Is There Good News You Can Trust? - LIFECENTRAL CHURCH ONLINE

hey everyone welcome to life central church my name is leon and my name's alison uh you are so welcome whenever or wherever you're watching this from in fact why don't you pop in the chat right now where you are watching it from especially if this is live we would love to know where you are even if you're just around the corner we would love to know that so why don't you pop that in the chat this is not just a great sunday this is mother's day and so a big shout out to all of you moms out there as well and if you hang with us till the end of the service in the post service chat we're going to be marking mother's day a little bit more with our mad awards our making a difference awards and some other fun and interesting and surprising stuff as well and we're really looking forward to that but in the meantime you can expect to be with us for just under an hour and we've got the second in our series today andy hancock's going to be speaking to us and the uh topic that he's going to be addressing the question he's going to ask is is there good news you can trust absolutely and that is so current for where we are as a culture right now and certainly in the uk that is so relevant for us this week but speaking of news we have some news for you as well in a few weeks time it is easter sunday on sunday april the 4th and as well as and we're going to do a good news sunday event there's going to be creative arts there's going to be music there's going to be drama it's going to be so good but we're also opening our doors we are opening our doors for the 10 o'clock and 11 30 so two services 10 o'clock and 11 30. if you'd like a ticket for that it's free but you'll need to register obviously we're still under social uh distancing and restrictions so there's you know in terms of things like masks and no singing and seats and distancing and all of that but if you'd like to be here in the room with us then you can do that from 12 noon today that's on sunday march the 14th those tickets are available in this link now don't worry if you're not able to be there or you're not ready or you can't get in we will be online okay and so we will be online and we'll have some people in the room on easter sunday that's great yeah it's such good news and we're so excited about that we would love it if you could share that good news with uh people in your neighborhood so we're going to be producing some good news cards and we would love it if you would come collect some cards or we can deliver them to you to get those cards so that you can distribute them to your neighbors your friends your family your street wherever so that they can share the good news too and in that card there will be an invitation to the service and there will also be an opportunity to ask for prayer so that would be great news to share with the people that you live around wouldn't it absolutely and again for the for the tickets and for the cars is on this link that's on the screen right now guys talking about prayer we offer prayer online as well all the way through our service if any of you want prayer at any point then please just click on the link and it will take you there and we would love to pray uh for you today but we're gonna head into our service right now we're gonna sing a song and encourage you to engage in this song as well right after this song andy is going to come and speak to us and share this message is there good news you can trust and you know this song is called never lost and it's about battles and it's very easy when you hear this song to think that what the song is saying is that we've never lost any battles that's actually not what the song is saying this song is talking totally about jesus and easter reminds us as we head these next few weeks towards easter easter reminds that jesus had many battles but he never lost any and because he never lost any battles that gives us hope and courage and confidence guys well if you're in a battle right now maybe you are in a battle focus on jesus he's never lost any battles and he is there for you this song is never lost such an easy thing for you to do and your hand is moving right now you are still showing your voice is [Music] you can do all things [Music] no you never lost the battle and i know i know win possible by the power of the holy ghost [Music] i know my god [Music] is [Music] you can do [Music] [Music] you never lost never lost the battle [Music] can do it [Music] you can do [Music] i know [Music] you can do [Music] know i know [Music] [Music] [Music] um [Music] so welcome to week two of our have i have we got news for you we can't say have i got news for you every we might get sued but my name is andy and i'm really excited to bring this to you i think it's really important but you know in a few weeks time there is a really really important day that we all need to get on board and celebrate we all need to make sure that we are thinking about this day and it's a day that you need to think about in advance because you need to prepare if you are going to do something good on this day you need to prepare because in a few weeks time it is april fool's day and april fool's day i think we all need a little bit of a laugh coming up don't we and so maybe you want to start to think about some pranks that you could pull on some friends and family for april fool's day and actually the bbc are pretty good at pulling these level of april fool's jokes in fact in 1957 richard dimbleby he ran a panorama news piece on a spaghetti tree in switzerland and claimed that spaghetti was growing on trees in switzerland and thousands of people wrote in asking how can they grow spaghetti trees in their back gardens just so you're not confused spaghetti doesn't grow on trees in 1976 patrick moore told bbc radio 2 listeners that at 9 47 a.m on the 1st of april they would experience something called the jovian plutonian gravitational effect where he said basically the earth's gravitational forces will be reduced for a moment and if you jump in the air at 9 47 a.m you will float for a couple of seconds imagine how stupid you would have felt if you jumped and nothing happens and you know in 1980 bbc world service they announced that the chimes of big ben were going to be replaced by a digital clock beep and thousands of people's heads fell off and people kicked off about it and the bbc has pulled some great april fool's day jokes and you know in the last few years in the last five or six years we've seen the amazing not quite of april fool's day jokes but we have seen the emergence of fake news and you know i think it's made us entirely cynical it's brought us to question what we're watching and what we're hearing where is the source coming from how can we believe it it's even left some of us believe in the rants of our friends on facebook over the opinions of experienced medical experts and even just this week the news has been really really difficult and i just want to say in that you know when somebody speaks up about the state of their mental health we've got to listen we don't our first response should not be to question whether they're telling the truth or not our first response should be to listen you know with what's what's gone on with with the tragic murder of of of the girl this week has been it's been horrendous to see you and i want to encourage men as you're listening listen to the women in your life listen to their experiences listen to what they have gone through sons fathers husbands boyfriends take time to listen to the women in your life and how this is making them feel the news has been really really difficult to watch and is really difficult at the moment and so it's hard to feel like paul does when he says in romans 1 i have complete confidence in the gospel it is god's power to save all who believe because you look at the world and think it's so broken what does the good news mean for people and maybe you look at it and you think well i believe it because they talk so passionately about a church or you know when like you've ever been convinced of something by somebody and you listen to them and you're like yeah totally and then you go and try and explain that exact thing to somebody else and the person you're explaining it to go it doesn't quite make sense what do you mean and you're like oh no but when they said it it meant loads and almost like you maybe found yourself in situations where you're trying to talk to somebody about the good news and you just wish that leon our lead pastor was with you in that moment because he would know all the answers he would know what to say and you just get frustrated with yourselves you know sometimes sharing the good news and thinking about the good news of jesus can leave us in this tension and one person that got left in that tension was a person called thomas thomas was one of the disciples and he was known as being doubting thomas and i actually think he gets a bit of an unfair deal i think actually the biblical tabloids have given him a rough time you know we're going to talk about why he's called down thomas in a moment but in john chapter 11 when jesus says he's going back to judea the disciples are kicking off they're like no jesus everybody wants to kill you in judea why are we going back to judea but thomas speaks up and it says in john 11 verse 16 then thomas said to the rest of the disciples let us also go that we may die with them it's almost like thomas is ripping off his top and he's like jesus if you're gonna die i'm gonna die with you and he's like all in he's courageous he's enthusiastic he is like out there saying jesus whatever happens i am following you to the death and yeah just nine chapters later following the death of jesus on a cross he has his mates tell him the disciples say hey jesus has risen from the dead and we don't quite see the confident courageous thomas we see a different side of him in john 20 verse 25 he says unless i see the nail marks in his hands i put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side i will not believe see he doesn't believe the words that he says and almost this this you know all in this about him has faded away i wonder what the what the seeing jesus died on the cross did inside thomas i wonder whether he brought up doubts jesus i thought i thought you were the savior of the world and now you're dying on a cross maybe it brought up questions maybe it brought anger or frustration or hurt or bitterness whatever it was his confidence in who jesus was was shaken and guys i know that there are things in our lives that can shake our confidence in the good news of jesus i know for so many of you you know today mother's day is a really tough day because you're thinking i wish this day was different this day wasn't supposed to be like how it feels today maybe you've had some horrendous news this week maybe the last weeks and months have been difficult for you and it's left you having your confidence shaken in the good news because you're like jesus i thought it was going to be different and now it's not the way that i thought it was you know i remember a number of years ago living in manchester which is enough to shake anyone's confidence in the gospel to be honest and then i would went out and i was i went to a church thing on a saturday night and on the way back we seen a homeless guy and as i walked past he shouted why god why and i was like okay god that's a little bit of a sign and me and my friends we sat down we chatted to him we shared the good news of jesus with him and it was going so well and he asked me for a hug and i was like why not that's that's what a good christian guy would do and i i gave him a hug and what he did is he put his hands on the back of my neck and felt that i was wearing a gold chain and it was actually a really important gold chain to mean he snatched the gold chain off me and ran off and that really shook my confidence it ra i spent weeks being annoyed going jesus i was trying to tell somebody about the good news and i end up getting robbed and so often it can feel like our confidence and our trust in the good news of jesus can be shaken but what happens in verse 26 the very next bit of where thomas says you know until until i put my fingers in the scars i won't believe it says a week later jesus showed up you see thomas in his doubts in his questions in his frustrations he didn't run away he stuck around he stuck around to to allow jesus to meet him in that and that's what was happening in the image that was behind me is is is thomas got to encounter jesus in the midst of his questions in the midst of his doubts in the midst of his frustrations jesus met him and gave him what he needed to hear and i believe that jesus can meet each and every one of you in your doubts in your questions in your frustrations that jesus can meet you right where you need him to meet you today and see thomas stayed in the game and the point the main thing that i want people to remember coming out of today is this you can only fully trust in his name when you're fully placed in the game you know if you've got questions and doubts and you know your confidence is shaken that's okay stay in the game stay in the game so that jesus can speak to you and you know thomas he stayed in the game and eventually he was killed for his faith you know he spent 20 years preaching the good news of jesus in much of west and south india and in fact the church today in india owes its presence to the preaching of thomas and him preaching the good news you see it's okay to have doubt it's okay to lose confidence it's okay to have questions and anger and frustrations but stay in the game because when you get hold of what this good news can do in your life and through you it has the power to transform our broken world and so i want to encourage you to stick around and i want to spend a bit of time opening up four main reasons why i believe we can trust this good news and if you're not a christian this may well go somewhere i'm not going to answer all your questions of course i'm not but this may well go some way to to answer and help you with the things that you wrestle about of whether you believe in jesus or whether you can believe that jesus is who he says he is and if you are a christian what i hope today does is that it deepens your trust in who jesus is and the good news it deepens your confidence but also equips you to talk to other people about this good news of jesus and so the place where we need to start is the historical reliability of the gospels you know one of the biggest things when you talk about god or jesus or faith to people is the biggest thing that comes back is it's all fake it's all fiction it's all just a made-up fairy tale that has been used down the ages and so we need to ask the question could it really have happened could it be historically accurate and so to do that we're going to look a little bit of luke and luke's gospel is a really good place to look for for reliability because he was really concerned about the sources he was a physician he was a really bright bloke who made sure that his accounts were accurate as they could be and as you can see on on the screen now luke 3 verse 1 luke lists a bunch of political leaders at the time and i'm not going to go through them all because some of them are quite difficult to pronounce but i want to focus on the one that's in bold they're herod tetrarch of galilee he was also known as herod antipas and loads of things have been found by archaeologists with his inscription on in fact there's been lots of coins found with with herod anti-passing scripted on them that match the timing that luke is talking about and in fact not just herod anti-pass but loads of the herod's that are mentioned in the gospel accounting matthew mark luke and john historical artifacts have been found with their inscriptions on matching the times that the gospels refer to and in fact if we talk about the roman caesars that are mentioned not just in the gospels but right throughout the new testament loads of historical evidence have been found including coins inscriptions and even statues that confirm that they were about in the times that the bible says that these people existed and then if we think about the geographical locations the towns the cities the buildings even the structures that the bible says that jesus visited all of these have been verified by archaeologists and historians they are known to be actual places that were about in the times that jesus is claimed to be about and even the customs of the times are correct you know in the in the passage that we looked at last week with leon in luke 7 where he came across a funeral you know in in judea the custom was that women followed the coffin and the body so the coffin would go first and the women and the funeral possession will come after it but in galilee where the funeral was taken place in luke 7 the custom was that the women led the procession out so the body would follow the women and so when jesus comes and he meets the woman and the whole procession stops it's because it was taking place in galilee and you see this luke's inclusion of this little detail shows us that the my new details of the gospel accounts can be trusted and so therefore when we look at all of the evidence and hey we haven't looked at all the evidence we've only looked at like a very small slice of the of the cake you know when we look at it though we can find that the gospels match up with the known history of the time and so the people were real people the cities were real places the customs were exactly as said and the events actually occurred you know a quick google search will tell you that most in fact the majority of historians of archaeologists of theologians agree and do not question the existence of a man called jesus existing when the bible says he existed it can be considered factually accurate that a man called jesus exists in the times that the gospels say that he existed it is not really disputed by people who know this kind of stuff the question is was he who he said he was was he god in human form the question is can i trust this good news that jesus was talking about and so we need to look at the authority of jesus so the first thing that we've looked at is historical reliability the second thing is the authority of jesus and a really good case study to look at is luke 5 and in luke 5 basically it's the story where four friends lower their paralyzed friend through a roof to the feet of jesus and this happens and we're going to read the three together it's in luke 5 and it says when jesus saw their faith he said friends your sins are forgiven the pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves who is this fellow that speaks blasphemy who can forgive sins but god alone that's really important that jesus knew what they were thinking and asked why are you thinking these things in your hearts which is easier to say your sins are forgiven or stay or say get up and walk but i want you to know that the son of man as in himself jesus has authority on earth to forgive sins so he said to the paralyzed man i tell you get up take your mat and go home immediately he stood up in front of them took what he had been lying on and went home praising god you see in this moment jesus demonstrates his authority and he demonstrates his power you see when he says i i've your sins have been forgiven everybody in the room is looking at him because they're like only god can he only god can forgive sins only god has the authority to forgive sins and so by him saying your sins are forgiven he is saying i am god in human form and so when when everybody doubts it and questions it he goes hey to prove that i am god in human form i'm going to show you that i have the power that he's given me as well and so he says to the guy get up and walk he demonstrates not only his authority but his power and there's loads of examples right through the gospels where jesus confirms that he is who he says he is by his actions and in fact when he encounters demons demons know his name and know that he is somebody to be feared why because he was god's in human form and you see guys jesus healed to verify his deity to verify that he was who he said he was and that's why in our experience we are more likely to see somebody healed when we pray for them in a evangelistic non-christian setting i know that's my experience of praying for young people in our prayer room on a friday night that we used to run that we would have unchurched young people come in and we would see shoulders be healed and knees be healed and god doing all kinds of things because these are people who don't yet know him and jesus is trying to reveal himself to them he's trying to get their attention and say hey i am who i say i am and you know we cannot keep the healing power of jesus in our church buildings and in our church services you know i really believe that you are so likely to see somebody healed not necessarily guaranteed i don't understand all of this stuff but i know in my experience when you pray for somebody maybe in your workplace or on your zoom calls or you know in your in your classrooms you are more likely to see god move and god heal in those environments because he wants to get the attention of those that don't yet know him so i encourage you to step out in that and you know one of the biggest actions that jesus gave was to show that we can trust his authority that he was who he said he was that we can have confidence in this good news is the resurrection and i want to show you a video this is a guy called lee strobel and his wife became a christian and at the time he was an atheist and he was working as an investigative journalist and so he was like right i am going to prove that this is all nonsense and i'm going to prove a on the pivotal point of christianity which is the resurrection and so he spent time investigating and looking into the evidence of the resurrection and off the back of looking into all of it he discovered that it was overwhelmingly true that the resurrection happened and therefore gave his life to jesus off the back of it and he's since been writing loads and loads of books about the evidence that we can trust this good news of the resurrection and this is just a two-minute video of four reasons why you can believe in the resurrection take a look i like to look at the evidence for the resurrection in four categories the first one is did jesus die on the cross was he dead virtually every scholar on planet earth can see that jesus was dead after crucifixion we have no record of anyone anywhere ever surviving a full roman crucifixion even the journal of the american medical association published a peer-reviewed scientific medical study of the evidence for the death of jesus and said clearly the weight of the evidence indicates that jesus was dead even before the wound to his side was inflicted even the atheist new testament scholar gary ludemann says historically it's indisputable that jesus was dead so jesus was dead the second category of evidence is the early accounts we have for the resurrection in other words i used to think as an atheist that the resurrection was a legend and that took a long time to develop in the ancient world but what i learned is that we have preserved for us a creed of the earliest christian church a creed that is a eyewitness-based report of the resurrection of jesus now this creed has been dated back by scholars to within months of the death of jesus within months that is historical gold so we've got a news flash from ancient history on the resurrection third category of evidence is the empty tomb and the best evidence for that is even the opponents of jesus implicitly admitted the tomb was empty because when the disciples began proclaiming that jesus had risen what the opponent said was oh well um the disciples stole the body now they're conceding the tombs empty they're just trying to explain how it got empty so everybody's conceding the tune was empty how did it get empty is really the issue and that goes to the fourth category of evidence which is eyewitnesses you know for most of what we know about ancient history it comes from one or maybe two sources of information and yet for the conviction of the disciples that they encountered the resurrected jesus we have no fewer than nine ancient sources inside and outside the new testament confirming and corroborating the conviction of the disciples that they encountered the risen christ that is an avalanche of historical data so you put all that together and you have a really good case for easter so so good isn't it and you know i would i love what he said there about the conviction of the disciples and i would be humble enough to offer a fifth one which would be the actions of the early church you know the majority of the disciples were killed for their belief that the resurrection happened they were killed for preaching the truth of the resurrection and say would would they have died for a lie maybe one or two of them would but would 10 or 11 of them like surely at least one of them would have gone boys just just put it down we were having a laugh we made it all up like surely at some point if it was all made up and like falsified and fake news surely one of them would have gone now it was all made up but every single one of them had the conviction that it was true and that for me is so so compelling of the evidence of the resurrection and i wonder whether the final words of jesus were ringing in their ears you know one of the last things that jesus said before he ascended up to heaven in matthew he said surely i am with you to the very end of the age you see there was a promise that they were clinging on to the disciples in the early church faced unbelievable opposition unbelievable difficulty in their attempts to share the good news and yet they had the promise that jesus was with them and guys in your doubts in your frustrations and your questions and your disappointments jesus is with you maybe you are finding today really tough for a number of reasons i want you to know today the truth that jesus promises to be with you that we might not understand why things happen and why things turn out the way they do but jesus promises that he is with us and so today know that promise that the disciples and the early church knew in the months and years after jesus death and resurrection that jesus is with you and i want to look at something in acts acts is called acts because it's the acts the actions of the early church and the apostles and in acts 5 i discovered this i'm reading through the book of acts at the moment and i discovered this i've never really caught on to it i probably just read through it and it just this time reading it a couple of weeks ago it just really resonated with me and peter and the disciples they pulled before the sanhedrin because they've been preaching this resurrection message and this is what happens in matthew 5 it says when they heard this they were furious and wanted them peter and the disciples to be put to death but a pharisee named gamaliel a teacher of the law who was honored by all the people stood up in the sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while then he addressed the sanhedrin men of israel consider carefully what you intend to do to these men some time ago theodos appeared claiming to be somebody and about 400 men rallied to him he was killed all his followers followers were dispersed and it all came to nothing after him judas the galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt he too was killed and all his followers were scattered therefore in the present case i advise you leave these men alone let them go listen to this for if their purpose or activity is of human origin it will fail but if it is from god you will not be able to stop these men you will only find yourselves fighting against god isn't that incredible gamaliel was one of the most respected rabbis he wasn't a jesus follower but he stands up and basically says let's put it to the test if this is made up if this is fake news and fiction it will all fall apart but if it's of god then it will be everlasting and it will never stop and gamaliel puts the good news of jesus on trial and says if this is something that we can trust then it will last through the ages and we're still here today guys he put it to the test and the book of acts is full of astonishing stories where the good news of jesus is put on trial and it is shown time and time again that it can be trusted and so the final thing that i want to look at is the testimony of people you know you you can't argue with personal experience and we can we can look at all the evidence that we've just spent a little bit of time doing there and we can look at all the theory but it's like at some point theory has to move to being practical and personal you see i think the only way that you can fully know that you trust the good news of jesus is to experience it yourself is to immerse yourself in it and to put your trust in it and show that it can be trusted and we have hundreds of people who are part of our church who have done just that and i want to show you a video we have shown it before but you know what it speaks so well of people who have had personal experience of the truth of the good news of jesus here's some life central stories my name is olga my name's dom my name's laura lucy my name is megan ellie i'm anne my name's raj let me tell you about my history with jesus [Music] i've never had that relationship with god and i just automatically believe that just by saying i believed in god that made me a christian but when i was 14 we went on a christian holiday to a place called grapevine and when i was there i saw the work that god was doing and for the first time ever i asked jesus into my life it wasn't until this summer when my mom suddenly and unexpectedly passed away that i felt guarding my weakest and lowest point stronger and louder than he'd ever been it was when i lost my dad and i certainly wrestled with that i've certainly had doubts and questions and gone through all of those processes but ultimately it has in fact strengthened my faith i grew up believing in god but i wasn't entirely sure and i guess i would only turn to him when i was desperate bit of a last resort seven years ago i found myself a single mom i was completely devastated and it has been the biggest challenge of my life in my desperation i started to turn to god again and i started to pray and that's when i started to hear the signs i realised that's when he was listening i found myself running different as if i was escaping out when i got to the front i was surrounded by an incredible presence i felt completely safe and during that time god spoke to me very clearly that he was going to save my whole family and god has been faithful to that promise over the last 30 years he saved all of my family my understanding of myself has really grown in recent years i've always struggled to relate to god as a father and always believed i needed to try harder to be a better christian then two years ago my dad died my family has been through one of the most challenging times yet the storm is raging around us threatening more thunder and lightning but i have my god beside me and i am holding on to him he is my savior my guardian and my father mum's sikh my dad's muslim it's always been very difficult for me to kind of pick a religion to follow and i've always been very like anti-religion anti-god and looking for god and for jesus was something that i didn't plan to do it just happened and i spent a long time kind of thinking about trying to reach out to god but never really taking the steps to do so so i started to watch a few of the sermons from from church on on sunday morning i found it really appealing and i also felt like every single time i listened to leon talk the things he talked about seemed to be like he was talking to me directly and so i started to pray and i knew that i wanted to be a christian that uh my love for jesus would be never ending finding jesus has helped me calm my depression down it's helped the anxiety go away and it's helped me focus on what i need up until around three years ago as an atheist i didn't believe in god growing up i'd heard about god but only vaguely however due to my parents informing me and reminding me about god all the time i started to believe there was a god then february 2018 i got invited to the weekend away i had amazing time and i experienced the holy spirit i was so confused at first i didn't understand what was taken over my body although i felt at peace it just shows how amazing god is that i can call myself an atheist three years ago and now i'm fully committed to god i came to a point a few years ago when for various reasons i stopped attending church i spent just a few years in the wilderness but during the dark times i went to realize something else something very important god has never left me alone never i've been ignoring him but he'd never taken his hand off me he got to a point where i would compare myself and my journey and my relationship with him to other peoples it would cause such an unnecessary pressure within me my outlook changed when i realized that i can't compare my path or my journey with him to other people's once i realized that it made me concentrate and focus on my personal relationship with him it made me get rid of some of the inside pressure which was built up within me [Music] god's not done with me yet and he's not done with you all either [Music] a real variety of stories of circumstances of situations of lives every single one of them has found that the good news is good news to be trusted in their life and you know the good news is not just theory when you experience it personally and live it out you find that it can't be trusted but we come back to that main point you can only fully trust in his name when you're fully placed in the game and so today i want to ask you the question are you in the game are you in the game of following jesus and not just to people who aren't christians we're going to give you an opportunity to follow jesus and say yes to jesus for the first time or or say hey i'm getting back in the game but maybe you've kind of been in the game but you've been on the sidelines and you just feel that invitation of god saying get back in the game and so i want to give you that opportunity to do that because you know it's by you show trust by participating in and endorsing things and so you can show your trust in the good news by participating and endorsing and so i want to invite you to take a step into the game in a few moments time if you're not a christian i'm going to give you that chance and we're going to pray a prayer so maybe you want to just spend a couple of seconds considering whether you want to make that decision and decide to follow jesus and place your trust in this good news that jesus offers us but maybe you are a christian and you just get that sense that hey you've not been in the game maybe it's been because of heartbreak maybe even i just get the sense that somebody who's even in the past week has said i'm not sure i want to follow jesus anymore i just feel like god wants to remind you that you have an invitation to trust him that he can be trusted and he invites you to stick around like thomas did and he wants to meet you in your despair and in your grief and maybe there's areas of your life that you know that you've not been fully in the game that god says i'm inviting you in here maybe it's in the area of your finance maybe it's in the area of telling people about the good news we're going to talk about how you share the good news in a few weeks but maybe today jesus is just saying hey it's time to get back in the game and in a few moments we're going to sing and you can maybe reflect on that but if you're not a christian and you've never made that decision to follow jesus i want to invite you what i'm going to do is i'm going to pray a prayer line after line and i want to invite you to pray that prayer with me and you can say it out loud if you're on your own if you with people you can whisper it or just say it along in your heart it's not it's not about whether you say it out loud it's about whether you mean it in your heart and so i want to invite you to pray with me jesus i thank you that you love me and i thank you that you chose to die on a cross for me i'm sorry for the things that i have done that separate me from you jesus i choose today to place my trust in you jesus i want to follow you so jesus i pray that you will come into my life [Music] and would you show me what it means for me to follow you [Music] oh man enemy maybe some of you went ready to pray that and hey maybe you could just say to that say to god today you know like what thomas did geez i need you to show i need you to reveal yourself to me i need you to show up so i can like feel that you are there maybe that's the question you need to ask jesus today but if you did pray that prayer i want to encourage you to let us know get in touch with us you can text lcc next steps followed by your name to 60777 and then we'll you'll get sent a link and if you click that link you can then fill out the form and if you take i have decided to follow jesus one of our team would love to be in touch with you you know we're not gonna get in touch and try and sell you solar panels or talk to you about ppi we're not gonna pass on your number to anybody else we just wanna get alongside you and help you to take those next steps in following jesus and so i'd encourage you to do that right now take out your phone and text and let us know because we want to walk with you and support you and we want to celebrate with you with the decision that you have made and we're going to finish up with an incredible song and after that we're going to if you're watching live we're going to join leon and alison in the studio for the post service hangouts they're going to be delivering some mad awards to some mad mums making a difference that stands for and we're going to be having our next installment of life central kids news it's going to be loads of fun to stick around but we're going to wrap up with a song that just speaks of how we can have our trust in the good news it's called build my life and it says i will build my life on this same foundation it is a firm foundation the good news that we can build our life on there is loads of incredible lyrics in this that just speak of a response of our heart to trusting in the good news of jesus so let's sing this song together and reflect and allow god to speak to us this is build my life [Music] why [Music] we could ever bring you worthy of every breath we could ever breathe we live for you oh we live for you in jesus name of every other name jesus the only one who could ever say you're worthy of [Music] there is no [Music] show me who you are and fill me with your heart and lead me in your love to those [Music] we live for you [Music] jesus [Music] we live for you [Music] show me who you are [Music] oh show me who you are [Music] [Music] build your kingdom and here will build my life upon your love it is a firm foundation [Music] oh [Music] and i and i will not be shaken and holy [Music] show me who you are [Music] show me who you are fill me with your heart and lead me in your love to those around me [Music]

Channel: LifecentralChurchUK

Views: 3,237

Rating: 4.8139534 out of 5

Keywords: church, meaning, purpose, life, calling, lifestyle, Jesus, God, Spiritual wisdom, Spiritual Growth, God’s wisdom, Healthy decision making, How to make wise decisions, Make better decisions, making wise decisions in the bible, how to make wise decisions as a christian, faith, decisions, peace, covid-19, fake news, apologetics, evidence of jesus, christian debate, coronavirus, news, latest news, is the bible trustworthy, trust in jesus

Id: ztD2H8mQeeM

Length: 52min 42sec (3162 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021