20 Year Anniversary

[Music] well happy anniversary everybody so good to see you today and i want to just take a moment like i always do and look into that camera and say to every campus every location we are one church that has the privilege of meeting in 23 locations all across our region i got up early this morning like i do every day and prayed for you and your campus pastor and your leadership teams there and just love you so much i'm going to give a special shout out to today to the men and women in the alabama department of corrections one of the greatest parts of the story is how we've been able to bring who we are as a church into those facilities and i just want you to know from the bottom of my heart that we love you you are our church family we're so glad that you're with us yeah if you feel like clapping and then of course a bunch of you are still watching at home wherever you are we hope you're safe and sound and for wherever you are around the world thank you for joining us for this very special celebration have so much i want to share with you but before that let me just tell you what we're going after today and that is next sunday we're starting a brand new series like we always do in the month of february around the topic of relationships and this year we're calling it family values i truly believe that one of the things that america needs more than ever is a return back to godly values can i hear a good amen and so we're going to let the one who designed them to find them and uh and so that's starting next week february 14th men write that date down that is very important for you to know i just helped you out a whole lot all right so make sure you're aware of that day today we are celebrating our 20th anniversary and i want to show you a little video that we our team i see a little video they worked for uh probably more than six weeks our amazing video team literally threw the night to get it done for today uh just a history of these 20 years he said pc why would he why do we do that the bible teaches us to be careful and watch yourselves closely so that you say the next three words out so that you so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live in fact teach them to your children tell the stories over and over and over and over and over tell the story so that you can thank god and keep the values that got us to this place my grandmother on my on my dad's side was was probably my favorite grandparent i loved them all but i used to love to go to her house and she loved to tell stories she told stories about how they washed their clothes in a pot of boiling water over an open fire and her values just come through every mama tell me that story i want to hear that again that story today we're going to do that we have a little history video to show you how we got to this place and when it's done i want you to just give get jesus all the praise and all the honor amen everybody take a look [Music] well it really all began in 1999 when i literally had the worst year of my life i went straight to my pastor after the time of prayer and fasting and i shared my discontent and my depression and said but i really think the lord wants to do something and i don't know what it is and he said it's chris is because god's called you to be a senior pastor and he will give you supernatural love for a city so tammy and i loaded up the van with all the kids took our two-week vacation and literally went to eight cities the last one was birmingham because we had intended on attending the southeastern conference baseball tournament and was just really just thinking what a beautiful city and i was just enjoying the view from that little outdoor cafe looking down over the six lanes of highway 280 and i'm telling you as loud as i'm speaking right now i heard the spirit of god say you're gonna pastor some of the people down in that traffic jam you know sometimes when you get somewhere you forget where you were and what it took to get you to this point and now there are so many people that are here that never knew where it was 20 years ago there weren't any books about church planting there wasn't any money for church planting but one of the exciting and scary parts of the beginning was what we didn't know and now looking back you can see the hand of god because i know what i knew about all of this and what i didn't know and where we are isn't because of what i know it's because of what god did [Music] pastor chris used to be my youth pastor and we were so excited for them the vision that he and tammy had to move from baton rouge to birmingham and pastor chris made a statement i'll never forget he said someday i'd love to have somebody like you helped me start our student ministries and most importantly start a ministry school that would put young leaders into full-time ministry within a night or two i couldn't sleep i was thinking about dreaming about having visions about a city i'd never been to we just knew that that's what we were supposed to do what i did every day was recruit recruit recruit and asked as many of them as could to come to birmingham and help us start a ministry school that would become highlands college we called it 24 7. pastor john and i we were roommates in colorado springs and we both agreed to come help start it up the reason i came to birmingham was that i was i had the chance to get in the game i had the chance to not only learn about doing ministry but to actually do it everyone did everything it's also what made it so much fun i was like i was at disney world having so much fun so the first sunday we had 400 people the worship was kind of crazy for us i'd been raised very very traditional and they're clapping i was like we don't clap in church like what are we doing the presence of god was just amazing before go and i was like and we're going to a high school yeah i do remember the feeling of like is this thing really gonna last like this is all portable and it felt like okay like i'm not sure if this thing's like you know gonna work but then like you'd go in the auditorium you would serve and see people just loving every minute of it and then throughout the summer i just started training leaders and building what we would know now as the dream team i joined the setup team which was like i don't know four o'clock in the morning i remember pastor steve blair distinctly you know wearing a backpack vacuum cleaner and and just being a part of that before the sun even came up we arrived one morning and there was a big dumpster in the roundabout and we were like what are we gonna do and this this guy just gets his jeep and he wraps a chain around the dumpster and drags it out of the parking lot and then after service drags it back and i actually think he burned up his transmission doing it but there was this there was this can-do attitude after setup i would go and lead worship we all know what an alabama summer's like though so i'd be like in mountain brook high school's restrooms like doing a sponge bath you know trying to get all the sweat and then get get a jacket on or something like that and go out and lead worship so it was just a blast you know the visual of somebody raising their hand at the end of every service it was hard work but it was worth every minute of it and so we really didn't have a place to meet between sundays at all one of our very first members offered their home as a place to have wednesday night leadership training meetings i had no idea it was going to turn into our wednesday night service you know first time there's maybe 30 people and then 75 people we'd move all of their furniture out i think we could get about a hundred plastic chairs in their living room and their foyer pastor chris would be kind of in a corner and he'd have his keyboard out you know and he'd be playing and then you know somebody kind of get a little excited and they start like moving maybe even dance a little bit you know just a little bit and you'd feel like the living room floor like bounce up and down the floor began to move so we realized we have outgrown the sorel's house went into the eagle point clubhouse for several months outgrew that we moved into the greystone office complex and the momentum was still there he'd go okay now turn to john and now turn to axe and you could just hear the pages you just you heard the the the diving into the word it was revival it was evident it was obvious that something was happening it was something that god was doing and it was supernatural and people's lives were being changed and they were encountering the presence of god i could remember the first time i came and spoke here it was on a wednesday night down at the office we did two services which i've never done that before it was packed couldn't even move around because there were people sitting at my feet people would show up at five you know 5 30 you're late you're not even gonna get a seat in the room the place was always covered up standing room only and such a feeling of excitement that atmosphere in that room was just um amazing pastor chris began to teach on the holy spirit and something just took place it was like a rocket launch there was an engagement level that was fundamentally different from anything we had ever experienced it got to the place to where on wednesday nights there would be people that were tailgating in the parking lot to eat and wait for the doors to open and it was revival like i've never seen it sparked something supernatural it was just unbelievable what was happening every wednesday night and every sunday no one was talking multi-site back in the early 2000s but what happened was there was a church in town a pastor tragically died of a heart attack and his widow called just a couple of weeks after the funeral and said hey we'd like you to take our church and i thought she meant leave highlands and come be the pastor of this church and i said well susan i already have a church i can't do that she goes no no just adopt us we'll give you our facility but we'd like to join highlands and that's where our second campus that's how it began we were just wondering this this concept sounds cool would this actually work to gather an entire group of people in a separate venue put a message on a screen have a team there locally that led all the other parts of the service and could something like that actually grow could something like that actually work oh i was almost convinced that no one was gonna show up to watch me on a screen this is a really a stretch but you know what we were given this facility and so it only took us about three months to get it ready as a video venue and 780 people showed up when we first started my wife she would come here and get the dvd pastor hayes kirby would would run it down to her and she would take it he'd be like hey don't speed but get there fast you know and she would take it to riverchase so that we'd have a copy how about the one time they forgot to send the dvd and i found out about it during literally it was it was during meet and greet and i looked up and in the booth they were like we don't we don't have we don't have the message i literally ran out from office and i had a i had some messages i preached as a youth pastor because i was still pretty fresh to highlands at the time and i threw the folder down and messages went everywhere and i sifted through the messages and i found one and i ran back down to the room just as meet and greet was ending ran right up on the stage and preached that sunday so to say that our method was archaic it was our cake we literally we drove a dvd we drove a dvd we weren't even thinking multiple locations we were thinking one location in fact the original dream was to build a 6 000 seat auditorium because that was my model up to that point and so we were looking for a lot of land and we found the 128 acres here on grant's mill next thing you know grant's mill is born and that was a an important part of the journey this is a day that we as a church have looked forward to for so long i can't hardly even believe that i'm standing here doing this right now it was a moment of our church that people have been anticipating and it was so cool just to look around and see the stadium's seats full mr bob pastor chris's father was there i remember seeing the smile on his face knowing how hard he worked and how many years he prayed dad was all up in that and just to the point where when the time came we did find that land that we could just make that purchase i mean we had the money in the bank and i just couldn't believe it dad was making sure that not only was the church operating but it was operating with margin i remember going up to the second floor and looking down and i remember being aware that i couldn't see a sliver of carpet because there were just people everywhere i thought lord what are you doing our church would go from from 4 000 to 9 000 literally in a couple of months we had had so many things happen before we built the grants mill campus we had river chase we had campuses and other cities and when we got the building it just it accelerated all of that but really our identity had already been set we were portably minded we were going to reach communities outside of birmingham there was a hunger there was a passion but it was also i'm not going to settle for anything less i i want more of god and i want to bring as many people along with me as i can even though we're 20 years old some of the founding like ideas about church are happening every week this church was built on 21 days of prayer and fasting in january of 2001. we have had saturday morning prayer every weekend that we have had church for the 20 years of our history i love the fact there is an invitation to give your heart to the lord after every service and there has been for 20 years we started small groups when the church was six months old and it made us and it made it made our life so much easier because we didn't have to come up with it on our own my first time at switch seeing it grow from like 40 50 70 i remember the first time like there was more than 100 you know students here in this big box you just really felt like you were on the beginning of something that wasn't gonna stop we didn't know where it was gonna leave if you just showed us a picture of the motion conference at the bjcc it would have blown us away we just invested in what was right in front of us we've learned that on the other side of that can be some pretty spectacular things that we could have never anticipated dream centers prison ministries launching one campus at a time by being faithful to god in his calling and being faithful to stewarding the gifts that he's given us the vision and the mission has not changed at all at the end of the day the church doesn't exist for the people that are here it exists for the people that are not here yet therefore that has turned into outreach small groups first saturday serve serve day grow helping other churches do those same things and about the ark launching new life-giving churches the dream center really equips us with so many resources to be able to go out into our communities within the city of birmingham and i'm just beyond grateful to be a part of something so supernatural so purposeful and so special all i can say is look at what the lord's done we've seen people from all over the world come and learn how to love your neighbors right where they are and it's the most amazing ride i could have ever imagined in fact way beyond i could have ever imagined from the very first year of the church one of my deepest passions was to invest into young leaders still to this day i think the deepest calling in my life is what we're doing through highlands college it's been a vision that we would raise up leaders and those leaders could impact the world from right here in birmingham it's incredible i think we'll look back at our 40th anniversary and say it's our greatest legacy well i think when you get to 20 years old you can settle i think it's very easy to say look what we've done look around and just kind of enjoy the ride from here on out but i would want to remind our congregation and our church that that that we exist to reach people far from god just as much as we did when there was no one here and it's really not about being bigger there's not a single aspiration in my heart just to be bigger what wakes me up every day what makes me want to keep leading this organization with passion and excellence is that there are people far from god who just need some hope and need some life and need the gospel explained to them in a way where they go oh i get it and i think the thing that drives me more than anything else is people giving their life to jesus and spending eternity in heaven with him no matter how many years old we get i know that one thing will be consistent and that is the heartbeat of who we are methods will change but the mission never will once we find life we got to give life away and that life is jesus christ and it's been that way from day one we've been able to do this thing that so few could even dream of and it's just getting started you know how you get in your car and you know you're about to reset that trip odometer setting back to zero you're not really doing that right because i mean you have 20 years you've got the investment and god's been faithful and you've got people who've been around you all this time and but at the same time you got that excitement of just going and pushing that thing and that's how it feels right now god has just done some amazing things on this ride that we've been on so i can't wait to see what the next 20 years are going to look like what he has planned for us is something that we can't even imagine we will have a greater impact in the next 20 than we have ever had in the first 20. but i promise you god's got something in his heart and his mind that he wants to do that we're not planning right now and so we're getting older but i don't want to get older i want i want to be like a little child i want us to stay giddy about a person getting saved when someone lifts their hands and we clap i want it to be like we've never seen that before i think that's key i think as we get older let's not get older let's be more mature let's do more because we have more but let's keep the same innocence the same passion same excitement as we had when we began this 20 years ago come on anybody want to give jesus praise one more time yeah stand on your feet give god all the praise oh you deserve it lord pretty awesome pretty awesome please be seated so you can't have a proper celebration if a cajun is the pastor unless there's some food can i get an amen everybody so uh this is what you get when you get a guy from louisiana you get cookies on your way out that say 20th anniversary so that's out there for you just as a way to celebrate and then we just finished this series called my church jesus said i will build my church so we decided to get all of you a commemorative t-shirt that just says i love my church so there you go so grab one of those on your way out as well i want to take a moment uh we did a more i i would say more of an informal celebration on wednesday night if you wanted to hear my wife speak you want to see my kids who i honored uh you want to hear from all five of our overseers that was on wednesday night more of a heartwarming type celebration we'd love you to go back and watch that it's archived on our website uh but but but i still want to take a moment before i get into this very short message and honor the original 34 people who launched this church i want to honor some of the first attenders who just poured heart and soul like robert and robin sorrell i want to honor our trustees our non-staff elders i want to honor our overseers i want to honor uh our staff especially our lead team but the 460 people now on staff who pour heart and soul into this eight days a week come on somebody i just really want to i really want to just thank god for them my family come on give them a good hand it's good it's good to honor people and so one of my fears not really a fear like in the wrong way but one of my fears is to wake up and we're just a normal church that we just forgot some things we just did we forgot where we came from we forgot who we are and i think one of the values of looking back and reminding ourselves of our values in this way is that you don't forget you tell the stories keep telling the stories and so i went through the scriptures it took me like two days i went through the scriptures and i looked up don't forget never forget those two phrases in literally 30 different translations of the bible it was so much fun i really enjoyed doing that and i feel like the lord put a message on my heart of some things that we can never forget i found over 12 i think it was 15 when i finished my my study of things you should never forget we don't have time for 15. let me give you three and that is i think we should never forget that we're not a great church we serve a great god amen everybody that's the first thing honestly when i think back of our story and when i tell the story of those who say how in the world does that happen and i really get that question from people who know me like how how did that happen you know they they know me better than you do and they're more amazed that all this happened like me and i always go back first to how the church really started and that is with 21 days of prayer we have a february birthday because we wanted the month of january to fast and pray to seek god because we knew i know to this day that um that this is we're not this good we're just we're we we know how to do some things we're not it's not like we're bad at this but we're not this good we're not we're not as good as people think we are we serve a great god who did all of this i know that and that's why i'm desperate to to to worship god i'm desperate to get up in the morning and seek god every day i'll do it out of my love for god but also do it out of the fact that i don't want to do this without him i pray a prayer on the side while the news is playing that five minutes of video news i'm drinking some water i have a little a little mint over there just kind of wet my my whistle because i you know you speak a lot i'm just over there kind of getting my game face on i've got a little sign over there that says it's a privilege to be on this stage thank you god for choosing me with my hand on it you can come look at it sometimes my hands on it i pray and say and here's my prayer please don't send me out there unless you come please please please don't make me go out there unless your presence comes with me and that's why all these years we've been seeking god studying his word we're going to continue to study his word my mind goes back to the summer of 2003 2004 when we were in that little office complex behind the lloyds behind the skates 280 what that was behind the lawyers i mean you could hardly find this little office front that we were renting 230 seats and people just during the summer not not during the the times that people normally come to church i'm talking about during vacation season packed out with people just hungry for god and all i was doing was teaching the power of god going verse by verse through the book of acts talking about the person of the holy spirit which by the way you're getting a book of acts and holy spirit series this year we're going after god just like we did all those years ago why because we need god you need god and i'll tell you you're not good enough to be a husband you're not good enough to be a wife you're not good enough i don't care how many degrees you have you need god in your job and with your family we need god deuteronomy says that when you when god your god ushers you into a land like you get success through your ancestors like you have all this success it says you're going to walk into large auditoriums filled with 60 000 people bustling cities you didn't build well furnished houses actually guess what you didn't you didn't you didn't buy that come up on wells you didn't dig vineyards and olive orchards you didn't plant in other words you didn't do this and when you take it all in the bible says and settle down pleased and content make sure you don't forget how you got there and so what do we do i'm asking you moving forward in the next 20 that let's continually seek god's presence over our own efforts can i hear a good amen everybody that's the first thing you just got to know that never forget never forget we need we need god in our life here's the second thing we can never forget and that is never forget that we take next steps spiritually and we help others do the same we are a next steps church in other words we're not an event church we're not a carve out an hour and 15 minutes on a sunday church we're not that no no we believe that god has great things for us we believe that god wants to do a work inside of you and i would love you to lean in here for a second and hear this he's not done with you yet either he still has more for you and a lot of people settle like well okay i'm saved got my fire insurance going to heaven no no the greatest joy of christianity is that your life can be changed and it can god can do this deep work on the inside of you so we believe in next steps and there's really two types of people here you're either taking next steps or you're helping others take those steps and i love the things that i love the most if you don't know what really it just warms my heart more than anything else life change life change just two sundays ago i was hanging out here about five minutes before the service pre-rolls play and people are visiting and all that and this guy from this section right over here walks over i saw him walking toward me and he was tatted from head to toe i mean his face neck arms everything everything was tatted he he had this he had this um look on his body like i was only imagining his story as he was walking toward me like you could see that he had had a rough journey but on this part of his face he looked as innocent as a little child his eyes were gleaming tears coming down his face the most beautiful smile i have seen honestly in a long time and just great you could see the gratitude and just the innocence on his face he said pastor chris i gave my life to jesus in one of the correctional facilities and this is my first sunday out and i just had to come meet you and please tell the church thank you thank you for coming into those facilities thank you for loving us it meant so much to us and not just crying and i'm just here to tell you he wants to do the same thing in you too there's more life change for you you call out to god guess what you call out to god for help and he'll help can we just stop there and thank god for that if you'll call out to god for help guess what he'll help and he's a good father that way but watch this next line it kind of transitions but don't forget there's the verses that made me find this this scripture don't forget he's also a responsible father and he won't let you get by with sloppy living so you can go to heaven being mean but guess what you don't have to be mean and you can go to heaven we know just just maybe not the best marriage but guess what you can have a better marriage and you know because all it takes is jesus to get to heaven but guess what god has more for you your life is a journey you must travel with a deep consciousness of god and i'm inviting you into that i'll never forget 20 years ago you know when you start something brand new it's very important for you to define what you're going to call success every organization family should do it what are we going to say to call it when is it successful how do you know when you cross the line and in the church world uh most celebrate attendance and offerings i call it nickels and noses and it's not enough we decided years ago that would never be our our measurement of success we were going to cause success when people are were moving from where they were to where god wanted them to be that we would define a journey a pathway we believe that god has great things for you so for 20 years we've said you can know god that's the first step and when we say no god we mean you can be in a relationship with him that christianity is not church attendance christianity is not your belief system christianity is not the fact that you own a bible and say a prayer christianity is when you're in a relationship with god not religion and then after you're in this relationship he'll take you through a down a pathway called freedom you can find freedom you can start working through those issues so that there's a better version of you and you can stay where you are or or you can say you know what my life would be better if these things would not be in my life and so i'm going to allow myself to get in a small group and to work through some things and by the way more than 4 100 small groups start today we've already added another thousand since last sunday and you can get a chance now to get in a group get in a group and start working through and get close to people and take off some masks watch the message from last week and then once you've done that we'd also invite you to get on our growth track so you can discover your purpose look in my eyes you have a purpose and it's not survival it's significance god has something for you just as much as he has for me you i am no more called than you were called i'm telling you this you have a call in your life and the two greatest days of your life are the day you were born and then the day you discovered why you were born and so we put together a growth track which by the way i'll have to confess over the years has become kind of efficient um but has lost some of its secret sauce and so we've had meetings for probably six months on how we were going to return our growth track back to its original field because years ago we used to have step one of the grow track our membership class had pork tenderloin and wedding cake can i get a better amen somebody so guess what tonight we're starting a brand new growth track we've re-recorded everything we've rewritten everything back to the original and there is food and dessert everybody so just like you might want to join the church all over again tonight i mean you might want to [Applause] but ultimately so that all of us can back get back to doing what we're called to do and that is make a difference make a difference make a difference and so for 20 years i've given you a challenge that literally tens of thousands of people have accepted this challenge and that is let me prove it to you so let me prove it to you if you doubt what i have just said that god has a better life for you let me prove it to you and i'm asking for a year and it won't even take that long but i'm asking give me a year and i'm asking you to go all in and and i'll and if if you come back a year if you come back on our 21st anniversary and your life isn't remarkably changed i'll go to another church with you i'll resign i'll go with you but i won't have to in fact people been asking me all week because they're they're feeling the you know the warm fuzzies and their life's been touched and so i've heard all week long what can we do for you what can we do for you is there something we could do for you like no no first of all it's not about me this is not about me this is about god this is not my church this is his church it's not about me so there's no no there's nothing you can do i i'm very well taken care of you know you know what i've changed my mind there is something you can do for me i thought of something everybody i have a gift i would like for you to give me for the 20th anniversary and that is go all in that honestly nothing would make me happier than you free i would love you to grab the passion of the people you saw in that video and get i'm asking for your time your money your ideas your values you just come pour your life into this like we all did and watch and then 20 years from now you'll be in the video yeah that's that's what i'm asking for i changed my mind the third thing i would like for us to never forget is that we don't go to church we are the church so we decided that we weren't going to be a place that okay i'm glad we were able to provide you a sunday okay that's what we do no no we don't just go to church that is that is a very small part of who we are we are the church we are the church we don't the church does not exist for us we are the church we exist for the world and we've been saying that for 20 years and that's why when 2020 happened um and i say this very humbly we were ready for it honestly and that's why in march of 2020 when other medical institutions we're still trying to figure out how to test people we were one of the first lines we 11 700 covet 19 tests at a church everybody where they were getting prayer and love and last year alone you served and you gave toward 1.4 million meals to families we did disaster relief in over 1200 different locations and homes where trees had fallen on their houses or they were hit by hurricane sally or the different things that happened in 2020 and i would just like to say that's what it's all about we weren't here just to have a place to sing three songs and hear the best messages of your entire life y'all didn't have to laugh that hard we were here to be mobilized energized get a mission on the inside of us to go out there and change the world and make a difference with our lives that's what we were created to do so don't forget the foreigner i love this verse i've never seen this verse before when i did my don't forget study don't forget the foreigner who's not a member don't stop now and say okay we have our church no no let's always forget the person who doesn't go here yet don't forget the member that's not a member of your people of israel but it's come from a far country and that's far meaning they got in their sin and they got in their life and they're looking for they're looking they're looking at you and wishing they could be apart people are going to be attracted here by your great reputation i mean that's the one that god only god could have done it your wonder working power who those who come to pray at this temple and that's why we need to continue to create have creative ways where we reach people with the gospel and and just keep building auditoriums so that we can have seats for those because it's not about us it's about those who are not here yet and one of the things that i want to honor you for is that over these past 20 years we've been able to organize ourselves in such a way where we do we always think take care of you first you give so that we take care of you but you don't give just for you you you like me we wanted to touch and change the world and i'm happy to let you know that just this year we have given over 100 million dollars away to missions over our 20 years church planning come on let's give god praise for that here's another don't forget verse i found you're christ's body that's who you are you're not seat number 12 on the third row back to this no no you're a part of the body you're we need you we need you like we needed those 34 or 20 years ago so you must never forget this that we function well without you but we'd function better with you like i cut a finger off and i could still i'll still wave and i'll still be able to hold things with four fingers but it would be better with you because you're a part of the body and only as you accept your part of this body does your part mean anything otherwise what happens is and i just don't want this to happen we fall into the consumerism trap had somebody say the other day his most ridiculous statement i'm looking for a church that meets my needs well i i i mean i understand a little bit of that but it's really that's not what it's all about that's spiritual consumerism we are not spiritual consumers we are spiritual contributors we're here to do something that makes a difference and i'm inviting you into it i'm inviting personally inviting you like i did the 34 people 20 years ago to take the next 20-year journey and here's my prayer here's my closing as it's another it's another don't forget verse by the way is there there's a bunch they're all they're great as you live this new life i pray that you church of the highlands stepping into the next season together or strengthened from god's boundless resources so that you will find yourselves able to pass through any experience and endure it with courage so we're still gonna have bad days but guess what we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna be we're gonna get through it for we must never forget this is why i do it that he rescued me from the power of darkness and reestablished me put me gave me a spot called church of the highlands can't believe it and he put me in the kingdom of light for it is by his son alone jesus gets all the praise that we have been redeemed and we've had our sins forgiven he didn't owe us this it didn't owe me anything he gave us this and we thank god for an amazing 20 years one more time would you show your love to god so for 20 years i've given people a chance to know god so i'm going to tell you with every head unbowed in every eye open this this is a chance for you to say it's time it's time not to go all in with the church that's that i'll invite you to that but to go all in with god it's time so let's go let's do it i mean why be a nominal christian why just get into heaven i'm inviting you to know him passionately like the kind of love that you would sit on the stage to hear the scriptures i'm inviting you to finally deal with that area of your life that just shouldn't be in your life and if it wasn't in your life your life would be so much better and to find out if you're a camera person or a guitar person or a children's church person or or you just have the best broom sweeping skills in the world find it let's go let's go and how about 20 years let's go make a difference and it begins with the first thing no god now close your eyes and i'm going to keep the service at every location normally i pass it to the campus pastors but we have a very special ending you don't want to miss and so if you're here today and you say chris i'm it's time i'm even talking to christians who just you just know you're not close to god like you need to be but you want to use this marker this day this 20th anniversary day to say this was the day i went all in with god i do want to pray for you and i am going to ask you to be bold by letting god know so i've said this for 20 years we're not going to make you stand up or come to the front of the room but you need to let god know don't be ashamed and if you want to be included in this prayer of commitment to god lift your hand right now at every location lift it high let's go let's go come on yeah there it is yes yes yes yes i know it's happening at the location it's all there it's just time it's just time good it's my favorite part of the service always has been and while all of us every voice pray it together let's join with them come on say it strong say jesus thank you for dying on the cross and paying for my sin thank you for forgiving me today i surrender my life come on say it strong everything i give my life to you i'm going all in change me save me forgive me and the best way i know how i'm going to serve you with everything in your name i pray amen you want to welcome the newest members come on to the body here it happened again come on give god all the praise

Channel: Church of the Highlands

Views: 3,288

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Chris Hodges, Church of the Highlands, COTH, Alabama, Religion, Christianity

Id: 0ltX60Ucvks

Length: 43min 45sec (2625 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 07 2021