Faith to Keep Fighting | Mark 5:25-34

what's up mercy hill hey mercy hill it is great to be with all of you today my name is clayton king can y'all practice some southern hospitality and say hey clayton and i wanted to first of all tell you i'm glad that i'm here unfortunately because of a little thing called covid the students were not able to come to crossroads summer camp but we decided to bring crossroads summer camp to mercy hill so that's what we did that's what we're doing just a little bit of background i met jd greer in the 1900s and we became the best of friends when i was a student at gardner-webb and he was a student at campbell campbell is where you go when you're not smart enough to get into gardner-webb y'all can tell him i said that and we've been really great friends ever since then and then recently i was able to connect with your church here at mercy hill was able to connect with ronald and ronald and i became really quick friends and then i bumped into pastor andrew at a common friend's house a mutual friend in the mountains of western north carolina next thing you know here we are and today has been a really great day at all of our campuses because you're here and i'm here and i'm ready to preach my son was able to come with me my 18 year old son jacob who just graduated from high school he came and preached earlier this week to the students here at mercy hill and i am very very proud of my son my wife shari and i have been married for 22 years and we have two teenage boys and they are 18 and 15 years old they are single and they are not ready to mingle so ladies stay away from my children at least for now wait until they have a job and so do you and then maybe we'll pre-arrange an old testament style marriage and skip all the drama for the mama okay i uh i live in anderson south carolina i'm 48 years old i was saved 35 years ago and 35 years ago while some of y'all are saying woo are you glad i'm 48 i appreciate that wow so the night that i gave my life to jesus i was on my knees praying to receive christ at a small little pentecostal church in greer south carolina i was an eighth grader god tricked me into going to that event that night i had never kissed a girl at age 14 and there was a girl in the youth group named barbara and barbara had written a letter to me to ask me if i wanted to go with her and she gave me a multiple choice test yes nowhere maybe please check the box and if you're a teenager here at mercy hill today letters are these things we used to use to communicate with each other on this stuff called paper paper is made out of trees and you can find it at the smithsonian museum of natural history in our nation's capital and that night i heard the gospel the holy spirit convicted me of my sin drew me to jesus and i was on my knees at the altar praying to receive christ when god called me to preach and now i'm a pastor in south carolina and my wife and i run crossroads summer camps that your students were signed up to come to and now i'm here so if you're okay with it we're going to dive in because i've got a limited amount of time to preach at mercy hill today i've got to finish in two and a half hours and i want to go ahead and get started don't don't you dare no i will i will go because i'm 93 baptist and 7 pentecostal and if you get me fired up we're gonna be in the book of mark mark chapter five let me ask you a question while you turn to mark chapter five the scriptures are gonna be up on the screens at your campus today but i wanna ask you a question and this is a rhetorical question so i don't expect you to actually answer this question but here it is what are you afraid of just think about that right now what are you afraid of i am afraid of several things but i did some research to find what the most common fears among americans are and i did extensive research over an extended amount of time meaning i googled this for about 42 seconds and here's what i found for americans to be our most common fears you may have never heard of these but i'll go ahead and list off a few of them astrophobia astrophobia is the fear of thunder and lightning at every campus would you raise your hand if that's you you're afraid of thunder and lightning i'm not afraid of it but we have an 18 pound toy poodle named theo who loses his mind every time it thunders here's one that i bet a lot of you suffer from i do not have this phobia it's called ophidiophobia it's a real phobia ophidiophobia the fear of snakes i'm not afraid of snakes i grew up on a farm in south carolina catching with my bare hands but some of you you have diarrhea if you even see a picture of a snake it's just you can't control it here's one agoraphobia that's one of america's top 10 fears the fear of big crowds if if you're an introvert you probably understand that i'm the opposite of an introvert i'm the most extreme extrovert that has ever lived when i see a group of people whether it's two or two thousand my first thought is i can't wait to meet all of them um here's one this is so this if if this is your phobia it's been a hard year for you mysophobia the fear of dirt and germs i don't have that phobia but my wife does how about acrophobia the fear of heights i have a recurring dream i've had this dream since i was a kid that i'm falling from a tall building and i always wake up right before i hit the ground so i guess that's one of my fears now here are two fears these made the top 10 list in america and i have both of these fears arachnophobia the fear of spiders friends i want to tell you right now if you have a pet spider you need to repent of all of your sins and give your life to jesus for sanctification spiders are satan's offspring meant to destroy the world i am six i am six foot three i'm six foot three 230 pounds and i make my five foot three wife kill every spider in our home and i am not ashamed of that but now this one did not make the top 10 list but it should have because this is my biggest fear i bet you've never heard of it coulrophobia it is the fear of clowns i don't know why everybody isn't afraid of clowns because they eat people it's like i saw it on national geographic i'm i think so those are some of my fears i also i also listen i also fear i fear cilantro because it tastes like sadness and death um there are some things that we that we fear that are kind of silly but but let me let me kind of transition here for a minute if we could get honest with each other and and and really open up about the things that we're really afraid of there's a different kind of fear there's a different place even in the human brain where we are afraid of some things that are a little more existential here's what i mean by that some of us if we're honest or afraid of being alone or we're afraid of having someone break our heart or we're afraid of being broke or we're afraid of being hurt or afraid of being taken advantage of i know over the last 18 months our country has gone through some serious upheaval and we as a country i think are coming face to face with some of our fears i know when i talk to people in ministry and i've been a a pastor and an evangelist now for three and a half decades the kind of things that people tell me they're afraid of in moments of transparency are really eye-opening so i want you to think below the surface what are the things that you are really afraid of like at night when you're laying in your bed by yourself whether you're a student here and you've been at camp all week today or you're an adult maybe you're retired or you're empty nesters maybe you're single maybe you're still in college maybe you're in grad school maybe you're a young professional maybe you're a middle-aged couple like me and my wife and you've got some kids in the house what are you really afraid of can i just tell you some of my fears i confess this to my wife when we got married in 1999 i have lived with an unreasonable fear that my wife would eventually leave me because that happened to some of my friends before i got married i also have lived with and have to fight by faith the fear that something terrible will happen to my children i love my children they're my world and i live with that fear that something tragic or unexpected might steal them away from me and so i want you to know that every human being has that kind of fear what i want to do in this message today is i want to take you to a a place in the scripture where we meet a woman who shows us the difference between faith and fear so i want to make a statement it's going to be on the screens i'd love for you to write this down because this is really sort of the anchoring principle behind this woman in mark chapter five and her faith when she met jesus faith isn't the absence of fear faith is trusting god in the face of fear okay when you become a christian and some of you are going to become a christian today we've prayed for many of you to meet jesus at the end of this message and i know that while i'm preaching right now the spirit of god is already drawing some of you to the good news of the love of jesus christ and so i want you to know that if you are a christian fear will never completely go out of your life and if you become a christian in the next 25 or 30 minutes which i believe that many of you dozens of you are even going to do once you become a christian that doesn't automatically get rid of all the fears in your life what god does for a believer he doesn't give us an exemption from fear he gives us a companion in our fears we'll say it again you don't get an exemption from your fear you get something better you get as a christian a companion that will walk with you when you're afraid that's what jesus does for you and the woman that we're going to meet here in mark chapter 5 is my favorite example of somebody in the scripture who lived a life filled with fear but she chose faith even when she was afraid so if it's okay with you we're going to go to the scripture together for mark chapter five i'm gonna begin in verse 25 i'll read straight through the scripture and then i'll preach a little bit and the spirit's gonna speak to us here's what happens in mark chapter five now a woman suffering from bleeding for 12 years had endured much under many doctors she had spent everything she had and was not helped at all on the contrary she became worse having heard about jesus she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his clothing for she said if i just touch his clothes i'll be made well instantly her flow of blood ceased and she sensed in her body that she was healed of her affliction keep that scripture up there i was going to pause and drop a footnote mercy hill at every campus and watching online i am one of those christians that still believes in the whole bible i believe that god is still healing people today i've seen it happen it's happened to me i believe that this is not a one-off story i believe that god still heals people when we pray he doesn't always heal according to what we desire or what we ask he always heals according to his wisdom and according to his sovereignty and according to his power and i want you to just know i go on record to say our god still heals the sick this woman received it so she comes up behind jesus and and she grabs his garment his outer garment she's immediately healed of affliction okay now verse 30 at once jesus realized in himself that power had gone out from him so he turned around in the crowd and he said who touched my clothes his disciples said to him you see the crowd pressing against you and yet you say who touched me but he was looking around to see who had done this the woman with fear and trembling pause that's why i started this message by asking you what are you afraid of this woman was afraid she was afraid for lots of reasons that we're going to unpack here in just a minute but even after she was healed she still had to face her fear the woman filled with fear and trembling knowing what had happened to her came and fell down before jesus and told him the whole truth daughter he said to her your faith has saved you go in peace and be healed from your affliction that's an amazing story one of my favorites in the gospels now i want to give you a little bit of background in context to make application for us for you as a teenager for you as a young adult for you as a newlywed couple for you as a widower or a widow or a single man or a single woman this story happened to her 2000 years ago but this story happened for us today as we read the bible together so a couple things here jesus gets on a boat sails across the sea of galilee to visit another part of that region when he gets off the boat a large crowd of people come up to jesus and that's earlier in mark chapter five and they're touching him they're pressing around him because they'd heard the rumors this guy can perform miracles this guy can turn water to wine this guy can walk on water this guy can speak to fig trees and they wither and die this guy can cast out demons and everybody in that region which was essentially poor jewish farmers and fishermen blue collar workers rough and tough people they wanted a messiah and so they're all coming around jesus and in the midst of this story we see one woman and this woman had been bleeding for 12 years now we don't know everything about her but we know enough 12 years let me talk about this for a second anybody at any of our campuses right now 12 years old raise your hand if you're 12 years old okay right here there are probably no kidding there's probably 25 hands in this room where i'm preaching right now to broadcast campus with their hands up 12 was a great year for me it was a year i discovered girls up until the age of 12 i thought they were gross and we used to do this thing back in the 1900s where like like circle circle dot dot now i got my cootie shots i don't know if y'all do that anymore and there better be an adult right now that is worshiping god with me when i start humming that tune okay now y'all probably just text each other um or snapchat or myspace oh i'm just kidding um thank you for the courtesy laugh well when i was 12 i was in the sixth grade okay that's the halfway point between first grade and twelfth grade think about this think about your first day in elementary school as a first grader fast forward to your high school graduation that's 12 years this woman had been bleeding that long just want to help you understand here's my first point about this woman write it down she was weak she was weak there was no strength in her no physical strength she had been robbed of her emotional strength this woman just loses she loses blood she loses energy she loses community she loses friends she loses her money this woman is weak she's lost so much now we don't know what was wrong with her maybe she had a chronic nosebleed maybe she had a bleeding ulcer maybe she had hemophilia my mom and dad died a year and a half apart and my dad was diabetic he had heart disease and was on dialysis my dad had to take blood thinner and so if my dad were to cut himself or fall and scrape his knee my dad would have pretty much bled to death his blood would not coagulate and when my dad had to start taking blood thinner and had to start going to dialysis my dad was was almost like a living corpse had no strength your blood listen your blood that's inside of your body is made up largely of iron and it delivers oxygen to the cells of your body and if you constantly lose blood then your body is not getting what it needs it's not getting oxygenated it's using all of its energy to recreate the blood that you're losing and this woman had been bleeding for 12 years from first grade to 12th grade she was weak i'm just simply trying to make the point when she came to jesus she did not bring anything to jesus except her weakness and that's what i want you to hear jesus wants your weakness jesus wants all of it as a matter of fact the apostle paul would say that it's our weakness that magnifies and showcases god's strength in our life when i was in college i wanted to be a strong christian i used to preach sermons about being a strong christian and now that i'm closer to 50 than i am 40 i've changed my mind i want to be a weak christian because if i am a strong christian then people see my strength and they think i'm strong but according to second corinthians 12 7 through 10 when people see my weakness god's strength is made perfect and my weakness is actually the way that the world will see jesus in me have you thought about that whatever you're afraid of whatever thing in your past you have to wrestle with whether it was abuse or abandonment or insecurity whether it's a mistake you made or a sin you committed or something you did 10 20 years ago that the devil continues to throw in your face and accuse you of have you ever thought that the very thing satan tries to use against you to demoralize you or sideline you from god's mission could be the very thing that god uses in your life to beat the devil at his own game to show the world how strong god really is in your life our weakness is where god's strength is made perfect here's the thing christian i'm a christian you're most of us are christians okay christians love to get fired up when the preacher talks about miracles god's got a miracle in your future god's got breakthrough coming for you i love that too i like to hear about the miracles i've seen god perform miracles but have you ever thought about this you don't get a miracle unless you get a mess a miracle requires a mess the mess precedes the miracle so if you're a mess if your life is a mass if your marriage is a mess if your money is a mess if your health is a mess if your relationships are a mess if your emotions are a mess if covet and lockdowns and masks and vaccines and politics and racism and everything we've been dealing with as a country all these things if they have got you in an emotional mass you are a prime candidate for god's miracle of healing in your life and it starts when you repent of your sin and you ask jesus to save you she brought her mess to jesus she was weak and we're weak too you're weak i'm weak as good as michael jordan was maybe the goat michael jordan got weak he was great when he played for the bulls and he came back and played for the wizards not so much everybody even the strongest among us eventually has to come face to face with our weakness that includes you and that includes me but i want to show you something else about this woman she was poor or as we used to say she was broke there's broke and then there's college broke some of y'all remember being college broke some of you students aren't there yet but you will be i was so college broke at gardner-webb i ate ramen noodles from other people's dorm rooms people would leave some uneaten ramen noodles in the bottom of a styrofoam cup and if it had been sitting there less than three days it was fair game it was mine i staked the claim to it there's broken there's college broke this woman was a different le this woman was literally a different level of poverty jesus meets her and mark records the meeting and says this woman had spent everything she had on doctors now i did do some research and i'm not talking about you know just uh google i actually studied some commentaries on this the jewish talmud it's not the bible but it's a book written by rabbis of jewish teachings and the jewish talmud which she would have read gave 11 different cures for someone who could not stop bleeding and there were some weird weird cures she probably tried every single one of those and she had spent all of her money so when she came to jesus she came with nothing in her pockets she came empty-handed don't miss this when we come to jesus you know the one thing we bring to him because there's really only one thing you can give jesus like my birthday's in november my family always asks me what do you want for your birthday i'm like really there's nothing i want there's nothing i need there are some things i might want i might want to go see a particular band in concert or i might want to go eat at a great restaurant that i really enjoy but there's nothing i really want that much you can't really give me anything except for my family and my friends that i really really need you know what i'm saying but we think about it in terms of bringing something to jesus to earn his favor almost like giving jesus a gift or giving jesus a present you know there's really only one thing that you can give jesus that he didn't give you in the first place because every good thing that you could give to jesus he's already given you there's only one thing you can give jesus he didn't give you your sin there is literally nothing else you can give to jesus that he didn't first give to you do you love jesus great you know why you love him because he first loved you do you worship jesus why do you worship jesus because he's been so good to you you can't help it everything that we give to jesus he first gave to us but when we bring our sin to jesus jesus takes that not as a gift but he gives us the gift of repentance and faith and then he saves us as a result when she came to jesus she brought nothing to him she was poor she had no money to pay him she had to wait until everything was exhausted before she was healed and i just want to say practically speaking have you are you at a place in your life right now where you have failed to come to jesus because you feel like you haven't lived a perfect life you've made too many mistakes you did some bad things you don't deserve his love you don't deserve his grace i want to go ahead and tell you embrace all of that and say i don't care i'm coming to jesus just like i am because he'll receive you it's his mercy that leads us to repentance his kindness she's spent everything she had and had nothing to bring to jesus and jesus received her anyway which leads me to the next part of her personality she was frustrated can you imagine being this woman how frustrated she was she had tried everything and nothing worked so i did some math i'm not great at math but i'm okay and i thought okay this woman has been spending her money on doctors that's not working she's hit a dead end every single time she's probably she's a jewish woman so she's probably been praying so if this woman had been sick for 12 years and let's just estimate guys she had prayed one time a day for 12 years she would have prayed four thousand three hundred and eighty times and for twelve years god didn't answer can we let that sink in for a minute because some of us have been frustrated that god has not answered our prayers the way we've prayed them and we need to own the fact that god is under no obligation to give us what we want but he has committed himself to provide for us what we need i'm glad god didn't always give me what i prayed for because when i was 14 i prayed that god would give me a supermodel wife and a corvette stingray that would go 500 miles an hour and my life would have been a wreck if god had given me even one of those i'm so glad that god doesn't always give me what i want but he always provides what we need let's do this let's assume that this woman was a devout jew and she had prayed five times a day for 12 years five times a day most jews did pray five times a day let's assume that she had prayed five times a day for 12 years that means this woman prayed 21 900 times 21 900 times dear god stop the bleeding dear god heal me dear god hear my prayer oh god why are you not listening this woman was frustrated and yet she still showed up to meet jesus when he came i want to encourage you don't give up on your faith when you're frustrated when things are hard we grow nothing good in life comes on the other side of something easy the best things in your life will always come on the other side of something that's difficult my biggest challenges in life are the times i've grown the most in my faith the season where i went through depression after preaching my father's funeral on father's day was one of the darkest seasons of my life but it taught me to live by faith and not by my feelings and this woman was so frustrated i bet she was frustrated with god i bet she had some really honest conversations with god it might be good for some of us to do that might be good for some of us to have real intimate conversations with god because think about it our strongest relationships whether it's your husband or your wife your children your best friends your pastor our best relationships are always with people that we can be totally honest with i know i can tell my wife everything i'm feeling and she won't leave me my son who's 18 years old he's with me is on the front row right here in this gathering at this campus right now we're honest we talk about our feelings we talk about our frustrations i tell him hard things that have happened in my life even today he got to listen in on some conversations that i was having with people about hard things he sees my frustration i don't hide my frustration from my wife and my son why would i hide my frustration from god god's a big boy god can handle your frustration god does not deal with god doesn't deal with drama like we do god's not going to fold his arms and shake his head and say well we're done i can't handle you you've got too many issues god is drawn to our brokenness he loves us in spite of our brokenness and our sin and our shortcomings and i love this woman's example even in her frustration she fought her way to jesus let me show you one more thing about this woman she was isolated i didn't want to skip this because of the of the of the year we just had in the world that we've been living in as a pastor i'm having conversations with people on a daily basis who because of the isolation they have felt during the season we've lived in are now trying to express their feelings trying to figure out am i ever going to be able to be normal again this woman knows about that because listen as a jewish woman if you bled from any part of your body you couldn't go to the temple you couldn't go to the synagogue for worship you couldn't gather on the sabbath day and hear the torah read from the scroll as a matter of fact if you look in leviticus leviticus will tell you in leviticus 15 that bleeding women were actually excluded from the community until the bleeding stopped or until they were made clean this could mean that this woman was never able to be married maybe she was maybe she wasn't we don't know this was the kind of woman listen hear this and feel this this woman was so isolated that when she walked down the streets of galilee people would cross over to the other side of the road so they wouldn't get close to her because they knew she was the woman who's been bleeding for 12 years and if they touched her they would be unclean and they couldn't go to the temple and they couldn't go to the synagogue and they would have to wait seven days to be clean can you imagine what it was like to be her for people to think that maybe she had committed a sin and god was punishing her america is very very isolated can i show y'all something i'm just going to go off off the script here for a minute i've got an iphone and i use it as a tool and i'm on instagram and twitter and facebook and i check emails and i text and make phone calls but and so i'm not saying that my iphone is demonic but i'm gonna tell you right now what i've noticed about our culture in the last five years this is making all of us more isolated this is keeping our attention glued to a screen that doesn't have a soul while there are people around us that we could be connecting with your mom your dad your grandparents your siblings your youth pastor volunteers small group leaders coaches friends i'm not against your phone i don't think that my phone is evil but it is a tool to tempt me to isolate myself and i'm not trying to get legalistic but i do need to just say this if you and i are spending an hour a day on social media and spending 10 minutes a day reading the bible then who's discipling us if you're a student and you can play fortnite for five hours and you don't know five bible verses from memory satan's gonna eat your lunch sooner or later we have an isolation problem in america that's why church is so important and this woman knew that she needed somebody to help her so she risked everything came out of isolation and clawed her way to jesus when she gets to jesus the bible says that she reaches up and grabs his clothes now i'm not going to geek out too much here but this is gonna blow your mind so pay attention for the next five minutes while i land this plane okay when she reaches up to grab his clothes it's not like he's a rock star it's not like she's trying to be superstitious this woman had read the old testament she's doing something specific prescribed in the old testament she's not just reaching up and grabbing that like the edge of his pants no jesus wore an outer garment called a tunic think about like a small blanket with a hole cut in it for your head and four corners and in the book of numbers from the old testament numbers 15 describes the four tassels that hung on the four corners of a rabbi's outer garment most of the time they were blue or purple and these four tassels were symbolic of god's faithful covenant to israel keep that in mind the word in the original language is kanaph we would spell it in english k-a-n-a-p-h canav it means the the hem or the edge of the garment where the four tassels hung so this woman a jewish woman who lived in galilee had read numbers 15 and knew that when a rabbi wore those tassels those tassels symbolized god's covenant love this woman had probably also read malachi 4 2. let me show you what malachi 4 2 says it's going to be on the screens right now i'm going to read it to you here is malachi 4 2. but for you who fear my name the son of righteousness shall rise with healing in his wings leave it there for just a moment this is a messianic prophecy about the coming messiah he's called the son of righteousness and he will have healing isn't that what she was looking for where will he have healing in his wings well we read the word wings and we think a bird but that is not at all what the hebrew word here is it's the word connoth healing in his tassels at the edge of his garments so when the woman hears that jesus has come she's probably thinking to herself i'm tired of living in fear i have enough faith to get me to this man and if i have to push my way shove my way crawl my way claw my way push my way to him i'm gonna get to him and i will reach up and i will grab the wings of his garment because i've read numbers 15 and malachi 4 and i believe there is healing in the canal of his garment i'm reading about this y'all listen i kid you not i'm reading about this on my couch at my house in anderson south carolina i'm reading about it in these commentaries and it's blowing my mind that he had four tassels hanging on the corner of his outer garment this woman reaches up and grabs one in faith pushing through all the frustration all the poverty all the weakness all the sickness all the fear and i've got my arm resting on a pillow because we have pillows on our couch because i'm married to a woman and we have pillows millions of pillows decorative pillows that i'm not allowed to lay my head on but they look pretty and i look over and my arm is on a pillow and i look down and on the four corners of the pillow are four tassels and so i looked around the room to make sure my wife wasn't around and i grabbed this tassel and i pulled it off the corner and i quietly stuck it in my pocket because i said i am preaching on this and i have carried this tassel with me all around this country to show you there was no healing power in the cotton or the wool that that tassel was made out of but jesus himself said to the woman your faith has healed you here's what i want to say faith replaces fear but not without a fight i know you're afraid so am i but i'm not gonna let fear rule my life because i serve a god who is resurrected from the dead i will decide and choose to have faith in what jesus did for me and if it means grabbing the hem of a garment the corner of a robe a tassel that's what i'm going to do faith replaces fear but not without a fight there were a lot of people there that day and everybody was touching jesus everybody was touching jesus but she alone touched jesus with faith everybody else was looking for a magician to heal their sickness make them rich make them better make it rain make the crops grow this woman she paid a price to get to jesus because she believed in faith that he could help her somebody asked me this week clayton when you pray what is your most common prayer among all the prayers that you pray to jesus i don't know what they expected me to say i guess because i'm a pastor they expect me to say i pray in latin and hebrew and greek the lord's prayer in 45 languages you know what i said my most common prayer help because i need his help and so do you faith replaces fear but not without a fight and i want to tell you right now at every one of these campuses you're watching right now and online you have the ability to choose faith in spite of your fear and you can choose it right now because jesus is here jesus is with you jesus is for you jesus gave his life on the cross took the punishment that we deserve for every sin we've ever committed and he didn't come to condemn you he came to save you and take away the guilt of your sin and he not only died on the cross to save you from your sin he rose from the dead to give you a brand new life and listen i'm just going to say it right now if there's a better deal anywhere in the history of the universe show me there is nothing better than jesus nothing better than giving your life to christ nothing better than getting to trade in my fears and my weakness and my sickness and my sin and i get his righteousness and his love and his family and his grace and his mercy and every one of the 8 000 promises in the bible they are for me they are for you there's nothing better than jesus i double dog scooby doo dare you to show me something better in this world than jesus that's what i want for you i want you to reach out i want you to reach out and i just want you by faith to just grab hold of his promise for you to close your eyes with me right now at every campus just close your eyes and open your hearts i know that many of you are already walking with christ you're a believer you've repented of your sin i know that many of you need to right now and so as we culminate a week of camp as we celebrate our student ministry i want to draw this thing to a close and say would you reach out and grab jesus by faith if you've never given your life to christ if you're not a christian if you kind of think you are but you're not really sure if you're afraid of dying and going to hell if you don't know whether you're going to heaven or hell when you die this is the moment for you to stop living in that kind of confusion you can know that jesus is your lord you can have assurance of salvation if you will by faith repent of your sins and ask him to save you so i want to pray this with you right now at every campus eyes closed hearts open if you want to give your life to jesus right now you can ask him to save you and he will so pray this in your heart to him right now if that's you just ask him right where you are he's listening jesus please save me go ahead right now do it jesus please save me i repent of my sin i give you my life i invite you to take over i'm sorry for what i've done and i receive your grace i'm all yours jesus and i'm all in thank you for loving me thank you for saving me now i will follow you i'm asking you to keep your eyes closed and your hearts open i'm not going to make anybody stand up or come forward today but i do want to ask you this simple question at every campus and even online if you just prayed that prayer to jesus and you meant what you said i want you with your eyes closed and your hearts open to raise your hand above your head right now adults teenagers middle age young old if you just prayed that prayer i want you right now to raise your hand straight up above your head and keep it up for a moment every campus right now raise your hand high keep them up i can't see every campus but i can see this one so i'm going to count how many people have just responded to the gospel just in this room keep your eyes closed i'm not going to make you stand up but i want to know 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31. you put your hands down at every campus open your eyes and look at me for a minute i don't know how many people just responded where you are but in this room 31 people right here i saw you you raised your hand to indicate that you prayed to repent of your sin and we are so excited that you have just given your life to jesus raising your hand doesn't save you praying a prayer doesn't save you jesus saves you it's jesus jesus jesus so welcome to the family of god we've got 31 new believers brothers and sisters who have just crossed over from death to life your sin that is paid it's canceled you're a new person in christ second corinthians 5 17. but you have just begun a new life it's not over it's just beginning so i'm going to ask everybody at every campus to do this take out your phone everybody everybody take out your iphone if you have a samsung i don't know what to tell you it might work it might not i'm just kidding take out your mobile take out your phone and i'm going to ask everybody to do this to make it less awkward for those who just prayed to receive christ look at your phone don't start instagramming or snapchatting or tic talking yet don't do that take your phone and if you're one of the people 31 in this room and dozens more i'm sure around our campuses if you just pray to receive christ text the word are you ready text the word baptize right now everybody's looking at their phones so you're not going to stand out text the word baptized to 81411. that's the number it's gonna be up on the screens text the word baptized eight one four one one if you're watching online and you just pray to receive christ text the word baptized to eight one four one one because we want to get you started in your relationship with jesus and in september we're having a huge baptism weekend right here at mercy hill and we want you to be baptized if you just gave your life to jesus okay so go ahead and do it again i'm gonna do it one more time text the word baptize to 81411 and we're going to get you signed up to be baptized right here at mercy hill church in just a few weeks in september you're going to go public with your faith i'm going to pray we're going to worship jesus thank you for what you've done at camp this week thank you for the students that have taken a tough situation and really had a great week in spite of it thank you that my son jacob and i got to be a part of this amazing church today and thank you for the people you just called to salvation satan you've lost another great number to jesus you'll never get them back they're bought with the blood of christ and jesus we give you the glory for your salvation that you have poured out on us today in jesus name we pray amen

Channel: Mercy Hill Church

Views: 468

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: jesus, clayton king, mercy hill, mercy hill church, faith, mark, greensboro, living by faith, trusting in the midst of fear, fear and trust, trusting God

Id: N_dXcQoCKCw

Length: 48min 41sec (2921 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 17 2021