Jesus Through Me

For as long as we've existed, there's been light. The sun by day, the moon by night. But God made a promise to all mankind. A greater light would come. The hue of galaxies diverse, lit with supernova burst. There is long-existed light across the universe, but a greater light would come. Isaiah spoke the Father's plan: on those living in the land of darkness, hope shall descend. The greatest light would come.

Then beneath the Christmas star, it came. This blazing light of God was named Jesus. Heavenly host proclaim the greatest light has come. Emmanuel, our God with us. With endless power and fire of love, of equal brilliance, there is none. The greatest light has come. This light unlike any other. Sinners saved by mercies covered. Turning enemies into brothers. The greatest light has come. A light that wakes the sleeping nations, draws the billions to salvation. Light of Christ, our firm foundation. The greatest light is come. In this light, the blind are seeing. In this light is life's true meaning. Those once dead, alive, and singing. The greatest light is come. Can you say amen to that?

"Come on." "Good morning." "It is so great to see you." South Campus, North Campus, online family, I've got a confession for you today. You ready? I love Christmas. Now, that may not seem like a big deal, but I used to think I didn't love Christmas. But reality is, I love Christmas, but I struggle with some of the facets of the way our society does Christmas. You get what I'm talking about here? Like, I struggle with the fact that Christmas seems to be starting earlier and earlier every year, okay? Like, honestly. Come on, you got to participate with me. How many of you like to start Christmas a little before, maybe a lot before Thanksgiving? Put your hands up. Be honest. Do it. Come on. There's more of you than that, 'cause I already see the lights up. Hands down. How many of you think there's an appropriate order of things? There's Thanksgiving, then there's Christmas. You don't do one until the other's finished. Hands up right now. How many of you know we're not going to get this debate resolved? Right. See, I'm not talking about that normal debate. I'm talking about the reality that I saw the first Christmas display in a store this year. I noted it in my brain for this sermon. I saw it the day after Labor Day. Come on. Can we all agree that's wrong? Like, somebody needs to be prayed for, somebody needs to be delivered, something. I wrestle with that, guys. I don't like the busyness of the season. There's a lot going on, and there's a lot of things that just distract us if we're not careful. I don't love the pressure that our families feel to spend a lot more money than we have. Do you know that they estimate that the average American will spend $900 per person in their family this year for Christmas? And some of you are going, "Not in my family, we're not doing that." But you get what I'm saying. I get it. But despite the struggles, despite maybe some of the misguided ways that our society has twisted the Christmas celebration, I bet deep down, every one of us, no matter what campus we're on, and we got a lot of us online today with the weather, I bet all of us would say deep down, we love Christmas. At least the message that Christmas shouts from heaven. See, it is the greatest news ever. To understand great news, you got to understand bad news. Do you know that the goodness of good news is directly proportionate to the badness of the bad news? And I'm just telling you, the bad news of humanity before Christmas was terrible. The words the scripture used to describe it are words like dark, hopeless, dead, guilty, blind, lost, bound for hell. To say that the human condition was bad news, to say that my life before Jesus was catastrophic, is the understatement among all understatements. As my granddad used to say, humanity was up a manure field tributary without a means of propulsion. You will get that in about an hour. Okay? My granddad said it a different way. My mama said I couldn't say it that way, but you get what I'm saying. We were up the proverbial creek and we couldn't do anything about it. It was beyond bad news. It was the worst of news. And into the midst of our worst news came Christmas. God became flesh. And I understand that's what we celebrate at Christmas specifically. But Christmas means nothing if we don't hear the whole story. Jesus not only became flesh, he lived just like us. Human, like we were designed to live. Not independent of God, not rebelling of God. He lived utterly dependent upon the Father. He was without sin, pure and spotless. And God offered himself on the tree. On the cross, he paid the price that justice demanded for our sins. God suffered our penalty. He suffered our hell. And he rose victorious over death, hell, and the grave. And God now offers to any human who will dare return to the way we were supposed to live, dependent upon him, following him. He offers us victory. He offers us newness of life. And when that occurs, listen, the adjectives that describe our reality change 180 degrees. Dark is overtaken by light. Hopeless is replaced with confidence in the future. Life supersedes death. Sights about what is real, what is important, becomes ours. Guilt becomes forgiven. Loss becomes found. Hell becomes heaven. Bad news becomes good news. The worst of news becomes the greatest of news. Come on, somebody give a clap and a shout for Jesus and what he did at Christmas. See, listen. Christmas shouts the grandness of God's love. The apostle prayed that you and I, us being rooted in this love, being established with this love, may have power. Now, when we think power, we think, but he said you need to have power, all of us together, to be able to grasp this love. It is so wide, so high, so long, and deep. And I pray that you have power to grasp it. And I pray that you have power to know this love that surpasses the ability of our brains to understand. And as you do that, you're going to be filled to everything God designed us to have from the beginning. God's love is so grand, it takes a supernatural ability to be able to even begin to grasp that reality. God's love seen in the radical act of becoming human like us and all that it represents. That is why deep down, with all the struggles of maybe the season, we all love the reality of Christmas. But hear me, I want to challenge that Christmas isn't just the grandness of what Jesus does for us. Christmas is the grandness of what Jesus would dare do through us. And through when we really think about it, is just as amazing as four. So what I want you to do is give me a few minutes to try to unpack this a little bit. In the Bible, we have 66 books. The Bible is like a library. We have Old Covenant, New Covenant, Old Testament, and New Testament. The New Testament is really the beginning of the life of the church. In fact, if you're not familiar with the scripture, I'm just going to tell you right now, I want you to start on book 40 of the Bible. I want you to start at Matthew. I want you to start in the New Testament. Read the New Testament like through two or three times. Then we'll talk about the Old Testament. The first four books of the New Testament are called the Gospels. That's an ancient word that just means good news. And the reason they're called the Gospels is they're about Jesus. They're about his birth. They're about his life. They're about his teachings. They're about his death and his resurrection. We have overlap in those four books, but we also have some things that are unique to each of those books. Luke's gospel contains some things about the Christmas story, honestly, we don't hear about very much. There are some words in Luke's gospel that speak of the destiny. They speak of the significance of an individual's life. But as we look at them, I want you to take special note of them because I don't think they're in totality just about this person's life. There are some specifics, yes, that are about his life, but they're not just about his life. I think they're about all of our lives. The scripture says that you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High. For you will go before the Lord. Note this way: to prepare his ways. To prepare his ways for what? That you're going to prepare the way that Jesus could give knowledge of salvation to his people and the forgiveness of sins. Because they need to see the mercy of God. You're going to prepare the way whereby the sunrise shall visit us on high to give light to those who sit in darkness, those who sit in the shadow of death. We're going to prepare the way to guide people's feet into the way of peace. Now, I think what we're supposed to see in these words is just not the "what" of the Christmas message, but the "who" through whom it happened. You see, a part of the Christmas story only found in Luke's gospel. You need to read Luke 1 and 2 this week. It's incredible. Is the story of a guy named Zachariah and Elizabeth. Now, some of you thinking, "I don't remember Zachariah and Elizabeth." I get it. They kind of got the raw end of the Christmas celebration. Like, they're never in the Christmas pageant. No kid ever comes out in October after the parts are given out for the little Christmas pageant saying, "Mommy, Mommy, I'm playing Elizabeth." No one gets to play Elizabeth. But don't mistake that to mean that they are not a major part of the story of Christmas. You see, about six months prior to the angel Gabriel coming to Mary and telling her she's going to be with child, though she is unwed and has never been with a man, that same Gabriel showed up to another dude, a priest who's serving in the temple by the name of Zachariah. And he looks at Zachariah and says, "Your wife is going to give birth to a child as well." And you have to understand Elizabeth's pregnancy just as miraculous as Mary's pregnancy, just utterly different. Mary was young, like very young, unmarried, and a virgin. Elizabeth was not. She was not young. She was married, and we can assume she was not the other. She was barren. Had never been able to have children. In fact, when Gabriel told Zachariah that his wife, who had never been able to have kids, was beyond childbearing years, was going to have kids, Zachariah couldn't wrap his brain around it and actually said, "Hey, how, how can I know this? For I am an old man and my wife is advanced in years." Come on, ladies. How would you like it if your husband described you that way? Gabriel, I don't know if you look, my wife's a little long in the tooth. Um, and I'm not a spring chicken. You picking up what I'm laying down? So Gabriel replied, "Behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place because you did not believe my words which will be fulfilled in their time." Now, here's what I don't know. I don't know if the not speaking thing was planned or if Gabriel just got a little miffed. You know, you look at the words like he got a little ticked off, and so I don't know if like he called an audible, like he gets up into heaven and God goes, "Gabriel, we weren't going to do the no speaking thing. What happened?" And Gabriel went, "Well, he mouthed off, so I shut his." You know what I'm saying? I don't know that that's what happened, but I do know this. I do know that for over nine months, the man who went into the temple was unable to speak when he came out. And then when his wife, in her advanced state, gave birth to a child, they, he had to give that child a name. Jewish custom was they named the child on the day of circumcision, on the eighth day. And so on that eighth day, they're going to announce the name. And the people asked, "What's the name going to be?" And Elizabeth says, "John." And they say, "Well, well, there's no family member who's named John." That would have been tradition in the day. But somehow Zachariah had told Elizabeth, "Hey, this dude that made me not able to speak, he said, 'The kid's name's John.'" And so when Zachariah wrote down on a tablet that his name will be John, immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, "Bless God." He was filled with the Spirit and he prophesied, and he said that his son would be one who was used to prepare the way of the Lord. To prepare what? To prepare people for what the Lord wanted to do in their life, to guide them into places of salvation, to help them have light shine in their darkness, to help them walk into the way of peace. Several hundred years prior to this, the prophet Malachi said that there would be one who will be like Elijah the prophet. "I will send Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord." So to this day, if you went to a traditional Jewish Passover celebration, they are actually going to have an empty chair and they call it the seat of Elijah. And it's their way of praying that the one who would come before the Messiah and the spirit of Elijah will show up so the Messiah would be able to come because the Jewish people are still looking for the Messiah. But we know from that New Covenant, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that Yochanan ben Zechariah, John son of Zechariah, you may have heard of him. We often call him John the Baptizer. He was actually the fulfillment of Malachi. So, it wasn't just that Jesus came at just the right time. John came at just the right time to prepare the way of the Lord. Come on. The way the Lord can orchestrate everything, the way he needs to bring about the hope, the life, the joy, and peace he wants for his children is amazing. We can rest in that reality that our God's got the whole world, by the way, including your world, in his hand. Our pastor, Jeffrey, man, he did a great job unpacking that last week. If you missed it, it's worth your time. It did something to my soul to hear that. It's amazing the heart of our God and all that he does for you and I. But you know what? That's not all that's amazing. It's not just amazing what God did. It's amazing who he did it through. See, I'm going to tell you something right now. I need you to really perk up and pay attention because you're not going to want to believe me. We have this tendency to read the Bible through maybe a wrong set of lenses. See, I want you to hear that John, who prepared the way for people to hear the message of all that Jesus had for them, he was an ordinary nobody in his day. Now, I get it. He's like, "No, dude. He's in the Bible. If you're in the Bible, you're a somebody. Like, you're a spiritual somebody. A spiritual big wig. Somebody who really did something." I get that. But he really wasn't. He was just everyday normal folk. He was born to ordinary parents. Zachariah and Elizabeth, they didn't live in Jerusalem. They lived in a village outside Jerusalem. You may say, "Well, Zachariah was a priest." Scholars estimate there were probably 20,000 priests around Jerusalem at this time. I mean, I'm not trying to be glib. Priests were a dime a dozen around Jerusalem that day. They were just ordinary everyday people. They didn't live in Jerusalem. Zachariah wasn't a member of the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin was a ruling council of Israel at the time. He wasn't a Sadducee. He wasn't a Pharisee. You're just an everyday dude. And to be honest with you, Israel was a nobody country. Like the center of the world at that time was Rome. If you went to Rome and said, "Hey, tell me about Israel." They would have probably said, "Where's and what is Israel?" Just like when you and I travel and we tell them from Abilene, people go, "Where's Abilene?" Nobody knows, right? They were just ordinary common people. John was born to very ordinary people. They didn't have money. They didn't have position. They didn't have power. They didn't have notoriety. John was born and raised in ordinary. But that's really every player in the Christmas story was that way. Joseph and Mary, worse off than John. I mean, at least his parents lived in like a village outside Jerusalem. They were way up north in a village called Nazareth. Nobody thought anything great could come from Nazareth. We don't know how old Joseph and Mary were, but it's likely they were like young to a place that we're uncomfortable. Jewish children of the day were declared to be adults when they had their bar mitzvah and their bat mitzvah. Bat for women, bar for men, age 12 and 13. They would become betrothed not long after that. So, it's likely they were young, middle, maybe late teenage in their years. From a no-name village, and God used them to change the world. The first witnesses to Jesus were shepherds. Yeah, shepherds like David? No, not in that day. Shepherds in the first century had a reputation. It was not a good one. They were thieves. They were liars. They were the outcasts of society. And yet God took these people, listen, and we, and millions like us in the world today, have salvation, have hope, have light, because God used these ordinary nobodies to change the world. Is that not amazing? See, what's amazing about Christmas isn't just the "what," but the "who." It's not just what God did, but the amazing way he did it through people. Listen, that excites me for me because I'm like them. That excites me for you because I bet you're thinking right now, "I get ordinary nobody." I mean, when we look in the mirror, we don't see ourselves born of a certain people, born of certain power. We see ourselves as ordinary. Now, understand, I get that when we are in Jesus, we are anything but a nobody. I mean, come on. How can you be a child of the King and be a nobody? I get that reality. I know that in Jesus, I am a child of God that I can call upon God any time, and the God of the universe who holds human history in his hands turns his attention to me. I know that I am an ambassador of the King. I know that I'm a co-heir with Jesus. I know that I'm going to rule and reign with him. I get that in Jesus, I am anything but a nobody. But by the standards of this world, I live in Abilene. I'm from Pampa. My parents, not one of you have ever heard of them. My education, pretty normal. You tell the same story as I do. Paul said by inspiration of the Holy Spirit to a group of people just like us, he says, "Brothers and sisters, think about what you were when you were called." I want you to do that. When you came to know Jesus, were you wise by human standards? Were you influential? Were you of noble birth? But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of the world, even the despised things. People who think you've done too much and gone too far. And God's going to choose you and change your life and do something incredible. He chose you to nullify the things that are so that no one may be able to boast, but nobody may be able to boast before him. Come on. Does that sound like anybody? Do those verses sound like you and I? Hear me. Christmas isn't just about what Jesus did for me. Christmas is about Jesus through me. And if you will catch it, "through" is just as amazing as "for." Early in Luke's account of Christmas, Gabriel told Zachariah that his son, the child, would be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb. Now, this is huge. Before the resurrection of Jesus, so Jesus is going to be put to death and resurrected 33, 34 years from Christmas, okay? So, we're still well before that time. Before that time, only a handful of people throughout the Bible had the Holy Spirit. They were leaders, and they were prophets. John was one of those. But when Jesus died on the cross, he rose from the dead. Now, anyone who would surrender his life to him would be so changed by God that we would house the Holy Spirit. We would receive, according to Acts 2:38, the gift of the Holy Spirit. So every follower of Jesus, if you claim to be a follower of Jesus, the same Spirit that was in John at birth is in you. The same Spirit that came upon Jesus, you. The same Spirit that was in Elijah, the same Spirit in Elisha, the same Spirit in Moses, in every follower of Jesus. Now, that doesn't mean we have a certain title like prophet or king or anything like that. But you know what it does mean? Listen, if you are a follower of Jesus, you carry a prophetic anointing. What does that prophetic anointing allow you to do? It gives you influence. It gives you the ability, like John the Baptist, to prepare the way of the Lord. To prepare people for all that God wants to do in their lives. To help prepare people that they will be able to receive from the Lord the knowledge of salvation, the forgiveness of their sins. They can be able to receive the mercy of God. We get to prepare the way that people who are in darkness, are sitting on the edge of death. We get to help prepare the way that God could come in and bring light, like the sunrise, into their life. That we would be able to prepare the way that they could get close enough that God could reach out his hand and they could take it, and he could guide them in the way of peace. Every follower of Jesus carries the anointing. Listen, if you are a follower of Jesus, you carry the power of God to prepare the way for people to have a chance to know Jesus, a chance to connect with Christmas. It's what makes Christmas amazing. Are you hearing it? The reason we have hope, ordinary, normal folk, John, Zachariah, Elizabeth, Joseph, Mary, some shepherds. God used them. He will use us to bring hope. Can we dare believe it? Listen, I know we feel a weight to this because I think we make it harder than it needs to be. We hear this and we have in our mind what this has to look like. Many of us think that preparing the way of the Lord looks, and listen to me on this. We think it looks like Charlie Kirk, that we've got to go into the middle of a hostile crowd and they can throw any question at us and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, we can throw out the answers. I have to admit, it was impressive. And I appreciate the specific calling that God had on Charlie Kirk's life. That's not what we're talking about here. We don't have to all be like John the Baptist. In fact, if you were going to be like John the Baptist, you are overdressed like that. Right now, he had one outfit. It was camel hair, and he lived like a weirdo in the desert. That's not us. So, we're not talking about the specifics of individual lives. We're just talking about taking a prophetic anointing and using it to prepare the way that people have an opportunity. Say, opportunity. You don't have to argue them into anything. You don't have to close the deal. You don't have to win the fight or win the debate. You know, there's two things you need to do. We need to love, and we need to share. That's it. Foundationally, we love and we share. Listen, God uses us ordinary nobodies to be messengers of the hope of Jesus. And the way we do this, listen to me, we do this by loving and by sharing. You want to know a foundational way? I'm not telling you these are the only ways. You know a foundational way to love and to share. Foundational way to love, first and foremost, is to pray. I'm not minimizing that at all. Every one of us are in environments where there's people around us that don't know the reality of Jesus Christ. They don't have hope that is found in Jesus Christ. You're going to go to a workplace next year. You're going to sign up for a gym. Y'all all sign up. I know. I go to gyms. And you're going to go for a little while. I pray that you go even longer than that. When you go to that gym, there's going to be people there that don't know Jesus. Your kids are in activities, and there are family or kids in families that don't know about Jesus. Everywhere you and I go, there are people. Don't think that everybody in the Big Country knows Jesus. That is nowhere close to truth. I can easily tell you, over half of the Big Country, but it's more than that, don't have an active relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Our area needs Jesus. We carry that. So, we just begin by praying. We go in there and we pray that God would do his work, that he would open their hearts. And we actually pray for opportunities that we can share. You say, "David, that overwhelms me." Why? Just share that you have hope in Jesus Christ. Just share that you've given your life to Jesus Christ. But a real practical thing you use. Often the way we share is we just invite them to join us in the stuff we're doing in life. We invite them to join us. I'm just telling you right now, you will never convince me that there's not power in a simple invitation. Come visit church. Because it changed the destiny of my family. It was 50 years ago that one of my mom's coworkers invited her to church, and my mom said, "No, but you can have my kids on Sunday." That invitation was God prophetically using this woman to prepare the way for me that five years later I could come to know Jesus Christ. My parents could return to the Lord. That my kids' lives and my grandkids' lives are all utterly different just because of an invitation. "Don't tell me that an invitation won't matter because God will take us together." I was at boot camp September, had a young man come up to me. I knew him. This young man had had the Lord work in a big way in his life a couple years earlier, and he'd returned to the Lord, and God had been reshaping his life, and he introduced me to a buddy. That buddy had just said yes to become a follower of Jesus, was going to be baptized that night. And they were telling me how he had never understood, but now he finally understood what Jesus was all about. You know how that buddy got to boot camp? His buddy invited him. It was just real simple the way it happened. And then God used the body of Christ to bring hope. I'm just telling you, there's a young man who at September was a life of darkness, a life of blindness, a life of death, a life bound for hell. And this Christmas is utterly different. All because of an invitation. That's it. That's what I'm talking about, guys. I'm not saying that's the only way we can share, but we don't have to make it harder than it is. Are we willing to love? And are we willing to share? Are we willing to let the Spirit of God go inside of us like that? Listen, the Spirit of God is going to empower us to do the main thing. The main thing according to Jesus is love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. You want to be empowered by the Spirit? He's going to help you. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. That's what he's going to do. We can all be a part of that. And when we do, it is amazing. To be honest, we miss a great deal of what Jesus has for us when we're not partnering with him in what he wants to do through us. Some of us are like, "Jesus, I need you to move." And Jesus is saying, "I am, but it's over here, and you're not with me. I'm seeking and saving the lost. I'm giving sight to the blind. I'm giving freedom to the oppressed. I'm declaring the favorable year of the Lord. Come join me, and you'll be amazed what I do for you in the midst of doing things through you." If we're only asking God to do things for us and we're not partnering with what he does for us, we're missing so much of what he wants to do for us. So what if? Go with me on this. What if, in celebrating the grandness of what God has done for us, and it takes power to even be able to understand it, what if we also, in the midst of celebrating what he's done for us, we refresh our commitment to what he wants to do through us, knowing that as he does it through us, it does this amazing thing for us? Can I get real practical? Come on. I'm going to do it. You might as well say yes. In the next two weeks, you have two of the easiest opportunities to invite people in your world. Just, just real simple. We have going on right now every night at the zoo, "Walk to Bethlehem." It's part of Christmas at the Zoo. If you take your family and friends that don't know Jesus through "Walk to Bethlehem," they're going to hear the story of the real Christmas and not all the stuff around it. And they're going to receive a clear presentation of the gospel. All you got to do is invite them and have them come join you. Now, if you look on that slide, it may have gone away by now, but if you look on it, it says tickets. Four tickets. You're saying, "Do they charge me?" Yes. All the money goes to the zoo. Beltway Park gets not one dime of this. How many of you are grateful we have a zoo? I mean, I love having our zoo. Well, this is a fundraiser for our zoo. So, buy a ticket. Buy a ticket for your friends. I know you're like, getting radical here. In fact, I'll make a deal with you. If buying a ticket for your friends is a hindrance, then many of us give offerings to the church, our tithes and offerings. Take a little bit of that. You can take it right off the top of what you're going to give here this year. Next, next one. And you buy tickets for your friends. It'll be as if our church is buying the ticket. I've already got permission to do this. So, you take now. Don't do that for your own ticket. You buy your own stinking ticket. But for your friends. "But for your friends and your families that don't know Jesus, if that's what it takes for you to get their ticket, take it. That's what we want to do. We're going to do all we can. The reason we're out there is to have an opportunity to share the love of Jesus. Would you do it?" That's one opportunity. You know what the next one is? Christmas Eve-ish services. People will come to that service that come to nothing else. There is something about that candle. I've watched it for decades. I want to light my candle. You know what it is? It's a symbol of the light people want. They need hope, and it's a symbol of that hope, and we carry it. Guys, we have seven opportunities over the course of seven days. Now, it's three specific days, a Thursday, Sunday, and Wednesday. Seven services. Invite everybody you can. Have them join you. If you have to go to more than one, go to more than one. And I promise you, they're gonna hear the message of Jesus. They have a chance. We have this opportunity. Come on. What would happen if we, Beltway Park, and then you add to it all the believers of the Big Country who make up the church? How many churches in Abilene? "One church." If we all, in our individual meeting areas and our individual names, one church, just began to love and to share, what could happen? How much light could come into the darkness? How many people will find peace that could have no peace if we just loved and shared? That's why I love Christmas. I love Christmas because we have the opportunity to be a part of what God is doing in the world. So this season, let's make a commitment. What do you think? It's amazing, isn't it? It's not just amazing what God did, but who he did it through. And there's people that he wants you and I to be a part of how he does it in their life. Would we just ask for grace to be a part of that with him? Come on. Everywhere where we are, North Campus, South Campus, online. Let's bow our heads and let's just put that in a minute, man. Let's let's take a moment and thank God for the love that he has given us at Christmas. Man, if you're a follower of Jesus, would you thank him that you know the way of salvation? That you've had light shining in your darkness? That your feet are being guided on a path of peace? I mean, don't minimize that. Don't ever get tired of that. I have people all the time saying, "Pastor, I want to go deep." You want to go deep. You want to go deep in the height, the width, the breadth, and the depth of God's love. That's how you go deep. You got to get yourself rooted and in deep, man. Let us celebrate. Let us celebrate. Thank you. But here's what I think. Would you thank him? And you'll hear this, right? Would you thank him for the John the Baptist in your world? I understand it's not literally John the Baptist. It's in the spirit of John the Baptist that they prepared the way. There was someone, usually a lot of someones, who were part of the preparing the way that gave you a place of faith. Yeah, I had a woman in my mom's workplace, but there were others along the way, and others who've helped me grow. There were just people. Would you say thank you to God? Would you ask God to remind them, remind you who they are, and say thank you that they were willing? And now, would you say, "God, I want to be like them. I want to be used of you. I want to be filled with your Spirit. I want to be empowered by your Spirit to love and to share." And now, it gets really bold. Come on. Would you ask God? I'm going to ask, Spirit of God, show each and every one of us the people in our world that don't yet know you. I want you to pray for them right now. I want you to call out in your head their names right now. I want you to call out who they are. They're at your workplace. Come on. If they're at the place that you work out, the families that you do hobbies with, or your kids are in sports with, there are all sorts of people. Would you just begin to call? All you got to do is call out their name. Ask God to prepare a way for them to know you. You ask him to pour love in your heart for them. Show you ways that you can love them. You don't have to argue with them. You don't have to convince them. You don't have to debate them. You have to love and you have to share the hope that Jesus is giving you at times. Would you ask them for the ability to invite them? Maybe you want to send a text before you leave. I don't know. Father, we want the Big Country to know you. We want to be part of that. We want the people in our world to know you. Give us love and give us courage. And I pray for, Lord, any man or woman in this room that doesn't know you, who's not surrendered their life to you at this point, that they would have the ability to do so today. Spirit of God, would you draw any man or woman, north, south, online, they haven't surrendered their life to you. I just want, I want to speak to you right now. If they have, if you haven't surrendered to the Lord, you can do it today. God may be using people in your life to prepare the way. And you know now is the time that you need salvation. You need to surrender. Do you say yes to him? You say, "Yes, Jesus. I'm a sinner. Can't fix myself. I give my life to you and I receive your life. I commit my life to be your follower." That next step, you see, is what we did today. We had people getting baptized as a sign that they've made that commitment. That would be your next step. You go to that park news, that newsletter that we gave you on the way in, in our physical services. There's a little QR code that says, "I have decided." Just let us know you did that. We're going to go on a journey with you to help you take your first steps and your next steps with Jesus into the abundant life he has. Father, we just thank you for salvation. We thank you for how amazing your grace is. We thank you that you use people to help us know you. And we thank you, oh God, that you would dare use us. Give us courage. I pray that each and every one of us, we would not shrink back in any form or fashion. But would you overwhelm us with your love, Father? Would you put your love inside of us? And would you give us courage to take the steps to share, however it is. If it's an invitation, if it's a conversation, whatever it might be, Jesus, work through us. Anoint us. Let us walk in the prophetic anointing you have for us that we could prepare the way for people to have a chance to know you. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.