Stand Firm

Mr. Blue Skies, we're really searching for that, right? What a lot has happened since the beginning of the year, and we're wrapping up our series on decades, and before I begin our last message to this series, I just want to thank you all for being with us today for Turkey Fest, amen? All right, I believe in that we're going to collect 250 turkeys. We'll let you know the count later on this week, and listen, if you didn't get a chance to bring some turkeys in, here's what you can do.

If you want to drop, first of all, let Christina know how many turkeys you're going to purchase, so we can keep a count on that, and you can drop them off at Union Mission if you want to do that. Grab some turkeys this week, drop them off at Union Mission the next couple of days, and bless them, and we're going to bless some families here in Hampton Roads. 250 families is what we're believing for, man. Oh, man, I'm just so excited about that family that's going to receive that turkey at Thanksgiving dinner that morning or that day before, so that they can have a nice Thanksgiving dinner. A lot of people are going through a lot of hard times right now.

We can step up as the church and bless this world, amen? Let's bless this city. Let's bless this city. And if you aren't with us next week, please do come online, and those of you that are traveling right now, I'm sure you're online with us this week as Thanksgiving week is happening, and a lot of people are going to be traveling. Next week is really, really important because I'm going to share a bit about giving and our finances and where we're going.

And I'll have some handouts for you and stuff like that, too, to kind of tell you our goal for our end of year. We want to finish strong this year financially. Do we have our numbers up there if you want to just do that? Those of you who are guests with us, by the way, just be blessed today. We don't expect you to give today.

And we hope that this is a gift to you and you're enjoying this. And following the service, everybody, we'll have food out there and we'll have bounce houses for your kids. My kids were super excited. Savannah couldn't sleep last night. She loves Turkey Fest, my daughter.

And, you know, just enjoy yourself and fellowship afterwards. Invite your friends over after church, too, if you need to. We've got plenty of barbecue and tell them to bring a frozen turkey as well. But this is kind of where we are financially right now. And we will have more on that.

So I want you to be prayerfully considering what you as as those who are connected with with what we're doing here. We're a small church making a big impact, but we're soon going to be a big church making an even bigger impact. Amen. And and y'all are a part of bringing the future of this church, a legacy giving. We call it legacy as we're going to close the year, close January, you know, starting January.

We're going to we're going to be in good financial shape because I'm believing that God's going to speak to everybody's heart here about what to give this coming up season. This Christmas season to set us up for for next year. And by the way, if you're a give or faithful giver online, you can give online. You You can drop off your giving in the box as you leave, or you can text to give as well. There you go.

There you go. Everybody got that. All right. We'll have that up as we leave the church service today as well. Now that we've gotten giving out of the way, praise Jesus for giving.

Let's just celebrate giving. We love to give. Generosity is great, right? We want to praise God for giving. Let's close this series as we take our time machine back only a couple of years, which not a lot has changed, and we're still trying to figure out what's going to happen this decade.

You know, we're like, where are we going? A lot has happened so far, and just before the turn of the century, we were thinking that things would get better, right? Because last century was kind of tough, so it has to get better. For many of you, you probably thought that flying cars and hoverboards would already be here. You know, I know they have the hoverboard things.

It ain't the same, though. You know, it's not what we were expecting, but we don't have flying cars, but we have electric cars now, right? So we've got with the introduction of Tesla, and you all know that when that came out, and now everybody's going into the electric car market, and there's a debate about whether we should go full pledge into electric cars or go back gas or whatever it is. There's a lot of debate and controversy about that, but at any rate, electric cars are on the scene. It doesn't look like they're going away, and the man who started the electric car revolution, if you want to call it that, Elon Musk, who is the, at this time, one of the most richest, if not the richest man in America, buys Twitter, and that was a big deal, and you see his face all over the place, one of the prominent figures in the 2020s.

You can't go anywhere without seeing him. When we started the decade, President Joe Biden was elected into office, and he came in with a lot on his shoulders with the pandemic and everything going on, and today we're still, you know, there's just a lot going on politically, so he has a lot on his shoulders, amen. There's a lot you have to deal with in this decade, and for, as far as music, I can't say any other word but pop music, okay? This is like pop music mecca right now in America with all the pop and stars, and you have the controversial Billie English. I call her like kind of the Madonna of the 2020s, and everybody's going, you know, she's just out there changing her personality every week and every month, and whatever you feel about her.

She is like out there and in the world, and then, you know, Taylor Swift, who was the pop fan of last decade, has not only turned into a pop star for this decade, but has become an icon. I mean, with Swifties. Have you heard of the Swifties that are everywhere? Everybody's dressing in the different decades of Taylor Swift and going to the concert. I've never seen anything like it.

It's crazy how everybody wants to be a Taylor Swift fan. Adults, kids alike all going to concerts together. It has really established its place. Streaming services, oh my goodness. Where's cable anymore?

I think cable will be a thing of the past pretty soon with Disney+, Paramount+, ESPN+, Apple TV+. How many more pluses are we going to have, right? We've got so much streaming, and with the streaming services, you will see anything on these streaming services, including what we all saw and were shot. We were kind of like still trying to figure this out, kind of race our minds of this guy, the Tiger King. I don't know if you remember that.

Starting a decade, this guy showed up on our TV screens on Netflix, and it was just, what's going on here? And there was jokes about it, memes about it all over social media. And then the big phenomena of the 2020s is the arrival of TikTok. TikTok. Y'all remember, if you're social media people, how the advertisements were blowing up our phone.

We're like, what is this TikTok thing? Everybody's like, they're just showing up everywhere. And now it's replaced. In fact, it's the most popular social media site, social media app there is right now in America with young people between the ages of even as low as elementary school up to the mid-30s. That's kind of their go-to for information and entertainment and things like that.

But we have a lot going on, obviously, though. With the arrival of TikTok, there's a lot of different types of information we're receiving, and we don't even know what's true and what's false with any social media, with anything. But what we do know is there's a lot going on, right? Riots. We saw riots take place with Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, just all this stuff is happening.

The definition of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman has taken the front stage. We're just, like, we're confused as a culture. Politics. Trump's in court. Joe's in court.

Hunter's in court. Everybody's in court. I think that's what you do in presidential elections now. Send them all to court, right? That's what we do.

So everybody needs to be sentenced to prison, and it's just crazy. It's like children in this country. I mean, just all over the place, just fussing, arguing, debates about just character and things like that. And then, unfortunately, we had the war in Ukraine, which was a really, really big thing. It kept us all on our knees praying for Ukraine, but it didn't stop there.

War kept happening as the latest was Israel at war. Israel at war. When Hamas came in and brutally slaughtered Israeli families in a community, Israel retaliated by going into Gaza, and we have debates, pro-Palestinian debates and pro-Israel. It's just nasty. It's just nasty, guys.

2020, only three years into 2020. What can we expect at the end? War, economy, border crisis, hate, division, AI scaring the dickens out of everybody, right? What's going on with that? Are robots going to take over the world now?

I mean, how much further can we go? It's kind of a scary thing. And people are looking for spiritual things as a result. I think people are hungry for the spiritual. I think it's a time that we, as a church, need to lean in to this.

I mean, New Age is popular again. Wiccan is popular again. Paganism is popular again. Buddhism has arisen because people are searching for truth. They're trying to find truth.

And in every decade, there is a search for truth. There's a crisis point in every decade for truth. 1950s, it was the American Dream. Maybe that's truth. 1960s, it was a, if I just do enough that makes me feel good, maybe that's truth.

If I experiment, that's truth. The enablement of the 1970s as a result of the 1960s, maybe that's truth just to point at somebody else, or I need and I want, maybe that will give me, which led to greed in the 1980s, which, if I can get more, if I can just have more, maybe that will suffice this thing deep down inside of me, this thing that I'm trying to settle in my heart, this thing called truth. And in the 1990s, it was about choices and not even knowing who I was and identity things, and my family was this. I want to disassociate with the tradition, and I want to go against, and I want to rebel, and maybe that's where truth is found if I just do my own thing. And then the 2010s with the internet explosion over and over social media, we had this God of knowledge that just was there.

And then the post-modern and post-culture and relative truth movement of the last decade, it's just been this constant battle for truth. God help us find what we need to find. God help the church to find a way to share what truth really is. And one thing I will say about the 2020s, without a doubt, one word, and for the whole, the last decades and the whole century, your century, your generation, is adversity. We face adversity.

In every decade, we face adversity. How do we handle hard times? How do we handle difficult seasons? Well, Malachi 3.6, you all know this scripture.

I, the Lord, do not change, so the descendants of Jacob are not destroyed. I have quoted that almost every week. Hopefully you have that memorized. God does not change, and the reason He does not change is because of His very nature, number one, but also He doesn't want you to be destroyed. We have something we can lean in.

There is a truth that we can lean in, and this is what the Lord says, stand at the crossroads and look. He means you've got to make a choice. Are you going to follow God's way? Are you going to follow the world's way? Are you going to follow culture's way?

Are you going to follow the ancient way? It calls it the ancient paths. Ask where the good way is and walk in it, and you will find rest in your soul. That's a promise right there. If you feel like your soul is just tense, and there's, I don't know what's going on.

Is the robots getting ready to take over the world? What the spiritual, you know, all these things that we're fixated on. Oh, man. Like, what's going on? We can always go back because we have a God.

And that's what this whole series is about, a God that does not change. And He always is and always was and always will be. You can put your John Hancock on that contract right there. It will not go away. He is who He is.

And I want to talk about today. How do we deal any decade, including this decade, probably one of the most intense starts of a decade I've ever seen. Nothing's changed, but we're in a place right now, right? We're in a place. How do we deal with that?

Well, the Apostle Paul went through it. And the church went through it once before. And there were letters written to church and Apostle Paul. Apostle Paul was going through it. The church was going through it.

They were all going through it. And he was trying to teach them how to get through it so they can get to the destiny that was set before them. And he showed them. Here's what Paul, in 2 Corinthians, I just laid out just a bunch of stuff. I didn't pop on that yet, Matthew.

I'm getting to that in a second. But 2 Corinthians, I can't write all these scriptures down, but I can give you some indication. Here's what Paul was going through. He received stripes beyond measure. He was in prison.

He almost died several times. In fact, he even said, I died a few times. Floggings, 39 on five occasions. Beat with rods. Stoned.

Stoned. Meaning pebbles, not that he was stoned like you're thinking probably. Okay, some of you people who think that marijuana is a good thing that marijuana is legalized. You're like, what? That's stoned?

You woke up. That's stoned? Okay. No, like rocks thrown at people till they die. Shipwrecks three times drifting in water.

He drifted in ocean water, holding on for his life. Robbed. His countrymen were against him. Sleepless hunger, thirst, cold nakedness. There were no safe places for me, he said at times.

He had nowhere safe to go. Yet he had this deep concern for the church because he saw they were going through it too. are those unpredictable things, but he if they're hooking away, let me tell you. She didn't do something. You are okay in our extraordinarily heavy water with turning them apart to the church as Need for work.

We're wrong to ernst property owner, such a fantasy vision al hang on Hall. together? He wanted to share with them hope because they were going through it in 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. It talks about the church and what they were going through. They suffered and shamefully treated, conflict, labor and toil, distress, affliction, faint-hearted, they were weak.

They talked about rebellion, Satan, deception, wicked and evil man, and the evil one. They were facing a lot. They were facing a lot in the church. And they were just, they were getting it. They were getting it on the head.

They were getting it from everywhere. And Paul's like, let me share some hope with you today. And he's speaking, and I want us to do this. As we as a church here in this epoch of time, in this decade, Paul was writing to a church then, but he was writing for the church under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit for us today. So we have something that we can stand on, and we have something we can look at.

So join me in 2nd Thessalonians 2, 13 through 17. If you have your Bible app, you can pull open the event and follow there. Or you got that piece of paper in your hand, you can write notes and follow along with those notes. Here's what he says. But we ought always to thank God for you.

Look, that's, that, that, he loved the church so much. And you know, when we're going through times, like Paul was going through times, sometimes we just need to stop and be thankful. It's Thanksgiving, right? We need to be thankful for what God is doing and what God has done and what he's blessed us with. And brothers and sisters, loved by the Lord because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth.

He saved you. He called you to this through our gospel that you might share in the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers and sisters, what? Stand firm. That's the title of my message today.

He's telling us to stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we pass on to you, those teachings that we're receiving today. He's communicating to all of us, right? And the unction of the Holy Spirit, power of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God, who's speaking through him then and is speaking to us now. Hold on to these words. These words are important.

Hold on to these words I pass on to you, whether by mouth or by letter, meaning what I speak and what I wrote. May the Lord Jesus Christ himself, God our Father, who loved us, and who gave us grace as eternal encouragement and good hope. Those words there are just available for us, powerful. Encourage your hearts and strengthen. Come on.

Be strengthened. Be encouraged. Strengthen you in every good deed and word. Word. Let me give you four things today.

First of all, never forget. Never forget how good God was to you. By the gospel of Jesus Christ, we have been saved. We have been saved. We have been rescued as believers.

We always have that to go back to. I remember Admiral Vern Clark, he worked at Regent University while I was working there, and I got to sit and listen to him talk about leadership and depending on God, and he talked about the day right after 9-11 happened, or the day of 9-11, how President George W. Bush walked into the office. All the leaders of the country were there, and he looked around the table and looked at each one of them and says, never forget. Never forget.

Never forget. Never forget. Never forget what happened. So don't forget that. In the same way with the Gospel, let's never forget.

Let's never forget what God has done for us. Let me just talk about that for a minute. But before we can deal with any problem, we need to deal with this problem. And if you're here today and you haven't dealt with this problem, make that a choice today. Make that a decision today that you give your life to Jesus.

Because we start out disconnected from God. When we enter this world, we are disconnected from God. And Jesus comes in and reconnects us to God. So if we're not reconnected to God, if we're not reconnected to Jesus Christ, then nothing else will really work. So this is the starting point.

To go back to this. What is the Gospel? The Gospel literally means good news. In historical context, if a king had something great to share with the kingdom, he would send a herald out. A son was born.

A prince was born. A princess was born. Something great happened. He would send a messenger out to the kingdom. And they would tell of the good news.

And everybody would be able to celebrate the good news of that kingdom. This is what we mean by gospel. And Jesus came to proclaim a good news. Gospel. Message.

Message. To the people of this world. This dark world. He came and he made some claims. This gospel had some claims to it.

No other claims. Just outlandish claims. He claimed, number one, that he was God. And the next thing he claimed is that he had no sin. And that he was going to die for our sins.

And alone he was the way, the truth, and the life. No other religion says that. And that's what makes Christianity stand out beyond any other religion is that he says, I am the way. There's not multiple ways. There's not multiple patterns.

And I am the only way. And he prophesied his death and resurrection. He died for our sin. And no one, he said, no one comes to the Father but through me because I'm giving my life for you. That's good news because you were born into a world where you inherited sin.

You were born into a world that is controlled by something beyond what you are able to do on your own. So you needed a God to rescue you. It starts with that. Do you believe that? Do you believe that?

Do you believe that? And if you don't believe that, today is your day. There's no mistaking, you're here today because God wants to introduce Himself to you through Jesus Christ, and you can make that choice today. That's the first step, and maybe you would consider becoming a Christian, becoming a believer in Jesus Christ today, so that you can face the adversity of this world. But what are we saved from?

Some of you are asking, what are we saved from? First of all, we're saved from Satan. Satan is the ruler of this world. You were born on his side when you came into this world. If you don't believe that, talk to anybody who has young kids or had young kids, okay?

Some of those kids, you know, they were cute and innocent when they came into the world, but man, they got lean real quick, right? They were selfish, and they were jealous, and they were all those things. That's because we were born on Satan's side from the very beginning. He's the God of this world, so He saves us from Satan. Secondly, He saves us from sin.

He saves us from sin. What is sin? I've done things wrong. You've done things wrong. All of us have done things wrong, and there's something unsettled in our heart.

When you're alone by yourself, and you cannot figure out why that thing hasn't been reckoned in your heart, no matter what it is or where it's come from, there's something inside of all of us that says, Man, I'm trying to be good, but I just cannot be good enough. I have a lot to deal with here. That's called sin. It's a burden that we wear, that we can't get rid of, and we all need forgiveness. And Jesus comes to forgive us.

Jesus came to this earth to take that burden off of us. He calls it a yoke and a burden that He makes light. That He comes in, and He rescues us, and He takes that weight off of our life. And if you have weight today on your life, and you cannot reckon that weight, you cannot figure out where that comes from, and you need the weight taken off, that's what Jesus came to do, to save you from those things. And He also saves us from wrath to grace.

Wrath to grace. Wrath. What is wrath? It's what we deserve. Wrath of God is what we deserve.

We deserve the wrath of God. Because we were born under this kingdom, this kingdom of Satan. And there's the passive wrath of God, and there's the active wrath of God. And what you're experiencing today with poverty, injustice, war, and violence, and all those things is the passive wrath of God. It's not that God is doing it, but God's just allowing us to do it ourselves.

Because that's how we are. And He's just allowing us to do what we want to, and we're causing injustice, we're causing the poverty, we're creating war, we're creating all this stuff. And He's not doing it, He's just allowing us, and He's letting us do our own thing. Just do your own thing. Figure it out.

If you don't want to do it with me, do it without me. But one day, one day, the passive wrath of God will be the active wrath of God. That one day, He will return, He will judge, He will judge, there will be judgment, there will be punishment, when we die, we will appear before Him, and we will have to reckon, and that's the beauty of Jesus, that's the beauty of the Gospel. What we can't do, Jesus did, because God is so holy, and God is so mighty, but God loved us that He gave His Son, and Jesus told the Father, let's go, these people that we created, let's go and rescue them. And make it right, that's why Jesus died, so that you could have grace.

Jesus brought grace, He appeased the wrath of God through grace. This is why we love Jesus so much, because without any works, or without anything on our own, He chose to do that for us, so that we could have life in Him. He did it without requiring anything of us, anything of us. And wrath is getting what you deserve, but grace is getting what we don't deserve. That's what grace is.

That's why, by grace we have been saved. Not by works or anything that we do, but by grace we have been saved. He saved us. And also, He saves us from ourselves. Let's just admit, I'll be the first to admit, I can't save myself.

I'm far better with Him than I am trying to do it on my own. I try to figure it out on my own. If I didn't know the Lord, I don't know where I'd be or what I'd be. I'd probably be a bitter, angry, frustrated human being that probably would condemn religion, because I'm a very logical person, but because of the grace of God, I have experienced life in Him, and it's far better His way, because by doing it His way, I am much better taken care of. Jesus takes better care of you than you take care of you.

Jesus can take better care of you than you think you can take care of you. And then we're saved by God. God. Why? Because He chose you.

He chose you. He went out looking for you. I think about my kids and, you know, being in crowded places, and Miranda's like, hold on to them, hold on to them, you know, because they're just going, they're just wanting to wander. They want to wander. And Max was the worst.

Man, when Max was young, if you didn't keep an eye on him, he was gone. He had no clue. And there was times where we just, like, he would hide, and we'd try to find him. I think we were in a shopping center one time, and he hid, and we were just so, so afraid. He was playing, like, house inside this little, little curtain of clothing in the mall one time, and we didn't know what, where he was.

He was just, he was lost. But I didn't be like, oh, yeah, so, I've still got one, so the other, you know, I got 50% of my kids, so I can lose one. No, I wanted, I wanted both of my kids. And this is, this is what God says about you. I don't want just one of my kids.

A few of my kids. I want all my kids. And He's pursuing you. And perhaps the reason you're here today is because God's called you. Whatever it's through, wherever it came from, maybe you saw this on social media, you saw it on a website, you heard about Turkey Drop, you came to that, somebody invited you.

Whatever it is, God has always been pursuing you from the beginning of time. He thought of you way before you were even created, and He knew you, and He wants you. And Father, He chose you. Some of you have been wandering. Wandering, wandering like a child, but He comes and He reaches out to you and finds you.

Psalm 105 says, For the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever and His faithfulness to all generations. He's good always. Consider that today. The second thing we can do, we can always, first we can always go back to how good He was and how good He is because the gospel saved my life.

I can always depend and trust on that promise. But the second thing is, you've got to be in a good church family. Find love, comfort, hope, and grace in a church family. People go out there and there's this lie that you can do life on your own. You don't need a church family.

You can just worship God on your own and not have any church family at all. But I know this is a long statement, but there's a lot in the Scripture talking about love and comfort and hope and grace. This is what He talks about. May the Lord Himself, our Father, who loved us and by His grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope and courage, our hearts and strengthen us in every good word and deed. He says these things because this is what the church represents.

This is what the church represents. Paul represented that. The church needs to be representing this as well. We need to love each other, number one. We need to love each other.

We need to love God and we need to love each other. That's what Jesus said. They asked Him what the most important commandment was. He says, we'll love God and love each other and, you know, we'll figure out the rest. The rest kind of work out somehow if we can figure out those two things.

Love God and love people. Love God and love people. Let's love each other emotionally and relationally. We love each other. And Jesus said to love God and love people.

So we love God and love people and think by the grace of God. And you guys are just amazing church that really love each other. Y'all pour out your heart for each other. You're visiting each other when you're in the hospital. Heck, you're even sitting with people in hospital that have been sick for weeks.

And some of you in here are doing that. You're always asking questions, how you can help, how you can do more, how you can... That's just a loving, loving, loving church. The church also brings comfort. We need comfort.

You know, there's opposition in this world, right? We're facing different things. For those who are going through hard times, Jesus provides comfort. Jesus gives us comfort through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Through the church, we are provided comfort.

And there's a lot of emotions that are mentioned about Jesus in the scripture. But the most common emotion that's mentioned in the scripture is compassion. Jesus had compassion. That emotion was mentioned about Jesus more than any other emotion. And what he's saying...

He can relate to you. I've been through it. I can relate. I felt it. I can relate to it.

And He comforts us and He asks us to comfort others as we are comforted by God. Comfort others as we are comforted by God. And then there's hope. There's hope. So no one is looking at this world and saying, you know, I think things are getting better.

I think things are a lot better than they were in the 1980s or 1990s or whatever. I think if anybody's lived any amount of time, we're not saying that, right? We're not, well, everything's just getting better. It's all going to work out. It doesn't look like that.

And whatever you're going through, again, He's done it. And He's overcame it. And He rules over it. And we have hope in Him. And we have hope in heaven.

We have hope in heaven that we will be with Him. And I can walk through this life knowing that He will reward me. He will give me this place. He has gone to prepare a place for me. I know that.

I can trust in Him. And then there's grace. And no grace is the mantra of today, right? Like, grace comes from knowing Jesus and in the church. And we need to practice grace.

Man, we should always weigh on the side of grace. Grace. Because everywhere else, it's like, I'm not giving you grace. I'm just going to cancel you. I'm not going to give you the benefit of the doubt.

I'm not going to... We're just after each other in this world. But the God of the Bible is not like that. God offers grace. He offers patience with people.

And we need, in the same way, to forgive. We need forgiveness. We need forgiveness. People need a steady diet of grace. I need a steady diet of grace.

You do. As a tree needs water, we need grace so that we can grow. And some people are like, well, if we give people grace, are we just allowing them to sin? No. If you give them grace, they will grow in maturity.

They will be pruned and they will grow and they will flourish. We need to practice grace with people. We need to give grace. The church should be a gracious place. And you also need to embrace ministry.

He talks about, you know, word and works. Word and deed. Some of you are served. Some of you are just being present. You help and you give.

And we need that in the church. So we give. Through works, we bless each other. We encourage each other. Through words.

Some of you are just word people. You have words of encouragement. You have words that lift people up. You have prophetic words that you give to people to kind of carry them through. You do that.

So we give all this. 2 Corinthians says, He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. This is why we're here as a church. You need to be a part of a church.

We need to be the church. And that's going to bring us through. That's going to get us through these times of adversity. Number three, stand firm on the Word of God. Stand firm on the Word of God.

The Word of God does not change, because if it changes, then we have no promise to stand on. We have nothing to stand on. We might as well go, as Paul said, eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we're going to die anyway. So if we don't put our trust and our hope and our promise in the resurrected Jesus Christ, which clearly is demonstrated to us in the Word of God, then what hope do we have to live on? And the temptation is to bow down to the world rather than the Word.

The temptation is the pressures of life that come across. Opposition. You have opposition. Whether you're a public university or you're in school or work, you bow down, you're pressured to bow down to this world. And you're going to say, no, I'm not going to bow down to this world.

I'm going to bow down to Jesus. I'm going to bow down to Jesus. Jesus is the one I will bow down to. Maybe there's temptations that you're going through. There's weaknesses.

All of us have weaknesses. All of us have things that we're pulled towards. When we face those temptations, those weaknesses, we're like, I'm not going to bow down to that weakness. I'm going to bow down to the Lord Jesus Christ. That's who I'm going to bow down to.

When we're faced with false teaching, he talks about false teaching. There will be those in the church that call themselves Christians and they will stray away from the faith. That's what the Scripture says. And what's happening today is people are changing Scripture because it changes them. And instead of letting the Scripture change them, they change the Scripture so that they don't have to change.

And we can either bow down to that or we can bow down that the Word of God is always the Word of God. And you will be pressured by bosses. You will be pressured by teachers. You will be pressured by family, friends. And, you know, don't do that.

Don't say it. Don't act. You know, you're going to be challenged. But we have to stand. I'm going to preach it to myself in here.

Praise God. We've got the Word of God we can stand on. We can always stand on it. Because Matthew 24, 35 says, Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away throughout the decades. His Word is always true.

It's always real. It always stands the test of time. And you're going to be thrown every dart at you that's possible. And you've got to stand firm on that. That we have the Word of God that we can rest assured that everything, everything there is for our good because God takes better care of us than we do.

And the Scripture demonstrates that. And finally, look to your destiny. Apostle Paul was helping people walk and overcome adversity so they could reach and identify their destiny. What is that destiny? which notice outweighs the truth of the 북land adviser and that you are taking those things from us.

So TWO, maybe ausstour," that nieceider leads this Master when you feel about it or what we really knew внутри that might be in the game, that You might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. That you might share in the glory. This is a sharing. Our King shares His glory with us. We have that promise.

And if you don't know the Lord Jesus today, let me tell you, He wants to share His goodness with you. He wants to share His kingdom with you. He wants to share eternity with Him. Jesus is going to return. He's going to return to this world.

He's either going to return before our lifetime or we're going to die. And either way, we're going to be before Jesus Christ Himself. In fact, the Scripture says when we die, we're absent from the body and we're present with the Lord. That's a temporary state. Heaven literally means presence of the Lord.

Being in the presence of the Lord. It's not locational. It's relational. And we are with Him. I can't explain it.

I don't know what all that looks like in another dimension, but we will be in the presence of the Lord, which Paul says is far better than being on this earth. And we'll be in a temporary location. But one day, when He returns, we will be raised just like we were raised spiritually today by believing in Jesus Christ. If you don't know Jesus, know Him today, and you will be given new life. You'll be raised from the dead.

The old man will fade, and the new man will come. But physically, your body will be raised from the dead. And our souls that went with Jesus in that present state, that temporary state, will come together. And we will live with Him forever. And then we will be brought before.

It says both those who are raised to life and those who are raised, are raised to life and raised to death. So some will go to heaven and some will go to hell as they stand before the judgment of God. And there will be a choice that's made. But that choice is not made then. That choice is made now.

That choice will not be made then. That choice will be made now. And Jesus loves you so much that He gave His life and He gives you that choice. He doesn't push it. He's a gentleman.

But He's asking you. He's giving you the choice, that ancient path that's available to you. You can either reject Him or you can receive Him as your Savior. Because He said this, I go to prepare a place for you. And I will come back and I will take you with me.

That you also may be where I am. I want to share my glory with you. I want to share everything with you. And this is an important decision you have to make. I can't make this decision for you.

Your family can't make this decision for you. You were raised Catholic. You were raised Methodist. You were raised Baptist. You were raised non-denominational.

You were raised Pentecostal. That's not what saves you. What saves you is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. He died on the cross. He came down.

He lived a perfect life. He rose from the dead. He proved that He was God. And He wants to have a relationship with you. And all you have to do is start there.

Thank you. And believe in Him. And if you're here today, will you make that commitment to Jesus Christ? Will you make that commitment to Jesus Christ? And let's just bow our heads and close our eyes.

And I'm going to give you that opportunity right now. Are you ready to surrender your life to Christ? If you've fallen from Christ, maybe you once walked with Jesus, but you've walked away from Him, come back to Him. Come back to Him. Make that decision today.

Would you make that decision today? Let's pray. Father, just pray this with me. And all the church can pray. You can be praying for those who are ready to surrender today.

Just be praying. Just be praying. Spirit of the living God. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

Spirit, touch the hearts of those who are here today. And if you're here today and you want to give your life to Jesus, say this with me. There's nothing magical in this statement. It's just about surrender. Just about surrender.

Just saying, Lord, you know how to do my life better than I am. So I surrender my life. I give you my sin. Take that guilt off me. Lord, take the guilt off me.

Lord, take the responsibility for the things that I cannot suffice. Come into my life. I believe that you are God. That you are the only God and there's no way but through me. I receive you as my Savior.

Come into my heart. Come into my life. Make me a new creation. I give my life to you today. I give my life to you today.