Stewarding Influence

Can't blame the sound man for that this time. That's my fault, man. How's everybody doing today? So thankful that you're here with us, and I'm so humbled. I see, okay, the surfers did make it today.

Thank you guys for being here. The waves are really good today. We're just, yeah, give them a clap. Give them a hand clap. Yay!

You know I'm gonna embarrass you guys a little bit, right? Okay. Oh man, I am so humbled and honored to be before you today. It's just a crazy season. Even in fact, just last night got a couple of texts for some people who may have been exposed to the coronavirus and couldn't be here today.

Some families that are sick. And a lot of people are scared right now. Really scared. And I just want to say, you know, yeah, there's times in life, there's times in our world, there's times, there's events in life. This is nothing new, and this is no surprise to God what's going on right now.

But God's got this, guys. I want y'all to be encouraged. Live without fear because our God is in control. We will get through this. And we're so thankful if you're with us online and you're at home right now.

I want you just to text below right there in the chat line and let us know you're here and dialogue. You can interact with one of our people online that are there to pray for you, to be with you, to connect with you. And we're just so thankful that you're able to do that from home. We're getting better and better every week with our online service. We're going to have a lot more going on in the future.

Thank you for your giving, everybody that's giving. Really, we've had to spend a lot of money even to get even where we are online right now to get us live streaming and stuff. And because of you, we're able to get it into your homes. And the more you do, the more we can do. And we can only influence the world so far without you.

And we can't do it. And so thank you. And God chooses to use us, right? Amen. And we're starting a new series today called Change Your World.

Change Your World. We believe that God wants to use you to do something big. We're launching this new series. And our last series was Church and Culture. And what we talked about in that last series, and the reason I want to tell you that is because this kind of connects to us.

This literally picks up where that left off. Because before we were talking about culture and how an ever-shifting and ever-changing culture, a culture that tends to be far from God or going further away from truth and the values we hold as Christians, we can be countercultural. And somehow that is attractive to the culture, and it's really what people want. So we really focused on us a whole lot, right? Like what can we do?

How can we live more righteously? How can we be stand-up people in a world that is otherwise not? And how can we connect to the world that way? Well, we're going to put that in action. Change your world.

Today we want to talk about changing our world in this new series. It literally picks up where we left off. And if our role is to influence culture, if our role is to change culture, what does that, can it, is it possible? Is it possible that the church, that we, can change the world? Is it even possible that we can do that?

I mean, that's a big task, right? And God's called the church to do that. But can the church actually influence culture? Is it possible that the church can do that? I believe emphatically, yes, it can.

We can change the world. We can make a tangible difference. We can make a measurable difference. We can actually bring betterment to the world. And God uses us to bring betterment to the world.

And God wants to equip our church to be able to change the world. You can change the world. That's what I want to talk about in this series. And I'm hoping that as we go through this journey in this series, you'll learn more about yourself and how you can put action steps in place. Because God not only saves us from our sin and he rescues us and it's a beautiful thing, but he actually places us apart and makes us and gives us unique gifts.

He equips us so that we can change our worlds. And I use plural worlds because we all have influence in some area. In fact, Jeremiah 15, 19 says this, and God was having a conversation with Jeremiah. In fact, Jeremiah kind of approached God and says, man, you know, he was the weeping prophet, so he kind of did a lot of whining. He was a crybaby, if we want to say that.

He cried to God a whole lot. Oh, you're not with me. You're not doing what you did, blah, blah, blah. And he just kept going on and on and on. And here's what God told him.

You are to influence them. They are not to influence you. You are to influence them. You are to be an influence in your world. The world is not to influence you.

The culture is not to influence you. You are called to influence the culture. Okay, so that's the Old Testament, but the New Testament, Paul talks about this as well. And in 2 Corinthians 10, 13, and 16, I love this picture that Paul gives, and I think it applies to us. He says this.

He says, the area of influence God assigned to us is to reach you. He was talking about him reaching the people of that day. That God gives us an assignment. The very thing that God gave me to put on my heart is to reach you. Years ago, God called me into ministry.

I was sitting in an office in Raleigh, North Carolina, working from my desk, aimed at a certain career, a certain direction, and God specifically placed on my heart. And there's only a few times in life that God has actually like just, it was almost like an audible voice. And when I was there, he asked me, he said, what are you doing here? You need to be out there. And he called me, and he gave me an assignment.

And I left my job, and I went into ministry. I went back to school to pursue my graduate in divinity, which led me here to Virginia Beach. That's how I started. But not only that, when I came to Virginia Beach, I never knew that I would be here in Virginia Beach doing what I am now. Because God, you know, through a process and through time, you know, God led me to this part.

And God specifically said, I have a people there that I want you to reach. I'm assigning you in this part of Virginia Beach to be able to reach out to these people and pastor these people. And what a blessing and honor it's been. Let me tell you this. The story, and I can share the story today, and I don't have a lot of time.

I'll just give you a piece of the story. It is a miracle that Salt Church is going, man. I'm telling you, we started out with nothing. We started out with a few people. We started out with a little bit of money.

But God is so faithful. And God is doing great things. But here's what I want to say. I'm so glad that you've been blessed by this ministry. I'm so glad that you're here today.

I'm glad that God is doing a work in your life through what God called me to do and assigned me to do. But he's also assigned you something as well. He's given you something as well. It's not only for me to preach and to minister to you and this ministry to minister to you. But it's...

For you to take that influence into the world. And here's what it says, but our hope is that as our faith increases, see, God doesn't want you to stop there. He doesn't want you just to be saved. He wants your faith to increase. As we reach you, your faith would increase, your faith would grow, but that's not, you know, but where you are is not the whole hope.

The whole hope is that you, in turn, would go out. Our hope is that your faith would increase, that your family would be better, your marriage would be better, that your life would be better, and it's just better on this side, right? When you look back at your life, look, I'm not where I want to be, but I'm glad that I'm not where I used to be, right? And we have this faith that's growing. Our desire is that we have a measurable difference and transformation is taking place in our life, and this is what Paul is saying, so that our hope is that you grow.

Our hope is that you become more faithful, that your faith increases. And in fact, I received a testimony just this past week of someone who had been living a life of sin, and they just really, in the last few months, just really completely surrendered their lives to Christ. And they were telling me, you know, over on the other side of it, I look at my past life, and I'm just like, I just can't believe where I was, and what God is doing now. And I realized, you know, I thought it was better on that side of the house, because when you're in sin, you're like, oh yeah, that's where you want to be, and that's, you know, that other life, you know, it's kind of boring, and it's kind of out of place and stuff. But on this side of eternity, I look back, and I realize, oh my gosh, I can't believe I was there, and I'm so glad I'm here now, because it's just better.

It's just better. Life is just better. Real life in Christ is just better. And then it says this, and that our area of influence may be greatly enlarged, so that, and I love the so that to the scripture, so that we may preach the gospel in lands beyond you. See, this is God's dream, that we may be able to reach people beyond this, that we start here.

I preach to you. You grow, and then you go out, and you begin to minister to your world, and that's God's dream. That's God's hope, and that's what God wants for you. You have influence. You have a place of influence, and God wants to use you.

He's uniquely designed you, gifted you, assigned you a specific calling to go out and minister in your area of influence. And my hope in this series is to help you understand that, to help you see that God wants to do big things, and together we can change the world. We can change our worlds. There's a story, many of you may know Bill Bright, who is the founder of Christian Crusaders for Christ, and Lorne Cunningham, who founded YWAM, Youth on a Mission, or Youth with a Mission, rather. In 1975, they were friends.

They lived in the same city. They were going to meet for breakfast or lunch the next day, and God spoke to both of them in the middle of the night and gave them a vision of something. And when they met the next day, they had their visions written on the piece of paper, and when they shared what God had wanted to share with them, it was a confirmation because it was exactly what, it was exactly the same. It was exactly the same. And some of you may have, if you've been around in Christianity for a while, you've heard of the seven mountains, the seven mountains of influence.

There's seven mind molders in society. There's seven principalities, if you want to call it that, that shape society, that affect society. And they talked about these seven mountains, and they wrote these down. They shared it together. And they believed if these seven areas could be influenced by believers, by the church, that we could actually change the world.

We could actually change society. That these seven areas, we could help shape people, and particularly young people for them because they were involved in youth ministry. And we can actually make a tangible and a measurable difference in the world. Let me share these with you. And one of those is church.

It's church. First of all, it's the church. It's religion. It's the influence of the church. And here's the problem with the church.

We have a generation that's been taught and brought up that church is separate from the rest of the world, that our faith is separate from the rest of the world, that our faith doesn't actually involve the rest of life, that we are private with our faith, and we don't really let it connect with the rest of our society. So we go to church on Sunday, we do our faith-based things, but when we go out in the world, we separate loving people, people who really love God, but they don't believe that God and the church is to be involved in the rest of society. In fact, about 10, 15 years ago, there was a Barna study, and our salt group is actually studying the unshakable truth with Josh McDowell right now. And I haven't read that book in years, but it's great to go back to it because it really refreshes you to see what's really going on once again. And just 10 years ago, that only 10% of believing, confessing Christians actually have a Christian worldview.

They actually share a Christian worldview. They're Christians, but only a few of them actually operate from a Christian worldview. Well, what does that mean? It means the way we view the world, the rest of the world, and the rest of life, when we're looking at making decisions about what we're a part of, or what we're involved in, or how we make decisions in our everyday. Are we doing that from a biblical worldview?

And sadly, only 10% is probably much lower than that now. So what we do is we separate our religious life from our real life, is what we say that is. Instead of seeing God as real life and Jesus as reality, we kind of separate Jesus from reality and say, this is reality, and this is Jesus over here, and we segment it off. And that's really sad. That's a sad statistic that most people don't operate and make common everyday decisions with their work, their play, their choices in voting and government, and all those things from a biblical Christian worldview.

The second thing is government, you know, everybody knows that government can influence society, right? I mean, what we do, the decisions we make, the leaders we put in place, they actually influence society. The third thing is arts and entertainment. That was another mountain they felt that we needed to influence, arts and entertainment. Because what's happened is, in all these mountains, what's happened is Satan, the world has infiltrated these things and used them for the wrong things.

And we see the art and the theater and sports and fashion and all these visual arts. And things like that. In fact, we meet here in MOCA. You know, it's a visual arts facility that has a lot of modern art in it. And although there's good art and things like that, there also can be art used for the wrong reasons.

And God has actually gifted arts and entertainment into us. He's actually put that in us and he wants us to use us. And we need to redeem that back. We need to take that back. Art is God's.

Art was not meant for the world. And the world has taken art, and it's taken entertainment, and it's taken theater, and it's taken all those things and used it for the devil's glory, for the world's glory, for humanity's glory, instead of God's glory. But when we look at the world, God is an artist. When you're up in the mountains, and as I was at Appalachia State where I did my undergrad in Boone, North Carolina, I used to do a lot of hiking. And I'd go way up in the mountains, and I would see miles and miles around.

And when I could look out, when I'd look out over those mountains, and those mountains on top of clouds that looked like mountains, and then it was just beautiful. There's no way that there's not a God when you look at that fingerprint, because our God is an artist. And they use art and entertainment and sports. Many of you are sports fans in here and taken back sports. And all those things are good things.

And then there's education. Education, shaping our young minds. And just 100 years ago, most of the major Ivy League educational institutions were Christian. They were started by Christian people. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, those were places that were actually Christian hubs of thought.

That schools of divinity, men and women being sent out into the world through those educational institutions to change the world. And then there's business. You know, everybody knows that shaping our business shapes our economy. And having business people in business and the principles of God for our world. And then there was media.

And I don't have to go into media. You guys know what media does to people. Media, news, magazines, internet, all those things as another mountain. And then there's family. And I'll die on this hill.

I'll die on this hill. There's a lot of gray areas that I'll decide where to go and not to go. But any time you can study yourself, any time you study history, and any time the family is disrupted, the family is not strong, the family unit is broken apart, society falls. Society falls apart. Any time.

And it's important that we understand that family values, God's idea of what family is, is foundational in our lives. So what they said was, if these seven pillars and mountains influence culture, then we need to deal with them. We need to deal with them. And sadly, it hasn't really accomplished what they had hoped it had accomplished. But I believe that the church needs to revive these things.

It needs to look at these things again. And bring them back. And what God knows is that we all have people right here in this church, right here online that's watching this right now. We have people that are involved in every area of these mountains. Every mountain that I just labeled, we have people that can influence.

There's business people here. There's creative people here. There's educators here. They're all out there. They're all around us.

And you can be used. That's your area of influence. And I believe that God is up to something because, see, the church is the hope of the world. And not only is it the hope of the world, it is the hope of the, if it's an equipped church, is the hope of the world. And our job as a church is to equip you.

We need to be equipped people to go out and influence the world, to bring, change, measurable change to our world. And it starts with your world, with your world. We need to change, you need to change your world. In fact, Matthew 15, excuse me, 5.13 says this.

And some of you may ask, why salt church? Why do we call ourselves salt church? It's right here in Matthew 5.13. It says, you are like salt for the whole human race.

See, you are a salt flavoring agent. You are a preservative. In fact, in that day, people understood salt as preservative. And did you know that Peter even preached that God is holding back his judgment because he cares so much for the loss. He wishes that one more person, because of his church, because of the people who are influencing the world, he's holding back his coming, his second coming, to make things all right because he cares so much for the people and what his kids are doing, his children are doing here, the church.

We are the flavor of the whole world. But the question is, you know, what can we do? Now, here's the deal. We're not just going to go to these mountains and say, you need to turn or burn, okay? You need to get yourself right or you're going to hell, you know?

That's what we've been known for, standing up on boxes, on corners, oh, you're going to hell. No, what we need to do is we need to learn to love these people, meet with them and say, how can we serve you? What can we do for you? How can we come and minister to you? A great story of that, Church of the Highlands, second largest church in America, I think so before COVID.

Who knows what it is now? But Church of the Highlands, I actually, when I received the call to plant Salt Church, I went through a church planting process, and I used ARC, which is, they founded ARC. They and several other churches founded ARC, and they housed ARC, the Association of Related Churches, which plant new churches, healthy churches, to go out and be planted. And I was basically there before Chris Hodges, who's the senior pastor there. I mean, I was sitting from here to him, and he was just kind of sharing and talking to us and stuff like that.

And what an honor it was. He's just an amazing man of God, and they've been able to do so much. And their church is an incredible, like, mentor for me to be, a distant mentor, that is. I don't really connect with Chris Hodges. He's too big for me.

But I do, he's a distance mentor, videos, and, you know, kind of virtually he's like a mentor to a lot of us young pastors who are out there planting churches and stuff, just a very humble guy. And he talks, he tells the story about his church and how one man came to him one week and says, I have a heart for prison ministry. I have a heart for prison ministry. I want to, and here's what I want to do, Pastor Chris. I want to go into the prisons, and I want to pipe our services in there, and I want to give them.

What we're getting here at Church of the Highlands. So he says, you know, go do it. You know, I feel, that sounds like a great idea. Let's just go do it. So he said, we didn't really put any money into it.

We didn't do anything. We just allowed him to go and do it and put a video up and start piping their online services in there. And things were happening. And then the warden calls them and says, what, yeah, wow, this is incredible. Things are like actually happening here in the prisons.

And he says, well, what more can we do? What do you need? He started asking the questions. What do you need in these prisons? He says, well, there's two areas that we're having issues with.

One of them is violence. Violence is way up in our prisons and we need to bring measurable difference to our prisons, you know, the violence. He also said, you know, the rate of return is at 50%. We really want it at 0%. We want people out of here and not returning back to prisons.

So they started working out a plan and they began to take their small group method and all that in their church and all the stuff that was happening during the week. And the regular church services, instead of having just a church service on Sunday in the prisons, they were actually having small groups and they would use Proverbs and they started developing, talking about developing character. And they started ministering to these people how to be well-rounded people, godly men and godly women, even in the women correction facilities. And then the warden calls them up and he's like, what are you guys doing? And he thought he was in trouble.

He's like, what happened? You know, he's like, there's measurable difference. Like, violence is down. Like, violence is down. And we've never had that happen before.

And this is in Birmingham, Alabama. He says, violence is down. And not only that, our rate of return to prison is going way down. And you're making a difference. And it's like, wow.

And he says, you're welcome to all of our prisons in the state of Alabama now. We want you to get in there. So they've been on a mission to get into prisons throughout Alabama. I think they're out in seven or eight correctional facilities now. They have piped in services, small groups, all that kind of stuff and things.

There's measurable differences in their city. So this is just a great example of one man saying, I've got a heart for prisons. And the pastor's saying, go get them. Go get them. Because God has influence for you.

In fact, Matthew 5, 16, if you go on down, it says, let your light shine so that others will see the good that you do and will praise the Father. So why do we do this? Because our light shines and it praises and glorifies God. God, it glorifies God through his church because we are making measurable difference in the things that we are called to do. And what they'll do, ultimately, they'll look at what we're doing and they'll say, yeah, that's an awesome God.

I want your God. I want to have a relationship with your God because we see the measurable difference. We see that this is a world changer. This thing called the church is a world changer. It's a life changer.

And that's what my hope is for you as we head through this series. This week, we're talking about influence. We're talking about stewarding our influence. What you have, what God has given you, how do you steward that and how do you do that? And we'll be rolling through this series.

And I hope by the time you're done with this series or even in the middle of this series, you're going out and changing the world. You're changing your world, your world for God. So I want to ask three questions real quick here just to kind of take us down to the point. First of all, we have to ask why. Why should we do this?

Why even do this? Number one, God really likes it. God really likes it when we do this. He loves it when we love his children. He loves it when he loves the lost people.

Think about it. He's very passionate for the lost. He left the 99 for the one, right? He left everything. He left the heavenly kingdom, and he came down as a man in the darkness so that what?

Those that were far from him could be saved. He left everything for you, right? He cares for the lost people of this world, and he really cares when you care for those lost people as well. He cares for those, and he's concerned for the lost. And it's an act of worship when we love the things that he loves.

Now, think of it like this. You're not really concerned about the things that are found when you have lost things, are you? If you lose 100 bucks, you're not concerned about the 200 bucks in your wallet, right? Because the 200 bucks are still there, but you lost that 100 bucks. See, this is how God wants us to be.

He says, now, we love the people that are found, and we share together in community, but he also wants us to be together, love each other, and go out and go after passionately those who are lost, who are far from him. And it's an act of worship. If you worship someone, you love what they love. When you worship somebody, you really are stinking, like, in love with everything you are, with the thing that he's in love with or she's in love with. And we worship God in that way.

It's worship to God when we find his lost children. And it actually says he delights in it. He delights in these things. I mean, it's the father looking at his children and saying, look at my kids. Look at my girl Keisha over there.

It just warms my heart. I'm just so delighted in it. And look what he's doing. Look what she's doing. And it's just a beautiful thing when our father sees that, and he loves it.

Hebrews 13, 16 says this, don't forget to do good things for others to share what you have with them. These are the kind of sacrifices that what? Please God. He loves it. He loves it.

It pleases him. And he chooses to use us to do it. Isn't that a beautiful thing that he has actually chosen us? He could have just said it and it happened, right? He could use the plants, as Miranda was sharing in worship, the rocks will cry out if we don't cry out.

He could have used the rocks to save people, but he uses us. The second thing is you were created for this, and it's your assignment, okay? It's the reason you exist. So many people are just bored with their lives. There's Christians that are just bored.

Some of you are in here, and you're like, you're worried that it's, you know, it's Monday tomorrow, and you've got to start the rigmarole over and over again. It's the same thing every week. But if you're not doing what you are called to do, the very thing that you were gifted to do, the reason you exist, everybody wants purpose. And God has created you with purpose. He has created you with a specific assignment he's placed on your life.

Because this wasn't just intended to be. Because this wasn't just intended to be. This life wasn't just intended to be lived, you were intended to be lived to, it was intended to be lived to the full, that you may have life and life abundantly. Ephesians 2 10 says, For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. So he prepared it way before we ever knew it, way before we were ever born, he knew exactly what you were created and gifted and empowered, what he would empower you to do, to make a tangible, measurable difference in the world.

So why don't we? Because of time, because we're selfish, right? And we don't take the time to, I believe that life is just so, we're so rapid paced in life, right? I talked about that in a previous series, how we're just running and running and running and running and life is going and we don't stop to actually see. We don't stop to actually see the needs of people.

I think about, you know, going to cities and, and I love going to a new city and just going around and visiting the little hotspots and the restaurants. I love going into a little restaurant and just seeing the local people and how they interact and how they know Jane across the counter and and things like that. And, and you ask them what, you know, where's, where's the place to go around here? Oh, you can go over by the riverfront. It's beautiful.

Blah, blah, blah. You should be here into, you should come into summer. You know, you should, some of those Northern people when it's, when it's really cold, they're like, you should come into summer. You know, well, the one time of the year to one month of the year was actually pretty here. But, but you like to go, you go and you find these places and, but if you're in a hurry, if I'm in a hurry, if I'm traveling from one place to the other, if I'm in a jet and I'm flying over the city, you know, you just kind of miss it, right?

You're just flying through. There's a couple, there's a skyline, but that's about it, you know? And, and, and it's like that with, with, with people. There's, there's, there's needs all around us. There's people right beside you that need to be prayed for, that need to be helped, that need, that need to be ministered to, but we fail to see it because we're so busy with what we're busy with because we're in a hurry.

And, and as I said in a previous center, previous center, previous sermon, hurry is the enemy of, of, of love. It really is. Hurry is the enemy of love. We can't love people if we're in a hurry. Second thing is where, where, where, and that, this is the part I love.

You're asking where, where, where do I take this? Where, where do I minister? What do I, where, we, we know the what, but what the where, and that's your world. The plan for every Christian is not necessarily to change the whole world, but it's together change the whole world. So changing your world changes the whole world.

So if we're changing our world, we're hand in hand changing the world because God, and listen, God will never give you anything that you can't do. He will never make you do anything that you aren't created to do. He has given you everything you need. He's gifted you. He's given you passion to do something.

He's given you the ability, and he's given you something already in your life that you already know that's there. And there he's going to use you to influence that thing or that, that person or that area. And that's your influence. He's, he's already given you an area of influence. So the question is, what do you have right in front of you?

He says, where, where'd I go? What's in front of you? Where, where do I need to start? What's in front of you? I'm reminded in Exodus four, two, where it says, then the Lord said to Moses, what is that in your hand?

And he replies, a staff. He says, and God says, throw it down. Moses, just throw it down. You don't, well, I'm a stutterer. I'm a murderer.

I've done all these things. God, you couldn't possibly lose, use me to minister to Israel, to go in and save them from oppression from Egypt. You couldn't. What's in your hand, Moses? So the question is, what's in your hand?

What do you have? Who do you have in your life? What do you have in your life? For some of you, it starts with your family. What can you do with your family?

What areas can you start ministering to them and helping them grow and helping them achieve their unique area of influence? For some of you, it might be work. You have, you have an area of work. You have influence in your work environment and you can use that to change your world. Some of you are very successful business owners.

You've been able to make money. I was just having a conversation this past week with a guy who's heavily successful in business, just knows how to make money. Just money just happens for him. And I'm like, listen, dude, God has gifted you to make money. Use it for his glory.

That's why I can't make money. Like, I don't know how some people do it. They just do it, right? I wish I had that gift, but I don't have the gift. But you can use it and you can make tangible differences.

And it's whatever you do. It's not just things like that. It's wherever you go. When you leave here today, where are you going? Are you going to a restaurant?

Well, I want you to go to that restaurant. I want you to minister to that waitress by giving her a big tip. Just, just, just, just bless somebody today. Do, do something for somebody today. Take what's in your hand.

Do whatever with what you have. Look what Galatians 6, 4 says in the message. I love how the paraphrase message says this. It says, make a careful exploration of who you are. So look and investigate who you are.

Who am I? Who am I? How did God gift me? What did he make me? And the work you have been given and then sink yourself into that.

Put yourself into that. Put it, sink yourself, sink everything you have into that. And you are only one person. I get that. But you can't do everything, but you can do your thing.

You can do your thing. I love how Helen Keller said this, this quote, I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do. I can do.

So the third question, and lastly is how? How? How do I, how do I do this? There's two things here real quick I want to share with you. First of all, you have to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit.

You have to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit. As believers, we, when we give our lives to Christ, the Holy Spirit makes his home inside of us. And He's not only our Counselor, He's not only our Comforter, but He's our Guide. He guides us, and He prompts us, and we need to be sensitive to what He's saying. When we started, or right before we started Salt Church, the prayer I prayed every day when I left that door of my little condo over on Norfolk Avenue was, God, put me in a position where I can minister to somebody today.

Holy Spirit, lead me to a place, lead me to somewhere where I can meet somebody new today that needs to be ministered to, needs to be helped, and if you pray that prayer, God will do it. And I don't have time to share the ten stories or more that I have where God did something, where I met people right before they were facing eternity itself, before God, and I met them right at the right moment where their life was completely changed. And God used me because I listened to the Holy Spirit, and I asked the Spirit to guide and lead me. And the second thing is, find a need and fill it, and find a hurt and heal it. It's so practical.

Find a need and fill it, just what's in front of you. Where is there a need? Where is there a need right here in this church? Where is there a need in the community? Go out and ask questions when you meet with people.

My hope is, and one thing I ask, and I'm going to continue to do as we discover where Salt Church is going next and what we're going to do and how we're going to influence the community is to sit down with these people in these different mountains and ask, how can we minister to you? What is the need? What is there that's needed, and how can I help in these areas? What can we do? And where is the hurt?

How can we minister? What is the greatest need for people? We need to find those needs. Isaiah 58, 10, and 11 says, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light, what, will shine in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. The Lord will guide you always, and he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land, because that's why we exist.

That's who we are. We need purpose. We need identity, and our identity is found in Christ and who he created us to be, to be able to go out and change and influence our world. I love how St. Francis of Assisi said it like this.

He said, preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words. Don't you just love that? Preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words. So, in closing today, I want to challenge every one of you to take what you have, take what you have, and go make a difference. Let's pray.

Let me just ask, there's two different things I want to mention real quick as we pray out, and some of you here, you need a nudge. You need a nudge. You need to go ahead and start something. You need to go ahead and move in whatever the Holy Spirit is prompting you to do, and my prayer for you today is that as we're here together, and as we're reaching to God, as the Holy Spirit is here in this place, God, we invite you in, we invite you Holy Spirit in, that he would begin to prompt whatever that is in you. You need a nudge.

You need a push. Holy Spirit, push us, Lord. Push us, nudge us into the purposes that you've put in front of us. I pray that you would begin to open the eyes of people here today that are looking for opportunities, Lord, that they would see that you have a staff in front of them, that they would grab that staff and throw it down, and watch what you do, Lord Jesus, because you've got big plans. You've got big dreams for your kids, for your children, for your family, Lord Jesus, and to share the hope that you have for this world.

And as we continue to pray with every head bowed and every eyes closed, if you're out there online, bow with me, eyes closed, take this moment, very, very, very precious moment. Some of you have another nudge, and that nudge from the Holy Spirit is that you don't really have a relationship with Christ. In fact, if you stopped breathing at this moment, you wouldn't know where you would be. You don't have any clue where you would be in eternity right now. And for others of you, maybe you were walking with Christ, but you're far from Him now.

You don't really know if you even still know who God is. You don't really have a relationship with Him. Father, my prayer for you today, if that's you, I want you to join me in this prayer. I want you to join me right at this moment. And I want all of us saints and everyone to pray this together.

And there's nothing magical in the prayer. It's just to surrender to Christ, just making that confession of faith today that we put ourselves in the grace of Jesus and the Father who loved us and gave His Son on the cross to die for our sin. So if you'll pray this with me, Father, in the name of Jesus, I believe that I am far from you today. But I believe that you gave yourself on the cross for me so that I can have a relationship with you. So God, I give you my heart.

I give you my life. I give you, I completely, fully surrender to you today. I give everything to you. Make me like you, Lord Jesus. Come into my life.

I want to be on the other side looking back and saying, Lord, it is so much better over here. I don't have it. I'm not there yet, Lord. But it's so much better with you. So I surrender my life today and I give it to you.

Come into my heart. Come into my life. Transform me from the inside out.