Happy Easter, everyone. My name is Jamie, and I have a story, and you have a story. I don't know if you realize that or not, but each one of you have a story. Started the day that you entered into this world, did it not? And you are the sum of all the experiences and events that's ever happened in your life.

When I do marital counseling, there's a part of the counseling where I ask the couple individually to go and look at their life and kind of highlight key events that's happened and label them as either being positive or negative. Now, I want you to do that for me. Like, if you have a study guide or if you don't, it's okay. There's two blanks on there. I'm going to get you to fill those in in just a second.

What I want to ask you to do, I want you to think about your story. I want you to think about the things that's happened in your life that have been monumental and awesome and have influenced who you are. And I want you to think about the negative things that's happened to you that have influenced who you are. Now, a lot of you, if in this room, you're a Christian, you're going to put salvation on. That's great.

Kind of put that one on the side over here. I want you to think strategically. What event in your life, other than salvation, has had the most influence in your life? Now, you may have more than one answer, and that's okay. You know, I think about in my own life, I think about my children and their births.

Those were huge events that still affect my life today. It's a good story. I think about August 6th or 8th, we can't really decide on it. 1997, 1996. Excuse me.

When Laura and I went on our first date, June 11, when I asked her to marry me, and May 30, when we were married. Those are huge events in my life. They're very positive events. My kids being with me at graduation three years ago, that was a huge event in my life. But then there was some negative events.

Loss of family members. For me, one of those anniversaries is coming up next week, which happens to be my son's birthday. But 10 years ago next week, I had major neck surgery, and it was scary. It affected my life in a deep and impactful way, and it affects my story. So what, for you, would you say has affected your story in your life?

I want you to write it down. Then I want you to think outside of yourself, because we all Live in America, in this room. We live in this world. And if I ask you what event worldwide has affected your life more than anything else, what would you say? What one event would you say has impacted us?

I mean, take a moment before I get ahead of myself. I want to give you a chance to think like, if you could write down what one event, historical event, has happened that's affected you more than anything else, what would you say it is? Maybe you would say that Alexander the Great, Hellenizing the known world was one of those events. Maybe the rise and the fall of the Roman Empire was one of those things. Or the Industrial Revolution, the invention of the printing press.

I think a lot of historians say that was a huge event. Wouldn't you agree? Because if we didn't have that, we wouldn't have this. But then others might say that World War I or World War II. I mean, we all think that July 4, 1776, was a big event and it has effects on us to this day.

Or maybe, maybe for our younger crowd. Aren't you glad you got Internet? I mean, those are big things that have happened in life. But I know one event that hasn't happened in your life. There's one event on your timeline that hasn't yet come or you wouldn't be sitting in this room, and that's death.

That's a big turn, isn't it? To sit here and all of a sudden we're talking about all these awesome things that's happened in our life that's defined my story. And then there's this other story that's affected my story. But for every one of us in this room, there is a date coming in our future when we will leave this world. You can't ignore it.

You can't hide it. You can't run away from it. It's in our timeline. I don't want to quicken that. But at the same time, a lot of us ignore that the fact of the future exists.

We try to hide it in the shadows and we try to forget that for each and every one of us, our stories are being written according to where we think we're going to be someday.

Death is not the end of your story.

You see, all of us are created to be eternal beings. Death is simply a transition from the life as we know it to the next phase of life. In fact, if I can, I'd love to redefine death for you. Death is not termination. Death is separation of your body from your soul and spirit.

So when we think about Jesus dying on the cross. And the last thing he said, father, into your hands I commit my spirit. His body and his soul were separated, but man was not created that way. Man was created to have a body and a soul and a spirit. So when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, the curse on mankind said, from dust you came, and to dust you would return.

But aren't you thankful Jesus came to change your story? Because I know without any doubt in my mind that what Jesus Christ did on the cross by dying for my sins and rescuing me from death means my end. Point of my timeline is not the end, it's not finality. In fact, I want to invite you, if you have a device or a Bible, to go ahead and turn to Luke chapter 24, because if we have already talked about and expressed the hope of Easter is that Jesus is alive. He's not dead.

And he didn't later die or vanish. He was raised again. His body and his spirit came together. And out of all of the events in your life and all the events of history, the one event that I hope that you thought about that should impact your life and should change the way you live and should be something that points you in a different direction, should be the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Do you know anyone in this world that died and came back to life and continued living?

I didn't think so. Jesus did. He's not dead. He's so much more. And my appeal to you today on Easter, if you truly want to worship the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, is to ask yourself the question, how has the resurrection impacted my life?

Has it rewritten my story? Or is my story on a trajectory of self focus? Is my story living in such a way that I get the glory and I get the success? Or do I see that my little snippet story, the little short 80 years that we may have on this globe, that little short time is part of a bigger story that's been worked out since the creation of this world. Where does your story fit in with that story?

Can I invite you to stand and I just want to read the first part of Luke chapter 24, because this is what we're here to celebrate, right? But then I want to break that down and I want to talk about how the resurrection can change your story. But on the first day of the week, which would be Sunday, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, these ladies, bringing spices which they had prepared to embalm his body after he died on the cross. They dumped him in the tomb as quick as they could, because of Judaic law, they couldn't touch a dead body. So they're coming back to finish it up.

But what was the expectation of these ladies to find a dead body? And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. But when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. That's why they had come to the tomb. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothes.

And as the women were terrified and they bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, why do you seek the living one among the dead? I love that they call him the living one because it's only because of him. Anybody else lives, he is not here, for he has. What's your Bible say? Risen.

Remember how he spoke to you while he was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day rise again. And they remembered his word. Father, as we dig into your word, Lord, everyone in this room stands ignorant before you that without your divine enablement and assistance, Lord, we can't even begin to grasp what you're trying to reveal to us. So I pray that you give us eyes to see and ears to hear what your word would speak to us today. In Jesus name.

Amen. The key event, whatever you wrote down on your paper, in your own timeline or in history, can I ask you over to the side to write the words resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And if that is not the key event in your life that has changed your life, transformed your life, giving you new purpose, new hope and new meaning. Can I beg you today, Can I beg you to consider what your life is without Jesus? To be the one going before you, to define your desires and your wants, to guard you, to lead you like what is life without that we don't know what life is. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life, the living one. Whatever value of life you have, I'm telling you, it still never measures up to the life that you have in Jesus Christ because of what he did for you.

You see, all of us in this room, we're all sinners, whether you think it or not. Maybe you think my sins are only this much. I'm a pretty good person. But I'm telling you, one sin deserves death because of God's holiness and his righteousness. From the foundation of the world, he looked down and I believe in God's ability.

He saw every single face and soul that would ever exist. And God The Son, the word of God said, I'll go and I will put on human flesh and I will undo what Adam did, and I will go to that cross and I will die the ugliest, most horrible death and shed my blood and die the death that every sinner deserves.

And that changes my story. I'm not trying to strive in life to be a pretty good person. What I want to do is strive to live a life that glorifies the one who died for me and gave me righteousness. And that changes and rewrites my story. And without God's enablement, without his assistance, I'm lost without him right now.

If I scanned across this room, we might could pick out who is the smartest person in the room. And I applaud you for your intelligence, but you'll never figure out the things of God with your own mind. And here's the hope, because somebody in this room is the least smart, and without God's divine enablement, you wouldn't figure it out either.

God wants to rewrite your story. What you have to wrestle out in your heart today is do you want your story to be rewritten? I'd like for you to pick up with me in verse number 36. We're skipping down a few verses in that chapter, because from 13 to 35, there's a story told of a man, and possibly a friend, or it could have been his wife. These two individuals, they were on the road to Emmaus.

Emmaus was about seven miles outside of Jerusalem. But just like the ladies who came to the tomb and were perplexed because they couldn't find the body of Jesus, so too, these individuals were, like, distraught and discouraged because they had dedicated their life to the teaching of Jesus, but they had not dedicated their life to the resurrection of Jesus. And so they're walking along and an individual joins them and it's Jesus. They just didn't know it. And he begins to walk along and he's asking them, like, what's going on?

You're like, are you crazy? Have you not been keeping up with the news? What's wrong with your Twitter feed? Like you didn't hear what happened? This great prophet, they didn't even call.

I mean, they still were so ignorant. And these people knew Jesus directly. His disciples knew him directly. And they missed it. You will miss it.

All of us will miss it without God's help. So they're walking along and Jesus begins to, just like man, he gives them Bible study, like, on steroids.

And they're walking along and Hearing this and they get to the place where they shelter for the night. And they ask Jesus, would he bless the bread? And as he raised it up, boom. Their eyes were open and they realized, holy cow, this is Jesus. And now he's gone and he vanished.

And when we pick up with this story, it says while they were telling these things, this is Cleopas and his companion telling them what happened on the road. The skeptics still would not believe. There's not enough intellectual ability or knowledge or information that will ever point you to the miracle of Jesus resurrection. You will never, somebody will never be able to give you enough facts for you to go, alright, I've got enough. I'll believe in Jesus.

Faith is me entrusting myself to a holy God to accept whatever it is that he has revealed to me.

And if it's not in here, it's not truth.

Good ideas and good speculations. Self appointed experts of this. There is no experts in this. Let me tell you something. If anybody else in your life is serving as your savior other than Jesus Christ, you are serving an idol.

And if you're getting information to solve the problems in your life other than the word of God, you have a problem. There is no man and there is no philosophy that will solve your problem. His name is Jesus. Because not only is he the one who can save you, he is the word of God, he is the truth, he is the way and he is the life. If you're tired of the life that you live and you're tired of falling on your face and you're tired of being disappointed and you're tired of letting yourself down, put your life in the hands of Jesus.

Because I can believe facts and I could believe a little bit of a fable. But to have saving faith, that's a different story. Listen to what he says here. He says while they were telling these things, he stood in their midst and he said, peace be with you. Why would he have to say that?

Because it says they were startled and frightened. That's why. Come on, you guys, watch some of the horror movies from the 80s and 90s, that stuff. Still, some people laugh at them and some people, it freaks them out. They thought that they were seeing a spirit.

Let me give you the first point. Faith. Saving faith. True faith gives way to sight. You don't get the sight and then choose to believe.

Faith gives way for you to be able to have the sight to see and the ears to hear. They were frightened and they were startled because they thought they saw a spirit. But listen to Me, he was not just a spirit.

Do you guys see the correction that Jesus is about to make? I'm not a spirit, he says. He says, look at me. Look at the nail prints in my hands and my feet and look at where they pierced my side. He was a human being again.

He didn't cease to lay down. The greatest sacrifice other than Jesus dying on the cross is the fact that forever he will remain the God man. And he did that for you and for me. Faith gives way to sight. And when that happens, you know what I can do?

I can then look at my timeline. I can look at my story. He said in verse 41, he says, while they could not believe it because of their joy and amazement, they went from being startled and frightened to being joyful and amazed. You and I, sometimes when we think about Jesus and think about walking with him and think about the implications for my life, we'll get ourselves in these situations because bad stuff happens in our timelines, that happens in our stories and that puts us in fix mode. I gotta fix something.

Let me ask you a question. Does God allow the blessing and the problems to come in your life too? That's a hard. That's a problem for a lot of people to trust. The same God who wants to give me the blessing will also give me the blessing of the curse as well.

To allow me to walk through valleys and dark times and hard things. You're going, why would he do that? Does he hate me? No, he doesn't hate me. He doesn't hate you.

He wants to lead you to deeper and deeper truth, to know him in a more intimate way. And that's what he's inviting you and I to do, is to take our story and say, God, here's my story. Would you rewrite it? To take the pen that I've been using to write my story up to this point and give it to him? You see, we studied four stories in the last month.

We studied the story of the tax collector and the Pharisee. And what we learned there is that this man's life was changed because of his humility. He humbled himself before God, and it said that he was exalted because of that humility. A negative story was the rich young ruler whose life could have been different, his story could have been different. But he refused to give his life to Jesus.

Blind Bartimaeus, who cried out from a desperated point of faith. He said he received his sight because his faith had made him well. He literally received sight because of his faith. And then last week was Zacchaeus, whose interaction with Jesus moved him to being a giving person from a selfish man. It rewrote his story.

And how many of you in this room, you go back to some little story when you were seven years old where you said you were in a room and you asked Jesus into your heart, but you still lived apart from God, you're still pursuing a life of sin. You've never repented, and your life is no different. Can I tell you today that if you will put your faith full faith and trust in Jesus Christ, he will give you the sight you need to analyze your story. Thomas was one of those characters in John 20:24. He wasn't there when Jesus showed up and revealed himself to the other disciples.

And he said, unless I can see his hands and put my finger in the place and place my hand in his side, I will not believe. I'm going, dude, were you the one that was out there tearing grasshopper legs off in the playground? Like, who in the world would want to put their hand in somebody's side? Like, it grosses me out to get spit on me, and I'm spitting on myself right now. Thomas said, I will not believe unless I can touch it.

What's the problem there? Sight doesn't precede faith. Are you with me? Listen to me. Sight doesn't precede faith.

Faith gives you the sight you need. And so Jesus appears and he tells him, come on, gross, put your hand in my side. Why is that important, ladies and gentlemen? Because Jesus was not just a spirit. He was the fully resurrected Son of God.

And without his bodily resurrection, you and I have no victory over death. I have no hope that when death comes, that there's something beyond my death. He beat sin because he beat death. How does that knowledge change your life? Because what happens?

Faith will also open up and reveal to me truth. We live now probably more in a post Christian, a post truth error, where people don't even really care about what's true. Back 20 years ago, when we would go to youth conferences, they would talk about relativistic truth. Y'all know what that means. Like, it's true here, but it may not be true here.

Truth is truth. That's why I said to you earlier, jesus didn't just come to be the person to save you. He's the word of God who leads you into the path of salvation. Look at what he says to me. He says in verse 44.

Now, he said to them, these are my words which I spoke to you while I was still with you that all the things which are written about me and the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. And they did not get it. Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1, says, now faith is the assurance or the substance or the makeup of. Of things hoped for, the conviction of things that are not seeing. What do you hope for?

What are your hope fors? What in your life do you think will make you happy? When the Bible says that God works all things to the good, it's not your pleasure, it's his glory. Sometimes that's hard for us, but it's for the good, not for my pleasure. Don't misinterpret Scripture.

Misinterpretation of Scripture always leads to death because you're satisfying your flesh in doing so. What he's inviting us to do is like what he wrote in verse three, where he says, by faith we understand that the worlds were prepared. There's no lab where no scientist to this day has ever been able to prove the Big Bang Theory, a laboratory. But we live according to the revelatory word of God and what he has spoken. And that gives me life, not facts.

CS Lewis, when he wrote the Problem of Pain, writes convicting words of how our flesh, in our flesh, we really refuse truth. We want to figure it out on our own. We want it to be what we want it to be. And he says, he talks about the big story being like this dance. And he says, all pains and pleasures we have known on earth are early initiations into the movement of that dance.

But the dance itself is strictly incomparable with the sufferings of the present time. What is he saying? That the dance, the story that God is writing, is so much bigger and more than the sufferings of my own timeline and my story. As we draw nearer to its uncreated rhythm, pain and pleasure sink almost out of sight. There is joy in the dance, but it does not exist for the sake of joy.

It does not exist for the sake of good or of love. It is love himself. It is good himself, and therefore it is happiness because it is him.

Here's where he reveals that truth. CS Lewis says their vision of men and women fails them, and they cover their eyes from the intolerable light of utter actuality, which was and is and shall be, which never could have been otherwise and has no opposite. Well, what's he saying there? That's kind of a word salad a little bit. Your flesh does not want to know the truth.

How many of you growing up when your mom and dad would get onto you would say something to you and reprimand you, and you just fold your arms and say, no, you're wrong. I'm not going to do that. I'm telling you, you do not have to teach a baby to say no. Anybody have to teach their child to say no. First word that came out of their mouth was probably mama, and the second word was no.

How many of you as a child immediately picked up your toys, cleaned your room? You didn't. You know why? Because in your flesh and left on yourself, you will not do the things that glorify God. But listen to verse 45, he says, then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.

The men that had been with him for three years, who should have known better, still did not understand. And like a doorway, he took the key and he unlatched it and he opened it, and it opened into something revelatory and life changing. See, when I have faith in that, oh, it changes my story, because it's no longer me that I'm living for.

Has Jesus changed your story? Has the fact of the Resurrection changed your story? I think about these men who were walking on the road. I kind of wonder where Jesus took them. I wonder if he took them to Genesis 3:15 and said, Jesus myself was the one who would stomp the head of the serpent.

I wonder. I wonder if he took them to Genesis 12:1 3, where God is speaking to Abraham and telling him, I'll make you a blesser of the nations. And say, but it's me. I am the blesser of the nations. I am the seed of Abraham.

I am the one who has come to rewrite the story. I wonder if Jesus took Cleopas and his companion to 2nd Samuel 7:14 and said, Listen, I am the Davidic king who was promised to sit on that throne forever and ever. And I wonder. I just wonder if maybe he went right to Psalm110. 1.

I am Adonai, who sits at the right hand of Yahweh until I make my enemies a footstool. The prophet, the priest, and my king. I wonder. It says that their hearts burned within them as he's expositing these scriptures to them as he was telling them. I came to change the story.

And has he changed yours? Because with faith comes change. There's no way around it. If your eyes are opened and you see the truth for what it is, it should change you. It should give you hope for living.

It should give you direction and correction for when you get off the path, it should give you a purpose and Marching orders to go and live the life that will exalt the name of Jesus Christ. Verse 46. He said to them, it is written. That's authority. Jesus himself said, the word of God is the utmost authority, that Christ would come and suffer and rise again on the third day.

He had made them that promise three different occasions in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Jesus said, I'm going to Jerusalem and I will suffer and the Son of Man will die. But three days later, he will be raised again. Does it light your fire, ladies and gentlemen, to know Jesus Christ is alive? Then he goes on to say, listen, this is important.

And that repentance. Whoa, wait a minute. That repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in the name of Jesus to all nations. I'm afraid a lot of you in this room. You said you've been saved, but you've never repented.

Can I get in your stuff for a minute? It's Easter, and it is a day to celebrate. But I'm afraid a lot of you are going to walk out of these doors today. And someday, when you leave this world, you will go to hell because you've never connected the sacrifice of Jesus to your sins.

And I can't let you leave this place without begging and pleading with you to come to that point and place in your life where you say, you know what? I'm tired of my timeline being riddled with sin, that I'm trying to own myself, cover up or excuse. I'm going to give it all to Jesus Christ and let him rewrite my story. These men saw so that they could then tell. And we tell because they saw.

They laid down their lives not for a fantasy, but because of what they saw and they believed. And now they beckon us to do the same. Our faith transforms. Our story gives us sight. It reveals the truth and it demands change within us.

First Corinthians, chapter 15, verses 1 and 2. Let me just read those two. He said, I make known to you, brothers, the gospel which I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, by which you are saved. Check this out, though. If you hold fast the word which I preach to you, our salvation is only conditioned in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

But he said right there, holding fast to the word of truth. And I wonder if you today, you've been out of church for a while. You've struggled, you've walked away from the Lord. You've not been following him. What would it look like today for you to come and cling hard again to the Word, the Living word of Jesus Christ.

Don't walk out of here and say, you know what? I'll just fix it later. I'll just go on and do it later. No, no, don't do that. You.

You're playing with fire. Literally. If you leave this place and say, no, I can't. I've got too much going on. I'm begging you to consider the words of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that is bidding you to come repent of your sins and hold fast the word of truth.

See, until I have this kind of saving faith, my story remains as it is, focused on me with a hopeless end. And I don't want that for you. But let me ask you this. How can it change your life? How can the gospel.

How can knowing the resurrection literally change your life? Number one, you're forgiven. You don't have to earn that forgiveness. You don't have to cover up the sins. You can bring them freely to Jesus Christ and say, I'm a sinner, please forgive me.

First Corinthians 15:17 says, and if Christ has not been raised, you are still in your sin. See, the resurrection changes your life. I pass on from judgment. John 5:28 29 says, do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming in which all those who are in the tomb will hear my voice and will come forth. And those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, and those who did evil to a resurrection of judgment.

Your story doesn't have to end that way. But it also promises that we're new in Romans 6:4, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in the newness of life. Does your life feel old? Does it feel wore out? Jesus can give you new life.

You know what else the resurrection does? It fills the void. It fills the void. Jesus said, I am the door, and if anyone enters through me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. Blessing.

The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. And he says, I have come to give you life, that you might have it more abundantly. You don't have to live on the scraps of this world. You can feast in abundance in faith in Jesus Christ. You don't have to fear death.

But when this perishable will have put on imperishable and this mortal will put on immortality, then it will come about the saying that's written, death is swallowed up in victory. Hallelujah. I have purpose. First Peter 3:1:3:4 says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his great mercy, his mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, or I have a new identity. I have new identity.

Colossians 3:1:4 honed in on. For you have died and your life is hidden with Jesus Christ. I have connection. Romans 8:11 says, but if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies. He doesn't cut it off.

He gives you life. And I have life. I have life, true life. Jesus said to Mary, Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me and will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.

And he said, listen, do you believe this? And that's my question to you today. You want your story rewritten? You want to give him the pen? Do you believe?

Do you believe?

Don't let Easter be a checkbox. Do you believe our story changes because his resurrection gives life? There's no other way to get it. He said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No man can come to the Father except through me.

And you will never experience life to the fullest until you know the Father. Tim Keller said, if Jesus rose from the dead, then all you have to do, and then you have to accept what he said. If he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about anything he said? You can dismiss everything I just told you. The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching, but whether or not he rose from the dead.

Do you believe? Have you put your full, faithful trust in Jesus Christ? I could tell you a lot of stories about Scotland. I won't tell them all today because there's not enough time. On Thursday afternoon, we had a chance, after we'd finished our work, to go out and explore.

We walked down these streets with these beautiful 12th and 13th century buildings. It was beautiful. My wife got to put a checkbox on her bucket list that she finally got to walk into a legitimate castle. And the ladies put on some costumes that I would never touch.

But that wasn't the highlight for me.

We walked into this place called Greyfriars Cemetery.

We stood on this lawn in front of this monument, to which he then said, beneath your feet lie the remains of 8,000 who died a martyr's death for their faith. And look at me, ladies and gentlemen. I stood there and I said, I am such a worm. These men died Proudly died for the cause of Christ. We went to the place where they burned people at the stake because they refused to submit to the Church of England and read out of a book of Common Prayer.

And they died for it. They died for it.

And many of us in our spirituality, we think about the issue of disciplining ourselves to come to church, read his word and pray. And we think that's asking a little bit too much. There was a 16 year old boy who stood on that monument where people were martyred, crying out on the calls of Christ, preaching his guts out. A 16 year old boy. I thought to myself, I'm such a worm.

I want the faith that these martyrs had. I want the faith that goes all the way back. Because see, Jesus was the first one to die for faith. The rest of them died because of faith. He died so you and I could believe in Him.

My question to you today is this. Before you leave this room, you came to celebrate. And that's what this is. But the greatest thing you can do today to celebrate Jesus Christ is accept him as your Lord and Savior and make him your Lord. Let Jesus rewrite your story.

Because until, until you let him do it, until you yield to his lordship, you will never experience life in abundance. So I'm going to invite you to stand. I'm going to do something weird. Imagine that. I'm going to ask all the pastors to come and stand across the front down here.

I'm going to ask some of the ladies and other guys that have usually helped with counseling when we've had events. I want to ask them to come and stand out here because I want to give everybody a chance that if you this morning don't know Jesus Christ or you have strayed away from your faith, don't leave this room. You come down here, you take one of these men or ladies by the hand and say, look, I'm struggling. Or say I'm lost. Will you help me give us that opportunity.

That would be the best present, the best gift, the best act of worship that you could give to a holy God who did so much for you and for me and church. Pray. I don't know what you prayed this morning. I pray God let someone be saved today. Did you pray that?

And if you didn't pray it while we're singing like God Save the Lost, why would we want to waste our time if it's not for the benefit of lost people in this world? Father, as we come to this time of decision, I pray that you speak to hearts. And if there's someone here today that's lost and needs to be saved. Give them the courage to come up here. If there's somebody here today who has walked away from the Lord, from you, God, I pray that they would come and rededicate their life.

I've told this church a million times, and I'll say it. I'm blue in my face. Maybe somebody just needs to come pray because they've struggled with their story and they're asking you help me to see my story in your eyes and let it be rewritten. Maybe they just need to come. And I pray you'd move our people to come with them.

No one alone at this altar. Lord, we love you and we give this time to you now. In Jesus name, amen.