Death to Life

All right, we are in part two of our series, Miracles. How many of you need God to do something big in your life? Let's just be honest today. Hey, man, there's a lot of people in here.

I mean, I need God to do something huge in my life, and I'm praying for miracles. We serve a God of miracles, and He cares about your needs. He cares about your concerns, and He wants to perform a miracle in your life. So, we have, as we talked about last week, we have two different camps of people that believe this thing about miracles. Some believe that with the closing of the canon, the closing of Scripture, that miracles no longer are needed for today because we have the Word of God.

We have the perfect Word of God, and we don't need them. And then there's another camp that believes that miracles are still for the day. And I'm going to be straight up with you as we go into this message, as we did last week. We're going to clear the air and say, this church believes in miracles today. We believe there is nothing in Scripture that can even suggest that miracles, in my opinion, that suggests that miracles aren't for today.

And I'm believing God for miracles even in this house, in this church. I'm believing. I'm going to pray with you. You can pray with me, and we can believe in miracles together. In fact, Psalm 77 14 says this, you are the God of miracles and wonders.

He's a God of miracles and wonders. You still, and I love that, you still demonstrate your awesome power. In fact, he wants us to participate in that. Jesus actually taught his disciples, John 14, 12, he says, I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater than these, because I'm going to the Father.

So the reason he said, I'm leaving you. I'm leaving you so that you can even do more than I can do. So we believe that God is a God of miracles. Today I'm going to study another of Jesus's miracles here, or teach on one of Jesus's miracles here. And, you know, I really struggled with what miracle to talk about this week, because there's so many cool miracles that you want to talk about, and you want to preach about.

And I was going to go in the direction of what's in your lunchbox. I was going to talk about the fish and the loaves, and I was excited about that. But God really impressed on my heart this message. I've shared it with this church before a couple years ago, when we were in a brewery, just a few people. And I just felt that I needed to, somebody needed to hear this.

Somebody is coming into church today, and they need to hear this message. Maybe it's you today, but God, the Holy Spirit just pushed me towards this. And it's the miracle of Lazarus being raised from the dead. And this is what it's all about, people. A guy named Lazarus who was raised dead after four days being dead.

And this story is bigger than just a body being raised from the dead, because God wants to raise every part of your life from the dead. He has a desire and a heart to raise you from the dead, because death is never final. Death is never final. I've had the opportunity to speak and share at many funerals. That's a part of the pastor's job, you know.

We get called on. I've had funerals of believing people and non-believing people and people in the community that I don't even know. I've actually, just a few months ago, I was asked to be a part, to officiate a funeral for somebody in the community that didn't have a pastor. And it's an honor for me to be able to do that. But I'll tell you, doing a funeral, being a part of a funeral, puts things in perspective.

It does. In fact, a few months ago, I was probably about six or seven months ago now, time flies, but my wife's grandfather passed away. And I was called to Tennessee, and we shot out of town that week, and went over to Tennessee, and where my wife's from. And we were a part of that funeral service. And what's interesting, being in that time, I could sense that there were a lot more people dead in that funeral than the man in the coffin.

You're teaching about life. You're teaching, you're celebrating life. And so often, there are dead souls in those funerals that are dead, more dead, deader, whatever the proper grammar for that is, than the people that are actually in the coffin. There are people walking in and out of church that are more dead. We can fill up the seats.

We can celebrate. We can have a great time. But the fact is that there's people that are dead, that need to be raised to life. And you're probably there. Who knows?

Many of us are there. Maybe you're dead in your relationship. Maybe you're dead in your dreams. Maybe you're dead in your expectations, or you had disappointments, or you had hurts in life, or you're dead in your emotions, perhaps. Maybe you're happy on the outside.

Maybe you're giggly. Maybe people think everything's going well. But maybe there's something inside of you that needs to be raised to life. And maybe there's an issue that you need to settle with God. Maybe you have an issue with God.

Maybe you're caught in this death, this death trap that we're going to talk about today. There was a story of a boy that was in the foyer of his church, and he was staring up at the wall at these pictures of men, of servicemen. And they were dressed in, you know, their upper dresses, you know, the nice dress, class A, or whatever you call it. Sorry, military. Forgive me if I use the terminology.

You're going to throw stuff at me here. But he's looking at the pictures, and he's just kind of thinking. And the pastor sees him, and he walks over to the young boy. He's about seven years old. He said, how are you doing, son?

He says, I'm doing good. Pastor, who are all these people? Who are these people? And he said, oh, these are men. These are people that were a part of our church that died in service.

And we wanted to celebrate them, you know, on the wall. So we put him up there, and he kind of got weird. And he changed his facial expression a little bit, like in fear almost. And he looks at him. He says, sir, which service did they die in?

The 8.30 or to 10 o'clock? Come on, that's funny. I don't care who you are, right? That's funny right there.

And unfortunately, there are dead people in service every day. We could come in, and we could celebrate. We could get excited, and we could look good on the outside, but we're dying on the inside. And this message is for you people that need a miracle. You need to be raised to life.

You have some hurt. You have some shame. You have some despair. You can't get out of it. And John 11 is for you.

John 11 is your message you need to hear today. So let's look at this. Let's see what we can learn from this. In John 11, beginning with verse 1, it says, now a man named Lazarus... was sick.

He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. And Mary, whose brother Lazarus was laid sick, saw the same one who poured, or was the same one, excuse me, who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with hair. So you remember the story of the alabaster, breaking the alabaster and the perfume being poured out on the feet of Jesus, and then everybody's accusing her of this expensive, of wasting this expensive perfume. And Jesus says, she's done a good thing. Don't accuse her of anything.

She's done a good thing. Well, that's the same one. We got Mary and Martha here. So the sister sent word to Jesus, said, Lord, the one you love is sick. That's interesting there, the one you love.

And when he heard this, Jesus said, the sickness will not end in death. The sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory, so that God's Son may be glorified through it. Now notice the different characters in this story. Notice the different characters in this story.

You have Lazarus. And Lazarus wasn't just somebody that Jesus ran into on the road one day. Lazarus was like family. It says it was the one that Jesus loved. This was a very special person to Jesus.

This was one of Jesus' best friends. This was somebody who Jesus spent a lot of time with. Then he has his two sisters, Mary and Martha. And this family was very special to Jesus. And then you have the disciples.

And the disciples are with them. And they're on their missionary period, you know, going from town to town. And so we have all this going on. But you also need to notice that there's an urgency here. There's an urgency in this story.

So the sisters, they're concerned about their brother. So they send word to Jesus. We need to get Jesus here because Lazarus is sick and he needs to be healed. And we know that Jesus can do it. So let's get him there.

Let's get him there as quick as possible. And so there's a sense of urgency. But on the other hand, we see that Jesus has something else in mind. He tells his disciples that you've heard that he is sick and this will not end in death. So he has some kind of divine strategy here for this overall situation.

So Jesus says this. And what he's thinking here as he's approaching the city is, I'm getting ready to show these people something that will blow their minds. Something they've never seen before. Everyone will say, you knew what you were doing, Jesus, when this is over with. But if we back up, a lot of people will not understand this.

And you may have a situation right now that seems that it's impossible and there's no end to it. Isn't it interesting that when we're in the middle of a situation where we need a miracle, it seems like there's no end to that situation. And it seems like we're stuck in the middle of it. Are you ever going to come up with the answer? Are you ever going to show up, God?

Are you ever going to do your thing? And God's like, just hold on. Just hold on. And while we're waiting, we need to be careful not to become like many people do and fall into this death trap. So we're going to talk about the death trap today.

How we enter into this place where we feel like despair and death sets in. And you can see this in the story of Lazarus. And you can see it through several people's lives. Jesus does something that absolutely makes no sense just to start off with. So they send word to Jesus.

Jesus comes to Lazarus because he's sick and he's getting ready to die. And we really need you here. And then in verse six, it says, yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was for two days. Now that made absolutely no sense. Okay, Jesus, the first thing that happens when you hear this is you say, well, we're going to stay here for two more days.

Let's just hang out for a little while. This causes quite confusion in the disciples, quite a bit of confusion in the disciples, and I'm sure in Mary and Martha. And in many situations that we find ourselves in, we may be asking ourselves the same question, right? Like Jesus, where are you? God, where are you?

This doesn't make sense. I don't understand. And that leads us to our first point. We normally, what happens is we start this death spiral, this death trap when we don't understand how God works. We don't understand how God works.

It makes sense that Jesus should leave immediately, go to Lazarus before he dies, and bring healing to him. And have you ever felt like this in your own life? I know I have. And number one, you feel like God is delayed. Like, when are you showing up, God?

You're delayed in this situation. And number two, sometimes it seems like that God doesn't really care. And you're sitting in the midst of the darkness, in the situation, in the death trap, and you're asking, why God? And you'll see clearly in the story, as we look at Jesus' perspective. So we go to verse 11, and we even see that the disciples didn't know.

He says, after he had said this, he went on to tell them, our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I'm going there to wake him up. And what was the disciples' response? He says, Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better, right? That makes sense. And Jesus had not been speaking of death, but his disciples thought he meant a natural sleep.

So even the disciples knew him, who had been walking with him face to face, had watched him perform many miracles, had watched him do things that were unspeakable, were asking questions. And we often have those questions because we don't understand. But Jesus had something else in mind. And most of us miss God's ways because we don't understand how God works. And we're trying to figure out how God works.

And then we start entering into this doubt phase. We get caught up in this death trap of doubt. Well, if he's not going to show up, then, you know, I doubt he's ever going to do anything. And then the second point is we get consumed by doubt. We get consumed by doubt.

We start doubting. We start thinking, well, he didn't come through in this area. He didn't come through in that area. And then our doubt just sets in and overcomes us. We see this in verse 16.

It says, then Thomas said to the rest of the disciples, and I'm going to say it like this, let us also go that we may die. Let us go to me. Have you ever met those type of people? Like Eeyores, you know? I love Winnie the Pooh because you have all these different characters that are, that have all these different personality types, you know?

You got, you got, you know, just, just, it was written by a psychologist. It had to be because it's just all over the place, all these different personality types. And you have Eeyore who is the one who always sees the negative. And Jesus has some kind of divine strategy here, but he couldn't see it. And he's consumed with doubt.

My dad has this coffee cup and I, you know, he's always, he's been in the ministry for years and board meetings and stuff like that. So he loves this cup and it just represents those people, you know, in your life. And on the cup, it has cartoon characters and they're sitting around the table and they're in their full business suits and stuff. And they're all like strategizing, you know, like you do in a board meeting. And this guy's like happy, you know, one side of the cup and he says, I got a great idea.

And he's got this big cloud over him with a light bulb and they can do this, you know, kind of thing. And then you turn the cup around and there's always somebody on the other side of the table reaching over and he clicks that light bulb off and says, it won't work. It won't work. You know, you got these people that are doubters in your life. They're heavy doubters in your life.

And verse, and if we go back to verse but I said, so much. They remind him that, Jesus, if we go back to this place where Lazarus is, do you realize that we could be arrested and we could be stoned? And when he heard that, Jesus, okay, we're going to go now. We're going to go back to this place. They were full of doubt.

Now, I'm going to be honest with you. Now, the devil wants you to doubt, and he wants you to fall into this death trap. He wants you to be consumed with doubt because he wants nothing but death for you. And the truth of the matter is, while you're down and while you're in your doubt, he's going to throw more doubt at you, and he's going to throw more doubt at you. He's going to kick you.

He's going to hit you while you're still on the floor because that's how he works. He plays unfairly. We're consumed with doubt. Some of you here today are discouraged and you're caught up in doubt. Even the world is challenging the way you believe.

Maybe you don't even believe in God anymore or have a hard time really believing that He exists. You've been let down so many times. The carpet's been pulled out from under you so many times. It's hard to even believe God anymore. Had a conversation with a friend of mine not too long ago.

I hadn't talked to him in years, and somehow we connected through Facebook, and he was at one time a really strong believer. And he was at a place in his life where he didn't even know if God existed or if he even believed in the same God that I believed in anymore. And it was hard to believe because this guy was radical, you know, all about Jesus at one time in his life. And then he threw out the words, I can't have children. And a red flag went up right away because I knew that the circumstances in his life was bringing doubt, was bringing him down into that death trap where it's even hard to believe God.

And I believe this is where a lot of agnosticism and atheism starts, you know, because we enter into that trap, we start doubting, and we're consumed with doubt to the point where we can't even see Jesus arriving. We can't even see Jesus coming on the scene. We can't even see what Jesus is able to do. And then we enter into this final stage, which is really, really a place I don't want anybody to go. And we give up on God.

We just give up on him. We give up on God. I'm not even going to try anymore. I don't even want to think about it. I'm tired.

I've been ruined so many times. I've been misrepresented so many times. My marriage, my happiness, my money, my sin, whatever that is, we get caught up in that. Jesus, you need, I need you, and you didn't show up, and we get caught up in that. It's interesting in verse 20, it says, when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed home.

Now, this was the same Mary that was breaking the alabaster jar and pouring it on Jesus's feet. And she didn't even want to come out of the house to see Jesus when he arrived. She couldn't because she was so consumed with doubt, she was giving up on God, giving up on Jesus. And Jesus came arriving on the scene, and she couldn't even receive him because he was so defeated. For some of you here today, Jesus is arriving on the scene, and he's there, but you can't see him because you've given up, because you're so consumed with your circumstances.

And he wants, and he's calling, and he's looking for you, and you're in the house. I'm getting ready to do something big, but I'm not ready to receive it, God, because I just don't believe. I don't believe. And others don't know because on the outside, you may look happy, and you may be cheerful, and everything may be going well, and your job may look like really good. You may have, you know, the house, and the car, and everything is going your way according to what other people see, but in the inside, there's something there that's hurting and dying.

So I want to ask this question today, if you're following in notes, this is the key question here I want to ask today. What in your life is dead or dying? Assess your life. Assess your circumstances. What in your life is dead?

What in your life is working towards that trend of dying? What are those things in your life? Identify those things, because God wants to bring them back to life. Maybe you had a dream that's died. Maybe it's been dismantled.

Maybe even your relationship with God has been severed or has died, and he wants to bring that back to you. He wants to give you life once again. He wants to raise you to life inwardly and outwardly. So today, I want to help you conquer death, help you experience a miracle in your life, because the greatest miracles that we see and are the things that we don't notice very much, is that God wants to do something amazing in your everyday life, and God wants to do something inside of you. That's the greatest miracle, is he can do something inside of you.

He can change you from the inside out and make you a different person. So if you're dead and dying, there's three things that we want to talk about really quick today. And we can see this in the key verse we're studying here. In verse 25, it says, Jesus said to her, and this is it. This is everything.

This is the whole reason we exist as a church. This is the statement of statements in the Bible. He says that Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. And he who believes in me will live. Even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.

Do you believe this? So I'm asking you today, God's asking you today, do you believe this? God, God's speaking even to me, do you believe this? Do you believe this? So the first thing we need to do is settle in our heart who Jesus is.

If you're following your notes, settle in your heart who Jesus is. He is not just an event. It is not Easter. Easter. Everything wrapped around Easter is not just an event.

It's a person. It's a person. He is the resurrection. He is the resurrection in life. And he didn't teach just some kind of side philosophy or religion about being good or doing the right things.

He says, I am life. I am hope. I am victory over death. So let me say it this way. Easter isn't an event.

It's a person. You need to write that down. Easter is not an event. It's a person. Resurrection is not an event.

It's a person. So take your focus off the problem. Is it on the problem? Take your focus off the problem and place it on the person. And there was one person in the story that always believed, in this particular story that always believed, and that was Martha.

And she was totally optimistic because she had something that was greater than the problem. That's the thing. She had something that was bigger than the problem. She had her eyes on the person and not the problem. And she didn't have a clue what he was going to do.

In her mind, Lazarus had died as well. I mean, just like Mary in the house, Lazarus has died. He's gone. I don't know what he's going to do, but I believe. But I believe.

In verse 27, it says, Mary said, I believe that you are this Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world. In verse 27, it says, I believe that you are this Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world. In verse 27, it says, I believe that you are this Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world. So, first of all, she knew that he was the Christ. The Christos is in Greek meaning the anointed one, the one who has the power in every situation, if you want a good definition of that.

That has the victory in every situation. The Christ, the anointed one, the one who is able to overcome every situation in her life. She knew that, and she had it settled in her heart, even though she wanted some kind of different outcome, and she was probably wondering, and there was doubt even in her heart. In fact, when we look at verse 21, it says, Lord Martha said to Jesus, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. So, there's some kind of doubt there.

There's some kind of little thing there. If you had been here, he wouldn't have died. If you had showed up on time, God, if you showed up in my situation, I wouldn't have lost my business. If you had showed up in my marriage, it would have worked out. If you had showed up, I wouldn't be where I am right now.

I asked you, and I prayed, and I asked for that miracle, and it didn't happen. But here's the response we need to make. But I know that, and this is the key word right here, even now, even now in the midst of my circumstance, even now in the midst of my hurt, in the misrepresentation that's been thrown on me, even in my loss, even in my pain, even now, God will give you whatever you ask. I believe, Jesus, that you can still do it, no matter my circumstance. You need to say, even now, because you are who you say you are, Jesus.

I can say, even now, even now. And the second thing we need to do is stop analyzing everything. We're analyzers, right? We think about everything. I'm the biggest analyzer.

I got to, I'm thinking, thinking, I'm waking up in the morning thinking, how do we do this? How do we strategize this? How do we figure out this? And you can't have faith if you're going to listen to your mind and feelings. Here's the thing about faith.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for. So, we don't walk in blind faith. There's actually substance to our faith, but we don't allow our feelings to dictate our faith, because our feelings will steer us every time. Our feelings lie to us. They do.

We can get caught up in our feelings, and we can, it can dictate the direction we go. And God's out of the picture, because our feelings will often lead us away from what God has for us, the best that God has for us. In fact, if I followed my feelings, I would not be your pastor right now. Just in the last month or two, there's been times I'm like, am I, what's going on, God? You know, am I, am I the right person for this job?

Can I, I mean, is this, is this the, I'm ready to go, Lord, because I, sometimes you just feel the heaviness, the heaviness of life. But we can't operate on our feelings. We got to operate on our calling, who God's made us to be. And we got to keep our eyes on the prize, our eyes on Jesus. Hebrew says, we keep our eyes on Jesus, the Arthur, the Arthur and perfecter of our faith.

For he who endured the cross, despised all shame, and is sitting at the right hand of the Father. He's sitting at the right hand of the Father. He's conquered death. And can we keep our, our eyes on him? And, and understand that, that our minds are just too simple to handle the things that God has in store for us.

We, we're just simple people in God's eyes. I'm not saying you're a simple person. Maybe you're not in, in reality here, but reality is Jesus, is the truth of it. Jesus is reality, and he has, he's not simple-minded about this. His wisdom is beyond our wisdom.

His knowledge is beyond our knowledge. The things he does, we can't always understand, so we need to stop analyzing everything. In verse 38, it says, Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. And our minds, and I'm sure their minds couldn't really gather this. And it was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance, and it said, take away the stone, he said.

But Lord, said Martha, the sister of the dead man, by this time there's a bad odor, for he has been dead four days. Can you imagine? Four days. It didn't make a lot of sense to her. I got, okay, you're rolling away the stone.

You want to pull off the cloth. He's been dead four days. So even Martha was thinking a bit, this is kind of crazy. This is nuts. I'm not sure about this guy.

Let me think about this for a minute. He's been dead four days. He's decaying. Roll away the stone. I just don't know about this.

Often, God tells us to do something. God, Jesus asks us to do something, and we wonder the same thing. I don't know about this, Jesus. Let me think about this a little bit. Let me rationalize this.

I got to leave my job? No. No, God. That doesn't make sense. I got bills to pay.

You want me to say, what, to who? That person has nothing, wants nothing to do with me. You want me to forgive? No way. Forgive them for something they did to me?

Often, God will tell us to do something that we often can't rationalize or understand. And Martha was like this. She just couldn't understand it. She's like, wait a minute. Wait a minute.

And I'm not saying just operate on blind faith, guys. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Just realize that God is up to something we don't understand. Just take that to heart, that God is doing something that we don't quite see, we don't understand, but we have substance in Jesus. Because He's our faith.

We don't just have faith in faith. We have faith in Jesus. Jesus is the one we have faith in. And we've got to trust in God that He's going to do something, regardless of whether it makes sense. And here's a great verse pertaining to Abraham when you're dealing with confusion about what life brings.

In Romans 4, 19, 21, it says, without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead, talking about Abraham, since he was about 100 years old. And that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God. So he didn't waver. It didn't seem right.

It didn't make sense. But he didn't waver on that promise that God gave him. But was strengthened in his faith. We need to be strengthened in our faith. And he gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had the power to do what?

He had promised. He promised it. And he held on to that promise. And we need to put our faith and our hope in the person. Not an event, not a philosophy, not even a theology, but in a person.

The reality of who Jesus is. That He is the Son of God, the Christ, the anointed one that has victory over everything. So we can place our faith in Him if we're going through something. So if you are dead or dying, you need to do this third thing. Start living again.

Start living again. If you're following your notes, fill that in. Start living again. Here's the truth. The thief comes to steal.

Not only does he want to steal, he wants to kill. He wants to kill you. He wants death for you. Not only does he want to kill you, he wants to destroy you. He wants you no longer to exist.

This is how serious this is. The enemy wants to steal, kill, and destroy. But what does Jesus do? He says, I come so that you can have life, and you can have life abundantly. So Jesus spoke to death.

He spoke, and death ceased to be. Life came into the body. John 11, 43, he says, Jesus called out with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. Lazarus, come out of there. However you want to put that in modern day context.

Lazarus, come out of that grave. What happened? Lazarus rose. The dead man came out. His hands, his feet wrapped with strips of linen, and his clothes around his face, and his cloth around his face.

Jesus said to them, take off the grave clothes and let him go. What happened? They took off the clothes. What was supposed to be there? A decaying man.

He was no longer decaying. He was whole. He was well. He was raised to life. And the interesting fact here, and this is real interesting.

A lot of people ask, why did Jesus wait? Why did Jesus wait? It was believed in the Jewish custom, the Jewish understanding, Jewish theology, that the soul would remain with the body three days before it departed. Jesus arrived on day four. Or well after the three days.

Day four. So he wanted there to be no reason. There to be no argument that this was raised to life. This person was dead. He was dead.

There was no doubt that he was dead. There was no rationalizing this thing. Jesus can raise people to life. For some of you, it's time to get out of death and come into life. You need to take those clothes off, those grave clothes off.

You need to listen to the voice of the Lord as he's calling you out. He's calling you into life. Death to life. There is a life. Here's the thing about life in Jesus.

It's both quantitative and qualitative. It's quantitative in that you will live forever. The minute you give your life to Christ, that you cross over from death to life, you live forever. It's qualitative because it's purposeful. It's joy.

It's peace. It's hope. All these things that you have in life in Christ can be available to anyone who believes. And it's a choice, a choice that could change your life forever. It could change you forever.

Listen to me. I beg you. If you're here today and you haven't given Jesus your life, you haven't made a decision for him, cross over from death to life. There's this place in California called Death Valley. I'm sure many of you have probably heard of the place.

It's probably the driest place in the United States of America. And a lot of rattlesnakes there. I don't want to camp out there. A lot of people do camp and have to avoid the rattlesnakes and stuff. I mean, but it's just a dry, barren place.

It's not a very attractional place to be at at all. And then in 2005, we have this thing that happened called the Super Bloom that took place. Super Bloom. And scientists and everybody were like, just, wow. Like all of a sudden, life started coming up out of the hard ground and the dirt and the ashes or whatever's out there, you know, it just started coming up.

And there was flowers and there was grass and there was greenery and everything was just coming to be. And it was just a phenomenal, wow, the Super Bloom. Look at this. It looks like a life-giving place now. This dead place.

It lasted first season, but it was just phenomenal. And Ken Robinson, a scientist, said this. He says, this proves that Death Valley is not really dead. He said, it's just dormant. Right beneath the surface are these seeds of possibility waiting for the right conditions.

And I quote this. Perhaps, right below the surface, there's seeds of possibility in your life if you're going through the death trap. And God's just ready to light you up. You're just not, you're not dead. You're dormant.

And God wants to light you up in this world. He wants to light your life. I believe that for you. And some of you here today, maybe you walked in church today and you're like, there's just no hope. I don't even know if God's there anymore.

Can I tell you? Just right below the surface. Right below the surface. The potential. There's so much possibility for your life.

God has so much in store for you. He loves you. He wants a relationship with you. He doesn't want you just to be a good person. He wants you to be life-giving.

He wants to breathe life into you. He wants that for you today. With all bent and heads bowed and all eyes closed as I pray us out. If there's somebody here today that needs to know Jesus. That hasn't made a decision for Jesus.

And you've walked in here. Maybe something in the message, maybe something in the song has spurred something up inside of you. You're like, I don't want to live this dead life anymore. I don't want to do this anymore. Maybe you're making a decision.

Can I tell you? God wants a relationship with you. He does. He loves you. He does.

He loves you. He does. If that's you today and you're ready to make a decision, I'm not going to embarrass you. I'm not going to call you in the front in front of everybody. I just want to know and pray for you.

I want to pray with you that you receive Jesus. He says, behold, I knock on the door and if anyone hears my voice and opens that door to their heart, I will come in and I will make my home. He wants a relationship with you. If that's you today, if you would just gently lift your hand and say, Pastor, I'm making a decision today. It's time.

It's time. I want to cross over from death to life. It's time for me to do that. Is that you today? Just be bold and say, I'm in.

Yes, I want to make that decision. Death to life. Death to life. Eternal life starts today. Life starts today.

If you'll pray this with me, dear Father, in the name of Jesus, I surrender my heart. I surrender my life to you. I make a decision for you today. Come into my heart. Walk with me from this day forth.

I'm no longer my own, but I'm yours. I believe that you're the son of God, that you died on the cross for my sin. I believe and I receive. In the same spirit of prayer, I want to pray for those here in the place that may, maybe you need a miracle. You need prayer even now.

I want to pray over you. Is there anybody in here that just says, you know, I don't know. I'm unsure. I'm just uncertain right now, Leon. I need prayer.

Is that you? If you would just gently raise your hand. Amen. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm just uncertain, God.

I'm just uncertain. Let me pray for you, Father, in the name of Jesus, that you would begin to answer people. That you would begin to show them, Lord. That you would begin to perform a miracle in their lives. That you would give them direction.

That you would find hope in the thing there seems to be no hope for, Lord. That disease that seems to be a dead end, Lord Jesus. That seems to be no hope, Lord. That you would bring life into that, Lord. That you would heal that disease.

That you would bring hope. That financial situation, Lord, that's out there, that there seems to be no end to. God, how are we going to make it? God, begin to bring peace and hope. Perform a miracle in people's lives.

In that marriage, it seems like it's going nowhere. It's at a dead end. So, Lord, we pray that you would bring hope and peace and restoration and reconciliation to that marriage, Lord. We believe. Sometimes we need help with our unbelief, Lord.

But we're believing. And even now, even now, wherever I am, Lord Jesus, I believe that you can do it. Amen. Amen. Can we give God the praise and glory?