January 3, 2021 - Jesus Heals a Ceiling Fan // Luke 5:17–39

[Music] [Music] [Music] hey there welcome to summit online this is where you'll find the weekend worship experience coming right to where you are in fact we have two ways to watch first you can access the full worship service on demand on our youtube channel so don't forget to subscribe this is a great option for families watching together or maybe you missed the weekend service and want to catch up later in the week second we host a live service on sundays at 9 or 11 a.m at live.summitchurch.com we never want you to worship alone so this is an awesome opportunity to connect with a digital community through the live chat option plus we have hosts actual humans ready to connect with you answer any questions or pray with you in our digital chat rooms if this is your first time joining us i am so glad that you are here in fact i believe god has a purpose in you being here today here at the summit we exist to create a movement of disciple making disciples here in the raleigh-durham area and around the world we pray this worship service allows you to grow deeper as a disciple of jesus christ that's what this is all about the good news of jesus so our service will begin shortly but before it does i want to let you know about all the ways that you can engage with us today first our desire is that families would watch this service together so we offer resources for all ages including today's sermon transcript as well as kids and student notes for your families to follow along second you can give financially all that you give goes towards all that we do to propel the mission of god forward and finally we don't want you to worship alone so can you think of someone that might want to join you today go ahead and text a friend and ask them to tune in with you for resources ways to give opportunities to connect and a free download for our first time guests you can text next steps to 33933 or visit summitchurch.com nextsteps we look forward to worshiping with you today [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] happy new year and welcome to the summit church we are so glad that you're choosing to begin your new year with us if this is your first time joining us we are so happy to have you if you could text the word welcome to 33933 so we can help you take your next steps here at the summit we actually have three ways to gather here in person at one of our locations here in the triangle in a smaller environment with a home gathering or online you can watch services at any time throughout the week on demand on our youtube channel or join us live on sundays at 9 00 or 11 a.m for more information on all the ways to gather as well as weekend resources text next steps to 33933 or visit our website and whether you are new or not let me remind all of us what we're about here at the summit following the holy spirit we exist to create a movement of disciple making disciples in rdu and around the world it's that simple we believe that jesus has done everything necessary to save us so we're giving our lives to his mission and his glory we hope you can join us in the work that he is doing here and all over the world and if you'd want to give to this movement you can text give to 33933 all that you give goes towards all that we do the lord continues to provide all that we need to accomplish his purposes through your generosity so thank you now who's ready to start 2021 with some worship grab your bible and pen and turn up the volume he alone is worthy of all of our praise let's worship him together today [Music] just lift our voices sing to our creator god let's sing a hymn together oh creatures of our god and king lift up your voice and with a sing o praise him [Music] thou burning sun with golden beam thou silver moon with softer gleam oh praise him oh praise him hallelujah [Music] hallelujah [Music] let all things their creator bless and worship him in humbleness praise the praise the father praise the son and praise the spirit three [Applause] hallelujah [Music] [Music] in his great love [Music] hallelujah oh rain yes praise him [Music] [Music] i saw darkness run for cover still the miracle that i just can't get over my name is registered in heaven i believe in signs and wonders i have a resurrection power yes i do still the miracle that i just can't get over my name isn't registered in heaven yeah my praise belongs to you forever [Music] this is my testimony from cause death rewrote my story i'll testify by jesus christ the righteous i'm justified this is my testimony this is my testimony [Applause] [Music] sing the praises of the spirit son and father our god will finish what he started cause grace rewrote [Music] this is my testimony [Applause] if i'm not dead you're not done greater things are still to come oh i believe if i'm not dead you're not done greater things are still to come oh i believe if i'm not dead you're not done greater things are still to come oh this is my testimony from death cause grace rewrote my story i'll testify by jesus christ this is my testimony [Applause] is the flow that makes me [Music] nothing but the blood of jesus no nothing but the blood jesus [Music] thank you jesus thank you jesus amen amen well summit as we head into the new year we want our dependence on the lord to be our first priority no better display of dependence than through prayer in fact we are going to be kicking off the year with 21 days of prayer beginning january 11th so be sure to visit our website or your campus facebook pages for more information but why wait right let's start this year by praying together right now i know it can be awkward if you've never done this before but let's pray out loud it's a new year let's push ourselves outside of our comfort zones right and what better way to begin our time of prayer than praying through the lord's prayer if this is how jesus taught his disciples to pray i think it's a great place to start so let's read the lord's prayer out loud together i'll be reading from the esv matthew 6 9-13 pray then like this our father in heaven hallowed be your name your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil amen well happy 2021 2020 is officially in his in the history books and i think all of god's people said a man i know a lot of us are really glad to get that year behind us that is certainly how i feel i told you a few weeks ago because of lockdown you are likely to emerge from 2020 either as a monk a hunk a chunk or a drunk so you should choose wisely and i hope you finish that year well but i'm actually really excited about 2021 some things that i sense god doing and preparing us as a church to do i've just had a few weeks here just where god has renewed some vision and some promises that he's given to us and uh renewing the commission that god has given us and what we're called to do some of which i'm going to try to tell you about today luke chapter five if you've got your bibles luke 5 if you'll uh turn them on or take him out find luke chapter 5. um we're going to be in verse 17 is where we're going to start this weekend um over the break my family and i watched an old movie that i remembered from college called mrs doubtfire we had to fast forward a couple of of scenes in it but it was robin williams at his best robin williams plays an actor who is down on his luck and and makes a mess of his marriage so his wife separates from him and because his life is so chaotic the courts give her full custody of the kids but he loves his kids passionately and he is so desperate to see them that he dresses up like an old english housekeeper and he applies for a job as their mate i know that sounds impossible to pull off even in a movie but but that was the genius of robin williams the movie is hilarious it is sad it is inspiring all at the same time it illustrates something that all of us have experienced at some point and that is that desperation will drive you to do some radical things things you might never have dreamed of doing otherwise i share that because that's the sense of desperation that you got to recognize that is at work in this story that we're going to look at in luke chapter 5 on multiple levels luke 5 verse 17. on one of those days while jesus was teaching pharisees and other teachers of the law were sitting there who would come from every village of galilee in judea and also from jerusalem and the lord's power to heal was in him that's a very interesting phrase by the way the new king james version translates that phrase as the power of the lord was present at that moment the power of the lord was present upon him to heal verse 18 just then some men came carrying on a stretcher another man who was paralyzed a friend of theirs that we assume they tried to bring him in and set him down before jesus since they could not find a way to bring him in because the crowd was so so packed in there they went up on the roof and they lowered him on the stretcher through the roof tiles into the middle of the crowd before jesus what do you see here by the way what do you see at work here desperation desperation verse 20 seeing their faith you see that their faith that's an important detail that we're going to come back to seeing their faith he said friend your sins are forgiven you to which the friends probably said uh okay i mean that's that's good sin is forgiven that's always a good thing that's certainly better than than your sins aren't forgiving you but but doesn't this guy have a more desperate problem right now and is it pretty obvious what what he really wants what he needs jesus's response is no he doesn't have a more urgent need than forgiveness of sins verse 21 then the scribes and the pharisees began to think to themselves who is this man who speaks blasphemies who does he think he is who can forgive sins but god alone that's a fair question i explained this a few weeks ago the only way that it would make any sense for jesus to forgive sins is if jesus considered himself to be the one who had been sinned against you just can't forgive things that don't involve you say you and your spouse or your roommate had a terrible fight last night right and they said that your roommate or your spouse says some of the meanest rudest things to you that anybody has ever said and you are furious you're hurt and and it left you even wondering how you could continue on in a relationship with somebody who thinks much less says things like that about you this morning when you got up it was as cold as ice in your in your house you came on to church of course you smile and you put on the church act for everybody how are you oh i'm blessed and highly favored brother how are you but inside inside you were seething you are resenting them wondering what the future's going to be well let's just say that after church i walk up to that person in your presence and i look up and i look at them and i say i know i know about your fight last night and i just want you to know that i forgive you for what you said you would rightfully look back to me and you would say uh pastor that's got nothing to do with you right you might be a pastor and you might be spiritually sensitive but you can't forgive something that wasn't done to you and you would be correct when jesus forgave sins and they said who can forgive sins but god alone jesus was like ding ding ding you get it you got it and forgiving sins this was a roundabout way of of claiming to be god now does that make sense i point that out because every once in a while you will hear somebody a new testament professor in in college or somebody uh somebody teaching at a secular college who's not a believer going through the the gospels and they'll say that in the earliest written gospels which are matthew mark and luke i've been written about 20 or 30 years after jesus death they'll say jesus jesus never really claimed to be god that was something that only the apostle john john wrote his gospel a few years a decade or two after these these first gospels and they'll say these scholars will say that that as the legends about jesus grew people in the early church started to consider him to be god and that's why john includes that in his gospel they say but in the earliest writings the earliest gospels jesus never claimed to be god right in those they just considered jesus to be a prophet but see when jesus does stuff like this you can see that that accusation is not true in forgiving sins or in allowing himself to be worshipped or in claiming to be the new temple of god where god's presence dwells jesus is claiming to be god it might be an indirect claim but the implication is clear now you said well why did jesus sometimes speak indirectly like that well because aggressive statements about his divinity would have would have triggered some people and shut them off from from from really from really wrestling with the implications of what he is saying and considering the the works that he was doing um so he he avoided sometimes saying it in direct ways but the implication's always clear in forgiving sins jesus is accepting the role of god verse 22 by perceiving their thoughts jesus replied to them why are you thinking this way in your hearts by the way this is the other thing that jesus often did to show that he was a lot more than a prophet he was always reading everybody's minds verse 23 which i say to you is easier is it easier to say your sins are forgiven or is it easier to say get up and walk now that's a pretty good question right well let me ask you what do you think which is easier to say is it easier to say your sins are forgiven or is it easier to say to a lame man get up pick up your bed and walk away well clearly it is easier to say your sins are forgiven why well because that's something that you can't verify if i say to somebody um your sins are forgiven you you can't tell if it worked or not but if i said to a lame man walk or if i said to a blind man see then you can tell right away whether i've actually got the power that i'm claiming to to have if i say get up and walk to a lame man and he doesn't do it well then you would know right away that i'm a phony so jesus's logic goes like this we know that forgiving sins and making the lame walk are both things that only god can do fair right so if i can say to a lame man get up and walk and he does it then it's safe to say that if i say to him your sins are forgiving you then i can do that also if i can do the verifiable one then you can trust that i can do the unverifiable one as well you follow his logic in showing that i have the power to make this lame man walk jesus says i'm also proving i have the power to make good on my promise to forgive his sins and see what he says next but so that you may know verse 24 so that you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins he tells the paralyzed man i tell you get out take your stretcher and go home verse 25 and immediately the man got up and picked up what he had been lying on and went on home glorifying god my title for this miracle is jesus heals a ceiling fan see what i did there like he's a fan of jesus and he's coming through the ceiling to see him a ceiling fan some of you'll need to take the rest of the day to sort of think about that but jesus heals the ceiling fan verse 26 then everybody was astounded and they were giving glory to god and they were all filled with awe and they said we have seen incredible things today yes you have indeed there are two main things that i want us to see in this story there are two very distinct ideas but i think they're both really important for us as a people right now and they both center around this theme of desperation they both arise out of verse 20. look at it seeing their faith he said friend your sins are forgiven they are first of all our desperate need and then secondly our desperate faith let's look first at our desperate need our desperate need at first jesus has offered to forgive this guy's sins almost seems a little cruel i mean it's obvious like i pointed out it's obvious what this man wants right yet jesus just ignores that and goes straight for forgiveness right but what if jesus saw that this man's greatest need our greatest need greater than his need for being healed was actually to be forgiven this guy is desperate to be healed but jesus is even more desperate to see this man restored to god this is the consistent constant theme of jesus's ministry jesus yearns desperate sometimes almost frantic to bring people back to god so in luke 15 he is the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep to go after the one that's lost he's also the desperate widow who searches her whole house top to bottom to find a coin that she's lost he's the scorned father who who stands at the gate anxiously waiting for his prodigal son to return home who runs with abandon when he finally sees him coming in luke 13 jesus is going to weep over jerusalem and just lament old jerusalem jerusalem how many times i tried to get you to turn to me but you wouldn't do it in luke 19 jesus summarizes his entire ministry is saying i've come to seek to look for desperately to seek and to save at the cost of my life the lost here's my question for you what if your greatest need this weekend is different than your most pressing desire in fact maybe you should write this down many people do not realize that their deepest desires often do not match up with their deepest needs what is it that you think if i were to ask you right now sitting in your home at one of our campuses what do you think you most need from jesus jesus says what you most need from me is forgiveness and maybe by the way maybe that strikes you as insensitive maybe like this friends of this man probably thought that at first also maybe you're sitting here today for example and you've been wronged recently maybe maybe you've been abused and you say how dare you say that i my greatest need is forgiveness i'm the one who's been wronged and sure you say maybe i need to learn to forgive the person who wronged me and i'm struggling with that but that's it and it seems insensitive almost cruel of you to say that i need forgiveness also well i mean you're partially right i understand but but listen to jesus's wisdom because this is really quite practical if you've really been wronged what you need most is a way to forgive those who wronged you and guess what you can't ever forgive heinous wrongs unless you've experienced incredible forgiveness yourself those who have been forgiven they're the ones who learn how to forgive it may be true that you have been wronged but it's also true that in relation to god all of us have wronged him much more than we've ever been wrong then experiencing his forgiveness is going to give you the strength and the ability to forgive those who have wronged you listen i don't know who you are i don't know what you've done but i can tell you that the greatest need that you have right now is to know that you're forgiven you know the best testimony to this comes um come perhaps not even really from a christian but from an atheist literary genius named franz kafka franz kafka's most enigmatic book was called the trial the protagonist in the in in that book was named joseph k and he is arrested but he can't get a straight answer from anybody about what his crime was he's just arrested and taken from jail to jail and courtroom to courtroom but but the mystery is he's never told what he's done been done wrong uh in his private cell or as he's being transported from place to place he muses over all the things that he might have done that would have gotten him in this situation but he never he never gets an answer and at the end of the book a guard just stabs him and he dies it's not a great beach read by the way um for years after kafka wrote this people were unclear as to what the book possibly could have meant but after kafka died people discovered that he had put the meaning explained the meaning in his diary he said and i quote the state in which we find ourselves today is sinful independent of guilt that might be confusing here's what he meant as a society right in western society modern society we've thrown off our belief in god which means we don't have to feel guilty about sin anymore because moral laws are all relative morality is subjective and personal and i should have to feel guilty about my choices or my sexual preferences or whatever because i live according to my truth now that's our society kafka said and so we successfully got rid of guilt and yet and yet kafka says we still walk around with a sense of sinfulness and condemnation we're not even sure where it comes from we still feel condemned even though we got rid of guilt we feel like there's this sentence over our soul that says not good enough rejected we thought getting rid of god would remove our condemnation kafka said but it appears that we can't it's implanted within us we christians know right according to the book of romans for example that that is because god has implanted in our hearts a yearning to be restored to our father and a sense that things are not right with him you say well franz kafka that's a bit heady okay let me ask you kids got a lot of kids in our living rooms or at our campuses listening right now as a kid do you ever have the fear that people are mad at you or disappointed at you and you you don't know why the fear that maybe one day your parents might leave or your your teacher will flunk you or that you'll get picked last for the team and see that comes from something deep inside of us that knows there's something wrong between us and god when i first saw the show survivor i thought the little ceremony at the end of each episode where they they vote somebody off the island i i saw that as basically a metaphor for for my life i'm always afraid that at some point in whatever group i'm trying to succeed in and whatever group i'm trying to find acceptance in whether it's among my siblings or or my friends or in my career that i'm going to be the one that doesn't measure up and i'm going to be the one that gets kicked off the island well see that all comes from a deep seated fear in all of us that yearns for assurance of reunion and acceptance by our heavenly father i'll say it again listen i don't know who you are or what you think your greatest need is right now a car a job a spouse a different spouse a better roommate healing from cancer jesus cares about all of that and in a minute he's going to prove it by actually healing this man but but in jesus wisdom he knows that what you need most is forgiveness and restoration to the father and the good news is that that's why he came not only do you see that in moments like this but when you realize that he was headed to a cross in this story he is headed to a cross within a couple of years where where he's going to pay the ultimate price so that he could grant you forgiveness you see saying your sins are forgiven that was not just a blessing that he uttered it wasn't a benediction it was something he was going to purchase for you by his blood that's why he can say to you i forgive your sins because he paid for them that's what he said his cross was about and here's the deal here's the deal if he could make the lame walk and he could command the wind and the waves to cease and if he could speak and bring dead men out of the grave at just the sound of his voice well then you can also believe him when he says that his death on the cross paid for your sins if he can say to the lame walk then he can say to you i forgive your sins in fact the apostle paul would say that god raised jesus from the dead in part to prove that jesus had the power to forgive sins that he said he had romans 4 25 says that the resurrection was god's validation that the payment of the cross had been accepted the fact that jesus rose from the dead proved that the cross had accomplished what jesus said it accomplished so don't just believe jesus because of his words see believe him because he demonstrated the power to back it up there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from emmanuel's veins and and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty staying the dying thief rejoiced the sea that fountain in his day and there may i the vilest he wash all my sins away dear dying lamb thy precious blood will never lose its power to all the ransom church of god be saved to sin no more i know that's true and i've built my life on the fact that it's true and the reason i believe it's true is because jesus showed that he had the power to back it up by healing the lame and making the blind sea and raising for the dead so that's what we see as our is our most desperate need now secondly in this story what you're also going to see is our desperate faith i pointed this out as we as we were reading the story but verse 20 says that when jesus saw their faith right you see verse 20 seeing their faith it was then that he said your sins are forgiven and rise up and walk this miracle was produced not so much by the lame man's faith according to what jesus said it was produced by the faith of his friends on behalf of their faith their desperate faith jesus offered him salvation and healing maybe this man was so sick he could barely speak anymore or maybe he'd just been lame for so long that he'd given up hope and he he just couldn't believe that anything would ever change and into that gap that gap of of of helplessness that gap of hopelessness these friends rose up with their faith and they said no i bet jesus will do something for you it was their faith that loaded him into that stretcher and carried him out to where jesus was it was their faith that pushed their way through the crowd it was their faith that spawned the ingenuity to go to the top of the house and tear open the roof above jesus's head it was their faith that made them ignore all the people around who were yelling like hey what are you doing or the guy who was shouting what you can't do that to my roof it was their faith that lowered that man down expectedly at jesus feet and said master what are you going to do about this write this down write this down when the paralyzed man could do little for himself it was the active faith of his friends that made the difference when that paralyzed man could do little for himself or was unwilling to do anything for himself it was the active faith of his friends that made the difference what do you think luke the writer of this gospel is trying to teach us he's teaching us that sometimes our faith is so weak the marriage has been bad for so long that you've just stopped believing and the people around you have to believe for you he's teaching us that sometimes the people around us are too weak or too confused to seek healing for themselves so we we carry them before jesus we take that burden we press through the difficulties we lower them down through prayer at jesus feet by constant and unending on prayers and supplication and because of our faith the master gives them the miracle maybe that's gonna going to come for you in the form of a a prodigal child who is confused and has stopped seeking god or praying to praying to god on his own or her own and it means that you bring them every night in their spiritually paralyzed state to jesus and you say master master please do something maybe it's a spouse a friend a co-worker god has placed you in their lives because they are too spiritually weak to pray for themselves and so so you have to step into that gap and believe god for them and ask god to intervene in the new testament this special urgency to pray is called the gift of faith it's a gift that god gives in different degrees at different times when when he wants to do something in somebody's life he puts the faith and sometimes somebody else is hard to ask him to do it when his power is present to heal it'll put faith in the heart of certain people to ask him for it listen y'all this is a gift that we don't talk about enough at our church but one i really want you to recognize and embrace i read a book a couple of years ago written by a friend named sam storms who really helped me get my mind around this the book is called practicing the power dr storm says that when the new testament uses the word faith it uses it in three different ways and unless you learn to recognize the three different uses of the word faith you'll probably get confused he said first you got salvation faith that's the faith that embraces christ as lord and savior ephesians 2 8 it's by grace that you have been saved through faith uh the book of ephesians says that even that kind of faith is a gift of god by grace you've been saved through faith and even even that saving faith is not of yourselves it's the gift of god so if you have professed jesus as lord you have that kind of faith all christians have that it's what makes us christians second second you've got sustaining faith storm says sustaining faith that's the general confidence that god is present with you he will never leave you or forsake you it's confidence in his goodness confidence that he's in control that he's sovereignly working all things for good this is what we typically mean when we say that so and so has strong faith we mean that they seem to have an unshakable confidence in god's plan again that's something all christians should have at all times right but the third kind of faith the third kind of faith dr storm says is the spiritual gift of faith and that is what you see here at work in this story this is a special bestowal of faith that god gives to certain christians at certain times when he wants to do something miraculous through you or something miraculous around you you sense by the spirit an urge to pray an urge to press into the goodness of god and urge to lay down somebody at jesus's feet this is the kind of faith that paul had in mind in first corinthians 12 9 when he talks about the spiritual gift of faith some he says some are given the gift of faith i'll be honest i was always confused by that because i thought why would he call gift why would he call faith a gift and say it's given to some when all christians should have faith it isn't our duty to trust god why would paul say some of us have a special gift of it paul doesn't say that some have the the gift of purity or the gift of honesty so why would he say that that some have to give to faith well here's the reason it's because he's not talking about salvation faith he's not talking about sustaining faith all christians should have those let me quote dr storms here he says while all faith while all faith is an expression of trust and humble dependence on god this spiritual gift of faith is the experience of faith that arises somewhat spontaneously and unexpectedly in our hearts we feel certain that god that god wants to do something when god wants to bless us with a miraculous answer to our prayer he will take the initiative by his spirit to cultivate and build into our hearts the fulfillment of the condition that he requires jesus only does his miracles in response to faith so where jesus wants to do a miracle he stirs up in his spirit in believers the faith to believe him for something and then to ask him to do it therefore storm says dr storm says each time as we pray each time we seek god let us begin by asking god for an extraordinary powerful faith let us ask god that he work in us to produce and sustain the confidence that he is pleased to bless this is the faith that these friends in luke 5 are showing god put in their heart the confidence to press for this miracle because luke 5 17 the power of the lord was presently healed there that day you see jesus only heals in response to faith so he put it in the hearts of these friends depressed of the crowds so that he could work in this man the miracle that he desired the miracle of healing and even more importantly the miracle of forgiveness here's my question for you what paralyzed person around you as god put in your heart for you to pray for a friend a prodigal child a parent a whole people group i recently read a book by a guy named james banks who was a pastor from right here in in durham by the way he's pastor of a presbyterian church he's become a friend he talks about the journey his journey of praying he and his wife praying for two prodigal children one of whom has come back to jesus and the other who hasn't hasn't come back yet here's what he said when we pray for our prodigal kids watch this we carry them on stretchers of faith to jesus we do the heavy lifting but they receive the benefit they may be entirely passive or even actively resisting us but jesus sees see this our faith as we bring them to him parents don't you sense unless you say it's faith rising up in your heart as i say that do you realize that god at this very moment has put you in a place to intercede to pray his power is present to heal your desire to pray is evidence of that that's his spirit stirring up in you but he will not grant the miracle unless you exercise the faith i mean think about it have these friends not made that journey and not torn open the roof have they gotten discouraged have they looked at the crowds and said oh oh well this is way too hard or you know if god really wanted this man healed he would have made it easier right if they would have seen that and and not not actually gone through with it this man would never have received his miracle even if it's not a prodigal son or a daughter that you're praying for i bet there's somebody some person that god has put into your heart for you to pray for and i want to urge you as we start 20 21 for you to obey that that that impulse by the spirit and recognize that it's from him years ago i read a book by jim symbola it's called fresh wind fresh fire it became immediately one of my favorite books and one i i read again and again from time to time in this book he just tells the story of how god taught him to to be the kind of prayer warrior that we see this story in the the new testament pushing the story he includes in it the story of how god brought his own prodigal daughter home a daughter who had forsaken god and and run away from home and their church does a tuesday night prayer meeting each week i've actually been to their prayer meeting up in new york city it's one of the most powerful things that i've ever experienced one night pastor symboli had shared from acts 4 in this prayer meeting about how the church boldly called out on god even in the face of discouragement let me just let him actually tell the story of of what happened he said we then entered into a time of prayer based off acts 4 everybody reaching out to the lord in concert together an usher he said came up and handed me a note a young woman whom i felt to be spiritually sensitive had written to me pastor symbolize i feel impressed by the spirit that we should stop the meeting and pray for your daughter in a few minutes i picked up the microphone and told the congregation what was going on with my daughter there arose spontaneously a groaning a sense of desperate determination as if to say satan you will not have this girl take your hands off of her she is coming back i was overwhelmed the force of that vast throng calling on god almost literally knocked me over when i got home that night carol was waiting up for me his wife we sat at the kitchen table and i said it's over with chrissy it's his daughter's name you would have had to be in the prayer meeting tonight i tell you if there is a god in heaven this whole nightmare is finally over 32 hours later on a thursday morning my daughter walked in and we both just began to cry daddy she said with a start who was praying for me who was praying for me on tuesday night daddy who was praying for me i hadn't told her anything about it i didn't say anything she just continued in the middle of the night god woke me up and showed me i was heading toward this abyss there was no bottom to it it scared me to death i was so frightened i realized how hard i've been how wrong how rebellious but at the same time it was like god wrapped his arms around me and held me tight he kept me from sliding any farther as he reassured me i still love you and i'm not walking away from you i will never walk away from you that same tuesday night the very hour of the church was praying in response to the spirit god moved in and this girl's soul and showed her that she was headed toward destruction all the while flooding his heart with a sense of his her heart with a sense of his love that's a group of friends being bestowed with the gift of faith james banks again says our prodigal kids desperately need us to lift them to jesus on the stretcher of prayer even if they don't have the faith he'll see ours they will be blessed because of it summit family guests those you that are new to our church there's two ways i want to close first i want to tell you about something that we're going to start this year something i hope that we will make a lot more frequent here we're going to open up this year 2021 as a church with a fast where we are going to ask god specifically to do some things in our lives and our families and our neighbors and our church that only he can do 21 days 21 days of fasting in prayer we're going to give you some different options for how to do it some of you may fast for example from one meal each of those days others may fast from from some one particular thing the whole time some of you may cut certain foods out of your diet for 21 days we'll give you different options of ways you can do it we're going to give you daily prayer points that you can pray along with us together as we ask god for some incredible things and to move in incredible ways in our families and and in this church and in our community you're going to be able to sign up for daily email reminders it's all going to be on our website social media of course we're gonna we're gonna saturate everything we do in january in prayer we're gonna pray for god to move here and through our missionaries and church planters around the world that's all gonna culminate in an all-church night of prayer towards the end of january that we're gonna have at all of our permanent locations you'll be hearing more about those things in the days and the weeks to come listen i've told you before jesus said we were to be known as a house of prayer not a place of preaching not a place with great guest services or great family ministries but we're to be known as a house of prayer somebody do you think that's true of us right kovid disrupted things for a while and so as we're relaunching and in a way we're relaunching our church this year i want us to do so with prayer as a staple as a core as a foundation of all that we do we're not going to try to fit just we're not going to try to fit prayer in at the margins where we preach and we program um and then try to pray around that we're going to try to lay prayer as the foundation and then build the rest of the house around it this fast that we're calling you to is a part of that and i hope all of you will join me in it plus i want to tell you that there are miracles in the lives of your sons and your daughters and your neighbors and even your own life that are waiting to happen if you will exercise faith like this and press through for them second thing i want to do as we close is i want to give you a chance to pray right now now for those of you who are online um you could stop right now just literally hit pause on me and and pray with those right there in your living room you just pause this right now and you guys pray together as a group or if you're by yourself maybe you're at a computer or you're sitting in a room alone i want you to click the request prayer button and it'll actually take you straight to a live prayer counselor okay not an automated response but a live prayer counselor in a digital prayer room where you can share your request with one of our pastors or a host there [Music] [Music] came to the world you created trading your crown for a cross you willingly died your innocent life paid the cost [Music] counting your status as nothing the king of all kings came to serve washing my feet covering me with your love if more of you means less of me take everything yes all of you is all i need take everything you are my life and my treasure the one that i can't live without here at your feet [Applause] [Music] and dreams i lay down take everything yes all of you is all i need take everything oh all of you is [Music] here with my make me more like jesus make me this [Music] oh [Music] make us everything all of you is is oh if more of you means less of me take everything yes all of you is all i need take everything take it all jesus if more of you it's less of me take everything whatever's not like you yes all of you is all i need take everything take everything take everything take everything take everything whatever's not like you lord take everything summit family thank you so much for joining us today we pray that this worship service was a blessing to you and if it was consider copying the link and sharing it with a friend if you are looking to take your next steps with the summit you can text next steps to 33933 where you can find all the information about what is going on at our church we can't wait to see you back here next week summit you are sent [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Summit RDU

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Id: q-h7qx-Zqi8

Length: 59min 17sec (3557 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 02 2021