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] We are starting a new series today that's called While I Breathe, I Hope. And we are going to spend next eight weeks talking about how we find a hope that will never let us down and that is completely unshakable. What does it mean to have hope no matter the circumstances? And we're starting that today. We are going to be in Romans chapter 10. If you got a Bible, go ahead and open up there. Romans chapter 10. If you don't have a Bible with you, it's going to be on the screen behind me while you're turning there. Like I said before, we've been praying for today and we've been praying for this year all weekend. We believe God's going to move in a powerful so I hope if you're a believer here this morning, I hope you're paying attention to what the Lord's doing. This has nothing to do with who's on stage. It has nothing to do with the big screen behind me. It has to do with the fact that we believe that God inhabits the praise of his people and that where two or three are gathered in his name, he is there with them. Amen.
[00:01:23] All right, Romans, chapter 10. We are going to start reading in verse eight. Here's what it says. But what does it say? It here is faith that leads to righteousness. So what does your faith say?
[00:01:34] What does your faith say? The Word is near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart. That is the message concerning faith that we proclaim. If you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As Scripture says, anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.
[00:02:03] For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile. The same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
[00:02:16] Let's pray.
[00:02:19] Jesus, this is your Word. We're here for you this morning, nothing else.
[00:02:25] And Jesus, if there are my opinions in this sermon, let us notice them and throw them away. We do not need my opinions today.
[00:02:32] But if there's anything that's consistent with your character and faithful to your word, Jesus, would you plant it like a seed in our hearts that it would grow and we would become like you?
[00:02:41] We're here for you, Jesus.
[00:02:43] Every crown we lay down at your feet because you are the one who's worthy. We love you.
[00:02:48] Amen.
[00:02:51] So last fall I was hunting. I was elk hunting over in the Bighorns. I did not have a very successful season last fall, but I was elk hunting over in the Bighorns and I was by myself.
[00:03:02] And I really like hunting by myself. I do it quite a bit. There's something about it just being you in the mountain or you in the prairie, you know, just being fully immersed. But if you've spent any amount of time in the woods or in the wilderness, you know, sometimes weird stuff happens in the wilderness, and it's weirder when you're by yourself.
[00:03:22] So I was hunting by myself, and I am up on this kind of rocky outcropping, this knob, and I've got my binoculars out and I'm glassing down into this open area. It's last light. I haven't seen anything. Don't have have a lot of hope. But I'm glassing down, hoping to find something moving along the edge that's going to come out and feed into this opening. So I'll know where it is in the morning, right? And yeah, I'm just. Honestly, I'm not paying that much attention, just glassing around. I look down and out of the willows in the middle of this opening, a big bull moose comes out. Now, unfortunately, I don't have a moose tag and almost no one does, but I was just watching it. There weren't any elk, so I was like, all right, this is cool. I'll at least watch this giant bull moose. And as I'm watching him, I start to notice something. It's that he's acting pretty agitated. He does not seem like he's in a good mood. I mean, he's kind of like raking brush with his antlers and kind of stomping around. And I mean, just, you know, if you watch animals long enough, you can tell when they're not acting normal. And he wasn't acting normal. And, you know, if you've once again spent any time, especially in the bighorns, you know that really, the last animal you want to see angry by yourself is a moose. They're one of the most dangerous animals.
[00:04:31] But I'm 1,000 yards, 800 yards away, and I'm way up high over him. So I don't worry that much about it. I'm just enjoying watching this moose just glassing down in here and watching him rake the brush and stuff. It's cool.
[00:04:44] And all of a sudden, I hear what would best be described as a ruckus coming from the woods about 100 yards or so to my left.
[00:04:56] And when I say ruckus, I mean something big making lots of noise. All right? If you're a hunter, everybody's been fooled by a squirrel that you thought was a deer at least once. But sometimes you hear something and you just know that's big. Like, that is a large animal walking through the trees. And that's what this was. It wasn't like twigs snapping. It was rocks rolling down the hillside. It was like branches getting shaken around. I mean, clearly, this was a loud and loud noise. And. And my first thought was, oh, my gosh, there's another bull moose up here. That's why this one's mad. And I am sort of right in between them, which is not a great place to be.
[00:05:37] Now, wisdom would have said move, but curiosity said, keep watching.
[00:05:44] So I was curious. It's actually the same reason why you date that person in college with all the red flags, you know, it's like, I'm curious. I mean, so I stayed, and I just. I'm listening, and I'm watching, and I'm listening. And here's the thing. This will seem weird if you're not a hunter, but if you're a hunter, you'll get this. There's a way that an animal with four legs walks, and if you pay attention to the way they step, you can usually tell that it's got four legs.
[00:06:11] This seems weird, but they almost walk in triplets. It's like, if it's a bigger animal, it's slower triplets. But it's just something about four legs and the way they step. It sounds like, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. You know?
[00:06:28] And I didn't hear that sound.
[00:06:30] You'll also know if you're a hunter, that there's a way a human sounds in the woods. We do not walk very delicately. We tend to clomp through the woods. And if you hear that, if you hear 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, that's something with two legs, not something with four legs. I'm listening, and what I hear alone, staring at an angry bull moose 200 yards away from me is, And I'm thinking, yep, I should leave. But I didn't.
[00:07:06] I stayed, and I just grabbed my binos because I'm like, whatever's over here is more interesting than this moose. I grab my binos and I'm just looking into the trees to try to catch any piece of movement that I can. Which is super wise, right? To have your face in binos when there's potentially a bear or something. And this is what I start to realize. This is either a very large bear or it's a human that isn't trying to be quiet, which means that's not a hunter, which is probably the scariest thing you can encounter in the woods is us.
[00:07:34] So I'm getting real nervous, but I'm watching.
[00:07:38] Stuff starts to shake.
[00:07:40] Can hear it getting closer, watching through my binos, and all of a sudden my binos get filled. I mean, this thing's close, 20, 15 yards away. Absolutely should have taken my binos down. Didn't Long brown, shaggy fur, like the chest of an elk. You know what I mean? Like what their chest and shoulders looks like. Like that fills my binos. I can't see anything else. I'm looking into this gap in the trees and it's filled with. With just brown shaggy hair.
[00:08:11] And I look up, still brown shaggy hair.
[00:08:18] I look up again and listen. You're not going to believe me, but listen. This thing was seven and a half feet tall if it was an inch. I look up and aviator sunglasses, a mullet smacking a can of Copenhagen. There's a Sasquatch staring at me and it looks at me and says, you seen anything?
[00:08:39] Anyway, I got a new rug.
[00:08:44] So it's in my office if you want to see it later.
[00:08:49] Now, if you're thinking cj, you made that story up good. I'm glad. I'm glad you're thinking that because I did. I made that story up. That is not true. I am actually. I don't believe in Bigfoot. I know there are some of you that are die hard believers. We'll talk about it after. Just let it go for now. We'll talk about it after. I'm not a believer. There's too many people hunting with hounds. Too many trail cameras. We would have spotted him by now.
[00:09:11] But I don't believe in Bigfoot.
[00:09:13] But here's why I tell you a made up, ridiculous story in the beginning of a sermon, because it's easy to miss just how crazy our beliefs are.
[00:09:25] What we believe as Christians is much closer to believing in Bigfoot than we would like to think it is.
[00:09:36] Now, just to catch you up, in case you're not following what we believe, if you're a Christian, this is what you believe. You believe that approximately 2,000 years ago there was a guy in his early 30s from a town with a bad reputation, a middle of nowhere backwater town with a bad reputation in the Middle east, that this guy claimed to be God.
[00:09:57] And was that he? Then he called his shot. He said to everyone, I will die and rise again. And homie called bank. And mated. He died and rose again.
[00:10:11] And through his death, our sins are forgiven and we are reconciled to God. That's kind of a wild thing to believe. All right. That I don't know if you've noticed or not. Usually people stay dead.
[00:10:23] Most of the time, people stay dead.
[00:10:26] If you would like to know what we as a culture do when someone claims to be God, I would recommend that you just Google later. Florida man claims to be God.
[00:10:35] And you'll find out because that article is going to be about an asylum or methamphetamines. Those are the two options. We don't generally take it seriously when someone says, hey, I'm God.
[00:10:45] And we don't generally believe stories when someone says, I came back from the dead or you came back from the dead. And that's normal. It's rational to not believe that people come back from the dead. Now, I'm not here this morning to convince you not to believe in Jesus. I am 100% completely convinced that Jesus is God. He died and rose again and that all of our faith and hope and trust rests and is anchored in him for now and for eternity. I'm completely convinced of that. But I just want to see if you've noticed how crazy the thing we believe is.
[00:11:18] Because I think these verses that we read, if you grew up in church, or even if your Instagram or YouTube algorithm is showing you a whole bunch of the street evangelists that are super popular right now. You've heard these verses before.
[00:11:31] Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord. Believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead and you will be saved. That seems easy. That seems just like, sure, thumbs up, you know? In fact, every year, like almost half of Americans check that box. Or every time we do a census, almost half of Americans check the box that says they believe that.
[00:11:49] And if you think about it, Jesus is Lord. Alright, confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord. That's not hard to do. Today, you scroll your social media, Instagram, Facebook, you're going to find a million posts, reshares, you know, you're going to find someone if you want God to forgive you. Re share this to eight different people. Which is not how it works, by the way. Also, the devil won't curse you if you don't send the picture of Jesus to your friends. That's not how it works either, but you'll find that on Instagram.
[00:12:14] You'll find it in people's bios. You drive around town, you'll see a bumper sticker or T shirts. There's probably people here today with T shirts that say stuff like Jesus is Lord or Jesus is King, things like that.
[00:12:24] It's pretty normal. It's not terribly radical right now in our world to say something like, Jesus is Lord and God raised him from the dead.
[00:12:32] Probably most of us at least have a friend or family member that's believed that our whole lives. Even if you don't believe it, you probably know someone that's real convinced to the point that it just doesn't seem that wild of a thing to believe. Yeah. Oh, yeah, Grandma believed that. Dad believed that. I mean, sure, yeah, I believe that. Great. Yep. Or, yeah, I mean, I was confirmed when I was 10 or 11. You know, like, I did all this stuff. I don't think about it very. I mean, you know, like, I don't go to church real often, but, yeah, I believe that. Sure. Yeah, I believe Jesus. Jesus is Lord. God raised him from the dead. Great.
[00:13:02] I think we believe it kind of the same way we believe, like, the Dodgers are a baseball team and Thailand is a country. Like, we believe that. It's true.
[00:13:12] We just don't think about it very often.
[00:13:15] Make sense.
[00:13:16] We'd say, yeah, sure, yes, yeah, those exist.
[00:13:20] If you don't remember the last time I thought about the Dodgers besides right now. But they exist, right?
[00:13:28] That's kind of how we think about this faith. Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. I believe that.
[00:13:32] In fact, if I were a betting person, I would go so far as to say there are people here today who don't believe in Jesus.
[00:13:41] Not because you find the resurrection implausible, but because you've met a whole lot of people who claim to believe this, but it just doesn't seem to matter to them.
[00:13:52] Claim to trust Jesus to follow him, but they don't really seem to care. And you think, why would I believe it if you don't even care?
[00:14:01] Why would I give my life to a Lord if you never even talk about him?
[00:14:07] Here's the evidence. We all know someone, and if we're honest. Let's not be judgy here. If we're honest, then we've all been this person, but we all know someone that would say, yes, I'm a Christian. They would claim to follow Jesus. They would say, yeah, I believe this, but they will gladly scream at a ref in a third grade soccer game.
[00:14:26] I've never done that before. I mean, also don't come to any soccer games I go to.
[00:14:34] We all know someone who's like, yeah, yeah, Christian, great. And they will say horrible things about somebody on the Internet but still believe this.
[00:14:41] They'll say, yeah, I'm a Christian. Yeah, I believe that, absolutely. But they will cuss you out in a heartbeat. Doesn't matter.
[00:14:46] People that are angry and bitter but say they believe this. People that would say, yeah, I believe this, but I'm not going to let it like affect who I sleep with or how much I drink or whether I party on the weekends or not. We all know people who say they believe Jesus is Lord, but if we're doing a life check, they haven't checked in with him to see if he approves of anything, to see if he's actually Lord in a while.
[00:15:10] We believe in him the same way we believe in the Dodgers. They exist.
[00:15:18] There's actually further evidence of this and I think you should do the research on your own. I don't think you should believe this just because I tell you so. I want you, later today, get out your phone and take a picture of this. I want you to type this into Google later and I want you to read the articles. Read Pew Research, read Barna, read Genuine Data. Don't just read some AI summary, go read the data.
[00:15:40] Type this into Google. Religious affiliation versus religious activity in the 21st century USA. Here's what you're going to find. Now I want you to go fact check me because you shouldn't believe it just because I say it. But here's what you're going to find. What you're going to find is that a lot of Christians will check the box on a census that says I am a Christian. A lot of Americans will, in a survey will say, yes, I'm a Christian.
[00:16:05] Around half of us, actually that number has been declining for the last 40 years or so, but it's still somewhere around half.
[00:16:13] Now if you then look at the research on religious activity, practice things like church attendance, Bible reading, prayer, generosity, forgiveness, et cetera, what you find is that there is a huge disparity, there is a large gap between those of us who would say, sure, I believe that versus those of us that it has had any effect on our lives whatsoever.
[00:16:36] Now, I'm not saying that to make Anybody feel guilty?
[00:16:38] I'm saying that to say that I think we in general have a tendency to not notice how radical the thing that we believe is. I think a lot of us have missed the fact that we believe Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead. I think we see that as something that goes on a T shirt, not as a radical universe altering statement. Because here's the thing and we have to understand this. We have to understand this. A belief that isn't radical will not gain your allegiance. It won't gain your allegiance and it won't give you hope. A belief that's not radical won't gain your allegiance and it won't give you hope. Here's the proof. Do you have a friend that does not believe in Bigfoot but will stay up until 3am telling you why they don't believe in Bigfoot?
[00:17:26] No one does. But we all have a friend. We all have one friend that does believe in Bigfoot. And they are just ready. They've got a sermon ready, they've got five points and a call to action and they're just waiting for some sucker to say Sasquatch around them. And they're unloading. Right? We all know that person, but we don't know someone who's the same level of passion for not believing it. Why? Because Bigfoot's pretty radical. That's a radical thing to believe in. If you're going to believe in it, you got to have some skin in the game. You better be able to justify why you believe that thing. Because it's a radical thing to believe.
[00:17:57] Going to believe something radical, it's going to have some allegiance. But if what you believe isn't radical, it's not going to gain your allegiance.
[00:18:06] If you don't see how radical what we believe is, it's not going to gain your allegiance. It's not going to have your loyalty.
[00:18:13] And the most important part of that is that it's not going to give you hope.
[00:18:18] It's not.
[00:18:20] Look, I'm not trying to be a bummer. I'm not trying to rain on your parade. If you believe in God because everybody else does and you're supposed to, that belief is not going to get you through the divorce or the bankruptcy or the depression. It's not going to do it. If you believe in God because you always have.
[00:18:39] Jesus loves you, he forgives you. I'm not saying you're not going to heaven. I'm just saying that hope is not going to be strong enough to get you through the Cancer diagnosis.
[00:18:50] It's not going to be strong enough because it's not radical.
[00:18:53] You haven't seen how crazy this thing that we believe is.
[00:18:57] And it won't give you hope.
[00:19:00] The hope will be as strong as the belief is radical.
[00:19:07] You know, I meet a lot of people who say stuff like, yeah, I tried the church thing. It just didn't work for me.
[00:19:12] Normally what they mean is they tried checking the box. Sure, I believe that.
[00:19:17] But they didn't try the radical belief that Jesus is king, he's Lord, and he defeated death.
[00:19:26] They tried checking the box to see if it would help, and it didn't because it wasn't strong enough.
[00:19:36] Here's the thing, Paul. The guy who wrote the book of Romans isn't giving us something to put on a T shirt here. He's not giving us a platitude.
[00:19:44] When he said Jesus is Lord, he was writing to Romans, Roman citizens in the city of Rome. Rome was the capital of the Roman Empire, the most powerful and one of the most violent empires in human history.
[00:19:56] They inflicted peace with a sword and they conquered with violence. That's how Rome worked. And in Rome, they had a habit of saying someone was Lord. They would regularly say, someone is Lord. They would say, caesar is Lord. Now the thing is, Caesar didn't care who you worshiped, really. Caesar would let you go to church anywhere you wanted. You could be part of any religion, but you could only have one Lord.
[00:20:18] Caesar did not share loyalty with anyone. In fact, he made it a point of destroying his enemies and people who weren't loyal to him. Christians didn't get sent into the to get eaten by lions. They didn't get sent to the Coliseum. They didn't get set on fire under Nero's rule because they were nice people who posted JesusIsLord.
[00:20:39] They didn't get fed to lions because they wore a T shirt one day? No, they got fed to lions because they were so deeply convinced that Jesus is Lord, that Jesus is king, that he's the only authority that matters, that he is the ultimate, glorious, powerful king who died for our sins to reconcile us to God so that we could have hope now and forever. They were so deeply convinced of that that they would not bow their knee to any other Lord. So they would say, jesus is Lord, Caesar is not. What happens, happens. They were willing to face whatever fate because they were so convinced by this deeply radical, treasonous belief that Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not. And the Jewish leaders, the Jewish leaders, when they found out someone said Jesus is Lord, that meant that their rules and their regulations and their legal systems didn't have any power anymore. So you know what they did? They went around hunting believers, people who said Jesus is Lord. And they were putting them in jail, they were imprisoning them and persecuting them and flogging them in the streets. In other words, when they said Jesus is Lord, it was a radical, radical, world altering, future changing belief. They were declaring something, they were planting a flag in something. They were saying, this is what I believe and nothing else. This is who my knee bows to and no one else. Jesus is Lord.
[00:21:54] And when they said God raised him from the dead, the Romans were good at a few things.
[00:22:00] One of the things they were good at was killing people.
[00:22:03] They usually got it right on the first try. They didn't usually have to kill somebody twice. In fact, the Romans would execute people who were rebels and they would crucify them. You remember what happened to Jesus, right? He was crucified. They would crucify rebels and they'd hang the rebels as they were dying. Not just their bodies, they would hang them up outside of town while they were dying so that everyone who walks the streets sees what happens to someone who rebels against Rome. They used rebels to make a point. They crucified Jesus and hung his body up for everybody to see. But do you see what happens if he actually rose from the dead? Do you see how that means the most powerful empire on earth wasn't more powerful than Jesus?
[00:22:38] Do you see it? Do you see that? If he rose from the dead, that means Rome doesn't have any power to inflict any fear because the thing they can do, Jesus can undo. Amen. Do you see it? Do you see how if Jesus actually rose from the dead, then the enemy we've had since the beginning of time, death actually doesn't have any authority over us because we might die, but we will rise again. If Christ rose again because we are in him, part of his kingdom, washed in his blood and reconciled to God, we have hope now and forever. Do you see it?
[00:23:08] What I'm trying to tell you is that if Jesus actually rose from the dead, that everything is different.
[00:23:14] Everything is different. Every facet of life is different. If he rose from the dead, then the normal functions of the universe don't apply anymore. The miraculous can happen. Things can change. Because death, that is so far undefeated, was defeated in Jesus.
[00:23:34] That's why we have this series. That's why we have this flag right here that says, while I breathe, I hope. Because if Jesus actually rose from the dead, that if you're breathing, you're hoping if Jesus actually rose from the dead, that if you're still alive, there's still hope for whatever it is that feels hopeless. If he actually rose from the dead, keep praying for your child that's been drifting away for 15 years, that's in drugs and addiction. Keep praying. Because while we're breathing, we're hoping if Jesus is actually. If he actually rose from the dead. Keep fighting for your marriage. Because while we're breathing, we're hoping if Jesus is actually. If he actually came back from the dead, then there's hope for your addiction, there's hope for your finances, there's hope for your family, there's hope for our country, there's hope for our city. If Jesus actually rose from the dead, then we don't have to just deal with the suicide rates in Wyoming. We can do something about it. Because while we breathe, we hope. Amen.
[00:24:25] While we breathe, we hope.
[00:24:28] That is a flag that we can fly. That's a banner we can wave. That's a radical belief. That's the kind of belief that causes somebody to stand for something. And that's what Paul was asking us to believe, that he is Lord and that God raised him from the dead.
[00:24:44] While we breathe, we hope.
[00:24:52] I asked Mr. And Mrs. Kissick if I could tell this story in this sermon today.
[00:24:59] As some of you know, Bart and Kathy Kissack and the Kissack family, they've been in Gillette for a long time and part of New Life for a long time.
[00:25:08] Some of you, a lot of you will know the name Nate Kissack.
[00:25:11] Some of you will know it from the LBAR7 clothing brand that raised money and awareness for people fighting cancer. Some of you will know the slogan victors, not victims, and the relentless optimism that Nate carried through life.
[00:25:29] But you might not know the story.
[00:25:35] You might know the name from the funeral.
[00:25:41] Nick grew up here with his family at New Life in this church.
[00:25:47] And like many of us, he prayed the salvation prayer when he was very young. His mom, after church one Sunday, prayed the prayer with him to give his life to Jesus.
[00:25:56] And as once again, happens to many of us, as he got to high school and graduation and began to drift away from his faith, other things began to take priority.
[00:26:06] Questions, doubts, et cetera.
[00:26:10] And about eight years ago, he was diagnosed with cancer for the first time.
[00:26:20] Now, listen, for some of us who haven't been through something like that, we hear someone getting a diagnosis like that and getting angry at God, and we think, oh, how could you? But the Thing is, it's pretty normal. It's a pretty reasonable response when you get hit with something like that, to get angry.
[00:26:37] And Nathan did he beat cancer the first time.
[00:26:44] And we would say that's because a whole lot of people all over the country were praying for him. He might not have seen it that way. Well, we would say that.
[00:26:52] But it came back.
[00:26:55] He was diagnosed again.
[00:26:57] He beat it again. All while using his own story as leverage to help other survivors and other patients to raise money and raise awareness.
[00:27:10] I came back again.
[00:27:13] He beat it four times.
[00:27:17] Finally, about a year ago or so, he was diagnosed for the fifth time.
[00:27:25] And this time, the doctors told Nathan and told the family, look, we've done everything we can, and we'll keep doing everything we can. We'll do all the treatments, but it's not going to work this time.
[00:27:40] This is going to be it.
[00:27:44] And once again, as you can imagine, he got angry.
[00:27:48] Anyone facing news like that would respond that way.
[00:27:52] Didn't want to hear about God, didn't want to talk about it, didn't want to be around it.
[00:28:00] I will never forget the Monday that Mr. Kissack came by my office, and we were just talking about one more time to share the gospel with Nathan. And what we realized is that there's no magic words.
[00:28:17] He knew it. He had heard it.
[00:28:20] There was no way we were going to convince him.
[00:28:24] No way anybody could.
[00:28:27] So we decided. His family decided to continue doing what they'd been doing for a long time. There were a few of us who fasted and prayed, not just for healing this time, but for the Holy Spirit to soften Nathan's heart so that he could receive the hope of Jesus before it was too late.
[00:28:53] Later that week, they called in the family, the last moments where he could interact before he was intubated.
[00:29:04] Families rushing in. And the first family member there was his brother Levi.
[00:29:09] Levi had been texting with Nathan the whole way there. Everyone's trying to get their family as they can, and Nate couldn't really speak at that time, from what I've been told.
[00:29:22] But Nathan was texting and talking back and forth with him hours, hours before he was intubated and wouldn't speak anymore.
[00:29:35] Nathan's brother Levi led him to Jesus again.
[00:29:48] And Mr. And Mrs. Kissack received the gift of being able to see their son and to hear him or read the text messages that said this young man who had struggled with anger and questions and been battling cancer, to say, after giving his life to Christ, I am finally at peace.
[00:30:11] What I'm trying to tell you is that while we breathe, we hope that while we breathe, we hope.
[00:30:24] If Jesus actually came back from the dead. Look, it's a crazy thing to believe, but if he actually came back from the dead, then we will always, always, always hope. We will rage against the darkness. We will stand against the power of sin. We will combat the lies of the enemy with everything that we can. We will fight with our words, and we will fight on our knees, because this is a flag we can stand for. Because Jesus actually came back from the dead. If he actually rose, everything is different. And that means if you're breathing, you're hoping. And if you're in Christ, when you stop breathing, you're not hoping anymore, because you now experience the fulfillment of your hope. And you see the Son of God welcoming you in the thing you've been longing for, fulfilled in the presence of God. If we're breathing, we're hoping. Keep praying, keep believing. Never, never, never give up. Because if he actually came back from the dead, then we can always hope.
[00:31:30] This is what I want to ask you to do. As we close, maybe you're here this morning and you're a believer, and you've realized that you've been treating your faith like a rabbit's foot.
[00:31:41] You've been hoping that it gets you into heaven.
[00:31:43] You've been missing how radical this thing is that we believe.
[00:31:48] You've said, oh, yeah, I believe that. But you haven't really allowed it to change your life. Maybe not very much.
[00:31:55] You haven't really considered the fact that if he's king, he's in charge and that means our knee bows to him. Maybe you haven't really considered the fact that if he came back from the dead, everything is different and we better follow his teaching because he's the only one who ever defeated death.
[00:32:11] Maybe you're finally ready to say, you know what? I'm all in.
[00:32:14] I'm not holding back. I am in for the hope, because I see how radical this belief is. If you're here today and you're a believer and you're saying, you know what? I haven't been taking it as seriously as I need to, but if it's this radical of a belief, then I'll radically commit. I'm all in. If that's you, I want you to stand up right now. Stand up right now.
[00:32:33] Yeah.
[00:32:36] Praise the Lord.
[00:32:38] Praise the Lord. It's worth our allegiance. It's radical enough to be worth our allegiance. It's radical enough to be worth everything he gave. Everything.
[00:32:48] What could we hold back now.
[00:32:51] I want to ask everybody to stand with me as we prepare to close.
[00:32:57] Maybe you're here today and you have not given your life to Jesus.
[00:33:03] You have yet to decide to follow Jesus.
[00:33:06] And maybe today you're ready to say, you know what? If that hope is real, I want it.
[00:33:11] If that hope is, I want it.
[00:33:16] Maybe you're ready to say that you are saved by putting your faith. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from the dead, then you are saved. There's no magic words. You're not saved by praying a prayer. You're saved by putting your faith in Jesus, in his death and resurrection.
[00:33:35] But for many of us, it's helpful to have a moment that we can say. That's when I decided. For many of us, it's helpful to have a prayer that we can pray that helps us put into words the decision that we make now at New Life. We never ask anybody to pray that prayer alone.
[00:33:48] So if you're ready to give your life to Jesus, then I want to ask you to pray this prayer after me. I want you to ask you just to repeat after me, but say it to Jesus, not to me. But I'm going to ask everybody in this room to pray it together, because nobody should declare their hope alone. So everybody in the room, let's pray. Jesus, you are Lord.
[00:34:09] I believe that God raised you from the dead.
[00:34:15] I have sinned.
[00:34:17] Your death paid the price for my sin.
[00:34:22] You gave us your life, so I give you mine.
[00:34:29] Amen.
[00:34:31] If you just prayed that prayer, and I mean it wasn't the words that saved you, but if you prayed that prayer, and you were declaring it from your heart, you meant it, you are today deciding to put your faith in Jesus, then everything has changed. Everything has changed. Everything has changed. Your eternity has changed. Your hope has changed. You now have change. You now have hope that no one and nothing can ever take away.
[00:34:52] So this is. This is what I'm gonna ask you to do. There are cards around you. You might have sat on them. Those cards say, I've decided to follow Jesus. I want you to grab one of those cards right now. We ask everybody who decides to follow Jesus to fill out a card. Not because we need you to fill out the card, but because filling out that card allows us to follow up with you and help you on this new journey. To help you become who God's created you to be. To help you in your new hope of following Jesus. We want to make sure you have everything you need to begin this new journey. So what I'm going to ask you to do is to fill out that card and while we're worshiping I want to invite you to bring that card up here to the stage where there are tables on each side of the balcony that you can bring the card to and put them there. And then we have these little flags. These flags say while I breathe, I hope. What I want you to do is to come up and drop off that card and pick up one of these flags because we want to give you something to remember the day that you gained a hope that no one and nothing can ever take away. So as we're worshiping, fill out that card and then come up and drop off the card and take a flag. And if you're not coming forward then you know what to do. When you see somebody come forward forward, you clap and you cheer like eternity changed because eternity actually did. Amen.
