The Real Thing

[Music] [Music] what's up everybody welcome once again to i town church it's so good to have you with us today my name is adam i'm one of the pastors here at i town and pastor dave's going to be back next week to kick off a brand new series called my own worst enemy but today you have to deal with me so uh yeah sorry no i'm sorry no i don't need the pity it's fine it's okay i appreciate it i appreciate it hey i do want to say hello to those of you who are joining us live online as well as at our correctional facilities come on wherever you're at would you welcome each other to church this morning today i want to share about a topic that i'm very passionate about and i think that often times in life we settle for less than the real thing that the title of today's message is the real thing because i think so many times we end up settling for a cheap imitation uh something that isn't exactly what god had in store for us and how many all know that the imitation is never as good as the real thing anybody ever heard of mountain lightning you ever had mountain lightning it's mountain dew but but it's not or dr thunder you ever had dr thunder or any other doctor or mr related beverage they're all a knock off of something what about android phones right just a knockoff iphone it's fine all the android people will say oh the iphone's the knockoff but it's better so it's fine uh anybody anybody like honeycomb cereal you ever had honeycomb cereal you like it have you have you ever heard of crispy hexagons because that's a real cereal uh what about you any any fans of cinnamon toast crunch like cinnamon toast crunch what about buncho cinnamon squares that's an imitation this was my favorite of all the cereals that i found these are real cereals by the way okay you know tricks cereal anybody know tricks you know silly rabbit tricks are for kids right what about pranks cereal okay not tricks but pranks that's pretty clever if i ever see prank cereal at the store i'm definitely going to be buying some i love i love popeye's chicken sandwich i think it's the best and so then you've got that imitation chick-fil-a uh just not as good it's fine hey if you like that's fine you guys can like chick-fil-a if you want to swing by after church and grab oh wait you can't that's right well if you're hungry you could swing by popeyes they're open today the truth is is that the imitation is never as good as the real thing and so often times we settle for the off-brand the imitation the the fake version of so many things in our life and today i want to talk about how we find the real thing what i mean by that is how we find specifically real relationships real friendships real connection in our life because i think so many of us have given up good real connection for a cheap surface level imitation here's what the bible says that our friendship should look like in proverbs 27 17 it says as iron sharpens iron so a friend sharpens a friend that's a good picture i think a friendship of what it should look like and the picture that they're painting here would be very familiar to the people they're speaking to if you've ever watched a blacksmith work you know that there's lots of iron there's lots of sparks there's lots of friction that's involved with that it's a it's a hammering process that takes place and and there's just lots of collision in all of that and that's what a friendship should look like it's an iron sharpening iron situation but some of us are not getting close enough to be sharpened we're not even we're missing we're the the iron is swinging and there's just no collision there's no friction because we're not getting close enough to actually find that friction in an increasingly technology-based busy lifestyle we're just accepting more and more surface relationships more and more of our interactions are coming through technology which i think technology is great i love technology i love how it's made you know information accessible everywhere and it connects all of us in different ways but at the end of the day it's just not the same as face-to-face has anybody in the last couple years had to meet somebody for the first time over a zoom call anybody a show of hands it's weird right it's weird uh it's such a strange way to meet people and technology-based relationships are just not uh just not the quality isn't there it's a great tool it's a great part of all of it but even when we're together half the time we're on our phones we're disengaged you know sometimes we're sending text messages to somebody who's literally across the same room as us we're like disengaged from the conversation and i think it's left us with what i would call imitation friendships kind of looks like the real thing you know it seems pretty close from the outside you might think it's exactly the same thing but on the inside it's more like an impossible burger you know it's not real meat okay all you gotta do is take one bite and you know okay and i think that we end up with these imitation friendships these imitation relationships and social media has brought a rise to a lot of this but the truth is is that uh you may have taken a step back from social media maybe you deleted your account maybe you were like hey it's it's dangerous i don't want to be a part of it maybe you were never a part of social media and you've you're like look i don't buy into all of that and that's that's great but i think our busy lifestyle and as technology grows and as the world shifts i think we're all allowing that mentality to shift and to slip into our regular everyday lives i kind of realized recently that i was having a lot of conversations that were not much more than an instagram post there's not much more than here's a quick picture into my life here's a caption for you here's a like we like and then out like hey how are the how's the family doing oh man that's awesome how are the kids cool yeah my kids oh yeah they're great yep yeah oldest in kindergarten now cool hey high five heart we're out it's an instagram it's an instagram interaction it's not much more than that and there's space for that don't get me wrong like as you leave church today that's probably what most of your interactions will be like but that can't be what all of our interactions are like we can't have only surface level relationships and in some cases we've traded all of our friendships all of our relationships all of the real thing for an imitation for a surface just a cheap version of friendship and when that happens there's some trade-offs that we make there's a lot of trade-offs that we make in the process of that the first thing that we do i think and if you're taking notes jot this down is that we trade quality for efficiency we trade quality relationships for efficient relationships efficiency is not something we should be looking for out of our relationships we've bought into the lie that quantity matters more than quality and so we're not seeking out deep relationships we're we're just looking for efficiency and that's you know part of that social media right like the average number of facebook friends a person has is 338 that's the average number of facebook friends a person has but the average number of real-life friends a person has this somewhere between three and eight people and i think even then sometimes we use that term a little loosely like close friends i don't know if we all have three to eight close friends some of us don't have any close friends and we're worried more about the quantity the hundreds of friends that we have over here and we're we're less focused on the real friends that we have in life and so social media and and just the rise of our busy lifestyle makes us look for more efficiency in our friendships now don't get me wrong some people are different personalities and some people need more friends than others some people you just need a couple of friends and and that's just the way that you're wired you just need a few and that's great for others of you you need more friends that's just your personality style again that's fine it doesn't matter how many friends we have what matters is that we have at least some close friends like some people that we would call brothers and sisters even in fact proverbs 17 17 says that a friend loves at all times and her brother is born for a time of adversity now as we're talking about efficiency at all times sounds very inefficient at all somebody who loves at all times that's not efficient i can love from 9 to 11 every other thursday and on the fourth saturday of the month that's efficiency and that's at all times is very inefficient and adversity never happens at convenient times has anybody ever had a crisis and in the middle of the crisis you thought what a what a perfect time for this crisis to happen i mean everything's just going really smooth everything else is worked out anybody had a crisis that was like this is perfect timing yeah nobody nobody's had a crisis at a good time it always happens at the worst possible times and so it's not about efficiency it's not about it's not about maximizing the time it's about finding it's about finding quality relationships it's about finding people that will be there for you when you need them to be there for you that's one trade-off that we make we trade off quality for efficiency another trade-off that we make is that we trade lasting for immediate we trade lasting relationships for immediate we aren't looking to build lifelong friendships but who will tell me what i want to hear right now who's going to say hey that's great hey high five hey that's funny hey that's awesome hey you look cool hey that's a good idea who's going to tell you what you want to hear right now and we're not looking for the lifelong relationships we're looking for the instant gratification we get addicted to the likes the laughs the the high five the applause the whatever that is we get addicted to it science shows that we get addicted to those things just like you get addicted to drugs or alcohol or any of those other things and all it does is defer loneliness it's not fulfilling it's not it's not actually creating any lasting change in your life it's just deferring all of that it's the reason we end up chasing silly tick tock trends it's the reason that people eat tide pods it's the reason that it's the reason that we stack a bunch of milk crates up and fall off of milk crates it's it's the reason that people plank anybody remember planking that was like a weird time right i don't understand why that was ever a thing but it was weird no we we we end up doing a lot of dumb things to try to chase likes to try to chase an immediate reaction we need people in our lives who will tell us how dumb we look when we're planking we need people who would tell us that's not a good idea proverbs 27 6 says that wounds from a friend can be trusted but an enemy multiplies kisses those kisses are the likes we get but they're the laughs at a at a cheap joke at somebody else's expense it's the attention we get for doing something dumb and as christians we're supposed to be able to speak the truth and love to one another and so we need we need lasting relationships not the kind that'll tell us what we want to hear but the kind that will give those wounds from a friend we need the wounds from a friend we need somebody to say hey you may not want to hear this but i don't think that's a good idea you may not want to hear this but i think you're on a path towards destruction you may not want to hear this but you're going to be embarrassed of this photo in 10 years when that trend is no longer cool you need people who are willing to tell you those kinds of things and that doesn't come when all we're looking for is immediate now now now type relationships because people aren't going to say those kinds of things to you we we have often traded lasting lifelong relationships for immediate another trade-off that we make is that we often trade resilience for convenience we trade it and all we want is convenience surface relationships are easy because they're convenient we don't have to go out of our way we don't have to do anything special it doesn't inconvenience us in any way it just makes sense with our lives it's like have you ever tried to make convenience store food into a real meal you ever try to like live off a gas station hot dogs for an entire meal like it doesn't work nothing on the roller grill is is gonna stick to your ribs okay something about it if there was ever any nutrients in it the roller grill just sucks them all out that's just how it works there's nothing resilient about that meal and an hour down the road you're going to be hungry again because it doesn't stick to you because it was just something of convenience it wasn't anything real there wasn't anything that was going to stick with you and some of our relationships are like that it's good for a minute it's good when we want it when it's convenient for us and then when it's not convenient we cut it off we don't like what they have to say or when we have to have a tough conversation or when they say something that offends us in some way it's now inconvenient now i have to do something that i don't want to do but ephesians 4 2 says that we need to be humble and gentle patient with each other making allowance for each other's faults because of our love see surface relationships convenient relationships won't make an allowance for the shortcomings in our lives because we all fall short right we all make mistakes and and our friends are all going to make mistakes right too and if all we're looking at is the convenient relationship these imitation friendships then when things get difficult we're going to cash out or they're going to cash out there's not any resilience there there's not anything that's going to last there there's not anything that's going to stick in the social media world you can unfollow block hide their posts whatever you can just walk away from it and in real life a surface relationship you weren't that invested in in any ways maybe you hung out a few times you know but now it's inconvenient and so i'm just going to stop texting them back i'm just going to stop hanging out with them and it's not going to matter and and it was a convenience thing for both of you so they're not going to reach out about it anyways it's not always convenient but we need to have more resilient relationships that can stick through difficult things that can make allowance for one another that's how we grow that's how we get better is through this resiliency is working through difficult situations at the end of the day all of these things all of these trade-offs that we make all boil down i think to selfishness it's all it all comes down to a selfish attitude about our relationships but philippians 2 3 says that we should do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit but in humility consider others better than ourselves that's what we're supposed to live like we're supposed to consider others better than ourselves that doesn't mean humility doesn't mean putting yourself down you may have heard this humility doesn't thinking less of yourself it's thinking of yourself less it's elevating other people it's putting their needs above your own and look i know self-care is like a hot topic and i know it's a big thing and i know that it's like oh self-care you know you need to you need to care for yourself but the best self-care you can do is to invest into a relationship to invest into a friend because you can't live this life alone you're gonna need friendships and they're gonna need you i think sometimes we just get too toxic in that selfish mentality i think self-care is important i'm not trying to i'm not trying to say you shouldn't take time for yourself and sometimes relationships are toxic and you should walk away from them that's that's totally fine but i think sometimes it's all about what we get out of relationships it's all we're in a relationship only for what we want we're just friends with people that we think will help us or that are convenient or that are around us and we end up with these surface imitation relationships and an imitation friendship is just not as good as the real thing it's not as good as the real thing and so if we need the real thing if we need real relationships then what does that look like how can we really determine what that looks like well there's a few things that i want to look at for the rest of our time together and i really want to look at the life of jesus because anytime we can study something that he specifically did something that he did while he was on this earth man it's a great it's a great reference point for us he lived you know a perfect life and so if there's anything he physically did let's just copy that and he had a group of close friends that we read a lot about in the bible they're called his disciples and they're his closest friends and even within his group of disciples there were a few guys that he was even closer to than the rest and it's important that we have relationships like that that we have these close-knit people and so i want to study for just a couple minutes mark 3 verses 13 and 14 because this is how jesus chose his disciples and i think in just these couple of verses it gives us a little glimpse into how we can view our relationships how we can have the real thing okay so mark 3 13-14 jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted and they came to him he appointed 12 that they might be with them and that he might send them out to preach and so the first thing that we see in that is that jesus's relationships were intentional jot that down the real thing is intentional it says that he called out to those he wanted now this may seem like common sense but the first way that we find good friendships is that they're people that we actually want to be friends with and that's a that you're like oh well obviously but it's not so obvious sometimes sometimes we spend so much time trying to impress people that we don't really like or trying to be friends with people that we don't really even care for if we'd stand back and look at it like i know for me in in junior high in high school i really wanted to try to fit in with a certain group of people i wanted to be one of the popular kids and i wasn't i wasn't really popular i kind of flew under the radar but i really wanted to be one of the popular kids and when i was in high school it was like everybody wore abercrombie and fitch that was like the cool thing and uh and so you could abercrombie and fitch had to be like a good chunk of your wardrobe but you could wear like maybe some hollister and you could have some old navy but had to be like a minority stake in old navy like not a lot and and so i saved up some of my own money and i went and bought one abercrombie and fitch t-shirt which pro tip is not enough um and i wore that thing until it no longer said abercrombie and fitch and i had a couple of other you know semi-cool shirts one was a long sleeve bad call you know just you can only wear it in certain seasons and you sweat okay that's not good for popularity either and i had a lot of old navy and then a few just other random things right i but i wanted to be a part of this cool crew of people and then one day i kind of just started to realize you know what i don't even know that i really like them i don't even know if i really like want to be friends with them we don't really have much in common like i don't know what we talk about i'm not really a jock i'm not really into a lot of the things that they're into and i just don't know that even if we were to hang out what would we do together what would we talk about and so i started i started hanging out with like the band geeks and the theater nerds and you know that was more yeah what's up and i don't even know if they're geeks anymore because i feel like glee changed everything and now they're the cool kids i don't know but when i was in high school they were they were the nerds and so i thought i didn't want to be friends with the nerds but the truth is i was a nerd and i they were that was just my scene the artsy kids like we got along better we had a lot more similar interests you know that was just more my crew and i had so much more fun and and formed so much more meaningful relationships with people that i actually had something in common with people that i actually wanted to hang out with and so we need to be intentional about our relationships like forming relationships with people that we actually want to be friends with but not only being intentional about liking them but also in who they are using wisdom and and discernment to actually choose people that that you want to look more like you've probably heard this phrase before but you know you're the sum total of your closest relationships and so who are your closest relationships your closest friends if they're people that you want to look more like that's great but if you look at them and like you're the smartest one of the bunch you're the one who's making the best decisions probably not a great move okay they're probably not people that you want to be hanging out with all the time because you're going to end up looking more like the people that you hang out with so you got to use wisdom to choose good people who are on the right path who who have something in common with you but you're also on the same journey second timothy 2 22 says flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness faith love and peace along with those who call on the lord out of a pure heart i love that phrase along with those because there's there's things we're supposed to pursue we're supposed to pursue righteousness faith love peace that's great i think we would all say that's true but it says along with those like there's supposed to be other people on our journey the life that we're pursuing the things that we're pursuing we should have other people who are also pursuing those same things other people who are keeping us on the right path who when we fall to the wayside they're picking us up and saying hey we're headed in this direction this is where we're going and you need people who are on that same journey together and so we need to be intentional in our relationships they need to be people that we like people that we want to look more like people that encourage us challenge us and are on the same path the second thing we see is that their relationship was mutual so jesus called out to them he p he picked the ones that he liked and they picked him too he like they liked him it says and they came to him and see relationships are two-sided and so often times we end up in a one-sided relationship you can't carry a relationship alone it's impossible to have deep relationships when you're again wrestling with a lot of selfishness if we're in a selfish relationship whether it's our selfish motivation or theirs these one-sided relationships just don't work they have to be mutual and we have to break that that selfishness off of our lives john 13 34 says a new command i give you this is jesus talking to his disciples love one another as i have loved you so you must love one another by this everyone will know that you're my disciples if you love one another and so it's this idea of not being selfish like we have to love people we're not looking for what we can get out of their relationship we're looking for what we can give to the relationship it has to work both ways and so we have to look at our own lives and say am i being a good friend am i being unselfish am i looking for how i can serve but you also got to look at it honestly and this is difficult like is it one-sided am i the one who's always initiating everything am i the one who's carrying everything it has to be a mutual understanding a mutual relationship it has to work in both directions and that ebbs and flows in certain seasons and and some seasons you know people are pushing more and some people some seasons they're pulling more that's what it means to be mutual it's not a matter of like every day everything is equal right it's not like ever we text each other the exact same amount we pick the restaurants the exact same number of times it's not about that okay it's just about overall at a macro level what's the relationship like are you the one who's always carrying the weight are they always carrying the weight maybe it's not mutual okay the third thing that we see is that they're available jot that down they're available and so it was a mutual relationship it was give and take like jesus called them they came to him and then it said that they spent time with him that they would that they were with him that they came and made themselves available to be a part of jesus's life and that's important there's power in the presence of one another there's there's an intimacy a connection that you just can't get over technology over text messages even over phone calls or or video calls there's just some level of all of that that you can't get that we have to be together in person god believes so strongly in it that he sent jesus here to this earth like the word emmanuel means god with us that means that he wanted jesus in the flesh to be here with us to model the power of this in in the in presence this physical connection and it's important for us to get together hebrews 10 24 we've read this verse a lot lately let us not consider let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds not giving up meeting together it's important that we get together and not just to be in the presence of god but it's important that we get together it goes on to say let us encourage one another when we get together we can encourage one another friendship at some level means physically meeting together at some point at some point on some level if we're not gonna have surface relationships if we're gonna have the real thing there has to be a physical meeting now i get being an adult sometimes is pretty tough and schedules get crazy and my wife and i are just starting to get into the season where our kids are starting to have lives that are even making ours even more busy like our oldest is in kindergarten just started soccer a few weeks ago and we're just starting to get to that point so i understand life gets busy and i'm not saying that like if you don't have friends that you're getting with you know every thursday from now until eternity then you then you you're not real friends that's not what i'm saying because life life is just crazy like we have some really close friends of ours uh that you know we used to hang out with a lot more before we had kids and now we have kids and we get together less frequently i got a text from them a couple weeks ago that was like hey let's hang out let's set a goal to do it before the end of october it's like a two-month goal okay but it was realistic i appreciated it because life is busy and it's like hey let's let's just figure out a time and when we get together you know life is real and we talk about real things and uh and you know at the same time when things go wrong when things go south i know that they're always there and i'm always there it's like proverbs 17 17 17 that we read earlier that a friend loves at all times and a brother is born for adversity and and at the end of the day sometimes things go south and i know that while our lives are busy if there's something wrong if there's something going on or even if they just need help moving or whatever it is we're there for one another we're there to take care of each other and that's what's important at the end of the day it's all about it's all about getting together we got to be able to physically get together meet one another because when we physically meet together there's just something different about it there's something different about sitting down and it you don't have to like sit down and like you know like just release all of your emotions and talk about all the things that are going like that's we don't need to like gush emotionally every time we get together so like guys a lot of times won't get all of this because we like to we like to make those connections while we're doing some kind of activity like so maybe it's watching football or playing basketball or doing something now sometimes you know sometimes that means a bible study sometimes that means any of those other things but but sometimes it's an activity and that's great and that's the whole model for circles here at i town if you don't know what circles are they're simply smaller groups of people who get together around some kind of common interest and and just do life together just live life along alongside one another and we don't do circles because we want you guys to come be a part of something that we've created we believe in the power of gathering together and the power of circles of of having these opportunities where the big church becomes small because the truth is is that in the lobby is not the best place to form intimate and deep connections you need another environment you need a smaller a safer space and so i want to encourage you to find a circle like there are people in that circle there are there are relationships that need you and there are people out there that you need like that are going to help carry you that are going to help walk through this life together and so it's important that we find good healthy relationships that's why our circles are based around whatever because it doesn't matter what you're gathering about it matters that you gather it matters that you get in relationship with other people because the truth is my wife and i love leading fun circles we love we love meeting you know we like to have fun we like to play games we like to watch football we like to do stuff like that at the end of the day some of the people that we've met in these circles are some of our closest friends they're the ones who are there for us in a time of need they're the ones who were doing life with and it all started over a game of categories like it's not a big deal right and we can gather around all these different things because the important part is that we are gathering and so the third thing we see is that they're available the last one here is that we see that they were reliable jesus's relationships his disciples were people that he could count on that doesn't mean that they never fail they obviously had their shortcomings they were obviously human but he knew he could count on him he knew that when when life got important when things got crazy when it was very important that he was able to put the greatest calling on his life on all of them because it says they he called out to them they came to him they made time for him and he was able to send them out into the world to preach that was the greatest calling he had on his life and and he knew that he could count on them to help carry the weight to help carry this important burden that was on him they were there for him and not just present but like fully engaged and we need to have people in our lives who are fully engaged to in our difficult times in our times of struggle we know will be there for us that they'll be there for us in a time of adversity i know my wife and i i mentioned we had three kids so jonas five theos three and roman is seven months old and when roman was born it's baby number three we kind of know the drill by now and so we had everything sorted out you know we had the the baby bag packed and we had you know babysitters basically for our older kids well they weren't babysitters they were actually going to stay with some of our closest friends we'd call them family and we dropped them off over there went to the hospital everything seemed to be going great roman was born and about a half an hour later as we're kind of getting ready to transition to the post-op room the doctors start to notice that roman's breathing is not great like he's struggling to breathe he's got to work really hard at it and so we moved into the post-op room but within just a minute or two there's other doctors in there they've called nicu doctors in there and they've got them hooked up to all of these tubes and all these things and and before we know it they're rushing them off to the icu and now my wife has just had major surgery my son is in the icu the last thing i need to be worried about is my other two kids and i i'm just so thankful that they're with friends that they're with family that they're with brothers and sisters that we can say look we just they're just they're they're just there and it wasn't a convenient time for them they had just moved they were getting new flooring put into their house they had carpet spike strips all over the place they're just like playing goalie all day like jump over that it's a fun game it's called hurdles just jump over it they didn't have any toys unpacked yet because they had just moved and it was a very inconvenient time for them but even as they've got contractors coming into the house and everybody's got to get out and all of those things they're the ones who are scheduling people and making sure that our kids are loved and taken care of and and half the time i didn't even know where my kids were whose house they were at who they're with but i knew they were with family and i and i'm just so thankful that we had that those close relationships in that season because at the end of the day my instagram friends were not going to watch my kids your likes don't help love my children okay and and i just i just shudder to think like what would happen if all of our relationships in that season were surface and it's just a scary thought to think there are so many people walking through this life with these surface-level relationships that there's just no depth to it there's no there's no lifelong aspect we're just looking for what we can get out of it we're looking for a quick fix we're looking for a high five and we're just moving on but then when crisis comes when tragedy comes we're gonna be left out in the cold we need people who will stick with us who will be there for us [Applause] and the friends that we have have exemplified this last verse john 15 13. it says greater love has no man than this that he laid on his life for his friends and that's what friendship looks like at the end of the day it looks like people who are willing to lay down their life for you to put aside their own struggles to put aside their own problems and to show up when they needed when you need them the most and likewise that's what it means to be a good friend it's not always convenient it's not always easy but it's always worth it and look we've all been through some things okay the last couple years have been really tough on all of us and i was actually reading a statistic that said in january of 2019 the number of people who were reporting symptoms of anxiety disorder or depressive disorder was around 11 but in january of 2021 that number was 41 and for young adults it was even higher was 56 and that's just the people reporting that's just the people who are willing to say that they're actually feeling some of those things we've all been through a difficult season we're all walking through something maybe it has nothing to do with the last couple years but we're all walking through difficult times the greatest trick that the devil will try to get you to play is that you're the only one he's going to try to isolate you he's going to try to make you feel like you're alone and you're and nobody else is going through and the truth is we're all going through it we're all going through stuff we all desperately need each other at the end of the day the way a good what a good friendship looks like is that when on my bad days you're helping carry me and on your bad days i'm helping carry you and we're just carrying each other through this life we're helping in our difficult times that's what friendship looks like and we're not going to get that out of the imitation we're not going to get that out of the surface relationships we need brothers and sisters in our life so i want to encourage you to take a look at your life take a look at your friendships take a look at the people that are around you and the friend that you're being and is it how god designed this friendship to be are you stuck on the surface or are you actually finding some depth are you just looking for somebody to tell you what you want to hear are you willing to work through difficult situations difficult conversations to actually grow to actually be the iron sharpening iron because i believe that's how god designed us to be amen amen all right would you bow your heads for just a moment with every head bowed and every eye closed this nobody's looking around or moving around i just want to encourage you in just a moment i want to pray for each and every one of us that that we would have the depth of relationships that we need that we would have the friends that we need in our lives and that we would be the friend that other people need us to be that we would have good relationships but before we do that there's some people here maybe here in the room watching online and at a correctional facility that you don't have the most important relationship of all and that's a relationship with jesus i want you to know that that jesus loves you he loves you so much that he gave up his life for you and i and he doesn't want to condemn you he doesn't want to call you out about all of your past mistakes he paid the price for all of that he gave up his life on the cross to pay the price for our mistakes and today he wants to wipe your balance to zero all of the things of your past all of your mistakes all of your shortcomings he wants to wipe it all away and give you a clean slate a brand new life all you got to do is give your life to him to ask him it's coming to be your lord and so in just a moment we're going to pray a simple prayer i'm going to give you the words and and you can pray them quietly in your heart you just got to meet him but i want to give you an opportunity to give your life to jesus i'm not going to embarrass you i'm not going to single you out in any way the one thing i want to do is i want to know that you want to be counted in on it i want you to cross a little line in your heart and so if you would would you just lift your hand up high right now if that's you if you want to give your life to jesus would you just lift your hand up high all over this room yeah keep it up for just a moment is there anyone else i don't want this moment to pass you by yeah okay all right you can put your hand down if you lifted your hand in that moment or even if you just wanted to would you just pray this quietly in your heart just say dear jesus thank you for dying on the cross in my place please forgive me for all my mistakes for all my sin for anything i've done to hurt you god wipe me wipe me clean today just give me a brand new start just whisper these words just say i give you my life in jesus name and god i pray for each and every one of us lord that you would help us to find the depth of relationship god real friendship god help us to be the friend that you've called us to be help us to be the one who's there in times of adversity and god at all times god whenever we're needed god that we can be unselfish god just loving and serving people but god i pray that you would help us to find that support system for ourselves to help us to find the people who can be there for us god who love us and who and we spend time with and get along with god i just pray that you would help us to have great relationships that carry us through the difficult times god help us to look at our lives and and invest into the great relationships that we have god make changes in the unhealthy relationships god and help us to form great new relationships god people that will be lifelong friends god thank you so much for how you're moving in our lives and how you're going to continue to move we love you so much it's in jesus name that we pray and all god's people said amen amen come on would you put your hands together for what god's done today [Music] thank you so much for joining i town church online today we would love to have the chance to meet you and your family in person at one of our campuses or of course you can join us streaming live online this weekend now for more details about times and locations and even some of our streaming options you can go to itownchurch.com i sure hope to see you soon and god bless [Music] you

Channel: ITOWN Church

Views: 311

Rating: 4 out of 5

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Id: 0UDJYs-z-I8

Length: 42min 20sec (2540 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 07 2021