Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Hey, new life Gillette Church, we are thrilled you decided to listen to our teaching on your favorite podcast app. If you made a decision to follow Christ today, would you let us know by visiting? Yes, newlife gillette.com here is this week's teaching.
[00:00:25] All right, we're going to be in Matthew chapter 12. Today. We're finishing up our series called world builders, Matthew chapter 12. While you're turning there, I want to say good morning and welcome to everybody joining us on Church 307, wherever you're watching, from all over the state of Wyoming, especially to our friends down at Rollins at the prison. We are stoked that you've joined us today and we are going to jump in in Matthew, chapter 12, verse 33.
[00:00:52] Make a tree good, and its fruit will be good. Or make a tree bad, and its fruit will be bad. For a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers. Y' all didn't know Jesus had zingers. That's a first century your mama joke, that's what that is.
[00:01:06] You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him. And an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. Yikes. For by your words, you will be acquitted, and by your words, you will be condemned.
[00:01:35] Let's pray.
[00:01:38] Jesus, this is your word. We've already felt your presence in worship and seen your work through these children. They're dedicated. Now, as we turn to your word, we ask that you would speak to us.
[00:01:50] Jesus, if there are any of my ideas that make it into this sermon, they're just my opinions. Let us notice those and reject them. We don't need my opinions.
[00:01:58] If there's anything that's consistent with your character and faithful to your word, would you plant it deeply in our hearts, Jesus, that we would become like you? Because that's why we're here. We love you. Amen.
[00:02:12] You probably didn't know this. Maybe you wouldn't have guessed this about me, but I am a bit of a magician.
[00:02:18] Yeah. Now, look, I'm no David Blaine or, like Criss angel or anything like that, but I can generally find your card in a deck of cards.
[00:02:26] And I have this magic trunk right here that has come into my possession in a secret way.
[00:02:34] And anything you put in this trunk, this is the cool Thing. Anything you put in this trunk, if you say the right words and you leave it there long enough, like five to 10 minutes, it will disappear.
[00:02:44] Isn't that cool? I can tell you guys don't believe me. We're going to try it. We're going to try it this morning. We're going to practice. I need, like, three volunteers to bring something that we're going to put in the trunk. You will get it back, I promise. It's not going to disappear forever. Unless you bring a wallet. Then the cash will disappear forever.
[00:03:02] Don't judge me. It's going to go in the offering boxes. Not to me.
[00:03:06] I'm just kidding. Your cash is safe. But I need you to bring something. Cell phone, keys, wallet. You got something? All right, bring it up. Put it in here.
[00:03:15] Give her a round of applause. She's very, very brave.
[00:03:20] All right, what do we got? Oh, we got perfect. Perfect. All right, I need two more things. Two more things. All right, you got it. All right, we got this. We got a Bible man, that better not disappear.
[00:03:31] All right. And we have a highlighter. Perfect. All right, we got one more thing.
[00:03:38] All right, perfect. This is the cell phone. If it rings, I'm answering it. So into the microphone, all right? Now we shut the box, we close, we lock the box so that you guys know it wasn't tampered with and you don't question my magician abilities.
[00:03:54] Now, Abracadabra.
[00:04:00] Like I said, we gotta wait. It's not gonna happen right now. We gotta wait like five to ten minutes. While we're waiting, let's jump back into the story, shall we? In this passage In Matthew, chapter 12, we're at the end of an interaction Jesus is having with the Pharisees. He's having a little bit of a.
[00:04:16] And this is kind of him shutting down the Pharisees argument. This interaction started because Jesus had just healed a young boy. There was a young boy who was demon possessed. It says he had an impure spirit. And Jesus cast out this demonic spirit. Now, the Pharisees were threatened by Jesus. Jesus teaching contradicted their teaching to a large degree. And his teaching kind of threatened their place in. In society, the position they held, and the respect they had. So they were really committed to removing Jesus, to making sure Jesus wasn't credible, because they didn't believe that Jesus was credible. So they begin to accuse him as he's casting out this demonic spirit. They say actually it's by demonic power. They say it's by the power of Beelzebub, which is to say that's by the power of the Satan, the evil one, the devil. That is how he's doing this. He's basically tricking us. He's doing, like, demonic magic. This magic is not demonic. We prayed over the trunk before we brought it in here, so we're good.
[00:05:20] But that's what they're accusing Jesus of, is he's evil, he's deceptive, he's tricking us. And Jesus, obviously, these are really big charges. These are huge allegations. So Jesus is responding to that, and he's responding with a lot of intensity. Now, we got to pause here, because as modern Christians, if you read the Bible a lot, then you notice that Jesus interacts with the Pharisees often. He's constantly debating with them. He's over at their homes. They're almost in constant conversation. He spends more time with the Pharisees than he really does with anybody else other than his own disciples. He's with them all the time. And it's easy for us to imagine the Pharisees as if they are like Disney movie villains. They're like maniacal, have pinky rings. They're plotting just to destroy things the whole time. And the reason why we do that, we imagine that, is because, first off, they are part of the plot to kill Jesus. Later, they're part of the group of people that works together to kill Jesus. And also, it's because they're constantly debating Jesus. But something that's important to note is that this would have been kind of the normal interaction between a new teacher and the established teaching. The Pharisees were teachers. They were teachers of the law who had a specific perspective. And Jesus came in to challenge that perspective. Today, if we have two politicians who run for the same office debate, right? And they debate multiple times, that's kind of what Jesus is doing with the Pharisees. They are interacting the way most new teachers and old teachings would interact, going back and forth. The Pharisees want to disprove Jesus, and it's Jesus responsibility to disprove the teaching that came before him. That's why Jesus would debate with them, and then he would go have dinner with them later, because this is a pretty normal interaction. There's something else that's important about the Pharisees, though, and it's that they started with very good intentions.
[00:07:16] The Pharisees, to the best of our knowledge, they weren't religious elites, necessarily. At least not when they began. They weren't political elites. They weren't the wealthy kind of taking advantage of, you know, the Poor, that was more of the Sadducees. They would more closely fit that description. The Pharisees started off as kind of a working class, blue collar group of people.
[00:07:38] And they started off when Israel, when the people of God had been punished for disobeying the law. That's when the movement of the Pharisees started. The Pharisees were these fairly normal guys who saw that they had been punished by breaking the law. And they decided that the best thing to do, if they were punished for breaking the law, then they could be unpunished. They could exchange the punishment for blessing if they could perfectly keep the law.
[00:08:06] So the Pharisees became passionately committed to perfectly keeping the law so that God would give his blessing back to the people of Israel. And they became so passionate or zealous for this that they would make extra laws. So if God set a speed limit, hypothetically at 70 miles an hour, then the Pharisees would have come along and said, okay, our speed limit is 55 miles an hour. Why? Because even if you speed, even if you go 65, you didn't actually break God's law. And in their mind, they were protecting people from disobedience, right? It started with this desire to do what's right, to protect people from disobedience. But over time, as happens with all of us, what started off with good intentions about doing what's right became legalism. It became passion for keeping the people of Israel pure from people who disobey. That's why Jesus spent so much time with prostitutes, sinners, thieves, tax collectors. And that's why it was always written down when he did. Because they were outsiders, they weren't welcome among the obeying, righteous Israel.
[00:09:12] Here's a good way to think about this. The Pharisees started trying to do right, but they ended trying to be right. If you're married, you know the difference between these two things, right? You ever been on a vacation or about to go on vacation and you get to decide between being right and ruining your vacation versus just doing the right thing and shutting up. Right? And then enjoying the time with your family, Right? There's a difference between doing the right thing and trying to be proven right. Needing to be right. In the beginning, the Pharisees were a trying. They were passionate about doing what's right. But over time, it became a commitment to be proven right, to be the ones who are right in face of everybody else. That was wrong. And that is why they're attacking Jesus. Because Jesus is proving that they are not actually the Ones that are right, they're not really any more right than anybody else is that their righteousness doesn't make them better. And this is important.
[00:10:13] The Pharisees seem to have this idea that because they don't break the laws like other people do, that whatever they say is justified, because they're not like other people, that they can kind of say whatever they want.
[00:10:27] What they say is right, what they say is justified because they follow the rules.
[00:10:33] In this reaction, Jesus gives us an incredibly important principle. He begins this principle by telling us, you will know a tree by its fruit. Good trees produce good fruit. Bad trees produce bad fruit. And then he ends by telling us that we are actually judged, not just by our actions, but by our words. It's not just about whether we break the rules or not. What comes out of our mouths is part of how we are measured, how we are judged. And in the middle of this, what this whole idea hinges on is this statement in Matthew, chapter 12, verse 34. In fact, this is the easiest verse in the whole Bible to memorize because it's Matthew 12:34, if you want to memorize it. Matthew 12:34. My youth pastor told me that in eighth grade, and I've remembered it since then. Here's what he says, for the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
[00:11:26] The mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
[00:11:33] If it comes out, it's because it's in there.
[00:11:39] Oh, almost forgot our magic trick. You guys want to see if it worked?
[00:11:44] All right. This has never failed before.
[00:11:48] All right.
[00:11:50] I was expecting music. There was no noise or anything. Darn it.
[00:11:57] Whose phone was this? It didn't ring.
[00:11:59] I don't know who. I don't know who's. Is this your phone? There you go. Come grab it. I guess it didn't disappear. Sorry about that. It didn't disappear? No. Not even a little bit. I got a highlighter.
[00:12:11] It also didn't disappear. Here you go.
[00:12:13] Get that. Thank you. Thank you. I have a 10 for thinking putty.
[00:12:18] There you go.
[00:12:20] Also didn't disappear. Nice. All right. And I have a Bible. Thank the Lord you got this back, man. It's a big risk.
[00:12:28] Here's why we're doing this. Just obviously incredibly cheesy analogy. You probably figured this out. It's because there is no magic trick.
[00:12:41] What you put in is what you get out.
[00:12:47] There's no magic trick.
[00:12:50] It doesn't disappear.
[00:12:54] What goes in is what comes out.
[00:12:59] The mouth speaks what the heart is full of, what you put into your life.
[00:13:09] What I put into My life is what comes out of my life.
[00:13:15] Now, there are two important applications for this principle. The first is exactly what Jesus was talking about. It's why he answered the Pharisees the way that he did. It's this right here. What comes out tells me what went in. If I find bitterness, anger, frustration coming out of my life, guess what that means?
[00:13:33] It means bitterness, anger, frustration is going into my life.
[00:13:36] It means it's getting put into my life. Because there's no magic trick, right?
[00:13:41] If fear mongering, worst case scenario, thinking constantly being anxious is always coming out of my life, right there is a thing of clinical anxiety, that's normal. But if I am constantly feeding on anxiety and fear, it's coming out of my life, what does that mean?
[00:14:00] It means it's going in.
[00:14:01] If I am a follower of Jesus and I still constantly struggle with lust, I have this conversation with people, men especially, but men and women struggle with this regularly. I'm constantly struggling with lust. I can't get it out of my mind. It's constantly there. What do I do about it? The thing is, if it's constantly coming to my mind, if the words and the ideas and the pictures are constantly coming into my mind, it's going in somewhere.
[00:14:26] What comes out tells me what went in. Because the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
[00:14:35] So if I find myself with these things coming out of my life, the right reaction is to examine what's going into my life. If I find myself constantly struggling with lust, constantly struggling with objectifying people, constantly giving in to those sort of desires, then I should probably examine, is the music I'm listening, listening to constantly objectifying people, is it constantly sexualized? Is it constantly celebrating those sort of pleasures? Is the movies that I'm watching or the shows that I'm watching, are they constantly preventing, presenting people as objects, as sexualized objects? Because if it's coming out of my life, then it's going in somewhere. Now, thank the Lord. This does not mean you have to listen to only Christian music or that you can't watch an R rated movie. That's not what this means. What it means is when there's fruit coming out of my life, when something's coming out, I have to examine what. Where's it going in?
[00:15:27] A few weeks ago at the men's retreat, I had a conversation with somebody I respect so much here at New Life, and he said what I think may be the most mature thing I've heard a believer say in years. He said, I quit watching the news.
[00:15:42] He Said I realized I'm not supposed to be thinking that way about people I disagree with.
[00:15:48] I'm not supposed to be calling people idiots under my breath because I disagree with them politically. I'm not supposed to be hating them.
[00:15:55] Supposed to be thinking that they're crazy and how could anybody. And what in the world. I'm not supposed to have those thoughts, right? I'm not supposed to think that way about people from California or Minneapolis or Austin or wherever. Whatever group of people you disagree with is because no matter what your political opinions are, we all have a group of people we think are crazy and they're from somewhere else, right? Normally, I'm not supposed to think that way. So we say, what do I do? I quit putting it into my life because I didn't want to get it out anymore. I don't want that to come out.
[00:16:25] So I quit putting it in because what comes out tells me what went in.
[00:16:34] There's a second application of this, and it's the inverse.
[00:16:38] What goes in will eventually come out.
[00:16:43] I don't know if you struggle with this. I struggle with this. I do this sometimes. What I tell myself is, well, it's not having any negative effect on my life, so it doesn't really matter. Right.
[00:16:53] I mean, I don't talk about my wife that way. All the guys at work talk about their wives that way. I don't talk about my wife that way, but I just hear it all the time, you know? I mean, I'm around it a lot. I just don't participate. Well, that's the thing. It's going in, and what goes in eventually comes out. It might not have come out yet, but if it keeps going in, it's going to come out. Oh, I don't gossip. There's so much gossip at work. I mean, I just smile and nod. I don't ever participate in it. I mean, I listen to it a lot. I hear it all the time. I don't do anything to get out of it. I don't tell people to stop it. I listen to it a lot. I don't participate in it, though. I just listen.
[00:17:32] What goes in will eventually come out.
[00:17:39] I mean, drinking is not really that big of a deal for me. Right. I just, you know, I mean, I. Yeah, I drink most nights, but it's not like. I'm not like an angry drunk. You know what I mean? Like, I don't get mad or violent, and I don't have a problem getting to work the next day or anything. It's not really affecting My life, you know, I mean, I do have a hard time going without it for a day, but I mean, it's not like it's having any effect yet.
[00:17:59] Right?
[00:18:01] But what goes in eventually? If dependency on a substance goes in, guess what's going to come out? Addiction.
[00:18:10] If coping in an unhealthy way is what goes in, guess what's going to come out? Addiction.
[00:18:17] If gossip is what goes in, guess what's going to come out? Gossip.
[00:18:22] If complaining. And negativity and bitterness and people who are constantly complaining about how the world's falling apart and the Democrats are this and the Republicans are that. If it's constantly in my mind and going in my mind all the time, guess what's going to come out?
[00:18:32] Fear. Frustration.
[00:18:34] Anxiety. Bitterness. Distrust of people who disagree with me.
[00:18:40] Interesting that Jesus hung out with people from all the different backgrounds, isn't it? He hung out with the Pharisees and the prostitutes and the Sadducees and his disciples and everybody else, right?
[00:18:50] He loved them all, welcomed them all. He believed something, he taught something. He didn't agree with them all, but he didn't have hatred towards.
[00:19:01] See, I think a lot of us imagine that there's a magic trick.
[00:19:06] We imagine that because I love Jesus, because I trust Jesus, because he's forgiven me that whatever I put into my life, he's just going to magically take it away, that I can still put whatever into my life and it's not going to have any negative effects because Jesus is going to take it away. So does it matter if I'm having sex outside of marriage? No, not really. Because Jesus has forgiven me, right? I don't have to obey Jesus in that because he's forgiven me. But that's the thing is I'm still putting it into my life. And guess what? It's going to come out. If Jesus calls it sin, it's because it deals death into the world around us. Even if it feels good in the moment. What he's saying is it deals death later. And we imagine that, well, I can put all this bitterness and it doesn't really matter. I'm a Christian, so obviously the people I disagree with are the people you're supposed to disagree with. And the people I don't like are the people you're supposed to not like. Right? And we imagine that there's just this magic trick that I can put bad things in and Jesus will clean them up. But here's the thing. This is incredibly important. Jesus does not remove our free will.
[00:20:05] Jesus does not remove your Free will. It is a definitional, a defining characteristic of a human being that a human being has free will. We have the ability to choose. We do not react by instinct. We are not completely driven by our desires and urges and, and hormones. We have the ability to make decisions. God created human beings because he desires a relationship, a genuine relationship in which two people choose one another with humanity. That's what we were created for. And God does not take away our free will. Here's what that means. Have you ever cleaned your house and you're really excited about it? It's looking good.
[00:20:41] And then you let the dogs in or then you let the kids in?
[00:20:47] Yeah, they should stay out there. We should have outside kids.
[00:20:51] You have indoor kids. I have outdoor kids.
[00:20:55] What does the dog do? The dog comes in and just pukes on the floor. Right? Because it tried to eat a pine cone or something. That's just.
[00:21:03] But we do this a lot.
[00:21:05] Jesus wants to clean things up. He wants to come into our life and clean it up.
[00:21:12] And he cleans out the lust. And then we come back in and puke on the floor.
[00:21:18] We come back in and put that thing exactly back in there. Right? Which is going to eventually lead to something coming out of my life. Jesus cleans up the fear and the anger and the anxiety and we turn back on the 24 hour fear cycle and just feed our minds with who we're supposed to hate and who we're supposed to be afraid of. Right? We, we go back in. Jesus takes away our bitterness and our anger and our frustration towards our spouse. And then we fill up our mind with people complaining about their spouse and calling their spouse names behind their back. What do we do? We go back and we dirty up the floor again. Jesus wants to clean. Jesus wants to clean it. But we keep going back in and putting the same thing in, hoping that it will just magically not get dirty again. Right? And we're not talking about salvation here. Our forgiveness is for the full weight and measure of sin. But we're talking about becoming who we were created to be. All right? Jesus constantly forgives. He forgives every time.
[00:22:09] Get it dirty again, but we're still getting it dirty again. Right? And what you put in eventually comes out.
[00:22:18] So you might be here this morning and you're a believer and you might be saying, you know what? I'm seeing some things coming out. I'm seeing some fruit in my life that I don't want.
[00:22:29] I'm seeing some fear. I'm seeing some frustration, some anger towards groups of people I'm seeing some lust, I'm seeing some dishonesty, whatever it is coming out of my life.
[00:22:41] And if that's you, then the application this morning is to start looking at what's going in.
[00:22:46] If you're seeing that come out in your life, then the right way to respond is to start examining what's going in. Where is that finding its way into your life and remove that.
[00:22:59] There are others of us here today. You're probably a believer. And if you're being honest, you've got some things going into your life that are not great, and they haven't started causing a problem yet.
[00:23:10] So far they're manageable. So far they're not a big deal.
[00:23:15] But it's time to cut out the input.
[00:23:18] Don't wait until it starts bearing fruit, until it starts coming out. It's time to say, what am I putting into my life right now that might not be causing problems later, but it is causing problems right now.
[00:23:32] But there might be some of us here this morning or even watching online. And you're not even a follower of Jesus.
[00:23:38] You're not sure about this whole God thing. Maybe when you came in here today, you weren't sure about this whole God thing.
[00:23:44] Maybe somebody drug you to church. You came with your parents, or you came with your boyfriend or girlfriend, or maybe you just finally decided to try church because somebody wouldn't shut up about it. And you're here and you hear this sermon and you're thinking, you know what? Most of what's coming out of my life right now is garbage.
[00:24:00] And if what you're saying is true, then I don't know what to do.
[00:24:06] I don't know how to fix it, because I have been putting in all of this negativity for years, and now I'm getting it all out.
[00:24:13] Or maybe you're here today and you're saying, you know what? I don't know if I've ever put anything in my life other than bad things. And I'm just. I'm reaping the fruit. I'm getting what I put into my life, and I don't know what to do about it. And you're hearing this sermon and you're thinking, man, if that's true, I feel stuck.
[00:24:28] Here's what I want to tell you.
[00:24:31] The only thing you can add to your life that will truly bring transformation is Jesus.
[00:24:40] The only thing you can add to your life that will bring real transformation is Jesus. Listen, the world will exchange things. The world will bring change, but it won't Bring transformation. The world around you can make you into a workaholic instead of an alcoholic. Sure. The world around you can make you work out more and eat less potato chips. That's fine. The world around you can make you manage your negative behaviors in a better way so that you don't blow up at your kids enough. As much I know that was.
[00:25:12] The world around you can do that. The world around you can teach you to manage your reactions, right? But the world around you can't give you peace. The world around you can change you from drug addict to some sort of more palatable addict, but it won't give you freedom.
[00:25:28] I heard this story years ago about this Buddhist teacher who had reached enlightenment. And she was, you know, fully, you know, fully alive in peace and love for all people. And she was teaching about how to gain enlightenment. And it was wonderful until she got into the parking lot and someone cut her off when she was backing out of her spot.
[00:25:47] Right? Because the world can teach you how to manage and present peace. Only Jesus can transform your anxious heart and make you peaceful. Only Jesus can take the fear and bitterness inside you and wash it away and clean it up. That's why Jesus, talking to the Pharisees in a different place, he said, wash the inside of the cup, not the outside of the cup. Jesus wants to wash our hearts and make them clean. Not some magic trick so that we can keep putting garbage in without getting garbage out. But he is willing to take what we have put in and forgive us and make us new and teach us how to put good things into our lives so that we can experience genuine hope and healing and transformation. This is what we as Christians call the gospel. It literally means good news. It's the good news that the world is different because of Jesus. It means that Jesus is God. Jesus is God. And God created us as human beings in his image for relationship. He doesn't force us into relationship, though, because if there's force, it's not a relationship. You have to have decision. So he gives us the decision and we, you know it, I know it. It's obvious. We choose sin.
[00:26:53] We choose selfishness. We choose against him over and over and over again. We've known better for years and we still keep doing it. We choose selfishness, but he doesn't leave us in that. Scripture says he is the source of life and that all things hold together in him. We reject him and we die apart from him. We die without the source of life, without the source of hope, without the source of rescue. That's what Christians call hell dying apart from God with no hope of redemption or healing or restoration.
[00:27:28] But Jesus doesn't leave us in our sin.
[00:27:31] No, He. He came to live the life we couldn't live, die a death we could not handle, to give us a life we do not deserve.
[00:27:38] He lived the perfect life so that he did not deserve sin. He did not deserve death. He didn't deserve separation. But then he took the full separation. He took the full weight and measure of sin upon himself. The full weight and measure of sin. Not just yesterday's sins, not just the little sins, the full weight and measure of sin upon himself. It was poured out on him on the cross. He died. God died because he loves us.
[00:28:09] And Hebrews tells us that it was for the joy set before him that he suffered the cross. Do you know what the joy set before him was?
[00:28:16] It was you.
[00:28:19] You are the joy set before Him. It was being reconciled to you, forgiving your sins so that you could be with him for eternity. For the joy set before Him. He suffered the cross because he resurrected as the firstborn of the dead. That's what scripture calls it. What it means is that if Jesus rose for the dead, then we will too. We don't have to be afraid of death.
[00:28:39] We don't have to be afraid of sin. We don't have to live in fear of being separate from God for eternity. Why? Because Jesus paid the price. And we have eternal hope that starts now. We have eternal life now that continues on after we die. And everything will be made right by Jesus in the end. That is the good news. And if that is true, then everything's different. And it's the best news anyone can ever hear because it means that we cannot fix the problem. And we don't have to. Jesus did it for us.
[00:29:11] And it's the most wild offer that anyone will ever receive. You receive his offer of forgiveness by believing it.
[00:29:18] You believe that he actually is God, that that means he's king, He's Lord, he's in charge.
[00:29:24] That he actually died to forgive us for our sins and that you are forgiven by trusting in his sacrifice.
[00:29:32] You don't just believe that he exists. The demons believe that. But you believe that he is king, that he died to forgive you and he rose again to give you new life.
[00:29:42] You are saved by the cross, by grace, through faith, not by your work. So that none of us can boast.
[00:29:48] You trust that he loves you. He forgives you. He died for you. He has a good plan for you and for your life.
[00:29:58] And you do your Best to live as if he is God. You don't do it perfectly. That's the crazy thing. He doesn't say, follow my commands perfectly or you're out. No, he says, I want you more than I want you perfect.
[00:30:10] And he forgives us, and he forgives us. And he forgives us, and he forgives us. And he teaches us how to quit putting garbage in so that more and more and more we're becoming who we were created to be. And you can have access to that. If you're here today and you are not a believer, you can decide right now that you believe in Jesus, that you believe in his death and resurrection. You can decide to make Him Lord of your life, to let him be who he already is right now. Maybe you've been in church for years and you've been pretending, you've been trying to do the church thing, but you've never actually trusted that Jesus would forgive your sins. Maybe when you walked in today, you weren't even sure if there is a God. But he's working in your heart right now, and you're ready to give it a try if that's you. What I want you to do. There's a card you were handed on the way in today.
[00:30:54] It says, I've decided to follow Jesus. I want you to fill that out.
[00:30:58] Just fill out that card. And then while we sing this song, what I want to invite you to do is to walk up here and to drop this card into this not magic trunk as a way of saying, I've tried to put everything else in my life and it didn't work.
[00:31:13] But I'm putting Jesus in my life.
[00:31:16] Jesus can take my life. I want his transformation.
[00:31:20] There are no magic words.
[00:31:22] It's the decision to trust Him.
[00:31:25] In fact, can we all stand as we prepare to worship?
[00:31:28] You stand with me.
[00:31:30] A lot of times, most of the time when we follow Jesus, we do it through a prayer. The prayer is not magic. There are no right words you have to say to decide to follow Jesus.
[00:31:40] There's no magic words to get in or get kicked out or anything like that.
[00:31:44] But oftentimes having someone walk us through what to say is helpful. So this is what I'm going to ask you to do. I'm going to pray a prayer. And if you want today to decide to follow Jesus, I just want you to repeat it after me. But what I'm going to ask is that everybody in the room repeats it after me out loud, together, so that nobody prays alone, so that you can hear the voices of believers declaring what you are deciding to believe today.
[00:32:08] So let's pray. Repeat after me, Jesus.
[00:32:12] I know I'm a sinner.
[00:32:14] I have fallen short.
[00:32:17] I've put in so much garbage in my life.
[00:32:22] But you love me anyway.
[00:32:25] You died to forgive me.
[00:32:28] You rose again to give me new life.
[00:32:32] I let you be my Lord, and I give you my life.
[00:32:40] Amen.
