A Hope that Pursues

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Good morning. I'm Dan Brown. And just to give you a little bit of context of who I am, my wife Denise, unfortunately, is not able to be with me today because she's suffering from some vertigo. So if you will remember her in your prayers. We have three children, and our daughter, Kristi, is married to our wonderful son-in-law, Drew, and they have provided us with five wonderful grandchildren. We just are blessed by the Lord for all of that.

I want to tell you my story and how God has been working in my life. And it started when I was born. I grew up in a family, a godly family. My dad was a small rural Baptist preacher and we had family devotions every night. We went to church at least three times a week and often times four. And so I grew up with the scripture. I grew up with godly values. And being that I knew all that stuff, I thought, well, at some point there's an expectation for me to walk down an island and get baptized. And so at age 6 I did that.

But I got a little bit of exercise and I got wet because at that point I had not yet understood the seriousness and the reality of what salvation is and what Jesus had done for me, even though I knew all those scriptures. And I always thought I was a pretty good kid. I didn't really think about I had a need to be saved. But I continued to be the same person I was after age six that I was before age six. In my behavior and my values and thoughts. And I felt like I was a pretty good person. But then at age 17, God began to talk to me. me. One Sunday morning, because I was a preacher's kid, I knew all the ways to get into the church and all that stuff. We lived about three blocks from the church. So one Sunday morning, I got up early, got ready, and nobody else was ready to go. So I just walked to church and found my way into the church, and nobody else was there. And so I was just kind of wandering

around, and I just felt led to go sit down in the classroom where I normally had Sunday school and while I was sitting there thinking that I was there all by myself the Holy Spirit began to speak to me. I'm an emotional person and for you parents as you do family devotions and bring your kids to church I want you to see how valuable that is because as I was sitting there all those scriptures came to mind that I'd heard all those years. John 3 16 for God's all over the world that he gave his only begotten son. They who shall believe in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. And Romans 3 23 for all of sin comes toward the glory of God. These were all going over in my mind. The Holy Spirit was bringing him to my mind. And then for the wages of sin is death but to give to God as He taught a life. And if any man be a Christ, he is a new creature. But as many

as received him, to them gave me power to become the sons of God. And I realized at age 17, I was not any different than the boy that walked the aisle at age 6. I was not that new creature. And so that Sunday morning I gave my life to Jesus Christ. Made Him the word of my life. Now let me tell you, Monday morning I was not much different in the way I lived, but I was still a new creature. And you know I got to thinking and I thought these years past that you know whenever a baby is born, it's got all the DNA of the mom and the dad in it, but it doesn't have all the characteristics of the mom and dad yet. And it would develop those big ears or that long nose and eventually over time it will begin to look like the parents. And I realized that's the same way with me as a Christian. The Holy Spirit is within me and he's got all the DNA of God and that as I allow him to work he's

going to shape me to look like Jesus and that that's gonna happen over time I'm going to fail I'm going to make mistakes but God is working to make me like Jesus After coming to Christian, those things did start to develop in me. My wants and my desires changed. I wanted to serve God because I loved Him, not because I was afraid of punishment. I wanted to worship Him and praise Him because I now understood that He was worthy of that. And throughout my life, you know, there's been difficult times, but you know, the Holy Spirit and

Becoming a part of God's family Helps you through that Jesus told his disciples in this world you will have trouble but take heart. I've overcome the world and I've seen the death of my parents and And it was sad for a moment when we saw them pass away in the hospital. But when my mom died, we immediately left the hospital and we went to the village in pancake house and had breakfast. And we celebrated her life because we knew that she was the daughter of the king and we're going to see her again. God has blessed me so much and I have a story of how God rescued me from drug addiction and pornography and all the rest of himself. I have a story of how parents invested in me at a young age so that I didn't experience a lot of that. And I thank God for that blessing. And I want my life to be glorious and honor to Him. Colossians is one of my favorite scriptures anymore. I think it tells us the

purpose of God's creation and my purpose within that and said that Jesus is the image of the invisible God the firstborn overall creation, which means he's the most important of anything in all creation and He created everything by him and and through him and for him, so that he might have the supremacy. That's the purpose of God's creation, and that's my purpose within God's creation. To serve him, to love him, to exalt him. He's number one. Well, I know what you're thinking. It hits. That is my wife's father. I was immensely blessed. blessed. My parents did the best they could with what they had. So no shade on them but man, Chrissy's parents have been an immense blessing for these last 20 some odd years that I've known them. So thank you, Dan. We have been going through Hebrews and I think it would be maybe like an interesting exercise to think through what if Bible verses competed

with one another to see who was the best. Okay, this is how my mind works. They would compete over which one was quoted more or which one was memorized more or which one made more bumper stickers. And I think the pinnacle, just the shutdown argument of that is going to be like, who's on the most walls in people's homes? If you're on the most walls in people's homes, you've kind of made it, right? If you're wall art, you've made it. 1 Corinthians 13, 13 has to be in there. Joshua 24, 15, for me and my house, who served the Lord, that's got to be up there. Psalm 23, that's got to be up there. I mean, Psalm 23 just beats the pants up at Psalm 24. Okay, it's just true. It's kind of rude to talk about it in this company, but it's true. Today, today we are going to be dealing with a top performer in the Bible verse Olympics. Okay, this is like all-star material. This is MVP level

stuff and this is Hebrews 11:1. And I know, I know you've seen this on a wall somewhere. Hebrews 11, it says, now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen or things not seen. And the wall art game for this verse is strong. See? It's everywhere, man. I mean, that was like a five minute search. It wasn't even five minutes. It took me longer to save those images and put them on this than it did to find all of them. And you can buy all of this stuff. I mean, like, I think these are all under 10 bucks on So like the wall art game for Hebrews 11 1 super super strong the only problem the only catch Whenever we are defining faith this way is that we stop with verse 1. It's the only problem Now the Bible verse itself is great But the problem is whenever it gets hung on the wall It doesn't get coupled with verse 2 But when you look at the structure of the letter in Hebrews

You really should couple it with verse 2 to really get this kind of full-or definition of faith So let's read 1 and 2 together Says now faith is the assurance of things hoped for the conviction of things not seen for by it the people of old received their commendation If you're only reading verse 1 You lose a big part of Hebrews 11 one or the definition of faith. It kind of cuts the definition of faith short. In other words, if faith is only assurance and conviction and it doesn't have to be proactive, then faith can just sit back and be assured and convinced. However, when you get the full picture of faith, when you read it with verses one and together, and I want to kind of flesh this out a little bit. Faith is not sitting back and being smug and being assured and being convinced. It is that, maybe without the smugness, but faith by definition is going to push us into

something new, into something unknown, or as Hebrews 11 puts it, into the invisible. Faith pushes us into the invisible, and I want to keep reading to to kind of see this truth developed throughout the chapter that we're gonna cover half of Hebrews 11 today. If you look at verse three, when you start in verse three, it elaborates on this in three and four and five and following, what it does is it builds on this by talking about the saints of old. It starts talking about the Old Testament and it begins with creation in verse three. It says, by faith, we understand that the universe was created by the word of God. This is what Dan Brown just alluded to in Colossians 1, 15 and following somewhere around there, middle of chapter 1, where it says that creation was made through Jesus, right? For creation was made for Him, by Him, through Him. So the universe was created by the Word of God, by Jesus, by the Word of God, so that

what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. think about that, creation, you have the invisible Word of God at that point invisible, making the visible world. In other words, if you believe that only the visible makes visible, if you look at the visible world and you think, okay, the only thing that made this visible world are things that I can see, then yeah, your only choice is to think, yeah, we've got microbes that are eventually becoming people over billions of years. That's it, because you're deducing what is visible from what is visible. That's all you got. Because it's all you can see. By faith, we see the invisible here, the Word of God, creating something new. You see it again in verse four and again in verse five whenever it cites Abel and it cites Enoch, where Abel finds a sacrifice that is acceptable to God. You don't realize it, but when Abel made a sacrifice acceptable to God,

That was brand new. Nobody had ever done that. Brand new. Abel makes a sacrifice to God. Enoch, taken up into heaven before he died, brand new. It took faith to do those things. It pushed them into something brand new. So verses three through five, we're starting to go through the Old Testament. It's starting to highlight here that faith finds a new way forward. Faith pushes us into the invisible. Verse 6 though builds on that and reframes it. Verse 6 is really gonna push us all the way to the end here. Hebrews 11 6 it says, and without faith it is impossible to please him for whoever would draw near to God must number one believe that he exists and two that he rewards those who seek him. You must believe that God exists and you must believe that he rewards, that God rewards those who seek him. This is similar to verses one and two where you can just

read the first part and miss the second part, right? Where you think, okay, yeah, it's impossible to please him. Whoever's going to join the other guy must believe he exists. Yes. Okay. That's a, yes, that is a prerequisite, but not just believing that he exists. We are not theists, Right? We're more than that. We're Christians. Okay? And a Christian doesn't just believe that God exists, but also that he rewards those who seek him. That God rewards those who pursue him into the invisible. So it's not just that faith is this thing, but that God rewards this kind of faith. God rewards people that push into the invisible, that follow him into something new. and the examples that follow spell this out for us. First example in verse seven is Noah, by faith Noah, being warned by God, concerning the events as yet unseen, in reverent fear, constructed an ark

for the saving of his household. By this, he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. Noah was dealing with events as yet unseen. So what was he dealing with? an invisible flood. It was a flood. It was definitely coming. It hadn't happened yet. But he has to build an ark with an invisible flood. And he did. He pursues God by building this ark in faith. The whole ark had to be totally done before it started raining. Does that make sense? Like, he couldn't have like waited to see that God was beginning to flood the world and be like, like, dang, I gotta get an ark together. Like, that's not how it works, right? You know I had to build it in faith.

If we're gonna see faith as it is in Hebrews 11:1, it can't just be being assured and convinced. It cannot just be believing that God, even that God just rewards those who seek Him. It is a lunging forward into an invisible future. Future. Faith is a lunging forward into the invisible future. It's being faithful when you look insane. It's, it's, you're chasing after something that other people can't see. It's invisible.

If you want to exercise true faith, it is, it is a hope that pursues God into the invisible. This is the kind of faith that God commends. Noah's just one example. Look at Abraham, verses 8 and 9, it says, by faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going. Let's just stop right there. If somebody knocks on your door and says, hey, I have an inheritance for you. It's a big plot of land. It's actually like a whole nation. It's going to be great. Oh, okay, cool. Where is it? Well, I'm not going to tell you that yet. Oh, okay. Well, what do you want me to do now? I want you to take everything you have and I want you to pack it up and I want you to start going somewhere Where do you want me to go? Oh, I'll tell you when you get there Okay, if you think that's insane, that's exactly what Abraham did not even a little that's exactly verbatim. What happened?

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance and he went out Not knowing where he was going By faith he went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. Abraham had an invisible residence. He pursued God by living in the land as a foreigner by faith. Look at Sarah. Sarah's another example. Here we go, 11 and 12. By faith, what did Sarah do? Sarah herself received power to concede, even though she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore, from one man and him as good as dead, Abraham, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven, and as many as innumerable grains of sand by the seashore." Sarah, as these verses so delicately put it, she was past the age. I don't think I need to elaborate on that too much, except to say that Sarah had invisible

fertility. Okay? No way that woman was going to conceive. No one in their right mind would say, like, yep, she's definitely of childbearing age. No, she was passing, she was well past that. But she pursues God by trying to conceive in faith. lunging forward into something unknown. True faith, real, vibrant faith is a hope that pursues it, grabs onto the invisible promise of God in faith, and it acts on it. It acts on it. On this point, I want to clear up maybe some common false teaching on this because sometimes, occasionally, this happens, people look at these stories in Hebrews 11 and they read them and they're like, you know what, I'm like, I'm like Abraham. I'm like Sarah. And I also have like this deep desire. I want to see something happen in my life. I'm going to, I'm going to begin to believe God for a miracle. I'm going to do that. And, and it's

a really good desire. Maybe it's a really good desire, like children or provision or a house or something. And, and they will say, they will teach you this. They will say, all you need to do is just to believe God for it and to pursue it in faith. And you You can have it. That is not what these verses are telling. That's not what these stories are. The faulty foundation of that teaching is that it confuses desire with calling. It confuses desire with calling. In other words, Sarah didn't want a baby. Abraham didn't want to move. And Noah didn't want to build an ark. They were called to do those things. It wasn't because they saw him on a website or they saw somebody else having it. They thought, oh, I want that. And then they're believing God for it. That is not the story that we have here in Hebrews 11. Faith is not wanting something bad enough, and you can twist God's arm and get it.

That's not what faith is. Faith is pursuing God's call again into the invisible in the hope that he will come through. And this all sounds great. This is all going to make the wall art, you know, this make the great quote, what does it look like in real life? What does it mean to do this? When we grab hold of this, when we grab hold of a faith that lunges forward into something new, this is how you can tell. This is how you know you are pursuing in hope. It's going to look like three things. It's going to look clumsy, very clumsy. It's going to look disruptive, and it's going to look future-minded. I want to look at all three of those. I want to look at some of what we've already covered, and one in a verse that's coming. But it looks clumsy, it looks disruptive, and it looks future-minded when you are pursuing God, when you are lunging forward into a new, invisible future, when you're

going into the unknown. Yep. It's going to look clumsy, it's going to look disruptive, it's going to look future-minded. It's clumsy. Let's take that one first. All these saints listed, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Abel, Enoch, all those things listed were not perfect, not even close. And we can remember them too fondly. I mean, statues are hard to find fault in, but man, these heroes are not perfect by any means. Noah, for example, right after the flood abated, he got drunk, like right after the flood, like receded. He was plastered. And his family was like, you're crazy. And they kind of left him. Abraham was a liar who abandoned his wife twice. She still took him back. Sarah, whenever the Lord told her about the promise first, she scoffed. She's like, no, that's not gonna happen. And then God said, what'd you say? Did you scoff to me? She's like, no, I didn't scoff.

Okay, these are our heroes, right? Like people that scoff and can't even admit to it later. Okay, these are, you know, people that get drunk right after the flood, people that abandoned their wives whenever their lives are at stake, like the cowards. These are heroes. These are the people that Hebrews 11, right, as it is called the Hall of Faith, these are the people that Hebrews 11 is like holding up. Like it's going to be, look, just be just like Abraham, just like Sarah. They're clumsy. They are not perfect. When you pursue, when you pursue God's call in your life in hope, you are not always going to get it right. You are not always gonna just hit dead center. It's gonna be clumsy. You're gonna look dumb. You're gonna feel dumb. I don't know if any of you have ever learned how to play a musical instrument. But if you have, see, if you have, okay, let me tell you, I've learned how to play guitar

and learning how to play piano. Okay, I know how to play guitar. The first time I picked up a guitar and strummed it, it was the worst sound ever. It wasn't like I just like picked it up and just made the whole thing sing. My strumming was all like funky and I couldn't like, you know, I had to like contort my hand to get the, you know, all the muscle memory wasn't there yet. And I looked dumb, it sounded horrible. And if that's all I had to go on, I would never play guitar again. I had to be willing to look clumsy. That's why I did it alone. Okay? I didn't, I didn't, I just take a, take a guitar alone and, and play it by myself and sound dumb alone. But it's going to, you're just going to look dumb. And that's okay. That's part of it. Living by faith is a little clumsy. But it also works the opposite way. If you never look clumsy. If you never look dumb, you never feel like a spiritual newbie.

If you're the equivalent of a spiritual James Bond, okay, like, you know, just gets off the truck that's on fire and like straightens his tie and like he's walking with a martini in hand. Okay, if that's you, spiritually, if that's what you're going for, that's what you're trying to do, okay, you're probably, just guessing here, you're probably missing out on something that the Lord is calling you to do that would make you look dumb. You're probably not listening or ignoring a risk that God is putting right in front of you because you're worried about your image. The Lord's saying, look, look, hey, I need you to do this thing over here. I need you to go. I need you to walk through this thing. It looks dumb. It looks insane. You're going to look stupid doing it. People are going to ridicule you, but it's what I'm calling you to do. Go ahead and do that. It'll be great.

And you're over here going, I don't know, God. I mean, what do they say at the gym? when my friends think, how I'll explain this to my family. All those excuses sound really dumb, don't they? But that's what goes through our minds. If we're always trying to look good, we will miss out. When you pursue God in an invisible hope, He will come through, okay? You're going to swing and miss more than a few times. You're going to look clumsy, but the Lord will come through. For some of you, maybe that's jumping into a life group or a connect group, it's going to feel clumsy.

Leading something is going to feel clumsy. But if you're not ever feeling clumsy, you're probably not ever trying. So first, clumsy, when you're following the Lord into something invisible, it's gonna look clumsy. Second thing, it's gonna be disruptive. No one's life is gonna be normal after that. In that list we just covered, Abel, Enoch, Enoch's life definitely was different. Noah's social life, think about that. Hey Noah, you got plans this weekend? Yeah, I'm building an ark. Oh, what for? The total destruction of the world? Oh, okay, see you next week. I mean, that's, who's doing that, right? Abraham is starting a new legacy, right? In a new place, which is like social suicide. In his day and age, in the ancient Near East, doing that was crazy. Sarah's life was completely upside down by a new baby. I mean, look, if I'm 90 something and I got a new baby, dude, I am out. I mean, come on.

I need my 8 to 10 hours of sleep. Like, I need to hit, you know, Denny's at 430. I mean, I got plans at 90, okay? I'm busy. Okay, IHOP. Fine, not Denny's. Go a little high class. I'm a baby? In the midst of that? Man, a baby is for young people. And by young people, I mean, if I'm 90, I mean people in their 50s. No! No! The 50 year old said, no! This is how it is. When you fall toward faith, it's clumsy, it's disruptive, you're going to look strange, you're going to look unpopular, It pushes you into something you don't understand something other people don't understand because they can't see the invisible thing that you're called to And it works the other way if you're if your life is a model of stability If you're not taking any risk ever at all You're probably missing out on what the Lord calling you to do

You're always trying to look good and and you always want everything to be as stable as possible. Well great But that's a coffin, not a life. The Lord has called you to continue to grow and risk and change and embrace and jump into something that He is calling you to do. The Lord is not done with you. And if you're like, no, the Lord's done with me. Okay, that's no way to live. That's not what I call life. That's not what the Bible calls life. If your life is a model of stability, you're probably going after things that are visible, not invisible. invisible. You may have sacrificed God's calling for your own comfort. That's not a good place to be.

So you look clumsy, you look disrupted, you're also future minded. You start taking comfort whenever you are lunging forward in faith. You start taking comfort in the future and you see this in the next few verses or the next verse actually, verse 13. Hebrews 11 13, it says, Because these all died in faith. Verse 13, these all died in faith, not having received the things promised. Think about that. Think about that. They all died. Abraham was given a promise, I'm going to follow you, I'm going to do it, we're going to have a kid, okay, I got a kid now, and then he dies. He doesn't see all the generations that happened. He dies before that happens. Thirteen says, these all died, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. All these great saints, the ones that we've listed so far, and there's many more to name,

and we're going to look at those next week, all these great saints died looking forward, every single one of them. They died without fully receiving what they had promised. none of them had the whole picture. They only saw their life, but there was so much more that they could only greet from afar, which is a great line. They couldn't see the beginning, they could see the beginning, but they couldn't see the end, and they were comforted by the fact that God would come through on something that He promised, and they only had this really timely window called a lifetime that they could see anything through. Let me illustrate this with a few names. Franco, pretty Franco. Howard Minter No GR Hawkins No, not ringing a bell. You don't recognize them, but they are you are you are sitting in Part of the promise that those three men greeted from afar You are part of a church right now. Even if you're just visiting for the service

You're part of a church right now that they saw by faith and and did not fully realize. On March 9, 1981, these three trustees, Rudy Franco, Howard Mentor, G.R. Hawkins, along with Pastor Jimmy Stevens, signed on the dotted line for this property. The one we're standing on right now. We don't even know their names. I said those names. If you're telling the truth, you didn't recognize most of them. I had to look them up on Johnson County records. And more than not knowing their names, I didn't, we don't even know their legacy, we don't know what their families are like, we don't know their accomplishments, we don't know their fears, we don't know their joys, we don't know what, like how they woke up every morning, we don't know their habit structure, we don't know anything about them. Nothing. I just read you names, I could have made those up and you still wouldn't know. Let's go let that hang. With those four men, the three

plus Jimmy Stevens, the pastor, what they did was they exercised true faith and this pushed them into something new, something invisible. And I'm sure I am a hundred percent sure in this assumption that there were people that were saying our current building situation is just fine. I'm sure that they even had family members, that G.R. Hawkins, if he He was married at the time, even his wife didn't quite understand what he was doing or why he was doing it. I'm sure of it. And look, I know, I know buying a church property and building an ark are not the same. I get it, they're different, but both are a pursuit of God in hopes that he's going to come through. And these men and these saints that we read about are not commanded because of faithful church attendance. They're not commended because they know Bible verses really well. They're not committed because they gave a lot of money.

They're not committed, but for those things, they are committed because in faith they pursued what God had called them toward. So here's my question. Where's your invisible? What's the Lord calling you to do? Because our vision right now is invisible. I want you to be real clear. This is our invisible vision. It's a little ironic, I know. Plant four churches by 2040. 2040 is 22 years away. And you might say, it's so far away, Drew. Yeah. Drew, it seems impossible. We got like 75 people on a sunny morning. Yeah, I know. I say the same thing you do. And to all those objections, to everything, every reason that we shouldn't do it, I would just say, tell it to Rudy Franco. Tell it to Howard Minter. Tell it to G.R. Hawkins. Tell it to Jimmy Stevens. Tell it to the saints in the previous generation upon whose shoulders you walk. Tell it to Noah. Tell it to Abraham. Tell it to Sarah.

Tell them all your objections. I'm sure they would be happy to listen. I would love to see what they would have to say about that. Here are your risks today. The invisibles in front of you. Invest in another person's spiritual journey. That's what we call making disciples. Investing in another person's spiritual journey. It's risky, but it's your calling. I'm not making it up. What if you began to see teenagers as future pastors and deacons? If we're planning four churches in 22 years, 22 years is a long time. That's about how long I've been married, actually. Yeah, 22 years. Sorry, I just had to think about it. Yeah, that's how long I've been married. A lot can happen in 22 years. 15 year olds turn 37 in 22 years. I'm not gonna sit there and do math for every age, but you can, right? Think about how old you are now, think about how old you will be. Think about little kids, how old they are now

and how old they will be in 22 years. They're gonna be in charge, man. They're gonna be in charge. So I have a senior in high school who will remain nameless. And something that we've done with our kids, so we've just sent one to college and one of the senior this year, so we're about to do the whole thing again. But something that we do purposefully is we live in the future. So one particular is that the latter half of their senior year, there's no bedtime anymore, none, zero. There's just Fort Worth curfew, that's it, no bedtime. And the argument is, go something like this, look, in like six months, They're gonna be doing that anyway, whether we're there or not. So why don't we let them do it now, while we can be here and walk through it with them? What about that thinking? But for us, for mom and dad, that's really hard because we gotta live in the future. We have to admit that this is going to happen.

This loss is going to happen. They're gonna leave our home and it's gonna be really sad, we're gonna cry. I cried terribly when we dropped my son off for college. It was incredibly disruptive and painful, okay? But it's something that we knew needed to happen. It was for the future. Maybe your risk is to jump in with a connect group and to see who God brings to that. We have signups that are immediately at those doors and to the left. Maybe it's to confess sin within a life group. Maybe that's where your risk starts. Maybe you just start by risking by praying for specific people to know the Lord. In our time of response, I want to just summarize this way. In Hebrews 11, when faced with a big choice between what they had or pursuing what God called to them, they chose to pursue. They were not perfect, right? Noah the drunkard, Abraham the coward, these were not perfect people

by any stretch of the imagination. We probably wouldn't even make them Deacons or pastors here in South Burlington, okay? They're just, they were not great guys. But when the choice was put in front of them, they chose to pursue. Are you gonna choose the status quo or are you gonna choose to see God in faith? Choice is yours, it's mine. In a lot of different ways, in a thousand different ways, every day, we face those same choices. Are you gonna fight to keep what you have or are you going to risk losing it and pursue God for something that you know is going to be good. What is the Lord calling you to do? For our time invitation, I'm going to have two of our deacons standing in the back over by the sound booth and then over here in the other corner in the back. And they're going to just be waiting to pray with you during our time invitation. Just as we sing, if you want some prayer,

you can go to them and pray, and they'll pray with you. You don't have to sign your life away or anything weird. If you just want some prayer, man, do it. If you want to make a decision, if you want to join the church, or if you want to do something like that, I'm gonna be up here. You can still come up and pray with me if you'd like, or whatever. But just as we sing, we're gonna be singing one song.

If you need help, then make the decision. And now's the time to do it. Let me pray for you. Jesus, thank you. Thank you for all that you've done in us And through us, for us, most of all, I pray that we could respond in faith that you would help us to see our next step into the invisible, into things that we can't quantify. But help us to do it as so many of our ancestors did it, as so many people that have gone before us have done it. I pray that we would do it. That's your name, that we pray, amen. Please. I was working in the city

Miracle worker promise keeper light in the darkness My God that is who you are As you are way maker miracle worker promise keeper Light in the darkness, my God, that is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. You are here, touching every heart. I worship you, I worship you You are here, healing every lie I worship you, I worship you You are here, turning lives around I worship You, I worship You Who I am in the every heart I worship You, I worship You As You are waymaker, miracle worker, promise keeper Light in the darkness, my God, that is who you are You are way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper Light in the darkness, my God, that is who you are That is who you are That is who you are That is who you are, that is who you are I don't see it, you're working Even when I don't feel it, you're working Never stop, never stop working Never stop, never stop working

Even when I don't see it, you're working Even when I don't feel it, you're working Never stop, never stop working, Never stop, even when I don't see it, Even when I don't see it in your working, Even when I don't feel it in your working, Never stop, never stop working, Never stop, never stop working, Even when I don't see it in your working, Even when I don't feel it in your working, Never stop, never stop working, Never stop, never stop working, Even when I don't see it in your working, Even when I don't feel it in your working, Never stop, never stop working, Even when I don't feel it in your working, Never stop, never stop working, Never stop, never stop working, Never stop, never stop working, Never stop, never stop working, Never stop, never stop working, Never stop, never stop working, Never stop, never stop working, Never stop, never stop working, Never stop, never stop working, Never stop, never stop working, Never stop, never stop, never stop working, Never stop, never stop working, Never stop, never stop working

There was some people stop working Waymaker, miracle worker Promise keeper, light in the darkness My God, that is who you are We believe it Waymaker, miracle worker Promise keeper, light in the darkness My God, that is who you are That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on earth. For people who speak thus made it clear that they were seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country. That is a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God,

for He has prepared for them a city. Amen.