From Pain to Purpose

In 2 Corinthians, it says, but when one turns to the Lord, when one turns and sees the Lord, the veil is removed. Now, the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is what? Freedom. Freedom. And we all, with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

So, some versions say, from glory to glory, meaning that the closer we get to God, the more we become like God. The reason we want to encounter God is so that we can become more like Him. And He is transforming. He's just not making little bitty changes. He's transforming us completely.

The closer we are to Him, the more He is transforming us into the image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. So, the way you look changes when you encounter God. The way you see God, the way that unveiling that God has made through Jesus Christ changes us. And the purpose of an encounter is not so that we can just get some giggles, right, and feel good.

I mean, I love it when the Holy Spirit shows up, because there is some sensation to it, right? I mean, it just feels good. But that's not why we're trying to encounter God. We want to encounter God, not just for our personal enjoyment, but in every encounter in the Bible, we see three things happen. In every encounter in the Bible, we see God reveal Himself to somebody, cleanse them, change them, and call them.

Give them an assignment. Give them a purpose. In almost every place in the Bible, you see an encounter with God. Go back and look, and at least all of them I've researched, God reveals Himself to them. He shows up, He touches them, He reveals Himself to them, He changes them, He cleanses them, and then He sends them out.

And the greatest thing that can ever happen in your life is meaning. If you don't have meaning, if you don't have purpose, if you don't have assignment, if you don't know why you're here, you will dry up. You will not have meaning. You'll be dry, and you'll be hopeless. The greatest thing we can have is significance.

And we don't want to just live in survival mode. We want to live in significance mode, right? We want to be people of significance. And every soul longs for significance. So the reason we encounter God is not just for our personal enjoyment, but it's for meaning and purpose and what God has and He has planned for us.

And so we've been searching the Scriptures. We've been looking over these different moments where people have encountered God. Week one we talked about Jacob, how he struggled with God, and how he fought with God. And all night long for that blessing. He wanted that blessing.

We want to be people who just wrestle with God. Wrestle because we won't give up. That's why we're praying and fasting. We don't want to give up. We want to lean into God more.

We want to know God. We want to be changed and transformed. But not just to be changed and transformed because we want to know God one-on-one, face-to-face. And then last week we looked at Moses and all of his questions he had. Who am I?

Why are me? What about they? And all the things that we deal with that keep us from knowing God to the full. Well, today I want to visit Isaiah. I want to talk about Isaiah.

And for many of us, we've all experienced dark days, right? Perhaps this is a dark day for you. This is a dark time. This is a dark period for you. A trial maybe you're having.

A tragedy. Grief is all around us. Emotional pain. And people tend to distance themselves from God when they go through pain. When they go through.

So I want to challenge you that make these. Yeah, we can do that unhow to the whole of us. Let me ask ourselves, come on my first four kilo e one last. Dark days, times where you're leaning in a little closer to God. Because I don't want you to miss out on the opportunity.

In fact, the psalmist says it like this, the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted. The Lord is close. He's moving in. So the question is, are we going to move towards Him?

Are we going to move towards Him? Are we going to gain something from this? And if we recognize what we're going through, we recognize that God's working on the outside, we can actually benefit from pain. We can benefit from hurt and brokenness. And we all could learn how to have better responses to pain.

We all can have better responses to the things that we're going through. Because here's the deal, God never promised us that we wouldn't have pain. In fact, He said He would have pain. He faced pain. We will have pain.

But what He offers us is a way to overcome the pain. He offers us a strength that we can hold on to during it. And He makes something out of it. He brings us to a place where we're something better on the other side. There's a purpose in our pain.

And every major breakthrough, every major lesson in life comes through dark places and painful situations. Some of the greatest life lessons that I've had, some of the greatest life change moments that I've had in my life have been through places that were very dark, very confusing, unable to see the future. My salvation came from one of those places in my life. My calling to ministry came in a place where I just didn't know and I didn't know where to go and I was broken and trying to figure out purpose. And Salt Church was birthed out of a place of brokenness.

Out of a place of without clarity and fogginess and just trying to seek God for him. I could tell you the story over and over again and many of you have heard it. The trials that we went through when we stepped out to do this, a place of brokenness. But we can learn from the brokenness. And I think about, I played football in high school and I was kind of a hair of a jock.

I don't think I was a full jock. My sister's here today, so she's going to relate to all these stories in high school. She's a couple years younger, so we're kind of close in age. But I played football, I wrestled, I did all that, you know, all the manly stuff in high school. And I do none of that now, but, you know, I just remember my coach, Coach Ross Remfro.

Boy, he was a tough one, man. And he would come in and he had this shirt, no pain, no gain, blood, sweat, tears. And he would bring us into that weight room and he would just work on us. And he would get us out in the football field and he would work hard. We'd be throwing up on the ground, like sweating.

I remember the big boys out there, they were just throwing up all over. Just get off the ground, get off the ground. And he was just, he was just going to it, man. That blood, sweat, tears. If you can't face the pain, you can't gain.

We got to get prepared for this season that we're heading in for this football season. And he was a tough one. And then we had this other guy, Ross was kind of, you know, he was big and he, well, he was kind of stocky, I guess. He wasn't like real tall, but, but he was stocky. He was like East Carolina University graduate, played football and all that kind of stuff.

So he was like, and he was like strong too. He could lift a lot of stuff. But then we had this little other, this other guy, Coach Brooks, Coach Brooks. And he was like, oh man, he was the coach before Coach Ross and he had retired and came back. I just learned this last night actually, I didn't know that.

But he had this feisty way about it. I remember taking a weightlifting class with him. And I had him standing over us and he would like, he's like, come on, come on down. For that. I mean, he's like, oh is that going to end that off?

Thank you. You can do it down in the car. More, more, more, more. Stop now. Okay, and you would do like five reps, and then you do 10 reps, and then you do 15 reps, and then you do 20 reps, and I remember how hard that was, and I wanted to quit so bad, because the weightlifting class I had the year before was easy, because we would, you know, me and my buddies, we'd just lift weights and talk the whole time, but he was like, no, you got to do this right, and you're going to get strong, and I had some of the most conditioning times during that season.

Little Coach Brooks. He's probably watching right now. I don't know. And then we had Coach Mangum. He was a redheaded guy who was fiery, and he was a little goofy, but I tell you what, when he was on the football field, he was another person.

He was the sweetest guy in the classroom. He was like a good Christian guy, would look after everybody, but I remember him out there, and he would step on one leg. Like, he'd get so mad at us if we didn't, you know, score a touchdown or perform the play right. He'd go, guys, guys, and he would get really red in the face, and he would yell at us, and there were a few choice words all over the place, you know. You can't do the things now that you could do then.

I mean, they were pretty hard on us. We felt like we were in a boot camp or something in school, but there was a purpose for it. They knew what they were doing. They knew that no pain, no gain. They knew that blood, sweat, and tears produced the best in us so that we could have a winning season, and perhaps this is what God is trying to do for us.

Maybe not taking us through a physical boot camp per se, but there's a spiritual boot camp taking place in which we're facing brokenness. We're facing pain. Things are happening. He's developing us into the people that he's called us to be, that he originally intended us to be, and he uses pain. He uses times of hardship to do that, and we learn this from Isaiah, and if you look at the history of Isaiah, we have King Uzziah, who was the 10th king of Judah.

He started his kingship at a very young age. I believe he was about 12 years old when he took over the kingdom, and he was a very good king. He was a prosperous king. In fact, he was the most prosperous king since Jehoshaphat and even Solomon. He hit that time, and he came in, and he suppressed the idols of that day.

He took them off of high places, and it says this, 2 Chronicles, as long as he sought the Lord, God gave him success. Now, let me make a point on that just as a side point. Whenever we seek the Lord, God brings success, and throughout the Bible, we see the kings in Scripture. We see the kings that brought down those idols over the land. They pulled them down, and what did they see?

They saw success, but then another king would come in and begin to be adulterous with other idols and bring them into the country. What happened? The country began to fall, and eventually Israel fell, and here the prophet is talking to the kingdom of Judah about this very thing. Do you want what Israel has? So anytime we put gods in our lives, anytime when we're adulterous with the things that take us away from making God priority in our life, our lives don't prosper.

So during this time of prayer and fasting, this is an important time where you set aside those things that you feel are taking your time away from God to put down those idols in your life, to make sure they aren't idols, and really focus on the Lord to have an encounter, to have an experience with Him. For King Uzziah, unfortunately, pried God in the way. Later in his life, and he was a very young king, but later in his life, he walked into the temple. He decided he was going to take on the priesthood and burn incense in the temple. The priest tried to stop him to keep him from running in.

He went in and God struck him there on the spot with a horrible disease with leprosy. And he was taken and placed in a tower away from the kingdom until that period in which he died. So the kingdoms here, in this particular situation, it's been a very prosperous kingdom. And now the nation is saddened by his death. He was a very loved king.

And there was an uproar of disparity that was taking place. And it picks up here in Isaiah 6, beginning with verse 1. It says, in the year that King Uzziah died, and he says this, I saw the Lord. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. A nation that was in utter despair.

I think of our nation and all the things that are going on right now. In utter despair. But God usually takes these crisis moments and begins to reveal himself to us in big ways. And he did this with Isaiah. See, and I would even say this, don't wait for a crisis to experience God.

Even when you're on the mountaintop, aim for God. Go for God. Form that relationship with God. Go all in with God. Because you're missing out on so much.

If you're just waiting for the hard times to connect with God, you're missing out on so much more. Don't wait then. And then it says, He saw the Lord high and exalted, seated on the throne, and the train of his robe filled the temple. So he saw a God that was way bigger than what was currently in his head. He was thinking about all the things that were going on, but the Lord began to show him, I'm a much bigger God.

And then he said this, above him, and he began to explain these angels. There were the seraphim, which each with six wings. With two wings, they covered their faces. With two, they covered their feet. And with two, they were flying.

And they were calling to one another, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The earth is full of his glory. So God begins to reveal the throne room to Isaiah. Isaiah, reveal this big picture, this powerful, almighty picture of God with these awesome beings yelling out how big his God is. My first point is this.

God wants to reveal himself to you. God wants to reveal himself to you. He wants to show you how big he is. He wants to show you how huge he is, how powerful he is. And how do we encounter him this way?

By taking steps closer to having a vibrant relationship with him. By taking steps closer. It's less about what you do and don't do, but more about your being led into an environment or in a relationship with him. I was actually having a talk with our youth leader the other day. And we were talking about the things with the youth.

And I said, listen, you can talk to youth all day long about what they're not supposed to do. But the question is, are they going to listen to that? But your job is not to give them the do's and don'ts necessarily. Your job is to lead them into the presence of God. To lead them closer to God.

Because when God is revealed, things start shaking in us. Things start happening in us. And that's why we are revealed. We do what we do here. That's why we want to celebrate in this environment.

That's why we want you guys to be lifting your hearts to God in here because we want an encounter with God in this place. We want to encounter God in this room together. We want you to have an encounter online in your living room, right in your kitchen as you're watching this. I want you to lift God up. I want you to seek Him.

I want to bring you in the presence of God. That's why we do what we do so that we worship to bring the presence of God so that you may experience Him. And in relationship, you find purpose. And in purpose, you get really excited about God. And when you get really excited about God, you're not focused on the do's and daunts.

They're not really an issue anymore. And it's like this bridge that we're crossing over, this intersection. John Wesley even explained it, and I can't explain it in his elegant terms right now. But basically, there's this crossroad where we're walking away from our sin because some of you are still hanging on to your past, right? You're hanging on to all this stuff that's going on over here.

And you're like, I just can't get away from it. But the closer you get to God, the more vibrant your relationship is with God. The more you see God, the more you start walking across that line from sin and to God, and you start seeing Him for all He is. And you find purpose, and you find meaning, and you find power over sin. Did you know you can have power over sin?

You can. And that's what God wants you, wants for you. That's why He's given you Himself. That's why He wants you to encounter Him. That's why He's revealing Himself to you.

And sometimes it's just about changing your environment. That's why we pray and fast. That's why we do what we do, so that we can get away from those things, so that we can know God, so that He can reveal Himself to us, so that He can shake us a little bit, put us through some trials, put them through some spiritual boot camp a little bit. And He'll do it. Just this past week, God's been revealing some stuff in my life.

It's like, dude, you've got to get rid of that. You've got to get that away from you. And it says, at the sound of their voices, the doorposts and thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke. So when the presence of God shows up, things start to shake. Things start to happen.

Things start to move. And then, and then Isaiah understood this. He saw this. He saw it shaking. And I'm sure there was a little bit of fear in that.

And he dropped to his knees, and he cried out, woe to me, I am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips. And I live among people with unclean lips. And my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty. So when we have an encounter with God, we realize how little we are and how big He is. But He doesn't want to leave us there.

He doesn't leave us there. He doesn't want us just to see how little we are and how big He is. He wants to bring us in. And in verse 6, it says, Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hands, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. So he took a piece of coal from the altar.

And this is a representation of the Old Testament. The burning of a lamb on the altar for the forgiveness of sin. As a side point, relevant today, we have Jesus Christ, who was the lamb, who took away our sin, who your past, present, and future is wiped away. So we're seeing Jesus in this scripture. So what is he doing?

What is the angel doing? He's bringing Jesus to him. Jesus is touching him. Jesus wants to touch you today. And then in verse 7 it says, With it he touched my mouth and said, See, this has touched your lips, your guilt is taken away, and your sin is atoned for.

The second point I want to make is God wants to cleanse you. God cannot use you until you're cleansed. God wants to clean you up, wants to cleanse you, he wants to change you. And he will not leave you in the state you were once in. Practically, how does this look?

Practically, how does this work out? See, God cleanses us. It's God's power, but he makes us a part of the process. So we continue to take steps to encounter him. Let me just say, don't let January be the only time you take steps to encounter God.

Let it be all year that you want to encounter him every day at every moment. Every day you're taking steps towards because the Christian life is a constant progression of change. From glory to glory, we're constantly being changed. We're constantly taking next steps to become more like Christ, to being transformed into his image. We want to be like, we desire to be like Christ.

As 2 Corinthians 3.18 says, and we all with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. So you can never get to your purpose if you are defined by your past. That's why God takes away the past and moves you forward to your purpose. Satan wants to define you by what you've done and the do's and don'ts and all that mess that you got into.

He wants to remind you of that even this morning as you're listening to this message. But pastor, you don't understand. Oh, I may not understand, but God surely does because he says, I've got you something greater, something more. Let that go. I've atoned.

Jesus paid it all for your sins. And we might have a relationship with God, but we still deal with those addictions and struggles and things because there's consequences to the things that we've done. So that's why God instituted relationships. That's why we have relationships in our church. That's why we have a family of believers that are together so that we could talk these things out so that we could pray for each other.

That's why you have a community. That's why we have groups in our church that meet together in smaller areas. We go from rows to circles so that we can talk about these things so that we can get these things out so that we can develop really close relationships with people so that we can confess the things, the secret places in our life. Can I say this? We all have secrets.

We all have secrets and you're only as sick as your secrets. As long as you have secrets, you will stay sick. As long as you live in secrets, you will be sick. You will never advance to the thing that God has for you because you will be sick. You will be stuck.

And if you want to change, you need to have the guts to say, I've got some issues and I've got some secrets and you need to talk those things out with people. That's why you have close friends to do that with. I'm not saying share it with everybody but share it with somebody. Share it with somebody you trust, that you confide in, that you want to hear, that will hear and help and care. That's why it's important to have these intimate relationships with people.

That's why God formed relationships in the church. Long range of Christians don't make it. Only in community can we make it. We can do this. And here's another thing.

Others see things that you don't see. Others see things that you don't see. I have people in my life that are close to me. I have pastors in my life and they see things that I don't see. And I actually had one this past week call me out on something that I didn't see.

And you know what? It kind of hurts. But it's good that it hurts. Let it hurt a little bit. We need to hear it sometimes.

We don't need to be offended. And when we do it in a biblical way, when we come to each other and we talk these things out, hey, sister, hey brother, I really need to mention this to you. I really think that this or that. You need to be, you know, I love teachable people. You know what I think about when somebody's teachable, I know they're maturing.

I know that they're ready to be closer to God. I know that they're ready to become more like Christ when they're teachable. When they're not teachable, you know, I'll put them over here in this category. A lot of maturity needs to happen in their life, in their spiritual life. But teachable people are powerful people.

Because God wants to use the teachable. That's why he says we should become like a child. Unless we become like a child, we cannot inherit the kingdom of God. And we like to throw, I'm just going to throw this out. We like to throw a judgment card out there when one of our fellows, brothers and sisters, talk to us about something, right?

Well, don't judge not unless ye be judged. And nobody even understands what that scripture means. We like to start with the judge not part. Unless ye be judged, meaning that look at your life before you go in and judge somebody else. In fact, if we look all over the Bible, we see judgment is actually a part of church life.

There's a biblical way to handle it. If you see sin in somebody's life, and you want to talk to them about it and work it out one-on-one, go to that person in private, talk it out. If that sin is still there, then we bring an elder or a deacon or a pastor into the mix. And if it doesn't work, then we have to go to a larger level. And there's a system there for accountability.

We all need accountability, and we all need to be worked on. And I have people in my life, I have overseers in my life that I am accountable to. I have friends, I have peers that I talk to on a weekly basis that I'm accountable to, because I have sin in my life, too, that needs to be worked out. And I cannot, I'm not exempt from it, you're not exempt from it. Nobody is exempt from these secrets, but we're only as good as our secrets.

When we get these secrets out of us, then we can be used by God. Man, y'all are quiet. I knew this was going to be a hard message. I was praying around my yard yesterday. God was like, you got to, you got to, you got to speak this.

You got to talk about this. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send? Because he wanting, he's wanting to send some people. And this is a season of deepness, where we need to get this stuff out of us. So, so, because, because he's asking, he's looking, he's roaming around, he's circling around looking, who shall I send?

Who are my people that are going to go for me? Who are those people that are going to represent me in such a dark and crazy world right now? Who are those people who are going to stand up in the middle of this? And here's Isaiah on his knees. Woe is me.

He's humbled to the point where he's on the ground and he doesn't know where to go, what to do. I mean, because this mighty God is in front of him. He's so much bigger than him. And, and, and he, he's, he's telling, he's showing them how gracious he is. And he says, well, who am I going to send?

Who am I going to send? Who am I? I can imagine God just looking at, at, at Isaiah. So who am I going to send? Who am I going to send?

I'm not looking anywhere else. Who am I going to send? And, and, and what does Isaiah's response? What is Isaiah's response? Here I am, Lord, send me.

Here I am, Lord, send me. Here I am, Lord. You know, nobody else will, will take on this oceanfront area. So that's what I said to God. I said, I'll do it.

I'll be honest. I could have planted a church anywhere. I could have gone, uh, my, my brother Scott back there who, who I've known since he was a boy in youth camp, you know, he, he knows that, uh, we, we got a lot of connections down. I could have had a 200 member church, uh, startup just like that in North Carolina and we could have rolled with it and, and, and, and done amazing things. I was actually tried to convince to move there, but I felt like God had called me here and people were not reaching people.

There were so many people that were so far from God around here, they didn't know God and nobody was looking at them. They were falling through the cracks. Not that the churches around here are doing, they're doing great things. I'm not here dismissing the churches and my brothers and all my pastor friends here in the area that I talk to frequently. You guys are doing bang-up jobs.

But for me, my assignment, God said, here, are you going to go? Are you going to do this? Are you going to try to dig into the rocks of this really, really hard, heavy community? He gave me an assignment and God's given you an assignment. He gave Isaiah an assignment and he wants to do the same for you guys.

He wants to do the same for everyone. And the world will only be touched to the degree that we all know what we're assigned to do. We cannot reach the world unless we all know our lane and what we're called to do. He gives us an assignment. So my third point is, God wants to use you.

God wants to use you. And the best part of life is to know why you breathe, why you're here. So many people are lost because they just don't know why they exist or why they are here. But God knows exactly why you're here. And he wants to lead you into that calling, that assignment.

He told Isaiah, go and tell this people, dot, dot, dot. And I left it right there because Isaiah's assignment is not your assignment. Isaiah was assigned to go tell these people. Moses was assigned to go deliver his people. Paul was assigned to go reach the Gentiles.

Moses, the question is, what is your assignment? What is your assignment? How do we find our assignment? Well, through the church. That's why it says it is the manifold plan of God that he made known the world through his church.

That we all have an assignment, and that's why this church is designed the way it is. So that you can know God, grow closer to him, and you can find freedom with relationships, and you can discover purpose through discipleship, and then you can go on mission and change your world. That's why he made us, created us, so that we could come together as a church, as the body of Christ, and change environments, and change regions, change cities, and ultimately redeem the world back to him. It's a part of his bigger plan. Why do we go through trouble?

Why do we go through pain? Why do we go through dark times? Because God is perhaps doing what this next scripture says. Praise be to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion, and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles. Amen?

He does. So that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. So why do we go through those times? Why do we go through those pains? Why do we go through those hurts?

Because God is going to use those things to develop us in a way that we can touch someone else. Because somebody's going through what you've gone through. Somebody's been through some some stuff and you can relate. And he wants to use those things to help bring about life change, change in others lives. So just for a second, I just want us to imagine.

Imagine a church. Imagine a church where people have purpose, where people have meaning, of people that are cleansed and changed by the blood of God, that they are made new, that we have a church that is renewed from inside out, is transformed for the glory of God, and is sent out on mission, on their assignment. Imagine a church like that, where everyone, every piece of the puzzle, 100% of the people in the church are doing what they're called to do. Imagine a church like that. What could we do?

What kind of world could we create? Jesus indeed is coming again, but until that day, he is transforming us from glory to glory, he's making us more like him. Not so that we could, you know, be, you know, lift ourselves up, and be, oh, look at me, and this and that, so that we can be used for a purpose and a meaning beyond what we think our purpose and meaning is, what our true identity is in Christ. That's my hope for you. And today we need to start those paths of freedom.

Everybody is on a different path and conclusion. Everybody is on a different path. Some of you are at the revealing, God is just revealing himself to you for the first time today. Others of you, you're being called to go out, and others of you are in the middle, and you've probably been stuck there for a while in your sin, in your secrets. I want to pray for that set of people today.

I just feel led to do that because I believe that there's many people that are sitting in secret sin, and God wants to use you. He's got so much better for you. He's got so much more purpose for you, but we don't want to get rid of those things in our lives because we're reminded of what we used to be, but God wants you to break through and be who he made you to be. And it's so much better on this side of the bridge where we're running towards Jesus. So with all heads bowed and all eyes closed, I just want to pray for you, Jesus.

Jesus, I ask God today that shake us, Lord. Shake us, God. Shake some of those things out of us today as we're in this season. We've got one more week of prayer and fasting. And God, I just ask that you just rock our worlds.

Take some of the selfishness out of us, God. Take some of the bitterness out of us, God. Take some of the sin out of us, Lord. The sexual sin that we're still in or the lies that we're living in or the betrayal that we're causing or the shady business that we're in, Lord. Begin to break us.

Begin to reveal those things to us. Begin to do that, Lord. Those emotional things that have kept us back from being completely healed and completely in you, God. Begin to do that right now. Move across this place, Lord.

If you could, if there's anybody here with all Ed Spout and all this class to just, just say, yeah, I'm there. I'm there, pastor. I'm there, pastor. I, I, I, I'm in some situations right now and I'm ready to break through. Are you here today?

Any, anybody? Don't be afraid. The first thing, amen. The first thing we need to do. Now, I've seen hands raised.

See, the first thing we need to do is be bold, have guts enough to allow God to invade our lives and transform our spirits to conform to His. Father, I pray for those hands. I pray for them all over this place. God, I pray for these precious people that you have created, that you have made, that you would deliver them, that you would help them break through some of those past things that they're holding on to, that those secrets that are in their hearts and in their lives, God, cleanse them completely. Lord Jesus, help them see you.

Move them into a new place with you. Surround them with people, even right here in this church, in this fellowship, people who love them and care for them, and they feel that they can be accountable to, Lord. Or people in their world, Lord, that can perhaps bring them to fullness of you and help in that process. But ultimately, we know you cleanse them. With whole heads bowed and continuing to be closed, let me just ask this question.

Some of you need to go back. Maybe God is just revealing Himself to you for the first time today. Maybe this is the day. Maybe this is the day that God says, come out of the darkness and come to me. Is that you today?

Is there anybody here that says, I'm ready to make a decision for Christ. I'm not going to embarrass you. I'm not going to call you to the front or anything like that. I want to, I see that hand. I want to make my life God's today.

I want to be fully in. And I want to be 100% in. Praise God. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Will you just pray this with me? Just, just pray this out loud. I want the whole church to pray this.

And if you didn't raise your hand and you want to say this prayer, say it with me. Father, I believe that you are the Son of God. I believe that you died on the cross for my sin. Father, today I receive you as my personal Savior. I want to encounter you face to face.

Come into my life. Come into my heart. And transform me from the inside out. Today, from this day forward.