the county is national forests.

It's a land truly more touched by God's hand than man's, but there is one thing we all love, and it's jumping off the Hardy County Bridge.

There's a bridge that goes across the South Fork and the South Branch of the Potomac, and it connects Hardy County and Pendleton County.

Problem with that is boys from Pendleton County and boys from Hardy County don't get along.

Their arrival is at a place down there called Moorfield.

It's a terrible place.

It's just pig farmers, even the girls are ugly down there.

It's bad.

But we go down and jump off.

I got a picture of it.

Spent hours the other day finding this picture, and sure enough, Google Earth had it.

This is the Hardy County Bridge.

That's about 40 feet up.

And I don't know, if you'll look at this, you'll be able to see it's not very deep.

It's about a foot deep everywhere around, but in the center, there's this little hole that's about four feet wide and five feet long that goes straight to hell.

There ain't no bottom to it.

We tried to find it.

We were crazy.

I didn't say we were smart.

So you can, it's about 40 feet if you just jump regular, if you go over the banister, 44 feet if you jump off the banister, and you're a sissy if you don't jump off the banister.

Every year we wait all year long, and when May comes, by the end of it, the water's starting to get warm enough.

Now, not like warm down here in May.

Like our creeks don't thaw all the way until about June, because the sun only hits the ground for about four hours a day.

But we go and we jump off.

We risk our lives for a three second free fall.

Some of y'all like roller coasters.

Anybody here like roller coasters?

It's only one good part of the roller coaster, and it's that part that's the simulator free fall.

You know, chugga-chugga-chugga-chugga-whoa.

It's that feeling when your belly goes into your neck.

That's the same thing there.

And it's funny, because me and Tasha were talking a few months ago, and I guess about a month ago, and we were talking, man, that's a lot like what this life is.

When you really turn around, and you put your whole life into God's hands, and you say, you know what?

Not my way, but your way.

Not I who live, but Christ in me.

Whatever you want is what we're gonna do.

It's a free fall, church.

It's exhilarating and terrifying, because I'm not driving anymore, but I'm trusting the one that is.

We talk about a lot of things, and a lot of times, as the church, we don't talk a whole lot or enough about truly preaching to our faith, truly encouraging our faith, and there's some people that get it better than others, and there's this phrase that they use with these people a lot, and I hate it.

I really despise it.

They call them over-spiritual.

Jackie just laughed.

That is ridiculous.

That's the most absurd thing that I've ever heard.

There is no possibility for a man or a woman of God to be over-spiritual, okay?

I'm just hoping that somebody uses that phrase with me at some point in my life, because I have been connected with the living God long enough that I have forgotten any other thing than he's gonna do it.

Now, there's people that are dramatic, more dramatic than me, where it's all different shapes and sizes, and you know, Jackie takes her shoes off when she prays.

I respect it.

That's just what she does.

That's the connection that she has with God.

I talk in a weird accent.

God probably is like, what?

Or maybe you talk funny, I don't know.

Everybody's different.

And then there's some people that are fake.

It's just, it doesn't matter what you're in, or whether it's church, whether it's work, whether it's anything.

Some people fake cry when they pray, and some people just do it all for their glory and not his glory.

But then there are some people, and I bet you've met some of them in your lifetime, that you can just smell Jesus on them.

They sit down and you're like, oh, you know Jesus.

You smell like him.

I'm just gonna scoot a little closer.

I met a woman like that, Ms. Glenda Dawkins.

Glenda and Harvey Dawkins.

You never know how you listening to the Holy Spirit might change somebody's life.

Several years ago, and I mean several years ago, was at one time, I worked for Wyndham Worldwide, a vacation company.

And I was a senior manager there for a lot of years.

And I had a guest come in, and I was working that table that day.

And when I sat down, I could almost feel him on, I didn't even know Jesus like that.

She just had that much Jesus in her.

And she said, baby, what are you doing here?

I said, well, I work here.

She said, no, but what are you doing here?

I said, ma'am, I work here, I'm running the floor.

She said, you're not supposed to be here, you're a pastor.

And I said, no, not, but it got to me.

I started thinking about it that night.

I came home and I told Tasha about it.

And she said, God is the God of impossible.

But that little phrase, that little thing, that what if she's right though?

And then I started thinking, and then a year or so later, I got my call.

And then I told Clay, we went down to the Cracker Barrel and I said, hey, I think I'm called.

I don't know what this looks like.

And he's like, awesome.

Here, I'm gonna put you in here.

Cause that's what Clay does.

Clay finds out that you got something going on.

He's gonna put you to work with it right now.

He's gonna grow it in you.

And he's gonna develop you in what you're doing.

It's a blessing to have a leader like that church.

But that word of faith that she spoke over my life changed it forever.

We talk about the goodness of God.

We talk about the fullness of his glory, but so often our belief is weaker than the coffee we make.

There's a story in the Bible that really speaks to me.

If you have your Bibles with you, turn to Matthew chapter eight, verses five through 10.

When he, being Jesus, entered Capernaum, the centurion, Roman, not a Jew, came to him pleading with him, Lord, my servant is lying at home, paralyzed and terrible agony.

He said to him, Jesus, am I to come and heal him?

Lord, the centurion said, I'm not worthy to have you come under my roof, but say the word and my servant will be healed.

For I too am a man under authority, having soldiers under my command, I say to this one and he goes, and to another come and he comes, and to my servant do this and he does it.

Hearing this, Jesus was amazed.

He said to those following him, truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with so great a faith.

Jesus was amazed, church.

He wasn't amazed that the centurion had the gumption to walk up to a Jew.

He wasn't amazed at how finely he was dressed or that he was just talking to people or even that he thought that Jesus might be able to heal his servant.

He was amazed that the centurion believed you don't even have to go to my house.

Now they could have been 20 miles from his house or 20 feet from his house.

He said, you say the word and my servant will be healed.

So often though, because of circumstance in life, our faith isn't like that, I wanna have a faith that amazes God.

I wanna have a faith that makes God get out of his chair and say, now that's what.

I wanna have a faith that brings a smile across his beautiful face.

I want that kind of faith.

I've seen that kind of faith change lives.

But to do it, and if we're gonna thrive this year, I think that this is the key.

I think this is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.

So I wrote down a couple of things that we'll need to do.

First, we're gonna have to believe beyond what we see.

Faith is the evidence of things hoped for.

I wanna point something out, though, in that it is evidence.

Your God is not a God that expects you to just believe blindly.

He expects you to walk in the spirit, walk by faith and not by sight.

Because a lot of times, what you see and what's real really aren't the same thing.

I don't know if you watch the news lately, but a lot of things that you see and are real are not the same thing, church.

The truth and facts aren't always the same thing either, because there are lots of facts of life and there's a whole lot of things about life that I understand, but that don't make any sense.

But the truth and facts aren't always the same thing is because the truth is a person.

His name is Jesus.

And if he says it, I don't care how impossible it is.

I don't care how absurd it is.

I don't care how much you know, there's no way that could ever happen.

If you think that, you ain't met my God.

He is the God of the impossible.

He's the God that revolutionizes everything.

And when you get a little bit of that in you, you start to walk a little bit different.

But some of us have trouble, we have trouble with it.

We struggle to believe beyond what our eyesight sees.

Maybe you've been hurt and it seems impossible.

Maybe you prayed for that child to change, for that family member to change.

Maybe you prayed for that sick person and they still died.

Maybe that's how it happens for you.

Maybe you love God, but the hurt has made you really mad at him.

Anybody ever been mad at God?

You ain't got to raise your hand if you don't want to.

I would tell you something, it's okay to be mad at God.

It doesn't disqualify you.

If it does, then I am disqualified.

I've spent hours in my truck fussing at him.

You told me to do this.

You said do this and it was going to be okay.

And then, you know, a day or two later, I'm eating my crow again.

Like, Lord, I'm sorry for doubting you.

I knew you was going to show up.

I don't know why I do this stupid stuff.

God's a big boy.

He can handle you being mad at him.

What I'm asking you, though, is even though you're mad at him, believe him for who he is.

Believe that no matter what's going on, and I may hate my circumstances right now, I may hate the thing that I know he told me to do, but I know that if he told me to do it, that it's good, because he does things for my good.

He'll carry me through it.

He'll bring me to it.

And he will work it all out for my good.

If I would just free fall, free fall.

Stop holding on to all of these things that you think.

Church, I promise you are not as good at thinking as you think you are.

I've had a whole lot of things this month that I had to put some faith into.

My wife, this pretty little hillbilly over here.

She wanted a lift for a forerunner for Christmas.

Anybody ever put a suspension lift on?

It's about a six hour job for a shop.

So for me, it took 18.

It's funny, man.

There's a couple of times I'm like, I don't know if I'm gonna get this thing done.

I might have to go pay somebody.

And I'm like, no, you're not.

You and God got this.

We got it.

But every time I get in there, another light would come on.

I'm like, this must be what Ford drivers feel like.

Please, please, please, please, please, please, please.

I'm playing.

I'm serious.

But we got it.

And then it just seems like, man, one thing after another, one thing after another, one thing after another, until it gets kind of funny.

And here's where you get to a certain point in your life because if you're walking with God, you're gonna experience this all the time.

I get excited when he starts coming at me.

I get excited when the bombs start going off because I'm like, ooh, you're about to see him.

You're about to see dad move.

You better watch out.

I get so fired up in the struggle that it doesn't feel much like a struggle anymore.

But I know that some of us, it's really hard for our faith because of what we've been through.

I wish I had all the answers for you.

I wish I could tell you why it was.

What I can tell you, you'll find in Isaiah 55, eight through nine, the prophet that Jesus quoted the most.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways.

For as heaven is higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

It's a free fall.

Trusting that if he said no, it's not good for me.

The answer to all my prayers might not make sense to me or be on the timeline that I want, but it's on the correct one.

Touch your neighbor, say it's correct.

The free fall is saying that if God said no, then I don't want it.

If God said not now, then I'll wait.

If God says never, then it's never.

If God said he don't want me to do that, I ain't doing that.

Because I'm not walking for me.

I'm not living for him.

I'm just living for him.

And whatever he says is what I'm doing.

Monday and Sunday and Tuesday and Wednesday, because I tried this thing driving myself for a lot of years.

I'm not good at it.

Neither are you.

But I tell you, in the past however many years it's been, I remember when I was baptized.

I remember that cold Easter morning.

I've talked about it before.

I remember when I laid him to rest in the Atlantic Ocean and a new man came out of there.

And I mean a new man came out of there.

And this isn't by me, it isn't by the choices.

I didn't just change my behaviors.

God just changed who I was.

That's why I love these so much.

Because in all of the free fall, you gotta let go.

Every year that we jump off that bridge, the most terrifying part is the first one.

As you walk out there and you don't know if the floods through the winter have moved rocks around or anything like that, it is a lot of faith in that hole.

Like I said, all my years that hole goes straight to hell.

And then it goes in, it just ends up there.

But the first one is so hard.

And it's so much like that with our faith.

The first time that you'll truly believe God for something, and you'll watch for it, and you'll wait for it, and then you'll see it.

It may not be what you wanted exactly.

It may not go the way you hoped it would go, but you will see it.

And then the second time it gets a little easier.

By the 43rd time you jumped off of it, you're not even worried about it anymore.

Even that lady jumped off that bridge lots of times.

Y'all think she's just this sweet little Christian lady.

I know that crazy, Tasha.

Number two, give your imagination back to God.

I want you to write that down.

Give your imagination back to God.

All of us, and I mean all of us, if you look to your left and look to your right, you'll see somebody whose life has been marked by trials, been marked by pain, been marked by struggle, who has hurt, maybe hurting now.

Not one of your lives has been perfect.

Not one of your lives is perfect right now.

For some of us, the pain of what happened and the frustration and the failures of our life has made us bitter.

Clay talked about that a couple weeks ago.

We've allowed it to make us bitter and in some ways jaded, and now we say stuff like, I'm a realist.

Well, I'm just going to be realistic.

Church, I'm going to tell you, if you are a realist, you ain't a Christian.

There is nothing realistic about this walk.

There is nothing rooted in the facts of the earth that is about this walk.

Being realistic is another way of saying I expect the worst and talk myself out of seeing miracles.

The devil has stolen your hopes and dreams, but the God we serve is still the same God.

He's the same God that when you come up on an ocean and you've got an army at your back and there's positively no way out, but through it, he tells the water to move.

He's the same God that when you're in the desert and there's nothing to eat, there's no food around for miles, the food will fall from heaven.

He's the same God in the desert that when you have no water, he'll bring water from the rock.

He's the same God that when they shut the grave, tells the stone to move and it moves.

He's the same God that will call you out of yours.

So when you pray, don't pray like you're buying a lottery ticket, like, I hope this works.

Pray like he's got it now.

So let's see where this goes.

Whatever he says is right.

Whatever he says is what I want because I know, I know he's the God that's still working miracles out.

Talking real miracles.

There's some folks in the world, we call them cessationists, that believe that miracles don't happen anymore.

Believe they died with the apostles.

I'm here to tell you, I've walked this walk and been in this place long enough to know that it positively is still happening.

It's still happening daily, but some of us have changed our eyesight and we haven't aligned with them and we're not seeing it the way that we ought to.

We start seeing things as coincidences.

There ain't a single thing on this planet that's a coincidence, church.

There are things that are God and things that aren't, but there are no coincidences.

The fact that you got up out of bed this morning and you showed up here, it's not a coincidence, church.

Some of you are just exploring the claims of Christ.

You don't even know what half of this stuff means, but maybe you do, but you came to a place where someone will put their arms around you and help you through the hard and hold you through the shakes.

Just go clap for that.

But you're going to have to take your imagination back from the devil.

You got to take it back because with God, it says it.

It says it right there in the Bible.

With man, this is impossible, but with God, that's his favorite word.

It's impossible.

He loves it when it's impossible.

In fact, if your life is showing up, there's some things showing up that's an impossible situation.

God's just laying track as he's about to run through it.

You know what I'm saying?

He's just laying.

He loves to stack the odds against himself.

That way, when he shows up, you can be like, I know who did that.

It wasn't nothing but the blood that did this.

Nothing but God that saved me here.

But sometimes it's easier to see in retrospect, looking back, still the God that parts the ocean, still the God that makes the lame walk, still the eye opening, dead raising.

I'm sorry that the devil brought hardship to your door.

My Bible says that if you would give your imagination back to God, it says right here in Romans 8, 28, we know, slap your neighbor say, we know, that all things, slap the other neighbor say, all things, work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

He will turn it for your good.

When you see hardship show up, when you see impossible show up at your door, get excited because he's gonna grow you in it.

He's gonna make you better through it.

He's gonna change something in you that might be able to change something in somebody else.

He's gonna make you a chain breaker because he is the chain breaker.

He's not raising up a bunch of people that just have a good attendance on Sunday.

He's not raising up a church of people that, well, yeah, you know, we know God and God's pretty cool and we say grace before dinner and everything.

He's raising up a body of believers.

Do you know how much belief changes things?

I'll give you an example.

All throughout the Bible, every single miracle, miracle after miracle, and Jesus says, your faith has made you well.

Your faith has healed you.

Your faith has given you your sight.

He doesn't say your clothes or your thought processes or your ideas or your perfect attendance.

He said your faith has.

Your faith.

But if you're like me, sometimes I gotta talk to my faith.

Even though I've seen a lot of things and I've seen too much to deny, sometimes I still have to talk to the brother inside of me that wants to keep saying, but dude, what if it doesn't work?

And I gotta say to him, but what if it does?

But what if it does?

We saw him do it this time.

We saw him do it that time.

And I saw him over here.

I'd be stupid to believe that he's not going to show up in this part too.

Why wouldn't he?

A guy just switching up on a Tuesday.

Not my God.

But he'll take all your brokenness and mistakes.

He'll turn them into a testimony.

That may just change the world, even if it's just for one person.

Do you know how powerful your testimony is?

Testimonies allow other people to see that it's not just them that's going through the hard stuff.

It's not just them that's messed up.

I'll be the first to tell you about how far God's brought me because I remember how far I remember the pit of hell that he pulled me out of when he sat me on that rock.

I remember when he changed my name and I remember when he said, you'll be mine from now on.

And I've tried my best with it.

Let your kids teach you about it.

Anybody got kids?

I'm blessed to talk with these kids on Wednesday and I'm blessed to teach with these kids over here every Sunday at this service.

Right now, Mr. Bruce is handling, they love Mr. Bruce.

It's good.

They got more faith in you.

They know the Bible better than you too.

I'm just being real.

I'm not trying to hurt anybody's feelings.

Sometimes they know the Bible better than me.

They just, and with them, they don't even have to think about it.

It's so amazing to watch him.

So I'm like, well, who do you think did that?

God, duh.

Man.

And it's funny because Jesus talked about that in Matthew 2.

He pulled up the little child and he said, unless you become like this little one, unless you have faith like this child, you will surely not enter the kingdom of God because I've got to believe something that's far beyond what I can see.

The Bible says that I'll walk by faith and not by sight.

I'm not worried about what I can see, but I'm worried about what I'm concerned about and I'm hopeful for is what I can't see and what he's going to do when he shows up because I know it'll be phenomenal.

Childlike faith.

Number three, the last thing I wrote down.

This will allow you to recognize when God moves.

Recognize.

When people pray, it doesn't make God move.

It doesn't remind God to be God.

What it does is it aligns my eyesight with the vision of my soul.

It allows me to start looking for the places where God will show up.

I want to tell you this.

God has worked 50 miracles for you this week that you have no idea about.

He's been working things for your good that you have no clue about.

He's worked things out that you'll never even know were coming for you because he stopped them way down the road.

Kind of like you remember when the Israelites were crossing the Jordan over into the promised land and he stopped the water.

Do you know where he stopped the water?

The Bible says he stopped it in Adam, three hours north.

Sometimes he's that far ahead of us making sure that things are moved out of the way.

That morning that you woke up and you couldn't find your keys and then when you did find your keys and you opened the door and the dog ran out and then you got out there and it was a flat tire and everything seemed to go against you.

Well you missed a four car pileup that would have been you on the news because God said not today.

One day I'll bring you home but not today.

But you're going to have to stop walking through life like this.

Some of us are.

Some of us have given up on the idea because we didn't get it this way or that way or this way or that way that it's not still good and that God's not still working miracles.

But I'm going to tell you if you would start believing, start truly believing in what you pray for.

I promise you, and I say it with authority, I promise you, you will see it.

It may not be what you wanted.

It may not be just right.

But you will see God move.

My grandpa used to say it like this, if you plant corn, don't act surprised when corn sprouts.

And don't fuss about the work of harvesting it.

And if you pray over that corn, don't be surprised if you got to build a bigger barn to put it in.

That's the God we serve.

The God who didn't come to judge the world, but so that it might have life and life more abundantly.

Some of us, because our belief system has gotten weak, we're not living an abundant life.

I want you to hear me when I say this.

This is not no prosperity gospel.

I'm not saying you'll get a lot of money.

You may get a lot of money.

God blesses some people that way.

You may be blessed with love throughout your house.

Some of you have woken up this morning in a bed, in a warm bed.

You got into a car.

Some of you got into a Chevy.

Those are real blessings.

I'm just kidding.

I joke a lot.

Ford makes good trucks.

About that big.

They drive good.

Start looking at all the ways that you're blessed because it is so easy to get focused on the negative.

It's so easy for the devil to get into our head and get into our heart and start telling us that God's holding something back from us.

The first lie that he ever told, he's holding something back from me.

He doesn't want what's good for you.

You don't have this or you don't have that.

Look at these people on Facebook.

Their life is so good.

All you're seeing is the highlight reel.

You don't know where they went through on Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday.

Most of it is lies.

But what you do have is you're sitting next to a woman that loves you, a man that loves you.

You've got babies at home that love you, a baby that you prayed for, and somewhere around nine or 10 years old, they just became a frustration and you ain't loving them the way you ought to be loving them.

You're not breathing into them the way you ought to be breathing into them because the devil got a hold of your imagination and you started closing your eyes.

Church this year, let this year be the year that you open your eyes and you start to see miracles again.

You start to see the glory of the Holy God working in your life.

And if you pray for patience, expect for God to create scenarios where you have to be patient.

If you pray for healing, expect God to create situations in your life that make you know it was him who healed you.

If you pray for your finances, don't be mad when that job you called three weeks ago calls you back.

It might not be the perfect job, but it's a crazy thing that happens.

If you start working today, about two weeks from now, you'll get a paycheck.

If you pray for your family, don't be surprised when God says to roll up your sleeves and get to work.

Serve them.

If you pray for a closer walk with Him, don't be surprised when you need more comfortable shoes.

If you pray to get more involved with this church, don't be surprised when we find out what your spiritual gift is.

But first, we will make sure that you have the fruit of the Spirit.

Hear me when I say this.

We want to find what your spiritual gift is.

And you may have the gift of prophecy, but you're mean.

We want to see the fruits of the Spirit before we see the spiritual gift that you have.

So we know where to put you because you might be able to preach, but if you're weird, we can't have you preach to the kids.

They just don't know about me yet.

The reason I think I have this job is the talent pool must have been shallow.

But here's what I've seen.

If you plant corn, corn grows.

And I've seen it myself.

I've seen it in this place.

Seeds being sown and then sprout and be watered and lives change.

And I'm not obtuse enough to believe that God's not still the God who's working miracles all over this house.

I've seen some personal ones.

These aren't things that I've heard about, not things that I read about in a prayer digest, but they're things that I've seen with my own eyes.

I've personally seen a little girl in my family about the age of my daughter.

She's on her second heart transplant and her body's rejecting it.

But it's not anymore.

And we can't think of a reason why.

The doctors can't figure it out.

She shouldn't have survived the first rejection.

But here she is, still breathing, still talking, still a beautiful, wonderful 14-year-old girl.

And the only thing that changed it was a nation of prayer.

People who came around her, these people, this nation, valorous nation, prayed circles around this little girl.

I've seen it restore families that were ravaged by divorce and adultery.

I've seen it not only restore them, but bring them back closer than they ever were before it.

That their children know how insanely loved they are.

And mom and dad have a whole new relationship because he is the God that when he fixes it, church is fixed.

When he heals it, church is healed.

When he restores it, he doesn't do it halfway.

He restores it.

I've seen addicts, junkies, people that were on the streets come in here and find a body of people, a hospital where they could get better and they could get love through it.

And they wouldn't just be judged for it, but they could be healed.

And I've seen them turn into powerful warriors for the cross of Christ that you don't want to step a toe against if you're a demon.

They pick up the sword and they run dents in the enemy of hell every single day.

They're praying over you now because God is a God of miracles.

There's no circumstance that changed them.

Just God on a cross.

I've seen the dead raised.

I mean that literally.

People who had two weeks left to live, but that was six years ago.

People who we don't know if they got three minutes or three weeks, that was 15 years ago.

Because God didn't say yet.

God said I still got some stuff for him to do.

I've seen others go home and I don't mourn them because they're better off than me.

And I don't want them to mourn me.

When it's my time, I'm gonna go out dancing.

I can't wait to see him.

I can't wait to hold his hand and just sit under some shade tree.

And I got a lot of questions.

What's impossible for man?

God does before he has his coffee in the morning church.

But give your imagination back to him and watch what he does with you.

Give him your heart.

Give him your imagination.

Give him the glory when it comes.

When he shows up in your life, take a second to give him the glory.

Now this is something that I do and I don't know if it's for you.

It doesn't matter how you pray or where you pray.

But sometimes for me, there is power in hitting my knees and I mean it literally, kneeling before the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, when I bow to him because he is the love of my life and the king and the hero and the champion of my life.

Because he will show up and every time that you see it and you thank him, you get a little bit stronger.

And so you can start to be much, much more unrealistic and start free falling all through this year.

Let me pray for you.

Father, thank you so much that we live in a place where we can gather together to worship your holy name, that we could glorify you, God, that we could learn to love you all over again.

If we've been walking with you for 10 minutes or 50 years, Lord, let this year be the year that we grow a little closer and we know you better.

And I ask that you would be with every prayer request in this place, every hurting person, every person that's in a wonderful place that you would hold on, Lord, that they might see your light.

And I pray for the one that's here today that doesn't know you, that is just now starting to explore, that they would find community and family here, that they would find the love that you provide.

We love you, Father.

We praise you.

And all God's children said, amen.