Spiritual Formation // Unintentional Spiritual Formation

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Transcript

  

Good morning, good morning.


  

 How are you guys today?


  

 Good, good, good. Welcome to Destiny. Glad you guys are here. I am not Pastor Jonathan. Pastor Jonathan and Vivi are on vacation this weekend. They are enjoying some time off at the beach. And we are all here.


  

 Which is fantastic. Every bit is good. But they are gone this week and so I have got the opportunity to share God's word this weekend. So if you guys would stand to your feet, let's read today's scripture and pray over our service.


  

 Romans , verse  says this, it says, do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. That by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.


  

 God, we come to you today and we are thankful for your word.


  

 Each of us here today has something that we need from you that only you can provide.


  

 God, we open our hearts and minds to you today. We pray that you would speak to us and whatever it is that we need to hear from you that we would be open to it and open to whatever change you want to bring into our lives. God, we love you and we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, you guys can have a seat.


  

 We are in a series right now and have been for a few weeks on spiritual formation.


  

 And we've had some hopes in the middle of this series as a staff and as those who have been preparing some of the messages and even the team of people who assembled months ago to put some of the things together that we are in the middle of now. Because as we went on a journey, even as a staff to begin to go through this process before we came here as a church, there's just a lot of things that we began to see take place in our own lives that have made this beneficial.


  

 You know, I would even say for me as someone who's, you know, I've been a believer for a while. I've been working at a church and even on pastoral staff for a while.


  

 The introduction into spiritual formation that we've gone into, like I said, even as a staff before we were here as a church, has marked my life in ways that I didn't expect.


  

 You know, I've been through stages in my life of spiritual growth and seasons of ups and downs. But looking intentionally at what it means to practice the ways of Jesus and to invite Him to form me as a person has had a lot of impacts. And our hope as we've been preparing things is that over this time that it would wet your appetite for more of that yourself.


  

 Because even for me and watching people as they've slowly got into this process, you see the changes that it makes in the lives of people. And like I said, not even just in my own observance of others, but like what I've been through even in my own heart.


  

 To think about how much of life around us feels shifty and changing and unstable, but yet when you give yourself over to let Jesus spiritually form you even as everything around you can be changing and shifting, life becomes more stable.


  

 You know, when I look around and I see that within our culture, the rat race of perfectionism, of always trying to have the absolute next best thing. And then as you let God form you, as you let Him form your spirit and you find that regardless of how perfect or imperfect you are that He has already accepted you in Christ.


  

 Like when you see that in your own spiritual formation, all of a sudden you get to engage with God in these practices, if you will, and be okay with the moments that you do really great and the moments that you fail. Because whether you do great or you have moments of failure, we're still accepted in Christ already.


  

 You know, when you see people's desires of the way that they want to live their lives, I don't know if you can relate to this, but like I want to live a life that I can be proud to live in front of my children, right? So that when my children look at me, they know I'm not perfect, but that I could live, like I could set out in front of them, model to them an example of a life that's not what I want it to be, but a life that's been spiritually formed by Jesus.


  

 And maybe you can relate to that too, where it's like I'm not just trying to do this well for my own self, I'm doing this because I love what Jesus is doing in me, and I'm hoping that the children he gave me to look at me could look at my example and want to follow in that example.


  

 You know, we out in the lobby, there's this banner up to help us remember like what it is we're in the middle of. And for so long, we have talked about, you know, our mission here, the reason why we exist as a church, right? Of course it's to fulfill the great commission that God gave us, but contextually here in our city, we believe that what we're here for is to help people know Jesus and show Jesus, that as we live that out, as we do that, know him better and show him to others, we will fulfill that great commission to go into all the world and make disciples.


  

 But in that, if you've seen in that lobby banner, like for this time that we're together, there's an added piece of the verbiage that you see there, because what we're hoping about, or what we're hoping is that during this time that we would know him, that we would show him, and that we would grow in his ways.


  

 That we would know Jesus, show Jesus, and grow in his ways.


  

 Because as we do all those things, we get to fulfill the call that God has on our lives.


  

 And, you know, it was just a handful of weeks that Pastor Jonathan kicked off the series, and we've had an opportunity to go through some different components of this. And I would encourage you, if you've missed any of those, you can go to destinychurch.com and you can look at the previous messages, you can watch them on YouTube or listen on a podcast.


  

 But we've been some places, like we, Pastor Jonathan kicked off a few weeks ago, and we're kind of laying out to us, like what is spiritual formation? Because if you're anything like me, that's not typically a terminology that I use all the time. Right? Like I maybe understand a little bit about spiritual growth, right? But the idea of formation, like that's not a, like formation is not just a common term I use when I'm out talking with my friends, right? Maybe you do. But that wasn't me.


  

 And that's a new concept, and we talked like what is formation and what isn't it?


  

 We've talked even after that a little bit about how the condition of our heart matters for our own formation, because if our heart isn't ready for it, all the practices in the world that we could share with you and teach you and show you won't matter if your heart is not in a good position for it. And that we need our heart to be right.


  

 We need the condition of our heart to be ready for what God wants to do.


  

 And that even in our heart that there's an identity that we have about ourselves, how we look at ourselves in relation to God that's important, because that heart identity that we belong to Him is important for this process.


  

 And even last week, Pastor Jonathan, just continuing to expound and show how the invitation to this is for everyone.


  

 Right? Last week we looked at how Pastor Jonathan took us to the Scriptures and looked at Jesus' call to everyone, and he said, "Come, follow me."


  

 It was not an invitation to the elite alone. It was not an invitation to the lowly alone. It wasn't an invitation to the poor or the rich alone. It was to all.


  

 Come, follow me.


  

 And today we're going to transition a little bit, and we're going to talk about unintentional spiritual formation.


  

 And I want to highlight a little bit of something before we even get into that message. We've said this a couple of times, but I just want you to know because the resources there are valuable for you. We have added a whole new space to our website that if you go to destinychurch.com in the top right tab, you'll find a brandnew tab called spiritual formation.


  

 And in there you'll find several different things. One, you'll find a quick tips tab that you'll be able to find that has all kinds of different resources that are available to you, podcasts or books or videos or things that you can engage with that will help you to grow. Right? You'll find information about upcoming future formation groups that we're going to have, including a formation course that's coming out next month that we've been talking about. You'll find even that when you go into the top and you see the tab where you can watch the previous lessons about this, because we wanted you to have everything you could to be able to grow and learn and understand. Even when you see the tab up top for watch and listen and it gives you all of the podcasts, there's now a new place that's called sermon summaries. And you actually go back and look at Pastor Jonathan's previous messages all the way back to even the Holy Spirit series that brought us here. And you can see the overview of the summaries of those, the transcripts from them, because we want you to have everything you need to go on this journey of letting God—we know that he offers us salvation, but he offers—like we can be saved today, but from here unto eternity, he wants to form us into someone brand new. And that's what we want to go through as a church together.


  

 And so today we're going to talk about unintentional spiritual formation.


  

 There's three pieces that we're going to talk about today. I'm going to tell you a little bit of where we're going, and then we'll go there together.


  

 Today we're going to talk about how spiritual formation is not just a Christian thing, it's a human thing. That it's something that's already happening. Another thing we're going to look at together is we're going to talk about what are the driving forces in our lives right now that are forming us already.


  

 And we're going to end today looking at an invitation to leave behind unintentional formation and step into a new place of intentional formation with Christ through his word.


  

 So the first place we'll go today that I want to start off is this, is to remember that spiritual formation isn't a Christian thing, it's a human thing.


  

 There are three parts to us. We are spirit, soul, and body.


  

 And our spirit is being formed all the time just simply as a human being. You don't have to be a Christian to enter into spiritual formation.


  

 It's a common experience. By simply being a human being, having been created by God, our spirits are being formed all the time. We're changing. Internally we are being shifted and shaped and changing all the time. And we know this because even on an outside perspective, from a physical perspective, we see the changes in ourselves and in people over time. All over the place. And we love it. We enjoy it. Like this is why when you go to a wedding, right, or a graduation party, like we can use that one, like we were just talking about our graduates, right, and our kids were moving up, which is crazy because now every one of my children is in the Destiny Kids building. I don't have any in DK Jr. anymore. And so pray for me.


  

 But like at graduation, sometimes you go to graduation parties, right, and we're celebrating someone and they'll have a board up and you'll get the chance to see like that person as they've been through their whole years of schooling. And we love to look at it, right, because like the person you're looking at now does not look like that first, like when they're dropping them off at kindergarten, that picture and you're looking at like a sweet little kid. And you see the pictures now of like who it is physically that they've been formed into, who they've grown. We love to see the change in people.


  

 But past the superficial of seeing the physical changes that we go through, we go through internal changes, right?


  

 On the inside, over time, we are shaped and shifted and changed.


  

 It's a common human experience.


  

 You know, just as I was even thinking of that example, like thinking about watching pictures of us as we grow up or thinking of weddings when you see those pictures of the bride and the groom, right, and you see all their years till they got to this moment here. I don't know if even on your phone, if you ever have those moments where, you know, like you go to look at your pictures and it would love to just be like, would you like to see a little collage of this child? Right? And then they show it in its back at like the baby pictures you still have on your phone.


  

 And you look at it and you're like, oh, my gosh, I remember when they were so tiny. Right? And you look at it now, like we love to look and see that change.


  

 But formation and change is not just happening on the outside. It is happening on the inside all the time.


  

 Like formation, like something important for you to know is this. From a spiritual perspective, formation is not optional.


  

 This is not an end, like when we're like, welcome, we're starting a series. This is about spiritual formation. This is not the intro to your journey.


  

 It's not like right now we're like, I remember that was it, .


  

 That's when I started being spiritually formed. That's not the case.


  

 Spiritual formation is not optional. It's always happening to us.


  

 And the thing is this. When we realize that, we're faced with a decision, will we make this a conscious thing that we get into or will we just let it happen and be completely unintentional about it?


  

 Because up to this moment, we have been formed.


  

 We are being formed and we will be formed in the future.


  

 Who you are today is a result of who you've been formed into.


  

 But in the future, the future self of what could be is still in front of you of who you're going to be formed into from this day moving forward.


  

 And so it's important, again, that we remember this is not an invitation for you to start something new.


  

 This is an invitation for you to recognize you've already been in it. Are you going to choose to allow God to form you into something wonderful or are you just going to unintentionally, accidentally let it go and just find out what happens?


  

 And I don't know about you, like if you've ever watched things over life, nothing accidentally gets better.


  

 If we accidentally just let things happen, things deteriorate.


  

 And the other thing I want to talk to you guys about is this, right? Understanding that this is a human, a common human experience that we are spiritually formed all the time. Is I want to look at the different things that already form us.


  

 Going back to our scripture in Romans chapter , he says, don't be conformed by this world. Other translations would say, don't be conformed by the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. There are lots of things around us that will attempt to conform us, to shape us and mold us. And I think it's important that we're aware of what those things are. Because we have choices that we can make about not just the fact that we give ourselves to Jesus to transform us by the renewing of our mind, but even in what we're being conformed into, will I put myself in position to see the things that God wants to see in me.


  

 And so I want to put up, let's see if they've got a slide back there. There's a slide that we're going to look at here of what unintentional spiritual formation looks like.


  

 So you guys can see this up here if you're following along on the you version, you have that slide there as well. But you'll see these are the six driving forces of spiritual formation.


  

 Right? And you'll see this triangular piece here that looks like our habits, our relationships and the stories that we believe.


  

 And all of them are connected through an environment that we are in.


  

 And at the bottom, we have this line that runs across, demonstrating to us and reminding to us that these habits, these relationships, this environment we're in, these stories we believe, they shift and they form and they change us over time and through experience.


  

 If we never give ourselves over to let God transform us, this will be what forms us whether we want to or not.


  

 This, if we live by accident, the best we've got is this.


  

 And so over time and through experience, my habits, relationships, the stories I believe, an environment ultimately will shape who I become. And I can either allow it to happen unintentionally or I can intentionally give myself to Christ to not be just conformed but transformed.


  

 So I want to talk about a few of these here.


  

 The first four we talk about, habits, relationships, the stories we believe in our environment, these are active pieces, active driving forces. And they're active because they're things that we do.


  

 The last two, time and experience, those are not things we do but those are simply things that happen to us rather than things that we do.


  

 But I want to talk about these for just a second.


  

 I want to talk about first habits.


  

 Habits form us into a certain type of person.


  

 The habits that we engage in all the time, they are always making us into a particular kind of person. So you could look at this at like the very simple level of like thinking about the repeated things you do every day and when you do them, right? Like for those of you who work out or you exercise or you follow some sort of a physical diet or a way of eating, you know that by doing those things they begin to shape and shift who you are.


  

 The way that you start your day and the way you finish your day, they begin to shape a little bit about how everything looks in between those.


  

 And every little habit that we carry, if we're intentional about it, it can begin, like if we give that to the Lord, he can do something even through our habits to shape us. That's why like when we've talked about in the future we want to invite as a church for us to participate in different practices that Jesus did is because even in engaging in those habits, it will begin to shape and shift and mold us into someone new.


  

 Like let me give you just a few random habits of mine, okay? Like these are just, these are, you can determine for yourself whether you feel like they're good or bad. I think I know which ones are good or bad for me, right? I realized in my life, like when I've just stopped and kind of evaluate myself, if I've got a question or I find myself curious, the habit that I've somehow developed in my life is that when curiosity is sparked in me, usually the next thing that happens is you'll hear me go, "Hey Siri."


  

 (Laughter)


  

 Right? Because if I'm like, "I want to know."


  

 Well, but my habit of what happens when I become curious is I just simply respond with, "Hey Siri."


  

 Now, I'm not trying to take it too deep, but what kind of person do you think that that's forming me into when my response to being curious is to grab my phone and ask Siri what she thinks?


  

 Or what kind of person do you think it's forming my children into if what they see out of me is out of my curiosity, I want to know what Siri thinks?


  

 Another habit that I have is the way that my day starts, right? For the first hour of my day, it looks the same every day, right? Like my wife and I, we get up, we've already had the coffee that was set to brew at five, we go grab coffee, we come back. For the first like ,  minutes, we're just quiet. No one's talking. We just grab our Bible. We do a Bible study, right? When we finish for another ,  minutes, we'll just talk to each other, like, what did I learn? What I read today? Like, what am I in the middle of? We will split. We'll take like  minutes and we'll just go pray by ourselves. It's just like silence, quiet, no one's around. And we'll come back together shortly before six o'clock. We'll pray together and we'll always finish our prayer in this way. God give me eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart to obey.


  

 That's what has developed my morning habit, okay? Even in a good way. That's forming me into somebody, right? When another, like when I get into my car or if I go into a store or literally if I just go take a walk somewhere, you know what I've realized my habit is?


  

 First thing I do is start to look for my AirPods because if I'm going to go somewhere, I might as well listen to a podcast.


  

 I don't know if that's you at all, but like, and so for me, like, what's that forming me into?


  

 I have to ask myself the question, like, is it forming me into something good or is it forming me to a person who's not okay with quiet?


  

 And that's my own. I got to wrestle with that. I'll tell you when I get there.


  

 Right?


  

 Or if another, like, a habit I've developed, being on staff for a while and being a pastor for a while, like, when I can see from afar that someone is coming to me and I realize we're going to have a serious conversation, right? Doesn't matter how far away it is. It could be right when it gets, like, there in the moment. But, like, I have an internal kickback. I have a habit that the moment that I realize they could be coming in my office, it could be a staff member, it could be a person, it could be off the side of the road to someone who knows me and they're going to, like, if I have the ability out loud, I will. But most of the time I have this small inside prayer. It's like, God, give me wisdom, give me discernment and tell me what to say.


  

 That's the habit that I've developed.


  

 Because I know that if I just speak on my own and I don't have his wisdom and discernment, it's just up to me.


  

 And I really don't trust me.


  

 It's a habit. Habits make us into a type of person. What are your habits?


  

 There is a direct connection between how I live and who I become.


  

 Another one is relationships.


  

 Relationships form us.


  

 I mean, this is why, like, for those of you who can remember your teenage years and you remember back to when your parents were super concerned about who your friends were, or maybe you're the parent now and you're looking at your own teenagers trying to explain to them why friendships are important.


  

 Because the relationships that we have, the closeness we have with people, they shape us.


  

 I can almost exclusively look back at the results of my life that almost every time I've taken a step forward or stepped off the cliff.


  

 There was usually somebody right there in front of me showing me how to do it.


  

 That relationship was important.


  

 You can probably imagine for you, if you looked at your life, you could see the same. Relationships form us. This is why who we choose to marry is important. We can't just marry someone because they're funny or they're cute, right? Like, we got to, that person's going to shape us. They're going to form us.


  

 We're inviting them into a formation process with us.


  

 And then there's these stories that we believe. This one I know can feel a little bit out there. But let me try and make some sense of it.


  

 There are certain things in life that we buy into and we believe to be true about what is going to give me the good life.


  

 Or maybe what's going to help me to avoid the bad life or what's going to rob me of the good life. There's things that we believe to be true. And these are easy to see in different ways. For me, the way I see it the most is in music.


  

 Like the music that we listen to a lot, it tells us stories.


  

 And the stories that it tells us oftentimes are shaping and sharing with us. This is what the good life looks like. And this is how you get the good life. And it shows up in these little quips and these little sayings that we can spout off all the time or we can hear someone say and we kind of, we lean into it because we believe that it's a bit of a narrative that if I follow that narrative, it will give me the good life I'm looking for. And this could be things that are deep and spiritual or these can be very simple.


  

 Right? Like if you believe the story that good always wins, it will shape the way you live.


  

 Or if you believe that nice guys finish last, it will shape the way you live.


  

 There's a story to be believed there.


  

 Right? If you believe the stories that you hear that if it feels good, then it is good.


  

 It will shape the way you live.


  

 If you believe the story that if Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.


  

 That was a nervous chuckle. That was funny.


  

 Like if that's the story that you believe to be true, it will shape the way you live.


  

 Right? If you believe the story that whoever dies with the most toys wins, it will shape the way you live.


  

 If you believe that the best way to love someone, right, is to tell it like if you buy into the story, if it makes you happy, then I'll support you.


  

 It will shape the way you live.


  

 Right? I was trying to think of an example today, like when I was just still in it this morning and thinking through. And for whatever reason, I thought about the song "The Gambler." Right? You got to know when to hold them. You got to know.


  

 I was going to see if anybody would start to sing here. Right? Like what? That's a story. It's a narrative about what life looks like.


  

 Right? And if you catch on, if you buy into these different narratives, these stories we believe, it will shape how you treat your family, your friends, what you think of God.


  

 And then there's our environment.


  

 And our environment, if you think back to that graphic, maybe we could, if they'll fill that graphic up again there. But habits, relationships, and stories we believe, they are triangulated around environment. Because the environment that we're in often offers to us all three of those. Our environment offers us habits, stories, and relationships.


  

 And environment's important.


  

 I mean, that's why if you've known someone or maybe you've been someone who's struggled with an addiction, like this is why we have sober living facilities. Because sometimes we've got to switch our environment totally. Because the environment we've come from that led us to a place of addiction gave us stories to believe, relationships to facilitate those, and habits to build it all up. And the reality is sometimes we've got to get out of that environment and into a new one, if any of that's going to change.


  

 That's another reason why our lives we live together as believers is important.


  

 We cannot expect to live in the environment exclusively all week long. That's out in the world and like only sort of halfway brushed by each other at church and expect that environment to shift much of those three things in our lives.


  

 Being together is important.


  

 I am a different person because of the way I'm being shaped because of my relationships with you.


  

 Like Mr. Andrew and I, we go to lunch every once in a while and we hang out together and when I sit and have lunch with Mr. Andrew, like, sorry, I just call him Andrew. My kids call him Mr. Andrew, right? It's weird to be like Mr. Andrew. But when Andrew and I, we have lunch together, it challenges the stories that I believe, it challenges my habits. That relationship built on this environment that we are together as brothers in Christ, like it shapes, it molds me. We all, we need each other.


  

 And the thing is, is that all of those pieces, those actions that we have,


  

 those active pieces that we do with time and experience, if we don't give ourselves to intentional formation in Christ, if we don't do that unintentionally, over time and through experiences, our habits, relationships, environments, and stories we believe will be the conforming and shaping forces in our life.


  

 And spiritual formation becomes unintentional when we fail to realize that it's already happening. So we leave it up to chance. Unintentional spiritual formation, not always, but it can be detrimental rather than helpful.


  

 When we don't realize that it's actually already happening in our lives, so we just find out what happens.


  

 And God's not inviting us to just leave it all up to chance.


  

 He's inviting us into a process that He has in mind for us. And listen, it's not going to be all perfectly straight across the board for every person.


  

 Like I wish it was, like in my mind, I love this straight path. Get in here with me on the path, right? And like, this is perfect. But the reality is all of us, like the practices are uniform, but how God takes us through them, it changes and differs between person to person.


  

 God knows what you're ready for, and He'll take you on the journey of what you're ready for next to mold you and shape you and take you to the next one. And it might not look like mine.


  

 We might not even look like each other's, but over time, over time, God's working of this path.


  

 He'll take us to where we all begin to look like these very unique versions of very similar people. Not the same. We're not talking just conformity here, that we all turn out to be the same person. That's not it.


  

 We'll all start to kind of, like have you ever seen family members? You can tell they're family members, right? The same is true with the family of God. We ought to be able to see within each other, we're family.


  

 We're starting to do things the same way, but in our very unique way God made us.


  

 And so here's the thing, like I share those with you because we go back, right? Don't be conformed, shaped, molded by the patterns of this world.


  

 That happens through unintentional spiritual formation. Simply allowing ourselves to experience whatever happens, but He says be transformed. By the renewing of your mind.


  

 There's an invitation to intentional spiritual formation in Christ.


  

 Our question today is not, am I being formed?


  

 Our question today is not, am I becoming something?


  

 Our question today is what am I being formed into?


  

 Or better yet, who or what am I becoming?


  

 Because we're invited into transformation.


  

 That word transformation there is the root word of where we would get the word metamorphosis.


  

 Metamorphosis is different.


  

 We have one example we learned as a kid and then we move on, right? Like metamorphosis, when we think about a counterpillar to a butterfly, they are not the same thing.


  

 There's a process of transformation where something changes into something brand new.


  

 Metamorphosis being transformed, it changes, like a definition would say this, it changes the essential nature of something.


  

 It changes the essential form or nature of something. God doesn't just want to conform us, He wants to transform us and give us a new nature in Christ.


  

 A new identity in Christ.


  

 And the big difference in today is simply this, is today we're accountable to this knowledge. To realize formation's already been happening.


  

 I actually can't do anything about the person that I am right now today because what formed me into this has already gone past.


  

 But I'm accountable to what I allow God to do with me in the future because now I know it's already happening. But am I going to be intentional about it or not? Am I going to allow myself to be transformed by the Lord rather than unintentionally conformed to my environment and the patterns of this world?


  

 And so some questions I would give you to kind of just reflect on as we close that you could think about throughout the week, could talk about with your friends or family or in a smaller group.


  

 Who am I becoming? One question to think of is who am I becoming?


  

 If I can envision into the future like the person I am now that's being shaped and shifted, if I could look to its end, who or what am I becoming?


  

 Am I being intentional about who I'm becoming?


  

 And the last one would be this. Am I being transformed by the love and the beauty of Jesus or am I being deformed by sin and death?


  

 I'm either being transformed by Jesus or the world around me, the sin and death around me will deform me into something else. And as we close, I want to give, besides any kind of an altar call invitation, I want to give just another reminder of the things we've talked about over the last several weeks. In June, we're going to take time as a church to go through a course together, a spiritual formation course that we're doing on Wednesday nights from  to .


  

 There's childcare for ages four and up. The youth are going to go through it in their own way. Kids classes are going through it in their own way. And you don't have, I mean, we would like you to be there for the whole eight weeks, but if you've got to miss something, that's, that doesn't have to be a reason why you don't engage. Like you can still, we need you to register. We got to get things ready, but we're going to go through something together to say, I'm done with just letting the world accidentally shape me. I'm coming to a point together to say, God, shape me, form me. We want to do it together.


  

 And so I think the call to our room today is simply this. And I want to just piggyback off where Pastor Jonathan was last week. Jesus's call to everyone to all was to come follow me. And the invitation to all of us in the room today is to do the same. Either one to come follow Jesus in the sense of that if you have not made a decision to put your faith in him, to receive the forgiveness of sins by Jesus's payment of his death, burial and resurrection, that your invitation to come follow him is to come receive that salvation.


  

 But then also, whether today's the day you do that, or you've already done that however long ago, the second invitation is again to all in the room. And it is to not just receive salvation, but to also come walk in a new way of life.


  

 Jesus said, come follow me, because in him and him alone, you would find salvation. And then in that salvation, as you follow him, he would shift and shape and change you. And that is our invitation today.


  

 So let's pray together. God, we are here and we are thankful for you. You are our creator. We are known by you and loved by you. And God, I pray that for every one of us in the room, we would be so brave and bold as to set aside our pride and set aside all the things that weigh us down and come follow Jesus. That those who need salvation to be forgiven of their sins today, that they would do that very thing. And that all of us would begin to walk in a new way of life as we follow after Jesus and learn how he lived and live like he did. Father, we love you. We are so thankful and appreciative of whatever it is you do in our life next.


  

 God, we love you. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.


  

 Listen, church, if you need anything at all, prayer wise, if you need to talk about any of the things that we just talked about, come see our prayer team. They'll be down front to my right, your left. They would love to meet with you. If you made a decision to follow Jesus in any kind of capacity, come talk with them, share that with them. Let them be excited with you and for you. And if you're here and you're a guest and you fill out one of those Connect cards, by all means, meet somebody at our Welcome Central. I'll be in the green room up here to the left. If you haven't had a chance to meet one of the pastors before, I'll be there if you'd like to come by and say hi. But other than that, we're excited to see you guys next week. Pastor Jonathan should be back by then and be excited as he always is when coming back from vacation to be able to preach. So love you guys. Have a good Sunday. We'll see you next week.