Choose Your Friends Carefully

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. So we have been going through a series called Uphill Habits. And as many of you know, starting out the new year, a lot of us have uphill habits. I'm going to lose blank amount of weight.

I'm going to get up every morning before 745 for some of you before nine. I'm going to start it out right. Lord, let's start with 10. And if I can make it to nine by the end of the year. But we start out with lofty goals, right?

It's it's the deal. January 1st, It's a new year. It's a new me. It's a new everything. So we're going to start out with lofty goals.

We're going to start out with these uphill goals. And our problem is, is that while we have these amazing, amazing uphill goals, our habits trend downward. I was just talking this morning with my brothers, Justin and Seth about how I looked at this all picture of myself three years ago when we first came back to the beach. And I was like, dude, I was ripped. I had been working.

I was working out like five days a week. I was, man, I was disciplined. And now I am lazy. And I have a gym membership I pay for and I never go. And I think about it every day.

Today will be the day. Tomorrow will be the day. No, it'll be Thursday or Friday. I'll pray about this on Sunday. Lord, you'll give me the strength for Monday.

And that is just kind of how we do things. Because we set these goals, but our habits don't ever meet them. And our habits form us. So it requires for us to have uphill habits. If we're going to meet these goals that we have for our life, if we're going to really fulfill what God has for us in our life, which is the single most important thing, then we have to get some habits in order.

And Pastor Leon has gone through the gamut. I don't have time to go back through them. Please, if you have not listened to all them, get online, get them, hear them. They're challenging. I promise you, every single one.

But our verse for this series is Romans 12, 2, out of the message. And it is, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out, readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. I'm also going to give you another version.

For some of you will recognize this immediately. And it says, and be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God. The deal here is that it starts on the inside. You can make amazing goals, and you can put them all over your calendar, and you can do all sorts of cool things. But if you don't change your habits, if you don't change your thinking, if you don't change your heart, then the outside is, A, just a show, and B, it is fleeting, and it will not last.

And so today, we're going to continue this, and we're going to go into habit number four, which is choose my relationships carefully. I want to highlight a word here. Hopefully, it's still up there. The very first yellow letter, word, choose. I think sometimes we forget we have a choice in our relationships.

We can choose who we surround ourselves with. We can choose who our friends are. We can choose who we spend time with. It is absolutely a choice. A lot of us choose our relationships.

We choose those friendships. We choose the people we spend time with based upon hobbies. I know a lot of us in here are surfers, and a big reason that we are here, a big reason we've been drawn here, our pastor surfs. We've had a lot of really good times in the water surfing. We've gone on trips down south.

We've had a lot of good times, and that's great. But that cannot be the sole reason that we have relationship with somebody is because they surf. It can't be because they like to work out like I do. It can't be because they like to work on cars like I do. It can't be because they like football like I do, or basketball, or baseball, or hockey, or whatever it is that you find common ground with people.

That is not where and why we should choose the people that surround us. If that's how you're choosing people, you're in trouble. No, I'm just being honest. Like, you are going to be in trouble because it creates a stagnant person. Because we tend to surround ourselves with people who do not challenge us, but rather look just like us, and are okay with who we are, because they want to be okay with who they are.

I'm going to hang out with somebody who's okay with not working out because they're not going to give me a guilt trip. If I hang out with Seth very long, A, I'm going to feel bad every time I look at the guy, and B, he's going to keep telling me he was yesterday, and he hit his personal record for something, and I'm going to sit there going, yeah, I got up this morning. Personal record, three days in a row, made it out of bed. But we tend to find ourselves and put ourselves around people, and it even happens within our hobbies. If you're a mediocre surfer like I am, it really stinks to go out with really good surfers.

It really does. You look over, and you get frustrated fast. So it's like, I need to find some people who surf worse than me, and that's who I need to go hang out with because it's really encouraging. Me and you, George, let's get out. But that's what we do.

That's how we choose the people around us. It's kind of like, oh, we fit in. Oh, we click. But we have a choice to do things differently. It's really often intimidating to be around people who are going to challenge you.

It's intimidating to be around people who are going to make you better. It is. It's hard to be around people who have their things in order and are striving and doing things or have done things or have hit a certain level. It's intimidating. Sometimes can bring guilt and shame.

I don't know why I'm there. And so we shy away from that, and we find ourselves around people who are unwilling to challenge us, unwilling to nurture us, unwilling to encourage us, and are just happy that we can sit along in the ride of life with them until we get to the end and be content with what little we have and what little we've done. So there's some things that we have to do biblically in our relationships. The first one is nurture my important relationships. 1 Peter 4, 7 through 8 says, It is important that we set priorities in our life, and that includes in our relationships.

I have a pastor's heart. What that means is I love caring for people. And it means that I give and I give and I give and I give and I give. And I have a tendency to give and put myself around a lot of people that need. That's not a bad thing.

It's what God has called me to be. It's why He has given me a compassionate heart. It's why I love people. It's why I love caring for people. It's why I would drop anything in the middle of the night and meet you at the hospital or the funeral home or wherever it is that you need to care for you because that's the heart God has given me.

But I also have to make sure that I'm prepared for those situations. And that requires for me to have priorities set in place so that my relationships are correct. Number one is God. If you have not set God as the priority in your life, every other relationship underneath that fails. Every one.

You may be sitting in here today and thinking, man, I've got a great marriage and I don't believe in God. Pride comes before a fall, my friend. You have to set God first and foremost in your life. That is the relationship from there down. But that is a given and that should be a given in your life that He is number one and everything else falls underneath that.

And when I say everything, I mean everything. Your marriage, your kids, your job, relationships with your family, all other relationships come underneath God. And if you don't set Him first, none of the rest matter and you can leave now. The second one is if you're married, there is no relationship, including your children, that comes above your spouse. And that relationship better be put in priority with God right underneath them.

And you better be seeking God out together. And I promise you that if you do that, you watch what God does with your children. Not saying they'll be perfect. Not saying you might not be praying for them. Might think God my mom was a woman of God and a praying woman because otherwise Lord knows where I'd be.

I promise you Leon feels the same way and any other guy that gets up here will tell you if it were not for a praying mom, I'd be in trouble. But I promise you that if you put those relationships in order, things will happen. Once you get past that, guys, here's where it starts to get cloudy for us, right? And it's like, oh, but I got these good friends and they've been my friends for 20 years and they've been so loyal and they love me so much and they would do anything for me except point me to Jesus Christ. Guys, I've told this story and I'm going to tell it again.

I have a guy in my life and I actually went and saw him the other day. The Lord led me to go see him. I haven't seen him for probably two and a half years, three years. His name is Keith. He was my best friend for a long time.

He was in my wedding. Keith was a horrendous influence on me. And when I say horrendous, I mean horrendous. I got married and Keith and I were tight at the time. And I can't even tell you the thoughts that my wife had about Keith.

She did not like him one bit. And I know what God thought about my relationship with Keith and that it was not good. I would go meet Keith to work on our Jeeps. We were both car guys. We would work until 2, 3, 4 o'clock in the morning on our Jeeps drinking beer.

And Keith had three things on his mind, Jeeps, beer, and sex. And that's all he talked about. And so you can imagine that if that's all that was feeding into me for 8 and 9 hours, into the wee hours of the morning, what I came home like. Keith had a horrible mouth. Still does.

And it fed this negative, just horrendous, horrendous attitude into me. Where I didn't love my wife. I wasn't caring for my wife. I wasn't preferring my wife. And it made my relationship with God stagnant to dead at best.

And there was one day that thankfully I have a godly wife, and she came to me and said, Chris, you have to end it. It was like breaking up with a girlfriend. He's like, you've got to sever this relationship. You've got to move on. I had to make priorities in my life about who I was putting around me, who I was allowing to speak into my life, who had my ear.

And it's a priority thing. And our problem is, and I was talking to Seth this morning, and it's just my heart goes out because, unfortunately, Facebook says a lot. And you can see who people are hanging with and what they're doing, when they're doing it, how they're doing it, in real time. And so you see these things, and you're like, oh, wow. Now everybody's going to unfriend me.

It's not a judgmental thing. It's a real thing. I get people, and Leon gets people, who tell us, I need this change. My life is so bad. I'm going through all this crap.

I don't understand why. I don't understand why. I don't understand why. And are you in a small group? Are you being prayed for regularly?

Do you have people surrounding you who love you and care for you and lift you up? Are those the people that you're spending time with, those people that met you at church that asked you to go out to lunch and you said you were too busy? Is that who you're surrounding yourself with? You are making a choice. And we have to make godly relationship the priority in our life.

Oh, I knew there wouldn't be a lot of clapping today. Don't worry. I'm going to say this one time, and I'm going to repeat it a thousand times, and I want you to go home and put it on a card and put it on a wall. Good does not equal, does everybody remember that symbol back in like algebra class? Does not equal godly.

Good, I know a lot of good people going to hell. You don't want to get caught up in good. You want to get caught up in godly. And it doesn't matter if that person likes Doctor Who. I know it's really hard to be her friend because of it, but she is really an awesome person.

I got past it. And let me tell you, she's awesome. I love you, Miranda. Oh, she's in that. I wish she could be in here today.

She will. Somebody will tell her. Maybe they don't like surfing like you do. Maybe they're not into cars like you do. Maybe they have no idea what a quarterback is on the football field.

But if that person loves Jesus with all of their heart and all of their mind and soul, and they are willing to love you and care for you and build you up and speak scripture over your life and pray for you and be there when no one else will be there with a godly word for you. If they're willing to keep you accountable and everybody else around you is willing to let you keep heading towards hell, that's the person that you need to be spending time with. Maybe it requires putting up the surfboard for a little bit, putting the keys to that Corvette away for a little while, and going and finding something that you can have a common ground called the Bible. Guys, you have to make it a priority. We go around and we have 12,000 IG followers, 5,000 Facebook friends, and we think, I got friends all over the place.

Nah, you really don't. And even those people that are around you on a daily basis that tell you they're friends, I promise you, if they're in the world, they only want what gets them something because that's how we're created. The next one, and I could preach on this all day. Man, I wish I had another hour and a half. Some of you are laughing nervously because you know.

Restore my broken relationships. You can put that one up now. And guys, I'm going to preach to the church real quick. So if you're not in the church, if you're not a Christian, you can ignore this next part. Christians are the worst.

We love to preach forgiveness. Eastелен ustedes Jesus And we love even more taking offense. We love to preach 70 times 7 forgiveness, but we flat-out refuse to go find that person that offended us and talk to them about it. We love to call ourselves anointed men and women, prayer warriors of God, we're marching out, we're going after Satan, but man, we will not stand toe-to-toe and look somebody in the eye and tell them we're sorry. We won't.

We would rather change churches, move cities, change our name, possibly go to another country, before required reconciliation. Like, to sit down over a cup of coffee with someone and say, this is how you offended me and this is why you offended me, and I just, I need to get this off my chest because you are a brother or sister in God, which means we're family, with the highest common denominator, and it like scares the bejesus out of us. It's like, you mean I gotta talk to someone about them hurting my feelings? Nope, going to a new church, see you guys later. Nope, sorry, you're a small group, not for me.

And no one knows why you disappeared. Guys, it is biblical. Matthew gives us instructions on how we are to treat our brothers and sisters in Christ, and it requires reconciliation. It requires us going to them and reconciling relationships. And now I'm going to cross bounds.

If you have issues with family, and I had to deal with this this past week, and I'm still waiting on a response from my sister who I haven't talked to for two years. If you have issues with family and you are a Christian, you are the one who is required to be humble. If you are a walking man of God, a woman of God, and you have issues with your family, you cannot leave it up to them to be the solution. It is your responsibility. Colossians 3.

13 says, Guys, that I don't need to say anymore. It doesn't say forgive most of the time, some of the time. And I know I've preached that message before. It says, That's what God has called us to do. It doesn't matter if the person keeps doing it.

We still have to forgive them and love them. And continue wanting reconciliation. Because someday we're going to get to the gates of heaven. And don't be shocked when you look over and there's this person that has offended you. They're right there.

I kind of in my mind believe that someday we're going to get to heaven. And we're going to have the judgment and God's going to say, Okay, now before you can go into the gates, I've got this room called the room of reconciliation. And you are going to be in that room kind of like purgatory until you get things figured out with these 3,000 people. That have offended you that you have not dealt with. Now, once you get that handled, Hey, welcome.

It would only be just. It is required of us to pursue reconciliation. If someone has offended you, seek them out. Talk to them. If you think you've offended someone, go to them.

Hey, brother. Hey, sister. Did I do something? Did I say something? There's just something that's odd.

Something's not right between us. I feel something there. What did I do? Because if I did something, I want to make it right. I want to be in unity, in fellowship, in worship.

I want to be able to stand next to you and in worship and raise our hands and worship the most high together without there being something there that could cause distraction. What do I need to do? The next one. And this is one I... There's a message in every single one of these points.

Sever the harmful relationships. He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm. There's another Proverbs that says, He who hangs out with fools is a fool himself. Guys, it is the hardest single thing when you become a Christian and you give your heart to the Lord to make this change. It is the single hardest thing to do because you have to let go of the world and you have to step into what God has for you.

And there's this, but I've known them, but we had so much fun together, but they were there for me during this or they were there for me during that. If you don't let go of your Keith, 25 years from now, you're going to find yourself working on Jeeps, drinking beer, cursing like a sailor, talking about sex without a wife. That's where I would have gone. At some point, my wife would have said, me or him. And if you're not careful, you choose him.

We have to let go of the world. And listen, guys, I live in the middle of it. I love surfing. I have a lot of good friends that are surfers. I have a lot of good friends that are not Christians that are surfers.

And every once in a while, it's cool to get out in the water and paddle around with them and embarrass myself in front of them. But they're not the people I'm calling every day. They're not the people that I want texting me, encouraging me or lifting me up because with a direction that they would point me, would send me straight to hell. And that's what, that's what I want to get across to you on this, in this sever your harmful relationships. The reason that you have to sever it is this.

If you tie a rope to your legs and you run 100 feet of it off a cliff and on the other end you tie a weight that's twice as heavy as you are and someone shoves that weight off a cliff, what's happening? You have two choices. Cut the rope or go over the cliff. And let me tell you, there are few people in this world who have the strength and the ability to surround themselves only with non-believers and not go over that cliff. I don't even know if there are any.

I've known a lot of pastors who thought they could and ended up going over the cliff. You cannot stay tied to the world and expect to not go over that cliff. You can't. They affect your habits. They affect your spirit.

They affect your mouth. They affect your thoughts. They will affect every aspect of your life. And it's like a frog being boiled. You don't even know it's happening.

But what we watch, what we see happen and is the hardest part about being a pastor is you know so much about so many people is they are so hurting and things are going so bad and they want, like the finances, they don't understand why am I not? Why am I not? Why am I not? And we just want to look at them and grab them and like there's times I want to do to them what I do to my son. If you've ever been around me much and my son is acting a fool, we'll use that word, I just smack him upside the back of the head.

He walks by and he's whack and it stuns him for a moment. I wish I could do that to some of you sometimes. In the middle of our conversation, I wish I could just whack you upside the back of the head and be like, are you not getting this? The reason that I beg you to... To come to small group every week, isn't because I want you at my small group.

Go to Lydia's. Go to Tim and Angie's. Go to Madison's. Go to anybody else's small group. You don't have to come to mine.

But I want you to get life. I want you to surround yourself with people who will cut that rope for you. I want I want you to surround yourself with people that if they see you going over the cliff, they throw you a rope and they drag you back out. You're going one way or the other. How many people know you're never stagnant?

You're going up or you're going down. So you're either going up the hill or you're being drug back down the hill. And it's a choice that you have who you want to be with. Do I want to surround myself with people who are going to help me up the hill? Or do I want to be with those people who are totally cool being in the pit?

Because they are. They love where they're at. They are enjoying the ride to hell. They'll tell you that. I'll see you in hell.

No, you won't. You have a good time in the hot tub. I like my showers cold. But that's who we surround ourselves with. And we're okay with it.

And we think we're good. We think we can come to church on Sunday morning, hear Pastor Leon's anointed word, and go right back out into the world and do everything that he says not to do. And we're still going to be okay. It just doesn't work. If you hold on to that stuff, you're going to go over the cliff.

You need someone who's willing to push you, pull you, or carry you towards the cross. Because that's what you want, man. I want someone who knows when I'm in the depths and I can't even lift my own head spiritually, that they will pick me up, throw me over the shoulder like one of those awesome military movies, Saving Private Ryan, all of them, Platoon, they all had it, right? The guy is so wounded. He's bleeding out.

He's about to die. And the guy comes in and grabs him, throws him over his shoulder, runs through the forest. His bombs are going off and bullets are whizzing by their head. And they're dropping napalm everywhere. And there's dead people all over the place.

And that guy is not going to leave that guy behind. I want someone who will do that in the spiritual realm. Who will grab me and run and says, I'm not leaving you behind, brother. You're coming with me. You are not being left to die.

Sever those old relationships. Those people who are willing to die with you there. I don't want somebody who's willing to die with me. I want someone who's willing to take me with them and live. After you've severed those relationships, start praying about who it is because they're in your life.

Initiate some meaningful relationships. And I want you to put in parentheses over meaningful on your notes because it's not there. Godly. I don't want someone who's going to be self-help for you. That's great.

That'll get you tomorrow. Maybe through next week. What I want you to find is someone who will encourage you to eternity. That requires not just meaningful, that requires godly relationships. You need someone who is going to encourage you, who's going to lift you up, who's going to carry you.

And so after you let go of the old and you cut that rope so you don't slide over, you've got to stand up and start looking around and find those people who are strong and anointed, godly men and women, and you intentionally go find them. In my notes, one of the things I have is if you're having trouble in your marriage, do you know who you seek out? You find somebody who's been through it. You find somebody who's been married for a while, who's been to hell and back in their marriage, and is standing firm, side by side. They may have some scars, but they know how to battle.

And that's the people you go seek out for marriage advice. You go find you a godly man and woman who can stand firm in their faith and in their marriage, and you go seek them out. And I don't care if you don't like the way they dress, if you don't like where they live, you don't like how they talk. It doesn't matter. What matters is they can show you how to walk the walk.

And if you struggle with drug addiction or any other addiction, you go find you someone who's been through it and who's walked out victorious and who doesn't point you to the 12-step program, although that's fine. We need those, and you need counseling, and you need professional help. But what you also need is someone who will stand by you, and when you start to think about things, will tell you, no, no, no, no, God has given you victory over that. No, no, no, don't think that. When he gave himself up on the cross, he wasn't just giving himself up.

He was giving himself up so he could die and take victory over that sin and that death. You've got power over those addictions. Stop it. And it's that way over every aspect of your life. Find someone that will challenge you.

Man, if you're hungry for the gospel and you're like, man, I want to get in this more, you find somebody who's studied. You find somebody who wants to dig, who wants to show who's been there and done that, who can walk you through it. Find those people. Surround yourself with them. And I had to give a very quick synopsis this morning for our pre-service service because I had about three minutes.

And what's crazy is before I got too deep into this message, I graced through it a little bit. The Lord had already put on my heart that I was in this position. I've got a couple of friends, but I have been, put myself alone for a while spiritually. And so just in the last couple of weeks, I've like more and more, there's just a couple guys in this room and a couple guys that I have had known for a long time that I've reached out to and said, listen, I feel like a lone wolf. I need my pack.

I need you guys around me. I need some people to speak into my life. I need some people to encourage me. I need some people to challenge me. We got to get together.

And it's so funny how God works because then I start reading through this message and I'm like, oh, oh, I get to reconciliation and it was like, oh, this, I'm not just preaching this at you. I'm walking through this with you. The reason I'm passionate about small groups and I know there's people out there right now literally thinking, well, the reason he's speaking this is because he's the guy who coordinates small groups. Yes. The reason I coordinate small groups is because I know this is the truth.

And I understand that if you have a pack around you, if you are walking with a pride of lions, guess what? Satan ain't messing with you. If you find yourself alone standing in the woods, you're done. You are dead meat. I want my pride.

I want to walk around with some lions. When I hit my feet, hit the ground, I want Satan to be afraid, not like, ah, opportunity. And it requires relationships around you with people who will challenge you, people who will lift you up and encourage you. I will go back to it. It's a scripture that my mom literally, I think she spanked it into me.

We've been training our dog and we've been learning that there's positive and then there's compulsion. And it's like, I'm going to be nice to you, but if you don't get this, then I'm going to be not so nice to you. And then you'll get it. And I think that's how my mom did scripture with me. It was kind of like, if you don't have this memorized, I'm going to spank you.

And it only takes so many of those before you get that scripture memorized. This one was an easy one and it's iron sharpens iron. So what? One man sharpens another. Dude, I could quote that in my sleep because it was spoken over me and spoken to me and my mom made me memorize that and memorize that and memorize that.

And it took years for me to understand what that really meant. But what that means is this. If you want to be sharp, you better be around other people that are iron. Because you can be around other metals. They might be strong.

They might have purpose. But if it's not iron, it ain't sharpening you. It's not doing anything for you. It has to be iron. And that's who you have to surround yourself with.

You've got to find the iron. You've got to look around this room, guys. And find the people in your church. Who will help you get where you need to be spiritually. Man, we do it in every other aspect of our life.

If you're a realtor, I'm on like 25 different realtor sites on Facebook and we go to our hurrah meetings and our rain meetings and we go to our social events and we do all this. So that we can grow our business and make more money. And that's not a bad thing. But that is secondary, maybe even tertiary. Because the people that I want to spend the most time with are those people who have in common with me the fact that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior.

Savior. I want to surround myself with Seth and Justin and Leon. And I'm not leaving anybody out. I'm just going off the people I can see because I can't see the rest of you. I want those people who will challenge me, encourage me, lift me up, and will put me on their back.

Guys, there's a lot of you in here who have just totally shut me out. Or you've written this off. And you're thinking to yourself right now, but my friends are good. But they're okay. They're loyal.

I can't find loyal friends like that. No, you have a loyal God. Who is your friend. And he's far more faithful and loyal than those people could ever be to you. And you want to find yourself around people who will point you to him.

Who even when they offend you. Guys, I'm going to offend everybody in this room at least once. If you know me very long, it's a lot more than that. But I love you. I do.

And I want to see you fulfill the purpose and meaning that God has in your life. I want to see you do things that you've never dreamt of doing. I want to see you minister to people like you've never dreamt of ministering. I want to see you have an impact in this world that isn't just monetary. There's a song that I was texted Justin the other day.

And it talks about not wanting to have a legacy. Because I don't want people to see me. It's all about Jesus. In order to have that, you've got to surround yourself with people that are Christ-like. We had four points on here.

And I'm just going to give you the answers because I don't think the answers are in your thing. And then I'm going to close this up. Mastering the habit. They really just reiterate everything I just said. Develop my relationship with godly friends.

The first one is develop my relationship with my church. Which should mean godly friends. Develop my relationship with a team. I know a lot of you think the reason that we want people in here serving to help is because we need help. And we do.

But the greatest, the best relationships I have are with people I have worked with. That I have beaten the rocky soil with in ministry. Those are the people that I have the best relationship with. And that's why we encourage people to get involved in our teams. It's because that's where you get to know some people that you probably wouldn't get to know otherwise.

I'm a weirdo and I know it. And I'm okay with it. And some of you have gotten past that and you've gotten to know me a little bit. And I'm still really weird. But you know, I love Jesus.

And I'll point you to him every time. So maybe you can take my weirdness a little bit. If you're okay with being pointed to Jesus. The last one is develop my relationship with god. And that shouldn't be the last one.

That shouldn't be the first one. But we'll end on that note. So guys, you have to start with God. And if you don't know him, I'm going to give you the opportunity here in about 30 seconds to get to know him. But I promise you that there is nothing that will happen in your life that has more impact than getting to know God because it impacts your eternity.

We're here for just a brief period of time. And then we go to a place where we sit forever. And we go to one of two places. Heaven or hell. And I hope that I can get as many of you to go to heaven as possible.

I want to rejoice with all of you when we get there. Let's bow our heads. Lord, we thank you for the opportunity today to hear your word, to be challenged by your word. Lord, I pray that it could just pierce one hard heart today, Lord. Lord, just one.

Lord, that it would challenge us to draw near to each other, to find our brothers and sisters in Christ and be encouraged and sharpened by one another. But most importantly, Lord, I just pray that this message would not return void and that, Lord, people would leave here today and want to change things. If you're here today and you don't know Jesus Christ, it starts with him. And he is my friend. And he did something that none of your friends will ever do for you.

He obediently laid himself on the cross for your sins and my sins. And I would love to introduce you, him to you today because he loves you and loves me in a way that no one on this planet, no one on this earth, no wife, no kids, no parents can ever love you. It's unconditional. If you want to get to know him better today, then I would just ask that you would pray this with me. Dear Lord, I want to know you.

And I know that I have been running headlong in the wrong direction, but I want to know your love that is unconditional. I want to know this love that meets me where I am. So Lord, I just pray that you would forgive my sins. Lord, I pray that you would indwell me with your spirit today, Lord, that you would give me the strength through your spirit to overcome the sin and death so that I could be reconciled with you. Lord, I make you my savior today.

We just pray this in your name. Amen.