Better Together

Hello, and welcome to the Salt Church Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. But today we're going to talk about the second installment is Better Together, Better Together, because we are better together. And last week we began with the series talking about salt. And there was this message that Jesus gave on Sermon on the Mount.

And this is kind of where we get our idea of Salt Church, Salt. You know, it just, it seems like a really cool hip name that we call ourselves because we're at the oceanfront. We're kind of a beachy church and all these things. But really what it comes down to is Jesus made this statement and was very significant to the people. He says, you are the salt of the earth.

And then he goes on, but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. So when he made that statement, this, you are the salt of the earth, that was significant. That changed everything. Because what people understood that day about salt is it was primarily a preservative.

It was a preservative. And just these people who were not seen as anybody significant. They were just regular blue collar people of no influence who just kind of gathered around because this extraordinary teacher was teaching about these amazing things of God. And they heard this and he says, you know, God wants to use you. And a little bit of you goes a long way.

A little bit of salt goes a long way. And we hit on that. Next week, we want to talk about the commission is the mission. So we want to talk a little bit more about mission, the mission of our church and where we're going and how we go out into our communities and in our places and whatever we're doing. We have this term called on mission.

We are Christians on mission. And we are constantly on mission. But today I think is very significant because I want to pull it back in and talk about community for a minute. Community. And we have three areas.

If you see our logo, God, community, mission. And community is a very significant part of that. And what we need to understand as a church is that relationships are significantly important. Community is important. Doing work together goes so much farther than doing it alone.

And the myth out there is that we can be Lone Ranger Christians, right? Like, you know, I can know the Lord. And, yes, we can know the Lord. It's a private moment that you have with God where you receive Jesus as your Savior. And it's kind of an inward working that takes place.

It's between you and God, right? And then we say, well, you know, I know the Lord and I know Jesus. And, but you have these talks, especially where I, you know, with my hobbies. I love to surf and I love outdoors and I love camping and I love doing hiking and I like doing all those type of things. And the people I tend to share those hobbies with think this.

Being alone is better. Being alone gets me closer to God. Being alone, and there are times where we need to be alone with God. There's times that I got to be out on a surfboard and alone with God so I can process things and He can speak to me. There's times I need to be alone in my room to pray with God and Him to help me, you know, discover the next step or the next direction I need to take.

There are times like that where I need to be with God. But it's significantly more important that we come back together in community so that God can do something, do a work in us. But there's this myth out there that we can be alone and as long as I have God and as long as I walk this life, I'll walk it alone, everything's okay. But it couldn't be further from the truth. There was this movie I watched which kind of applies to even, it's not even a Christian movie because I think most people understand that we need this community element no matter where you are in your spiritual walk, in your spiritual life.

It was called Into the Wild, Into the Wild. It was a book that was written and I watched a documentary, it's not a documentary, it's actually a movie about a true story about a young man. And he's walking out this adventure. And so this kid, his name is Christopher McCandless. And you can read about him, you can look him up.

And I just happened to be on Netflix and I saw it and I've heard a lot about it. And I used to be a big Pearl Jam fan, so Eddie Vedder has like the whole soundtrack in the background. So I was like, I'm going to listen to this and see, you know, he's got a ukulele or acoustic music going on through the whole movie. So I was like, oh, that'd be cool, you know, it's kind of artistic and stuff. And I watched his kid's journey as he leaves college and he had this, you know, white collar, kind of upper white collar suburban DC life.

And he decides I'm just tired of life. I'm tired of all the things that are going on in life. I'm tired of the demands of society. So he says, I want to reach true enlightenment. So I'm going to take a journey into the wild.

I'm going to just leave everything. I'm not going to tell my parents. I'm going to take my $24,000 that was saved for me to go to Harvard Business School. Very smart guy who was accepted. And he says, I'm just going to donate that to charity and I'm going to ditch my car without telling anybody.

I'm going to burn my social security guard, change my name, and I'm going to roll out into the wild. So it takes you on the story of this guy who's trying to discover himself walking out into the wild, meeting people on the way, running into these farmers and these different people, taking odd jobs, different places, and actually developing relationships along the way. But eventually trying to pull himself away from everything because he feels like the truest adventure, the truest of myself and to be able to connect with God and connect with something beyond me, whether he knew about God or not or what he thought about God, he took that into the wild. And there was even one point where there was an older gentleman that he stayed with for a while on the way, and the older gentleman was making these questions about or asking these questions about, you know, why are you taking this adventure? Why are you going out here?

I mean, you have everything. He says, I would even be willing to adopt you, you know, because he had such a close relationship with the guy because relationships were important. Well, I believe there's something more than just relationships. So he goes out into the wild and eventually in the Alaskan wild finds an abandoned bus after a long hike out into the wilderness and begins to set up camp. And over a period of months of hunting his own meat, living in the wild, just learning how to do things, you start to see this loneliness take place.

Now, a lot of people that read this story would say the opposite. But as I watched this this this kid, you know, just deal with being alone and talk to himself. And and there was one statement he made. It was honestly, it was one of the last things he wrote in his writings before he tried to adventure back. It said true happiness can only be found when shared with others.

He come to that conclusion near the end of this trip. True happiness can only be found when shared with others. And he packs up his stuff, leaves the van and tries to cross the river. But what he learns is the river is because of the melting snow is too crazy. The cross cannot make it across.

He goes back to the bus. And within a month, he passes away and he's found two weeks later by moose hunters. And one of those statements, I look at that. Some people say, well, he found true enlightenment, found it with nature, how he died, yada, yada. But I would I would beg to disagree with that.

Because true happiness can only be found when shared with others. And he realized that he started to think about his family. He started thinking about the people that he loved. He thought about it, and so is right, and so listen to me. The people that he passed on his way to living in the wild, God has not called us to live in the wild.

Though it's a great adventure, it's a great time to be able to hike, camp, don't get me wrong, doing things like that is extraordinary and fun, but we are meant to be together. Nowhere does it say in Scripture, it's better for man to be alone. In fact, it says that man needs people, right? In fact, God made woman so that man would not be alone, right? He made man, he made woman so that man could not be alone.

And also, in the very nature of God, we see the Trinity. We see Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There's a relationship happening there, and Jesus understood this. He had 12 people that were closest to him. It was like his small group among the great ministry.

In fact, I would beg to say or argue that his public ministry wasn't as effective, because there were times where he had multiple people, lots of people gathered together, and they received his message, and then threw it away, right? They received not. When he started talking about the harder things, I don't know about this guy, right? But these 12 people he had, they were very, very close. And we look at Jesus' life, and as he's with these 12 people, he's talking to them about the last things.

He's getting ready to go to the cross. These guys still don't get it, and he's in a room. And we see in John 13, 1 through 8, we see this. We see him talking about something. So there's two things, and I think it's supremely significant that we look at the last words of people, because I think the last words are probably the most important things when people share those things with us.

If somebody has something to share, something significant to a bit of wisdom or a bit of knowledge about life, usually it's at the last times of their life. And Jesus, his last words are significant. So the first thing he talked about was the Holy Spirit, right? And we talked about in our last series. But the second thing he talked about is relationships.

Relationships, being in relationship with each other. And in John 13, it says it was just before the Passover festival. So this was just within the last weeks of Jesus. And Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. He was getting ready to go to the cross.

And having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. He was talking about those twelve that he loved that were in the world with him. And the evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. And Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God. So he knew that this was getting ready to take place.

So he got up from his meal. He took off his outer clothing. He wrapped a towel around his waist. And after that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet, drying them with a towel that was wrapped around him. And he came to Simon Peter, who said to him, Lord, are you going to wash my feet?

Because Peter wasn't about this. You know, he didn't want to see this happen. You know, because here's the thing about feet washing. We understand foot washing today as something like servanthood related, if we grew up in church and we hear about it. And I've always took this scripture to really point towards servanthood, which is applicable and very relevant to this particular situation.

But I want to take it a different direction because what's going on here is Jesus is getting ready to wash Peter's feet. And he's like, no, look, this is the dirtiest act you can do. Because these people didn't have shoes, they didn't have cars, they didn't have, a lot of them didn't have horses or buggies or anything like that back then. I mean, things weren't even, I mean, you had to be the upper, you know, you had to be the upper class to even have anything. Even the priests walked and the highfalutin people, they had, they even walked.

So everybody, these were dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty feet. And they had mud between the toes. And Peter's like, there's no way you're going to look at the mud between my toes. And Jesus's response was, do you not realize how, you don't realize this right now, Peter, but do you not realize now what I am doing? You don't realize now what I'm doing?

So most people don't realize this. And I love this. People, most people don't realize this. I read this in a commentary. It was great.

Most people don't realize that they need somebody to know what's between their toes. I never saw it from that standpoint before. Like, oh, it's, it's just because, you know, he wants, he doesn't want the son of God to serve him. Yeah. Yeah.

That's, that's, that's true. But for others, it's like, I don't want to reveal my dirtiness. I don't want to reveal my sin to you. There's a lot of things in my life that you don't need to know about, but God didn't make us that way. And Jesus is, is making a point here.

I need to see what's in between your toes. You don't understand now, Peter, but later you will understand. And, and, and Peter said, no, you shall never wash my feet. Jesus answered, unless I wash you, you have no part with me. You cannot partner with me.

You cannot be a partner with me in this. You cannot be a part of the team unless you open up your dirty toes and let me in and let me clean your dirty toes. It gets down to what's between their toes. It's, it's about what's between your toes. And that's why we need community.

I know that sounds kind of gross. That's to me, it does because I'm not a toe foot person at all. You know, my, my wife picks on me about that all the time, even if it's clean. She's like, she wants me to massage her feet. And I'm like, I'll do it.

But you know, so I'm just kind of like, I just can't, you know, it's, it's, it's not the greatest act. And, and, and personally, I don't want anybody massaging my toes. Okay. I don't have pretty toes in the first place. You know, I got these long toes that bend around backwards, you know, they're, they're kind of gross.

But it gets down to what's between your toes. And there's, there's five things I want to, I want to talk about real quick today. What, what we, we are better when we, when we reveal our toes. No, that's not, that's not the answer to that. But how do we reveal our muddy toes?

How do we do this? How do we get together in community? How do we, what's the purpose of community? Why do we need community? Because we are better together when we, first of all, serve one another.

If you're jotting that down in your notes, go ahead. Because not only do people need to serve, which we are big on serving, right? You got to serve the people out there. We need to be served. There's times that you're going to have some difficult situations in life, and we need to be serving each other.

We need to be taking care of each other. We need to be helping each other. There's going to be crisis points in your life. There's going to be times when you fall down that you need a pick-me-up. There's going to be times in life where you really need someone.

You need to be served. And, and when your world falls apart, where do you go? You can go to, you know, friends, family. You need someone. And what better place than in community, in a fellowship.

So we need to serve one another. And when your world falls apart, you have someone to pick you up. John 13, 12, and 15 says this, when he had finished washing their feet, he put on the clothes, his clothes, and returned to his place. He says this, do you understand what I have done for you? Because I'm sure they didn't, but it was kind of ridiculous that he was washing their feet.

And they said, he says, you call me teacher and Lord, and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, here's what I want you to do. You also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. So, Jesus did it.

We should do it. A King of kings, Lord of lords, a teacher, the sovereign God who said the word and the world leapt into existence, said we should wash each other. He actually kneeled down and washed the feet of his closest, closest friends. Are we willing to wash the feet of our closest friends, of our family, our group, whoever we have? Now, I would say that, you know, when we dig into dirt, we don't share it with everybody, right?

We find people that are closest to us in life. There's, there's people, that's why we do small groups. That's why we have these fellowships outside of the church. So that you can come together and you can, you can look at each other's feet a little bit. Not really, okay?

You're not really looking at people's feet. But you need to look at each other a little bit. You need to be honest with each other. And you need to serve each other. You need to be together.

Serve one another. 1 Peter 4.10 says this, each one should use whatever gifts he has received to serve others. Faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. We talked about this a lot in the last series about these gifts that have been given to us.

Everybody has gifts. Everybody has something that God has given them. Maybe you're a hospitality person and somebody needs a hot food. Maybe you love cooking. Somebody needs something hot delivered to their house because they're having a hard time or they're not able to cook right now or whatever.

Maybe that's your thing. Or maybe you're a mechanic or, or, or some kind of engineer or something. And you, and, and somebody needs their car fixed, man. And they don't have the money to fix their car. They can't pay a mechanic the big bucks today to be, be able to fix their car, right?

I mean, it's expensive. Maybe that's your thing and you can help them. Within the church, we minister to each other. We work together. We, we serve each other with the gifts that are administered to each person.

And I need help administratively, you know, uh, cause I'm a terrible numbers person, you know, like keeping up with, uh, I'm not an accountant at all, right? So I have people that are, are with me that are capable of doing those things and we serve each other. And I, and, and I'm obviously a pastor and, and I serve them and I'm a communicator and, and, uh, I encourage them in other ways and we work together and that's why we need each other. We need, uh, community. Um, one of the, uh, best examples I can think of, of our church and serving each other.

And y'all are great. Y'all, y'all do serve one another. It's a great thing. And that's kind of one of our makeups. That's, that's why I love our churches because we do serve each other.

But, uh, one of our founding families, uh, Peter and Amber Zuber, um, a few years ago, um, they were with us. They were heavily involved. You knew Peter. They're living in Florida now. Um, he started a law practice out there and, and, uh, they, they moved away about a year ago or so.

But if you, if you were here in the, you know, a year before now, you would have seen Peter up here playing multiple instruments. I mean, he was on keys one week and then he was on bass the next week and he was on, you know, drums one week. He was like my jack of all instruments. And we always had a filler in, you know, if somebody was missing that week, we always had Peter, you go on that instrument, you know, and he's like, I'm on it, you know? And, uh, and, uh, they, they just a very, very close friend of me and the bass player, Stefan, we went to school together.

We were in grad school together and just had a really close relationship. And, uh, he has a few kids and one of his kids, Wesley Zuber, was diagnosed with cancer at two years old. And we walked through that journey with them here in the church. And, uh, you know, Peter being such a close friend, I was always contacting him and connecting him and obviously being a pastor. I'm concerned about people and, and, uh, I'm just contacting him and, um, and, uh, just, just to see where he is and trying to help him.

And he always talked about somebody always being there for him. You know, they, they, it's like every time something, uh, people continually calling him and, and helping him and encouraging him, praying for him and all those great things that they were doing as a church. And, uh, unfortunately, and this is something I don't wish on any pastors, especially starting a new church, is within the first year, uh, within that first year of our church, I had to, in fact, in the same day or, or the same month, I lost two people in our church to cancer. One was a man in his fifties named Dwayne Duvall. Y'all have heard me share the story about him.

And the other one was, was Wesley Zuber, three years old. The hardest funeral I ever, I've ever had to do. The hardest, not only because it was a child, but it was some people that were very close to me. And, and working myself through that, that sermon was difficult. I mean, there was a lot of tears looking at the picture of this three-year-old child who was hopeless and, and we did everything.

They did everything, uh, we could to, to help that family. Um, and I would call, like, after the death of, of, of Wesley and, and the weeks afterwards, I would, I would constantly call Peter. I'm like, Peter, do you need anything? He says, man, I'm, I'm taking care of. Like, people in the church, they're, they're bringing me food, they're, they're doing things for me.

Uh, people are calling, checking on us. I mean, we just couldn't be more blessed. We couldn't be more blessed. In a time of need, people were there. And that's why you need people around you, because there's going to be times in life when the unexplained happens, when things you can't explain, when things you can't figure out happen in your life.

And it's going to happen. It's inevitably, things are going to happen. And you need people in your life. And God puts people together, relationships together, community together, so that we can serve one another. Number two, he does it to encourage one another.

We are better when we encourage one another. Because if you're not encouraged, you're discouraged. And if you're discouraged, you don't think right. You make poor decisions about things. Think about it.

When you're down and out, or you're frustrated, you start doing things that you otherwise wouldn't do. Say things that you otherwise wouldn't say. And you need people in your life that can encourage you and help you through that process so that you can think correctly. John 14, one says this, Jesus talking to his disciples when he shares with them that he's getting ready to go away. These guys needed some serious encouragement because they were about to face something that they never thought they would face.

And he says, do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God. Trust also in me. He says, do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God.

Trust also in me. Because here's what happened. Jesus went into eternity. He left these guys here. He sent the Holy Spirit with them.

And they were able to do amazing things. But the one thing he appointed them to is his resurrected self. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Here I am. He came.

He went away. He died on the cross. He was put in a grave. He rose from the dead. There he was.

This is hope. This is hope. This is life. This is, look, look, I have the power to conquer life and death. I am over life and death.

That's your hope. Do not be troubled. Trust in God. And trust also in the Son of God who's getting ready to reveal the greatest event ever to hit this earth. So when we encourage people, you know, we're not always going to have the answers.

We encourage people like, you'll get through this. Everything's going to get better and things like that. But the best way to encourage people is with eternity, with heaven. Point them to Jesus. Point them to heaven.

Point them to God. Point them to like something far beyond what you're currently experiencing. In this life, there's something more than this life. And that's. That's what the Word of God shows us.

That's what every story in the Bible. Everything is directed towards this man, Jesus Christ, the risen Savior. And if we can put our focus on heaven, if we encourage people with heaven, then that's the greatest thing you can do with somebody who's going through pain and trouble, because trouble will come. Heartache will come. Death will come.

I'm being a little negative today. I want you to be more positive, Pastor. I'm being positive that you will experience death one day. But we can have hope. We can have hope that there is life in eternity.

So point people towards heaven. Point people towards eternity. Hebrews 3.13 says, Be encouraged, or but encourage one another daily, excuse me, but will encourage one another daily, as long as it is called today. I love that.

So that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. So what does that mean? Encourage each other daily. It doesn't mean encourage each other once a week while we're in church. It means encourage each other daily.

You need to be involved with people daily. That's why we form small groups. That's why we have opportunities for you to connect with people outside the church so that when you go through hurts and heartaches and troubles of life, you can connect with people in your family. We are here for you. They are here for you.

And we need to encourage each other daily. You need someone during the week to encourage you. That's what you need. Number three, we are better together when we produce with one another. We produce together.

This is a big one. We produce. Healthy churches are producing churches. Did you know that? But we can't produce if we don't do it together.

One person can't produce. I heard this. I love the teachings of the parables of the vines, the vineyards, and the fruit. You know, we hear about it all the time. And I always taught on that and talked about, you know, much fruit, more fruit, this and that.

But somebody brought it back to my attention that nothing produces without intimacy. Nothing produces without intimacy. There has to be relationship. There has to be intimacy in order for anything to come to fruitfulness. Right?

That happens practically, you know, relationships. We have kids, you know. It's intimacy that brings about fruitfulness, right? Plant life, water, vegetation. What happens is fertilization, intimacy, things.

Anything produces through intimacy. Relationships, visionary things such as businesses and things like that. They come through relationships with people, with ideas that come together with an equal passion and a close connection with people. That's intimacy. We need to produce with one another.

But we do it together. We are able to do things more when we have more people involved. One person, it's really difficult when you have one or two or three people doing things. And think about the things we've already accomplished as a church. We've been able to, I mean, I just think about just the giving and even the 74 turkeys.

I mean, like, who would have brought, like, could one person bring in, probably one person could bring in 74 turkeys, but it's probably not going to happen, right? Because in every little bit we bring in, we do together. And it's better together. And we're able to do more. We're able to feed more people.

Operation Christmas Child Boxes, we were able to bring those in. And we're able to serve 84 children somewhere in the world. That's a big deal. And when we all come together as more churches, every church comes together and starts doing this. We are able to do thousands and thousands more.

It's not about equal giving. It's about equal sacrifice. The more we give together, the more we can do. And God only allows us to do what we're capable of giving, what we're capable of producing. And we can only do that together.

And my heart, my vision is that we can be a generous, generous, generous church. I want us to be a generous church. In fact, I don't want us to go in debt for anything. We haven't yet gone in debt. And my heart is that I want us to be healthy and producing so that we can be generous.

Very, very, very generous. But we can only do that when we're doing it together because we're better together. Financial giving. We need to be, you may think, man, what can my little tie do? What can my little giving do?

What, what, what, what? How can it really make a difference? Guess what? By itself, it won't. But when you do it with others, when everybody gives, when everybody tithes, when everybody gives offering, when everybody gives to something, we can do far more together.

I cannot do it alone. We need other people. We need everybody to give together so that we can do more together because we are better together. And I'm going to talk a little bit about giving next week, you know, what that means and how God sees that and, and, and, and, and God, and how God wants to bless us to be a blessing. But we are a blessed people.

And when we produce together, we come together and we produce together. John 15, four and five says, remain in me and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself. We just can't do it by ourselves. It must remain in the vine.

Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine and you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit apart from me. When you don't partner with me, when you don't partner with my church, when we don't do it together, it produces nothing. You can do nothing without intimacy, without a fellowship of believers, without people all doing their very small little part.

It's a big deal because, you know, a little bit of salt goes a long, long way. Number four, we protect one another. We protect one another. We are better when we protect one another. See, the reason we create community within our church, small groups and other groups outside our church to get together is so that we can have places of confidence where we can share our problems.

We can reveal the dirt between our toes. And we need people we can go to that we know that's not going to go and tell everybody else, right? When we're really dealing with some stuff in life. So we need to protect one another. That's what we do as a community.

We protect one another. When you have friends and fellowships, you protect one another and you talk about these things. John 16 one says this, all this I have told you so that you will not go astray. Now that word astray in the original language means scandal. Scandal is a snare in your path that cannot, that you cannot see.

Because the truth is that we have things in our path that we cannot see, right? And we need people to help us see those things. I do things and say things that somebody else may see and can kind of confront me on. And maybe there's things that I see that you don't see. In fact, my wife's good at seeing things that I don't see.

And she calls me out on him all the time, you know? The way you talk to that person today, you know, they probably took that wrong. Oh, I thought I was just being, you know. No, no, no, no. So there's things that are hidden from us that we can't see.

And that's why we have to do this together. We need to help each other and not be offended or anything. Just grow together because we need to protect each other. And if we're heading down a path we don't need to go, we need to be able to have people that are really close to us that can help us. I'm a part of a small group myself here in the church, and also, I have a small group outside the church of pastors that we meet online once a month, and we talk about the issues and things that we deal with as pastors, because pastors have kind of unique issues, and we can all share on that same level.

And one of the things I ask people in that group to do, and we all ask, is help us to see. We encourage each other, obviously, and we go through the same issues, but sometimes they can sense things that I might not be telling them, or things that I've been doing in my personal life. Maybe I'm not spending enough time with my family, or I'm not healthy in some area in my life. Sometimes they can see that when I can't see it. And I open up my life, because I need that accountability in my life.

I need people to protect me, to protect me, and help me be healthy so that I can minister. And we're able to see each other, and talk through problems, and pray with each other, and do all those things, and kind of reveal those to each other. So, Ecclesiastes 4, 9, and 10, in the message, I love how the message says this, and I used the scripture last week, but I got a different version of it this week, because I love it so much. It says it's better to have a partner than to go it alone, right? We can't go it alone.

Share the work. Share the wealth. And if one falls down, the other helps. But if there's no one to help, then tough. I like how it says that.

Tough. You're in trouble, right? You're like the kid out in the bus, in that movie. I mean, if you don't have anybody there to help, then what are you gonna do? You're trapped.

Two, in a bed, warm each other. Along, you shiver all night. By yourself, you're unprotected. And with a friend, you can face the worst. You can.

You can deal with things when you have friends and people that you're accountable to in your life. Can you round up a third? A three-stranded rope isn't easily snapped. You need that strength. You need to be protected.

And number five, and finally, you need to pray for one another. We are better when we pray for one another. Because as a church, we believe in the power of prayer. That God wants us to go to Him as His children and pray. And we need to pray for each other.

And we are strong when we pray. It's good that we can pray alone and we can pray together. But when we come together and strengthen and pray for each other, there's unimaginable things that we can do, that God can do. Because God is calling us to be these type of people that pray to Him. John 17 says this, after Jesus said this, He looked towards heaven and prayed.

He prayed Himself for His friends. He says, I pray for them. I am not praying for the world. He was specific about that. I'm not praying for the world, Father.

I'm praying for them. But for those you have given me. He's talking about His disciples. And we need those people in our lives that pray for us. And we pray for them.

And He specifically is talking about those who are the closest to Him. Who are involved deeply in the things of His life. I mean, He couldn't, there was nowhere else He went to. In His final prayer, but He went to them. And He prayed for them.

And James 5, 16 says, therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. Because God is just and gracious enough to forgive us of all of our sin. That's not the issue. The issue isn't that we can't be saved out of our sin and our shame and our hurt and our loneliness and all those things. We can't be saved.

We can be saved and rescued out. See, that's the point of the gospel of Christ. It's good news because Jesus came to rescue us from that. That's not the issue. He is just.

He is righteous enough to forgive us of all of our sin. But it also says, but we need to confess our sin to one another. Therefore, confess your sin to each other and pray for each other so that you may be what? Healed. And some of you need to be healed today.

Some of you need people in your life that can join you in prayer and healing. You need prayer. You need prayer. So, we are better together. And there's no other way to live.

There's no other way. Jesus didn't give us any other kind of option. He birthed the church for the sole purpose of equipping the saints for the glory of God, for the glory of Jesus Christ, so that he can reach the world. How? Together.

Together. And we are a church that believes in community. And the last statement I want to say, we, if you're following your notes, we is always better than me. We is always better than me. Let me preach to the man.

We is always better than me, because I'm a man and I know we think we can do it alone, right? We think that we can handle it. I'm a man. You know? I can deal with this.

I'm getting along with God by myself. And I'm just going to work this out. But we is always better than me. You need to open up. You need to share with a fellow believer, those in the faith, those who can agree with you that God can move you through anything.

Amen. Amen. Hallelujah. Praise God. God is so good.

God is so good. God is so good. Yeah, the old thing that we used to say in church, God is good. Everybody say, all the time. It's so true.

God is so good. And we don't need to say it just in word. We need to believe it. The problem is we don't believe and we don't trust that God can use a simple salt to do amazing things. Man, I'm believing.

I'm seeing visions right now, like all over. Like right now, I just see people pouring. Like lost people just pouring into this place, filling it up because God wants to use a little bit of salt. Amen. Greatest news is that Jesus has paid it all.

And maybe there's somebody here today that's walked in this room and they haven't made a decision for Jesus. So that's where it really starts. Community, it starts there. All you need to know is grace is sufficient. His love is sufficient.

He gave it all on the cross. And you've been wandering through life. You've tried a lot of different things. Maybe you've tried a lot of religion. And my buddy Randy this morning was singing the song Losing My Religion while we were practicing with the worship.

And I was like, actually, I like that song. You know why? Because you need to lose your religion. You need to lose that religion and trust and love because Jesus Christ is not about religion. It's not about how good I am and how much, you know, how many rules I can follow to get into heaven.

How do I get into heaven? You know, do I do? I just don't think I'm good enough. No, you're not good enough. That's the point because Jesus is so much better.

Jesus is enough, right? That's why you need him in your life. Amen. And if that's you today with heads bowed and eyes closed, I want us to take this moment very seriously. If that's you today.

And I'm not going to embarrass you because I'm not about that because I believe it's a personal decision that you made. But I do want to pray for you. So if you're somebody here today that doesn't know Jesus and you're just ready to make that decision, if you'll just gently raise your hand and say, Pastor, you're right. I'm going to make that decision today. It's time.

I'm tired of walking it alone. I'm ready to do it with Jesus and a group of people who love me. Is that you today? Is that you today? If you'll pray this with me.

Everybody. Father, I believe that You are the Son of God, and that I've walked my own path for way too long. I need to be rescued by You. So today, I put my faith, I put my hope, I put my trust in You. Come into my life, come into my heart, and change me from the inside.

Lord, I give You my life, from this day forward, I'm all in, 100%, not 99.9%, but 100% because I believe in the goodness and the blood that You shed, and that You are alive today. Live in me, Lord.