Today, I wanna show you the most important spiritual quality that has the greatest potential not only to impact the trajectory of your year, but to impact your life. This quality, it is absolutely and completely the key to your spiritual strength. It's the key to your ministry impact. This quality is the key to your physical health. It's the key to your relational intimacy. It's the key to your financial potential. This quality is the key to you accomplishing your goals. Do you wanna know what this quality is? Yes!
Yeah! If you wanna know, say, "I wanna know." I wanna know! Let me tell you what it's not first. The good news is that this quality is not based on your appearance. It's not based on your background. It's not your education. This quality that has the potential to impact your entire life is your consistency. Everybody say, "Consistency." Consistency. Touch your neighbor and say, "It's your consistency." It's your consistency. Your consistency has more potential to impact your life than you would ever imagine. And many of you are saying, "Well, I'm screwed." (congregants laughing) Right? Because so many of us are incredibly inconsistent. We're inconsistent with what we eat. We're inconsistent with our desire to exercise. We're inconsistent in reading the Bible or our prayer time. We can't even get on time places consistently. Some of you might say, "The only thing I'm consistent at is being inconsistent," right? (congregants laughing) If you find yourself like most of the rest of us with really good intentions, but you struggle to follow through, I want you to know I completely understand. There are so many areas of my life that I've been inconsistent in embarrassing areas. For example, I'll tell you one. What do you think that a pastor should do with his or her spouse? Chances are pretty good if you're a pastor and you're married, you should probably pray together. That sounds like something a pastor should do. And so I've always known it's important and always wanted to pray with Amy, but for years and years and years, we were incredibly inconsistent in our prayer time. And inconsistent is actually a generous way to say it, meaning a lot of the time we just didn't do it. And so I would say, "Okay, we need to do this." And we would start and we'd do it for three days straight, and then we'd stop. And then six months would go by and then we'd start and then we'd stop. And I can give you all these different reasons why we didn't do it. I got a long list of excuses. And even though Amy may disagree, one of them is because it just takes her a long time to get started praying. (congregants laughing) She does like these prayer breathing exercises before they start that take forever. Like I'm going, "Can you get started?" I think I heard the voice of God one time saying, "Go ahead and start now, Amy." I think I heard it.
(congregants laughing) And then she likes to pray longer than I like to pray, and so sometimes we'll pray and then a kid will get sick and then something will happen, and we've been inconsistent. If you find yourself wanting to do certain spiritual disciplines or wanting to take care of your life or wanting to be an encouragement to your kids, and yet you're very inconsistent, I find strange comfort in knowing that the guy that wrote a big portion of the New Testament, he often found himself battling with inconsistency. The apostle Paul in Romans 7:15 said this. He said, "I don't really understand myself." Does that make you feel good or what? Any of you ever say, "I don't understand myself"? Sometimes I don't know why I do this. He said, "I wanna do what's right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do what I hate." He says, "I wanna do what's right, but I can't. I wanna do what is good, but I don't. I don't wanna do what is wrong, but I do it anyway." Man, can I relate to that. If you know that consistency matters, but you find yourself often inconsistent, and you're tired of having good intentions and falling short again and again, this message is for you. I call it the Power of Consistency. Father, we pray that by the power of Your Word and the presence of Your Spirit that you would teach us, encourage us, inspire us, move us to a God honoring life of consistently following Jesus empowered by Your Spirit. We pray this in Jesus' name. And everybody said amen.
Amen. Amen, amen, amen, amen. If you are new with us, we do things called message series where we'll look at an idea for weeks at a time. And we are in a message series called Pre-Decide. What does it mean to pre-decide? Well, we understand that as followers of Jesus, our decisions are incredibly, indescribably important. We know that the direction of our life is determined by the quality of our decisions. We make our decisions and our decisions make us. The problem is many of us, we're not very good decision-makers. So what we're doing instead of waiting for a moment in the future when faced with a situation that we know we're likely to face, instead of waiting for that moment and that time in the future to try to decide then, we're gonna decide now. We're gonna pre-decide. And we have a little statement we've been looking at for a few weeks. And the statement goes like this. When faced with such and such scenario, and you in your own life will be able to determine what that is, when faced with this in the future, I have pre-decided to take this very specific action. An incredibly powerful tool that can impact your life. And we're making six pre-decisions and spending one week talking about all of them. Last week, we know that the devil attacks and we're gonna be ready for his attacks. This week, we're gonna pre-decide to be consistent. Next week, we're gonna talk about being devoted. Then we're gonna be talk about pre-deciding a life of radical generosity. We're gonna pre-decide. When so many people are faithless we're gonna be faithful, and we're gonna pre-decide just like Jesus who said it is finished, that we are a finisher. What I need is I need a little bit of help today because I don't wanna be doing this by myself. I need all of our campuses, and even those of you online, you can type it in the comments section. Let's talk about what we are pre-deciding that we will be. What are you? You are ready. Say it with me. You are. Consistent. You are. devoted. You are. Generous.
You are. Faithful. You are. A finisher. What we're doing today is we're pre-deciding, and here's the key. It's not on your own, but it is with God's help I am consistent. Would you just say that with me? Would you say with God's help. With God's help. I am consistent. I am consistent. You can type that in the comment section if you want. One more time. It's not on our own, it's. With God's help, I am consistent. Why does consistency matter? Because successful people do consistently what other people do occasionally. We know this is true. Successful people do over and over and over again what other people do every now and then, because we are not what we repeatedly do. We are what we do consistently. It's not what we do occasionally that makes the difference, it's what we do consistently. And so what I wanna do today is I wanna show you in scripture why consistency matters and show you how to grow in your consistency in a way that would honor God. If you're ready say, "I'm ready." Are you ready? Ready! We're gonna look at a Bible character from the Old Testament, who was maybe one of the most consistent spiritual leaders of all time. This guy was ridiculous. His name is Daniel, and he was consistent morally. He was consistent relationally. He was completely consistent spiritually. He was consistent in his leadership. And to give you a little background on the story, it's really interesting, around 605 BC, this was about 18 years after the evil Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem. And the Babylonians, they came in there and the government abducted a lot of young boys. They did three deportations where they took all these people, but they specifically picked the best and the brightest young boys, often around the age of 12, with the goal of indoctrinating them. So, "We're gonna feed you our type of food, we're gonna teach you our education, we're gonna teach you our values so that the best of the best can become part of us and may be future leaders." And that was kind of like a slam on the enemies and also a way to build up leaders. And so Daniel stood out. The king, his name was King Darius, he noticed that this young kid, Daniel, displayed unusual consistency. Consistency is contagious. It's attractive. It builds great leaders. And so king Darius said, "Hey, this is a kid that's got it. I want to raise him up to promote him." Well, some of the Babylonian leaders said, "We don't want this guy. We don't want him to get getting our spot." So they decided to dig up some dirt on Daniel and try to get him canceled. So they went into his life, they talked to maybe his old girlfriends. "Hey, you know any trash on this guy?" They looked at his old social media posts. "Let's see what he tweeted seven years ago." You know, they tried to find fault in his character. And oddly enough, Daniel 6:4 says this. "They couldn't find anything to criticize or condemn." How crazy is that? They said of Daniel, "He was faithful, always responsible, and completely trustworthy." Those are powerful qualities. What was he? He was faithful. He was always responsible. He was completely trustworthy. What do you need to have to have those qualities? You need to have consistency. And so these enemies who didn't want Daniel getting their job, they said, "Okay, the only way we can get this guy is he so devoted to God, we're just gonna attack that." And so these guys went to the king and said, "Hey, King, we got an idea for you. You are the man, you're the GOAT, you're the best, and you look good in those shoes, so we think you should issue a decree that if anyone prays to any God besides you in the next 30 days, then we throw them in the lion's den." And the king looked down and goes, "Oh, well, thank you. I am the GOAT and I do look good in these shoes. And your suggestion is good. Let's make a decree that anyone who prays in the next 30 days to any God besides me will be thrown in the lion's den." And what do you think Daniel, who was faithful and consistent to God, did in that situation? Daniel 6:10 answers that question. And watch the consistency in his relationship with God. Scripture says this. "When Daniel learned that the law had been signed, he went home and knelt down as usual in his upstairs room, with the windows open towards Jerusalem. He prayed three times a day, just like he had always done, giving thanks to his God." Daniel did what he always did. He consistently pursued the heart of God. And so the leaders found out that he had disobeyed the king's orders, and so they said, "You have to throw them in the lion's den." The king wasn't happy about it, but he stood by his word and he threw Daniel into a pit with hungry lions. Game over, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. This is over. But what happened is God sent an angel, and the angel closed the mouth of the lion. Now, that's cocky. And here's what happened to Daniel, verse 23. "When Daniel was lifted from the den, no wound was found on him." Why? Because he had trusted in his God. Question: when did Daniel learn to trust God? And the answer is he didn't learn in the lion's den. He learned in his prayer closet. That's right!
Yeah! His faith wasn't built in the battle, his faith was built when he was on his knees. He had consistently sought after the heart of God three times a day, day after day, week after week, month after month. He consistently sought God. Why is it that some of us are inconsistent with our relationship with God? It's because Daniel prayed consistently and we pray occasionally. It's not what we do occasionally that makes the difference, it's what we do consistently. So how do we grow in our consistency? And if we wanna be an encouragement to our spouse, but every time he walks in the door, we pick him apart, how do we grow in our consistency? And I wanna give you a game plan today with three important thoughts. And we're going to pre-decide that we are consistent. Three big thoughts would be this. The first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna start with the why. Everybody say, "Start with the why." Start with the why.
Second thing we're gonna do is we're going to plan to fail. Everybody say, "Plan to fail." Plan to fail.
Third thing we're gonna do is we're going to fall in love with the process. Everybody say, "Fall in love with the process." Fall in love with the process. What are we gonna do all together? Now, this is no fun without you at all of our churches. What are we gonna do? We're going to. Start with the why, plan to fail, and fall in love with the process. Let's start at the top. Number one, if we wanna grow in consistency, we're pre-deciding that we are consistent. We're gonna start with the why. Answer the question, why did Daniel pray consistently? And I'll tell you it was never about an outward show. It wasn't like the Pharisees who went, "Look how spiritual I am. I'm praying on the street corners, long prayers so you'll think I'm spiritual." Daniel went to his closet privately, knelt down three times a day because he was devoted to his God. That's why he did it. He was devoted to his God. He pre-decided that three times a day, he connects with the heart of God. It was born out of devotion. And this is the very reason why so many New Year's resolutions fail. Let me tell you why, because they're the result of desire, not devotion. Ooh, that's good. Oh, come on, somebody. I'm preaching good right now, you're being kind of quiet. It's a result of desire,
(congregants applauding) not devotion. There's a big, big, big difference. If you just have a desire, you might not have a why, but a why pulls out the devotion. If you don't have a compelling why, you're not likely to succeed. And the reason why I know most new Year's resolutions fail is because you waited until January 1st to do it. That's just stupid. You don't really have a why. If you've got a real why, you're not gonna wait until, "Hey, I'm gonna start eating good, so for the next two weeks, (splutters) I'm eating everything." January 1st, "Oh, look a salad." Okay, that's stupid.
(congregants laughing) You're not a player. You're gonna go back to chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, chocolate Cocoa Puffs for breakfast in about three days, 'cause your why's not compelling enough. If you have a real why, you're not waiting till January 1st, right? If your doctor tells you in October, "Hey, you need to quit smoking or you're gonna die." "Oh, okay, I'll wait until January 1st to stop smoking cigarettes." No, you got a strong why, which compels you to start now. Yes.
That's right. If you wanna grow in consistency, you start with the why. Where do you wanna be more consistent? Where do you wanna grow? Somebody might say, "Well, I wanna be closer to God." Thank God for that. You might say, "I wanna have a better marriage," great. "I wanna have financial stability." "I wanna quit this bad habit." I'm gonna say why, why? What is your why? If you say, "Well, I wanna be closer to God. Well, this is the right thing to do. That's what church people do, right?" No, your why might be, "Because I'm sick and dang tired of the devil distracting me. I believe I'm created by God for His glory and I wanna serve Him wholeheartedly with everything in me so generations to come
(congregants applauding) would know His grace and His goodness. That why drives devotion, right? "I wanna have a better marriage. Why? 'Cause my spouse is a jerk. (congregants laughing) Sick of them, pray for them, pray for my spouse." No, no, no, no, no. Because my why is, "I wanna honor God with the vows that I said before Him. And I wanna show my children a godly example of what marriage can be and leave a spiritual legacy for my grandchildren that we are people of faith and we have a marriage of faith." What's your why? What's your why? "Well, I wanna have financial stability." Why? "So I can buy a purse, so I can get them shoes. So I can go on vacation." No, no, no, no, no. What's your why? "Because I'm sick and tired of living paycheck to paycheck. Because I'm not gonna worry if I pay this bill, I can't pay that bill. I wanna be financially free so I can be generous and make a difference in the lives of other people." What's your why? The why moves it from desire to devotion. You might say, "Well, I wanna quit this bad habit." Why? "'Cause it's expensive, it's bad for my health." No, no, no, no, no, no. "This has been maybe something that's been in my family for generations, and this generational curse stops with me." Come on!
Yeah! That's a why, that's a real why. That's a why.
(congregants applauding) I'm not talking about willpower, I'm talking about why power. Come on, somebody.
(congregants cheering) This brings out devotion. This is when the king says you can't pray, "No, I got my why. I need my God. Three times a day, I seek God in prayer." Because I promise you when you wanna be consistent, you're gonna have some obstacle, some resistance, something that's hard. You're gonna be a lack of support and from friends and you're gonna say, "I don't feel like it today. I don't wanna do it today." But listen, when you know your why, you will find a way. We're talking about why power.
(congregants applauding) Why power. And there is a why that Amy and I pray consistently. We didn't before 'cause we didn't have a why. My why then was, "Well, you're a pastor, so you're probably supposed to." I've been a pastor long enough to know that the devil don't take a day off, and so I better be seeking God together with my bride every single day. What I know is that everything that we do depends on the Spirit of God, the presence of God, the power of God. Our marriage needs the grace and work of God. We need leadership for our kids. I need wisdom to lead the church. Why would I ever not seek God with my bride? So when your values are clear, your decisions are easier. If you wanna become more consistent, define your why. You start with the why. Daniel knew his why. His faith wasn't built in the lion's den, it was built in the prayer closet. You start with the why. The second thing, and this sounds really counterintuitive, but I promise you this is important, is you plan to fail. You actually plan to not be perfect. Think about this. Daniel prayed three times before, we read that, just like he did before. Here's a question. Do you think he ever missed one of his daily prayer times? Think he ever did? Don't sit there and act like he's perfect. He's a person, of course he did. Don't over-spiritualize this guy. I guarantee you, he missed some of his three prayer times. I promise you, promise you, promise you, promise you. How do I know? Because he's a human being that lives in a very real world. King Darius one time said, "Daniel, you got to stay late for work," and he missed his evening prayer time. Or another time he was caught in traffic. (congregants laughing) The camels were at a standstill, right? It was nose to butt as far as the eye could see. I don't know, work with me on this, okay? His friends were over at the big game and somebody ordered wings and he stayed up too late, he got gas, he overslept in the morning, I don't know. I promise you he missed one of his prayer times somewhere along the way. Why is it that so many of us are inconsistent? It's because we have an all or nothing mindset. It's because if we fail one time, we think we are a failure. I failed, so forget it. And that's why we have to remember that being consistent isn't the same as being perfect. There's such a big difference. You wanna give yourself grace to fail because being consistent is not the same as being perfect. Here's what we know. I was talking about praying with your spouse. Some of y'all are like, "You're talking about that a lot." Well, maybe it's 'cause there's somebody here, and I don't know who it is, but you need to hear this. Maybe someone needs to hear this. When I teach on how to pray with your spouse or how to pray with your children, I always say, "Keep it simple, keep it short. If you miss one day, don't miss two." Why do I do that? People criticize it, "Why keep it simple?" Because if you make it complicated, you're not gonna do it. Why keep it short? 'Cause if you think you got to do it for hours, you're not gonna do it. I'm lowering the bar. I want you to get started. Does it mean you can't pray longer? Of course not. If you start praying shorter, you might pray longer. If I tell you to pray longer, you're not even gonna pray shorter. And then I'd tell you, "If you miss a day, don't miss two." Why? Because you're gonna miss a day. And you have to plan to do it. And I also tell you 'cause sometimes we miss a day, it makes me feel better because I gave you permission to miss it too, right? Here's the thing is,
(congregants laughing) is you're going to mess up. Plan to allow for it. Know that a momentary failure is actually a part of the process. And here's the problem for many of you. It is the illusion of perfection that's keeping some of you from getting started. Wow.
That's good. "Well, I'll never be great at that, so I might as well not try." I would take it all the way down to following Jesus. There's some of you who are not following Jesus today because you think, "Well, if I follow Jesus, then what if I mess up? I'm gonna say a cuss word, or I'm gonna give somebody the bird or whatever it is." And the answer is you probably will, but don't let that stop you from starting. You wanna follow Jesus. I'll illustrate it this way. One of my favorite things I've done in the last year, I've been taking some jujitsu classes with my sons. And here's a photo of us. There's two things cool about this. Number one is I'm spending time with my sons, sweating on each other. The second thing is that we have Life Church rash guards, which is just cocky. (congregants laughing)
And if you want one, I can't get one for you, they were made, but that's just cocky. Just so you know, that's cocky. And what's fun about jujitsu so much, the learning process, it's really hard to get a belt. So you start with the white belt and then you have a blue belt then a purple belt then a brown belt then a black belt. And you get little stripes along the way. So once you go for a while in your instruction, if you did good, you get a stripe. And like, you're so excited. It's like second grade, "I got a gold star!" I got a stripe! Ah, ah! Anyway, it's kinda cool. But my instructor was, when he put the first stripe on a while back, he's a black belt by the way, he won worlds and so he's really, really good, he put my first stripe on there and he said, "Which belt do you think is the most difficult to get?" I said, "Well, obviously the black belt." And he said, "No, no, no. The most difficult is the white belt because most people never start." Oh.
That's good. Most people never start, which I didn't for 10 years. I wanted to, but I wasn't gonna be any good, and I don't wanna start sweating. And then he said, "What is a black belt?" And I said, "That's someone you run from." That's what you do.
(congregants laughing) You run from them. And he said, "No, a black belt is a white belt that was consistent." That's right. That's good.
Wow. That's really good.
(congregants applauding) A black belt is a white belt that never gave up. Do you think I've missed any lessons? Yep.
Yes. I got another stupid injury. I haven't been in two months, I've missed some. And you're gonna miss some, or you're gonna eat the wrong thing, or you're gonna oversleep and not work out. Or you're gonna buy something stupid that you shouldn't have bought while you're trying to get out of debt. Or you're gonna look at something you shouldn't look at. Or you're gonna be reading the Bible everyday on YouVersion Bible App. You're gonna miss a day and you're gonna lose your streak. Oh, oh!
(congregants moaning) And I did hear a rumor that if you reset the date on your phone to a previous date and read the Bible on that day, your streak may come back. But I don't know if that's true, and I've probably never done that at least twice. I cannot confirm or deny if that's true. But oh, you're not gonna be perfect. You're not gonna be perfect. Don't confuse being consistent with being perfect. That's good.
Yes! Here's what we're gonna do, is we're gonna start with a why, we're gonna plan to fail, and here's what we're gonna do, we're gonna fall in love with the process. We're gonna fall in love with the process. Daniel wasn't praying 'cause it was a duty, he just loved time with God. He loved the intimacy. Here's what I know about him because I know his character, he wasn't saying, "Hey, if I'm all this stuff, I'm gonna get promoted." He was just consistently living his life in a way that honored God. And here's the mistake that so many of us make is we obsess about the goal. I gotta get a blue belt. I gotta lose 20 pounds. I've gotta pay off both credit cards. I've gotta read through the whole Bible. Whatever it is, whatever your goal. And then we're inconsistent. And we feel like we don't succeed until we hit the goal, and the goal is so far out there in the future and the path is often more difficult and the road is often windy. And that's why we don't obsess about the goal. We fall in love with the process. And that's why when I roll with my boys, my win isn't the next belt. That may be two years away. My win is when I show back up. 'Cause if you haven't noticed I'm 54 years old and I'm rolling with 22-year-old brown belts. And I get sore and I'm showing back up. What I know is if I'm consistent, I will make progress. And here's what's so important about whatever your goal is, is you're not successful when you achieve the goal in the future. You're successful when you honor God today. That's good. That's really good. That's when you're successful. So here's what we're gonna do is we're gonna pre-decide. Before we face that decision, we pre-decide. With God's help, I am consistent. Everybody say, "With God's help." With God's help. I am consistent. I am consistent. With God's help. And here's the key is, it's with God's help. Meaning you can't be consistent on your own. Paul said, "I don't even understand myself." He asked a question later in the text, "Who can deliver me from this body of inconsistency, this body of death?" And he said, "Praise be to Jesus Christ. He is the one who can empower us to live a life that honors God." We pre-decide with God's help, whatever it is for you. With God's help, I don't drink soft drinks. With God's help, I walk three times a week. With God's help, and I need His help, but I'm gonna put $50 extra a month to paying off my credit card debt. With God's help, I'm gonna read God's Word every single day. I am a devoted follower of Christ. We're pre-deciding, so our decisions aren't made in the future, but we're deciding today what we're gonna do before God. What do we do? We pre-decide. So my question to you is this: where is God calling you to be consistent? In what area of your life? Take just a moment and be open. You might even, if you want to, close your eyes and just say, "God, where do You want me to be consistent? Where could I honor You more? Be more faithful? Show me, God." Maybe in your giving, maybe in your prayer time, maybe in your words, maybe in your attitude, maybe in the time that you go to bed, maybe in what you look at or what you don't look at, maybe in the way you treat the people around you. God, where do You want me to be consistent? Let Him speak to you because He will speak to you and He'll show you the values that matter to Him and should matter to you. And when your values are clear, your decisions are easier. So what do you do? You pre-decide, "I'm consistent." Three times a day Daniel said, "I seek the Lord." I pre-decide. That's not gonna happen by accident. It's a decision I made ahead of time. And you start with the why. And you know you're not perfect so you plan to fail, and you fall in love with the process. And the great news is you're not successful when you achieve the goal in the future, but congratulations, before God you are successful when you honor Him today. So with God's help, may you honor Him in consistency in the area that brings Him glory and makes you more effective in this world. With God's help. With God's help. With God's help. With God's help. We pre-decide. We pre-decide. To be consistent. To be consistent. So Father, we ask that Your Holy Spirit would do surgery on our hearts today and we'd be open to what You want to say. God, help us to overcome even our sin nature of inconsistency. By the power of Your Spirit, when we're weak, You are strong. help us be consistent in all we do. We decide, we pre-decide. And God, I thank you in advance that there'll be some people that are watching this message today, that years from now, they will recognize their life has been changed by pre-deciding to honor You consistently in some area of their lives. At all of our churches today, if there is an area you know you can grow in consistency, you know what that area is and you wanna take it before God, would you just lift up your hand right now? Just lift up your hand, all of our churches, fantastic. Those of you online, you can just type it in the comment section, "Help me be more consistent," just type that in. And now Father, I pray that Your Spirit would empower us, that You would give us a clear and compelling why connected to glorifying You. God, help us to understand that because we are fallen people we're not gonna be perfect, but we're gonna fall in love with the process of honoring You, doing what You called us to do. And we will trust You for the results. God, build our faith that we're not successful in the future when we achieve what we hope to achieve, but God, we are successful when we honor and live for You today. Empower, God, Your church to consistently show Your love, consistently be full of grace, consistently be generous, consistently confess our sins, consistently be righteous before You, consistently, God, be Your light in a dark world. May we honor You with consistency, pre-deciding this is one way we worship You and live empowered by Your Spirit. As you keep praying today, as we talk about this, I think one of the things most of us can recognize is that we can be really inconsistent in some of the bigger, what I might call moral areas of life. We tell lies, we cheat, we hurt people, we're selfish, we can be mean, we can be cruel, we can be hateful, we can be deceitful, we can be full of pride, we can be lustful, and the list goes on and on and on. And you find yourself sometimes saying, "Hey, you know, this God thing, I mean, if there is a God, He seems pretty good and I'd kind of like to know Him, I'd kind of like to belong to Him, but if I do commit my life to Him, I'm not gonna be perfect." And so that illusion of perfection keeps you from surrendering to Jesus. And let me tell you right now, Jesus, the Son of God, the sinless one, God sent his son Jesus, the only one who's ever perfect, He sent Jesus for imperfect people. That's why Jesus came. He sent Jesus for sinners. Jesus was the Lamb of God who shed His blood, died, and God raised Him from the dead so that your inconsistency, or the biblical term, so that your sinfulness, so my sinfulness could be forgiven. And here's the amazing thing. When you surrender to Jesus, He forgives all of your sins, past, present, and future. He forgives your sins and you become new. Wherever you're watching from today, there are those of you who recognize that you're not the person maybe you hoped you'd be, and you feel guilty, you may feel ashamed, and you may think, "Well, maybe I can come to God later once I cleaned up my life." That's not how it works. You come to Him right now, you come to Him right now, you come to Him right now, you come as you are. Come as you are. Scripture says Jesus stands at the door and knocks. Anyone who hears His voice and lets Him in, He'll come in. He's there, He's waiting for you to say yes. When you say yes to Him, He says no to your sin. He forgives you, He makes you brand new. Wherever you're watching from today, those of you who say, "I know I've been inconsistent, I know I've fallen short, I want His forgiveness. I don't just want His forgiveness, I wanna follow Him. I wanna know Him today by faith. I surrender my life to Jesus." That's your prayer. Lift your hands high right now, all over the place. Lift them up. Come on, somebody, give God some praise (congregants applauding)
as we see people at all of our churches coming to faith in Christ. Those of you watching online, just type into the comments section, "I'm giving my life to Jesus." And we're gonna pray wherever you are. Just pray aloud, pray, "Heavenly Father." Heavenly Father. Forgive all of my sins. Forgive all of my sins. Jesus, save me. Jesus save me. Fill me with Your Spirit. Fill me with Your Spirit. So I could know You. So I could know You. And I serve You. And I serve You. And I could walk with You consistently, showing Your love and making You known. Thank you for new life. I give you all of mine. In Jesus' name I pray. Would somebody celebrate big, worship loud the goodness of God? (congregants applauding)
(congregants cheering)
