Ephesians 5:1-21 | Be Transformed
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Ephesians 5:1-20 NKJV
Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.
3 But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; 4 neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.
5 For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. 6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. 7 Therefore do not be partakers with them. 8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), 10 finding out what is acceptable to the Lord.
11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. 12 For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. 13 But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. 14 Therefore He says: “Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light.” 15 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, 16 redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
17 Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, 20 giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ
We often learn to do a thing before we learn to be a thing.
The world values what you do more than who you are so much so that you live out of your ability to do.
1. God will always call us to “be” before He calls us to “do”
Who we are in the heavenlies is not a conglomerate of our skills and abilities.
Changing your behavior will always start with understanding your identity.
Proverbs 4:23 NIV
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.You can not outlive your heart’s belief system.
When you understand who you are, your identity will regulate your behavior and this is why God always calls you to “be” before he calls you to “do”
2. You can’t be what you refuse to behold.John 5:19 NKJV
Then Jesus answered and said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.”
Luke 10:38-42 NIV
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one.[a] Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Three signs you have an identity crisis:
- You abandon time with Jesus
- You avoid deep relationship with community- You become annoyed by the assignment (Wanting to do good but never feeling good enough)
3. Be like Jesus.
Let your sacrifice be an offering of Love to God
Love has to be received before it can be properly given
1 John 4:19 NIV
We love because he first loved us.Mark 12:30-31 NIV
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. 31 The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.
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the Spirit-led life, and I believe that every life of the believer should be led by the Spirit of God.
I got one amen.
Every believer's life should be led by the Spirit of God.
And so I've been privileged to receive my assignment today.
We are in Ephesians chapter 5.
And I'm only going to be preaching from a couple of verses today.
But I'm going to read all of the verses.
It's verses 1 through 21.
We're going to read it together.
And I have the New King James Version.
It's on the screen.
You can read along with me.
But bear with me because I'm old school and I like thousand days in my Bible reading.
Amen.
Chapter 5, verse 1, it says, Therefore, be imitators of God.
Somebody say imitators of God.
as dear children and walk in love as Christ also has loved us and given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.
But fornication and all uncleanness, all covetousness, let it not even be named among you as is fitting for saints.
Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which is not fitting.
Somebody say not fitting.
Not fitting.
but rather giving of thanks.
For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man who is an adulterer has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
Therefore, do not be partakers with them.
Somebody say, do not be partakers.
Verse 8 says, Somebody say, no fellowship.
No fellowship.
with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.
For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret.
But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light.
For whatever makes manifest is light.
Therefore, he says, awake you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light."
Verse 15 says, see then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil.
Amen.
Verse 17, therefore, do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
And do not be drunk with wine in which is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit.
speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always, somebody say always, for all things to God the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of God.
Hallelujah.
Can we pray?
Father, we thank you for your presence.
We thank you that your presence is here and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
God, as we consume your word today.
God, we pray that you would change and transform our hearts, that we would never be the same.
God, we thank you that it is your word that changes us from the inside and produces good fruit on the outside.
God, so we thank you and we believe you for miracles, signs, and wonders.
Come on, church.
Miracles, signs, and wonders.
In Jesus' name.
And somebody say amen.
Amen.
There is a saying that
a pretty popular saying in culture from a man named Oscar Wilde.
And many don't know that we don't even use the entire phrase when we say it, but I promise you, as soon as I say it, you'll know what I'm talking about.
But there's a saying that says, imitation is the highest form of flattery.
Anybody ever heard that?
Imitation is the highest form of flattery.
And the saying suggests that when you find other people that are copying you, that are imitating you, or that are doing what you do, that you should take it as flattery, that you should take it as a sign of respect or adoration that somebody would see the benefit or that somebody would see the value in something that you do and want to be like you.
The saying suggests that when you find people that copy you, that you shouldn't be upset about it, but that you should be thankful that someone values what you bring.
And we find this a lot, especially in married couples.
And it usually comes from the wife and they say, baby, it would sure be nice if we had a little you running around.
It would show me nice if we had a little me running around.
I'm reminded of my children.
Anybody that's ever seen my son Andrew, he started off down here.
Now he way up here.
He's taller than me.
I got to look up to him.
But I used to call him my little carbon copy.
Because if you look, I couldn't deny him if I wanted to.
He looked just like me.
He smiled like me.
He talked like me.
Sometimes he walked like me.
He's just a little bit taller than me, y'all.
And I'm reminded of my daughter Symphony, and when she was a baby, we used to put her in this little bouncing chair, and she sat next to my keyboard, and I would spend hours at my keyboard practicing, whether it was for church or for a show.
I would just be practicing for hours, and she would sit there and play with her little toys and watch her dad, and as she got older, she would learn how to walk a little bit, and she'd waddle herself up to my keyboard, and she'd just start hitting the keys.
Didn't know what she was doing.
She was just hitting the keys.
And I don't think it was because she thought herself to be a great musician.
I don't think it was because she thought she just loved the sound of music.
I think that she did it because she was simply doing what she saw her father do.
Good parents want their children to reflect the things that they like about themselves.
When I see my children praying, there's something on the inside of me that I just get filled with pride.
When I see them worshiping the Lord, there's something about seeing them do the things they see their father do that just brings up this pride in me.
That's my baby.
You ever been to your kid's football game?
That's my baby.
And I'm fortunate enough to not just see that in my children.
I serve as the worship pastor here at the church, and we have worship leaders that are in development here at the church.
And I get to witness them grow and develop in their skill and in their ability, so much so that sometimes other churches will call and say, hey, can I borrow a worship leader this week?
In fact, tonight I'm going to be going to go see a couple of the worship leaders lead worship at a friend's church.
But they call them and they say, can we use them because we see what you have invested in them.
coming out.
And my team often makes fun of me of some of the stuff I do while I'm doing worship.
They be like, Pastor Brandon be saying, sing it for real.
Oh my God.
They'll start mocking me.
Now the choir does it.
They'll start mocking and doing stuff that I do.
But how cool is it that as I see the worship leaders developing, as I see them stepping out into new things that make them feel uncomfortable, I see them doing things that I do.
Saying things that I say.
And as a leader, it makes me feel good.
I'm so glad that they feel comfortable enough that they see value in the things that I'm depositing in them and using it.
But I keep in mind that there's a limitation to leadership.
And that is this, I can invest in them.
I can water them.
I can sharpen them.
I can teach them all the skills and wisdom that the Lord has given me through the years.
But what I cannot do is give them identity.
What I cannot do is give them purpose.
That comes from God.
I know this is a system that works against the system of this world because the world teaches us one thing and that is you are what you can do.
The world only values you for what you can produce.
You don't believe me?
I dare you to go to AT&T and tell them that God called you.
See if they'll give you a job.
Go over to Google and tell them that you were saved by the blood of the Lamb.
See if they get you a job.
They don't care anything about that.
They don't care much about who you are as a person as much as what can you do for the company.
What can you produce?
Nobody wants to hire a painter that can't paint.
In fact, we don't even call you a painter until you prove that
But the kingdom of God doesn't work that way.
And that leads me to my first point that the kingdom of God, God will always call you to be before he calls you to do.
God will always call you to be before he calls you to do.
And as I was studying for this message, and y'all were with me, I read verse 1 through verse 21.
And I was wondering, how am I going to get through all of these verses?
It's impossible.
In fact, I found it so difficult to make it past verse 1 and 2 because I believe that there is something that God wants us to get right.
from this passage of scripture and not just real life church, but the big C church, the world church that God wants us to understand in this hour concerning being before doing.
And I noticed a pattern as we've been going through this series in Ephesians.
In chapter one, verse seven, Paul says, you are redeemed.
In chapter two, verse one, he says, you are made alive.
In that same chapter, verse 19 says, you are fellow citizens in the house of God.
In chapter three, he says, you are rooted in love.
This is a pattern that I'm finding that Paul spends all of chapter one and all of chapter two and all of chapter three trying to get us to understand who God says that we are.
And it's not until chapter four that he begins chapter four the same way that he starts chapter five.
He says, therefore, and when I was growing up, I had a Baptist preacher.
And a Baptist preacher said, when you are reading the Bible and you run into a therefore, you need to go back and find out what it's there for.
Yeah, we need to know what it's there for.
And so what I believe Paul is trying to tell us through chapter 1, chapter 2, and chapter 3, he's trying to give us a sense of identity because it's in chapter 4 that he begins to say things like, take off your old man and put on your new man.
And it's in chapter 5 that he begins to say that you have to give up filthiness and uncleanness and darkness.
But how...
Church, you can't give up things before you understand who you are.
In fact, changing your behavior will always start with understanding your identity.
You can't wheel yourself out of bad behavior.
You're just going to sit there, I don't want to lie.
I won't tell lies.
I won't tell lies.
I won't tell lies.
I won't tell lies.
And you'll end up right back where you started from.
How do I know this?
Because the entire first half of the Bible tells us that anytime the road gets rough, we want to go right back to Egypt, the place that God delivered us from.
It's not a matter of bad behavior.
It's a matter of not understanding who God called us to be.
God never calls us to do before he calls us to be.
In fact, this is why I believe that Solomon said what he said.
In Proverbs, he says, Proverbs chapter four, verse 23, he says, guard your heart.
Guard your heart.
For everything you do flows from it.
What's left after everything, y'all?
Nothing, everything you do flows from your heart.
Just when you thought it flowed from your mind, he says, no, it flows from your heart.
And he's not talking about your heart, the organ.
He's saying that what you do flows from the center of your being.
The place where your identity is established.
In other words, what he's saying is you can detour your behavior for so long.
And after a while, you will begin to act what you believe in your heart.
So he says, guard your heart because this is what I believe.
You cannot outlive your heart's belief system.
You can't outlive your heart's belief system.
In order to change, you have to change what you believe in your heart.
Last week, the staff, we went through CPR training.
Yeah, some of y'all can imagine what that looked like.
We went through CPR training and I learned something that I did not know.
Okay, I'm gonna try and say this word.
I keep saying it wrong.
Defibrillator.
Y'all know what that is?
Yeah, see, I got it.
Defibrillator.
I'm gonna call it defib.
So I don't mess it up.
We streaming this episode.
But listen, I've been watching Grey's Anatomy.
Yeah, some of y'all understand.
Some of y'all feel it.
And I thought that the purpose of the defibrillator was to take someone who was dead and the doctor would go, clear, poof, and they'd come back to life.
Isn't that what y'all saw?
That's what I saw when I watched the movies.
I was like, that's what it does.
It takes somebody dead, poof, brings them back to life.
But what I learned in CPR training is that's not what a defibrillator does.
It's not.
The defibrillator does not bring you back.
The purpose or the function of a defibrillator is to, yeah, I said it wrong that time, y'all don't laugh at me.
The purpose of it is to stop your heart.
Yeah, y'all didn't know that, I know, revelation.
The purpose of the defibrillator, I said it right that time, is to stop your heart.
When your heart has entered into a rhythm or it's stagnant and it can't function properly, that's why they bring the pedals out.
And what happens is they place one pedal over here and one pedal over there and it sends an electric signal that stops your heart.
And this is why they do that because God in his infinite wisdom and his marvelous creation has created the cells in your heart and your cells understand who they are.
They remember their natural rhythm.
They remember their assignment.
And so when the defibrillator stops your heart, your cells kick in and say, we remember how we're supposed to beat.
And all I'm trying to tell you is that when you start operating in cycles and patterns that go against what's in your heart, your heart will always bring you back.
This is why it's important that your identity is firmly fasted in your relationship with God so that it becomes the natural rhythm
Man, I got two or three people that know what I'm talking about.
So that it becomes the natural rhythm of your heart.
Because sometimes we get so caught up in doing.
Our lives get so busy doing.
You come on Saturdays and you serve with the love in the Thomas warehouse.
You got three small groups.
And I'm not against serving.
I want you to serve.
Come on, you come and you join the choir that practices every second and fourth Sunday after fourth service.
But you get so busy doing.
And the danger is when your doing becomes your identity.
When it becomes that which you identify with.
I am that usher.
I am that call center representative.
I am the supervisor.
When your identity becomes the center of your doing, somebody say you are in the identity crisis.
You are in an identity crisis.
And Paul gives us the remedy for that in this same verse.
Look at this, he says, this is my second point.
He says in verse one, he says, therefore be imitators of God as dear children.
Did I make that up or is it up there?
As dear children.
And so this is my second point.
You cannot be what you refuse to behold.
I'll say it again.
You cannot be what you refuse to behold.
And so Paul is teaching us another spiritual principle.
And that is that you will become what you see.
What you choose to put your focus on will direct your life.
Have you ever met somebody that when they're facing new things, all they can think about is what could possibly go wrong?
What if I get sick?
What if I run out of gas?
What if I don't have enough money?
What if something happens to my children?
Have you ever met somebody like that?
All they can do is think about what could possibly go wrong.
They have no faith, but they choose to focus on all the things that could go wrong.
And what I'm trying to tell you is that when you choose to focus on anxiety, you get filled with anxiety.
When you choose to focus on fear, you get filled with fear.
But the good news is that the opposite is also true.
When you choose to focus on Jesus, you get filled.
Oh my God.
When you choose to focus on faith, you get filled with faith.
This is why we need to spend some more time in our word.
I told you I've been watching Grey's Anatomy.
But whatever you put your focus on, it will begin to direct your life
And you can always tell what's directing your life because it comes out of your mouth.
That wasn't even in my notes, y'all.
It reminds me of Mary and Martha in Luke chapter 10.
Luke chapter 10, verse 38, it says, And Jesus...
and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.
She had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said.
But Martha was distracted.
Somebody say distracted.
By all the preparations that had to be made.
She came to him, him being Jesus, and asked, Lord, do you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself alone?
Tell her to help me.
We're going to come back to that latter half, but I got to pause right here.
Because Martha had an identity crisis.
Notice what the word says, that Martha got distracted.
In other words, it wasn't that she didn't have something important to do, but there was something more important that needed to get done.
But Martha was so distracted, so distracted that she couldn't even see in the moment that she was in the wrong place.
She was going through an identity crisis.
And look at this, I have three signs, just three.
Three signs that you are in an identity crisis.
Y'all wanna know what they are?
The first sign is that you abandoned time with Jesus.
When you are in identity crisis, you abandoned time.
Jesus could be right there.
And you don't see the value in spending time with God.
You don't see the value in hearing his voice.
Because let me tell you something.
In order to hear from God, you got to slow down.
God does not go at your speed.
Number two, how you know you're in an identity crisis.
You avoid deep relationship with community.
Martha and Mary were sisters.
And she's so distracted by working, here is her sister sitting at Jesus' feet and instead of addressing her sister, hey sis, there's a lot of things that need to get done.
Do you think that you can help me with this?
She avoids the community of her own sisterhood and begins to complain to Jesus.
Jesus, do you even care?
Tell her to help me.
The last one is how you know you're in identity crisis.
He says, you become annoyed by the assignment.
You become annoyed.
Jesus, do you even care?
Listen, I prayed that prayer before.
Listen, maybe y'all better Christians than I am.
I prayed that prayer.
Do you even care?
Do you see me?
Do you see me?
Do you see these tears I'm crying?
Do you see this anxiety?
Do you see how rough my life has gotten?
Do you see me?
Do you even care?
Come on, we're the real Christians.
We go through some, do you even care?
She's in an identity crisis.
But I love how Jesus responds in verse 41.
He says, Martha, Martha.
You are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed, or indeed only one.
Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.
What I love about Jesus' response is that he doesn't demean the importance of her work.
No, no, you got some important things to do.
Somebody has to be an usher.
Somebody has to be on the parking lot team.
Somebody has to be in the choir.
Somebody has to be on the safety team.
Somebody has to be the call center supervisor.
Somebody has to do the work.
But what Jesus says is, even though you're doing something important, there is something better.
And Mary has chosen it.
There's something better.
And I believe that what Jesus is saying, he's saying that when he is in the room, when he is present, he needs to be first.
It's not that the work doesn't need to get done, but he just needs to come first.
First.
He says that my nearness isn't for your busyness.
My nearness is for beholding.
I want you to come near so that you can behold, so that you can see me.
Because you're not transformed by your busyness.
You're not renewed by your busyness.
You're not upheld by your busyness.
You're not delivered by your busyness.
You are delivered by beholding the glory of God.
By spending time in relationship with Jesus.
You are changed and transformed.
And I gave you that list of
Three Ways You Know You're in Identity Crisis.
That list did not come from a book.
That list came from my life.
It was just a couple years ago.
Most of you guys didn't know this.
I went on sabbatical for the first time in almost 20 years of ministry.
I hadn't had much of a Sunday off.
And I went on sabbatical, and I remember my first Sunday, I wasn't here leading worship, right?
My life hit the lowest depression.
Listen, when I say the lowest depression I had ever faced in my life.
And it wasn't specifically because I wasn't leading worship.
It was because for the first time, my doing had nothing to do with who I was.
I had taken such a pride.
I am the worship pastor.
And I was going around the city.
I'm doing worship everywhere.
Conference over here, conference over there.
Leading worship.
At that time, we only had two services.
Oh, in Jesus' name.
We only had two services.
But I'm leading worship and going and teaching Bible study and doing all of these things, all of this doing.
And at the same time, my life is falling apart.
When I was in Bible college, we had this thing, we said, if you only study your word to teach it, you're not growing in God.
And that's what my life looked like.
I was giving hope to others and I'm praying and I'm prophesying and I'm teaching and my life is falling apart.
I'm going through a divorce and my children are all in therapy and my life is literally falling apart.
I had no community.
I remember going to my therapist saying, nobody really loves me.
Nobody loves me.
They call me for prayer.
They call me for Bible study, but they don't call me for the birthday party.
Nobody loves me.
And I remember the moment that things changed.
The church flew me out to Wisconsin.
I ain't never been to Wisconsin.
Couldn't find it on a map.
And I'm sitting in a room with two therapists, prophetic therapists in Jesus' name.
And I remember one of them said, he stopped me and said, Brandon.
He said, do you know every Sunday,
You get up in front of God's people and you tell them how loved they are, how God has a purpose for them.
He has a plan for them.
They're chosen.
They're not forsaken.
He says, you get up every Sunday building bridges for other people to experience the love of God, hoping that one day
someone will build a bridge for you.
And it was in that moment that I realized that I am trying to give love that I did not receive.
You can only become what you behold.
And when you take your eyes off of Jesus,
You are no longer able to give from the overflow.
Listen, David said in Psalm 23, he said, my cup runs over.
I'm going to say it runneth because I'm old school.
My cup runs over.
In other words, that's how God wants you to serve.
It's not that he doesn't want you to do.
He just wants you to stay connected to the source.
So that as he pours in and you overflow, your giving is out of having received.
And this is what I believe.
I believe that you cannot give a love that you don't first receive.
This is what I also learned.
I learned, and this is what I firmly believe.
Some people might disagree.
That every single believer in the house of God has the same calling.
Some of y'all are like, what is he getting ready to say?
Every believer in the house of God has the same calling, and that is to sit at the feet of Jesus.
Your function, your assignment may be different.
Everybody can be the worship pastor.
Your function, your assignment may be different, but your calling is to the cross.
Your calling is to relationship with Jesus.
And when you put that calling first, when that calling begins to transform you, when that calling begins to change you, you can put off the old and put on the new.
You can put away anger.
You can put away filthiness.
You can put away coarse drink because I have been changed from the inside.
And I don't know if there's somebody in the room that's like me.
And let me tell you the truth.
It would have taken a lot for me to be honest about that before my life fell apart.
But I have faith to believe that the Spirit of the Lord is speaking to the hearts of everyone in this room.
And maybe there's somebody that was like me.
You're like, man, my identity is tied to all kinds of things.
In fact, I don't even know what I would do if I had to stop doing all this stuff.
I would feel purposeless.
I would feel valueless if I stopped doing.
That's not the way that the Lord wants you to live.
The spirit of the Lord is calling you.
Come back and behold me.
There's an old song that says, turn your eyes upon Jesus.
Look full in his wonderful face.
And the things of this world will grow strangely dim.
This is the relationship that Jesus is calling you.
And so there might be one or two people in the room that you're like, I can't even behold him because I don't know him.
I don't know what love you're talking about.
I've never experienced that kind of love before.
But if you say that it's real and I read it in the word that it's real, I want to receive the love that changes me from the inside.
If that's you, can you just lift your hand for me?
Just lift your, I wanna receive the Lord.
I wanna know him.
I don't wanna know him in just an external way.
I've been trying my best to change from the outside and I need the love of God to change me from the inside.
If that's you, can you just lift your hand?
I want to pray for you.
I want you to come to know the Lord.
I want you to know his love.
We can take a moment.
I want you to know his love.
Come on, you can just lift your hand.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
In a moment, we're gonna say a prayer, but I wanna do a second call.
For those of you who may know the Lord already, and you're like, the truth is I've gotten so busy in my life that my relationship with God is whittled down to a 15 minute devo.
I don't spend time with him like I used to.
I certainly don't fast.
I don't spend much time in my word.
And I feel so disconnected from who he is.
If that's you, can you just lift your hand?
I wanna pray for you.
I wanna pray with you because I've been there.
I've lived that life.
It's empty.
It always leaves you wanting, no matter how much you do, how much you give, it always leaves you wanting.
And you're saying like Mary, do you even care?
Do you see me?
I want to pray for you.
Just lift your hand.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We're going to put the prayer on the screen.
I want you to say this prayer with me.
For those of you who do not know the Lord, if you could say it with me.
Here we go.
One, two, three.
Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner and I ask for your forgiveness.
I believe you died for my sins and rose from the dead.
Right now, I turn from my sin and invite you to come into my heart and life.
I want to trust and follow you from this day forward.
I confess you as my personal Lord and Savior.
Thank you for saving me.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Can you give God a praise?
Yeah.
Give God a praise.
For those of you that just gave your life to God, I want to invite you to meet my friend Jeff in the back.
He has this I Have Decided packet.
We want to invite you not just to the church, but to a relationship with Jesus and to the family and to the kingdom of God.
And lastly, for those of you who say, I feel so empty.
I feel so lifeless.
I'm going through an identity crisis.
I wanna invite you.
The prayer ministers are coming.
I wanna invite you to meet us here at the altar.
Sometimes all it takes is for somebody to touch and agree with you, to pray with you, to remind you of who you are.
I wanna invite you to come.
I wanna invite you to come.
Can we stand on our feet, church?
I want to pray this prayer over you as we leave here.
Father, we thank you.
We thank you because it's in you we live and move and have our being.
We are literally nothing without you.
Father, I pray that every heart in the room would be fastly connected to you
I pray that we would make room in our life to behold you, to be changed and transformed by your love.
Lord, it is your, you said with love and kindness have I drawn you.
It's not miracles, it's not signs, it's not wonders, it's not might.
He said with loving kindness have I drawn you.
And I pray, Father, that every heart in the room experiences the love of God.
In a personal way.
Father we thank you.
That this word will not return to you void.
But it will accomplish what you sent it to do.
We give you all glory.
And we give you all honor.
In Jesus name.
Amen.