Changing People

Transcript

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

Romans 5. That's where we're going to be this morning in Romans 5. If you do not have a Bible with you, please feel free to grab one underneath the seats that is near you. We're going to be in the first couple of verses of Matthew, of Romans 5. And I'd like to tell you a story. There's a young man by the name of Phineas Gage. Phineas Gage was a young, smart, strong man,

about 25 years old, living in the mid 1800s. Phineas Gage was admired by his peers for his strength of will, his character, his integrity, and he quickly rose to the title of Railroad Foreman. where he would be in charge of who was making the railroad. And one day his crew was removing a rock, as was the practice in those days. They stuck a huge iron in between where a crack was in the rock. And they would usually pack it with sand, although at this point they did not. They'd pack it with sand, it'd put some gunpowder in there, they'd light a fuse, and it would blow the rock up. It would bust up the rock, it was too big. But when it exploded for Phineas Gage, the iron rod, which was over three feet long, went right through his head. I mean, it went right there, like exited the skull cleanly the whole bit. And people that saw it thought, surely this guy is dead.

But amazingly, Phineas Gage lived. And here he is pictured with the spike. He actually wouldn't take a picture without the spike for the rest of his life, okay? So Phineas Gage, you can see his left eye is permanently closed. He lost use of it. And it's a very strange thing to see that you consider that iron went through his head. The reason that we know about Phineas Gage is because there are many reports about this spike whenever it went through his head that it completely changed his personality. That in the accident, Phineas Gage lost most of his front left lobe. So I got someone here. Most of his front left lobe. And before that, Phineas Gage, like I said, was reasonable. He was thoughtful, he was hardworking, he was a leader, he was kind of ready to go. And after that injury, and he lived another 12 years, after that injury, he was irritable, he was uncaring, he was rude.

He was never married, but he immediately, like he didn't go back to his job working on the railroad. And he would change plans constantly. He would, he really never rooted down and his parents ended up taking care of him whenever he died. The, at the time that this happened in the mid 1800s, science had not yet connected temperament to brain function. They just thought you were how you were and that wasn't really connected to what was going on in your frontal lobe. But here, here it was. Finney engaged with living proof. In fact, he spent most of the 12 years afterward being kind of either he toured because he was famous, because he was the guy that the spike went through his head, or he was in a lab and he was being kind of poked at and prodded by scientists. It was so amazing and it's because his Phineas Gage, his personality drastically changed. And those stories, even in the mid 1800s and even today, we are fascinated with those kinds

of stories where people go through a drastic change. We watch TV shows like The Biggest Loser or The Amazing Race in part because we're in it for the transformation. We want to see how people change. We want to see what they're like. We want to see what this does to them. We want to see how people handle and respond to adversity. We want to see them come out different. That's why we watch shows like that. And although we are fascinated with this kind of change, we often fail or get tripped up greatly when we try to effect that change in other people. In fact, getting through change ourselves is hard enough. But changing another person, helping them grow and develop as any parent can attest, changing another person is difficult. It's hard and it can often feel like a railroad spike has gone through your skull. It's not fun. It can be different. In fact, if you're not convinced, just try to change someone's mind on how they vote,

or how they parent, or how they find love, or how they stay married, or how they get married. go ahead and try to change someone's mind on that and you will feel the resistance. It will not take long. However, however, even up against that resistance, even up against that daunting task, changing people is exactly what Jesus calls us to do. Christianity deals in this kind of transformation. You could even say that Jesus promises this kind of transformation. And what is making disciples, if not changing somebody's mind? What is helping somebody grow spiritually, if not helping them change? Haven't they changed how they think or how they perceive something? But how do we do this? How do we help people change? It's not as easy as it sounds, but the Bible speaks to this kind of change. Jesus spoke to this kind of change, changing people in Romans 5. And we're going to be in Romans 5, 1 through 8.

Romans, just as a cursory note, Romans is a letter that is written to a church in Rome, hence the name Romans. It's written by the apostle Paul and it was really, it was written for a couple of different reasons, but one of them is to help them understand the change that they're seeing in themselves and the change that they're seeing in other people. That Romans seeks to give explanation for what's going on inside of people, not just what's going on internally, but what is happening in heaven, what is happening in the spiritual realm, all those things. And as we walk through it, as we walk through Romans 5, 1 through 8, we're going to learn a lot about how God changes us and about how God changes people. So let's begin with verse 1, Romans 5, 1. It says, therefore, now that therefore is there for a reason.

Anytime you see therefore, you've got to go back and look what it's there for. Okay. All right. We're tracking. Therefore. So we have spent the first couple of chapters in Romans building up to what is, is about to happen, right? It says, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. So we can see kind of off the bat and there's been a lot kind of building up to this in Romans 1 through 4 But in Romans 5 it's saying look God is is Doing the transformation God is making people right with him through Jesus Okay, this is this is what 5 1 is saying and we see more of this in the next verse Romans 5 2 Through him through Christ. We have also obtained access by faith into his grace in which we stand and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Okay, this is what we would call kind of a resumption statement,

right? So these two verses kind of work together to kind of say, okay, here's the situation. God grants us access to grace, okay? So through Jesus's work on the cross on our behalf, we can now, we have access to grace. We stand in this grace, we move in this grace, We live in this grace and this grace gives people real hope. Okay. So another way to read verses one and two would be to say in order to change you, in order to transform you, God first needed to end the war between you and him.

In order for you to be transformed, God needed to settle that debt. And then, then he needed to give you hope for a better life. And so we see God is the one changing people. First two verses, God is the one changing people. God is bringing people from death to life. Like it says in Colossians 1, it says, we were transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the sunny loves. So we see there's a transformation happening, a transferring that is happening. And God is not just doing that in individual people. Colossians 1 also talks about how the gospel is growing all over the world. That this transformation that we're talking about is not just happening in kind of one or two people, but that this is happening kind of en masse. This is happening globally. God is changing people everywhere. And again, it is one thing to say, God is changing people everywhere,

but it is another thing to help God change people. And yet, this is our call making disciples, nurturing the spiritual growth in other people. We are called to help God change people. And often we get in trouble with this. So some of you might be totally convinced of what I just said, but when it gets to the how, sometimes we try the head-on approach to changing people. We try the head-on approach. So the head-on approach we're going to say is like persuasive arguments. So we're going to try to overwhelm people's intellect or we're going to create spiritual experiences. We're going to kind of backdoor the intellect through the emotions. So we're going to try to affect changing people by doing things to them, by manipulating them or arguing with them or just, you know, relationally, it's the same thing. It's taken them by the collar and shaking them and going, just change.

Okay? This is the head-on approach. If you have a co-worker or maybe a loved one, they're going through a tough time in their marriage, okay? And from what they say, you can see their faults in it, right? So they're describing the situation to you, just say, oh, I'm here, you know, just real tough, having a tough time. And you can see their fault. You can see how they're contributing to their own situation. Maybe they can too, but you can definitely see it. And so the head-on approach then is going to be to give advice on addressing their flaw. You say, well, okay, what your problem is, and maybe if you do it intellectual, right? You say, well, look, when you get mad and you want to retaliate, don't. Okay, that's advice, by the way. Like that, when somebody's advising you, they are saying, okay, here's what's happening, and here's your choice in that situation.

Don't do that. Okay? And maybe it's emotional. Maybe they say, okay, when you're having a fight, Imagine that they're just as scared as you are. This is an emotional appeal. This is an emotional approach. Both of them are head on. Both of them are head on. And inevitably, if you are talking with somebody, if you're in a relationship with somebody, and they're coming to you with their problems, and you are instantly trying to fix them,

that will turn that relationship into a project. You will, without knowing, unwittingly even, you will begin to look at that person as a problem to be solved, not a person to be loved. You are outside of a relational connection and you are now working on them. And what that, the end of that story is, you will feel defeated and depressed cuz people ain't projects and they don't like to be treated as such. Nobody does, really. And it will be a bumpy ride. And it's not going to be a bumpy ride because the advice is bad. Okay? It's actually a really good thing to say, hey, just try to emotionally get where the other person is whenever you're just mad at them. Okay, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that advice. So the advice is sound. However, the appeal is only to human will. It's all information and no spiritual power. And what we need to see, what you and I really need to grasp is how we help God change people,

not how God helps us change people. It sounds very small, but it's big. I'll say it again. We need to see how we help God change people. So God is the one changing people, we're helping. Not we don't need to see it as God helping us change whoever, right? as if it somehow flows through us, as if somehow we have the corner on the market of fixing life, okay? We don't. And we can find this in Romans 5 if we keep reading.

However, I will say that this isn't some, this is far from self-help. You know, as we read Romans, as we continue on, and you'll see that, this is not like, this isn't the head-on approach, right? This is like, you can try, you can do better. Romans 5, 3 and 4. It says not only that, not only do we have this hope, but we rejoice in our sufferings knowing that our sufferings produce endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope. We help God change people by suffering well. We help God change people by suffering Well, those two things aren't usually connected. So I have my work cut out for me because maybe what you're thinking is, no, no, no, Drew, we aren't talking about me changing. We're talking about somebody else changing, right? Other people changing. And my response to that is that's not really how it works. Uh, in other words,

when you are helping somebody change or when you have a burden to, to help somebody change, it, that doesn't leave you static. That doesn't leave you unchanged. You then are a part of that process too. You change too. And if you are unwilling to change, then you are unwilling to help other people change. They are part and parcel of each other. They work together. They go hand in hand. And what we see in verses 3 and 4 is that suffering changes everybody, right? Helping God change people means also that God is changing us. And we see this this step we see that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character Produces hope we see this transformation issue the encouragement then is to embrace this suffering as an agent of change in both you and in other people because When you're trying to deal with actual change If you're just going to change somebody's behavior, well, fine, but write an advice column.

Okay, do something else. Don't invest it in people. That's going to be very frustrating for you. If you want to help people change, then you must understand the role that suffering plays. We all want people of better character. We all want to be people of better character. character. What scripture helps us understand is that road that leads to better character does not have a detour around suffering. In fact, suffering is actually the pavement. It's actually what the road to character is made of. That suffering produces endurance, which produces character, which then produces hope, suffering. So, I mean, you might be saying, okay, well, if I want to help God change someone, should I just make them suffer? Right. Should I put some obstacles in their way and be like, okay, Lord, doing your best. You know, I just slap them across the face, see what's going to happen.

No, we do not need to make people suffer. We don't need to invent ways for people to suffer. I'm here to tell you at 44 years of age, I've learned that suffering will come just fine on its own. Suffering needs no invitation. Suffering is not like just waiting for you to just invite it into your life. Suffering comes unannounced. Suffering comes in all shapes and sizes. And sometimes, you know, suffering, I know the haze. You guys did not expect during the freeze to be out of your house for seven months, eight months, close, something, some horrible number like that, seven or eight months, like there's much of a difference. That was suffering. You guys went through that and we endured that as a church with you, but that doesn't make you different. It just makes your suffering more obvious. I went through suffering too. I was a little more quiet about it or it was less obvious.

I'm not saying you were talking a lot about it. It was just less obvious. It's totally news. Like, hey, we had to move out of our house. Like, that's a big deal. but something that I'm suffering or something that some of you were suffering through didn't make Facebook. It wasn't a kind of announcement worthy necessarily, but you suffered. You suffered. Suffering will come on its own and our job is to be faithful in the suffering. Our job is to understand that as we suffer and other people suffer, that faithfulness when we embrace that, that that's where change can happen. In other words, that we can help God change people. Remember, God's going to change them. We can do that by hoping through the suffering.

We help God change people by hoping through the suffering. And hope really is the key on this. There's a reason that that change from suffering to endurance to character ends in hope. There's a reason there because hope is very powerful. And it's the key in all this. Let's read verse five. It talks more about this hope. It says in Romans 5:5, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

With suffering, when we embrace suffering as coming from the Lord and we endure and characters produced in us, we receive an unshakable hope in God. And let me tell you, If you really want to change someone, if you want to change someone on a fundamental level, then you change what they hope for. If you want to change someone on a fundamental level, you need to change what they hope for. I'll give you two examples.

Let's take a married man who is always chasing other women. Okay. We obviously want this man to stop. Okay. We want him to change his behavior. Maybe we're his best friend. Maybe we're a coworker. Maybe we're helping him figure out what to do. And human cures abound. Human cures abound. I can get on Instagram and find 50 ways to stop chasing other women and to be more faithful.

And surely, there's everything from electroshock therapy to hypnosis, to rewards, they're faithful. Like all these things, they're all human things. They're not bad in and of themselves. They just aren't very powerful. But I want you to think about this differently, and I want to ask you the question. What do you think that man who's chasing after other women, what do you think he's hoping for? What do you think drives him to do that? What is he hoping for? The reality is the answer could be a few different things, but whatever that answer is, That man's hope is small. That man's hope is short, temporary, fading, fleeting.

That man's hope does not, maybe that man is just hoping for a little bit of pleasure or a little bit of escape from reality. Maybe that man just wants to make his wife jealous. I don't know, there's a thousand reasons he could be doing what he's doing. But what he's hoping for, What you will find is when you have a small hope, it does not satisfy. When you have a hope that if you are just living for the weekend, okay, that's not gonna help you make it through the week.

You're gonna run out of juice. It's not enough, it can't carry the water. It's not broad enough, it's not big enough. And if you would get that man in a sober moment, in a moment where they're transparent and you would say, hey man, just tell me, why are you doing this? What are you hoping for? What are you hoping to gain out of all this? If he would actually sit and explain it to you, you would see he would see that hope is very small and that hope would put him to shame. That hope would not be worth the carnage that he is producing in his relationship with his wife or his relationship with his children. It's not worth it. That hope would put him to shame. If other people would understand that hope, They would stifle laughter. They would think, oh my gosh, why would you do that? That's not a smart thing to do. It doesn't make any sense. It's a small hope that puts him to shame.

Let me give you a second example, a shorter one. Let's take a woman who's an alcoholic, has a drinking problem, and let's just say, let's just say she's guilted. into turning away from alcohol, okay? So she's getting drunk all the time and her five year old kid comes and just gives her the puppy dog eyes and says, mommy, please quit drinking, okay? So she feels guilty, okay? She is convicted in that moment. She feels totally guilty. I will tell you, if she does not find a better hope than whatever that next buzz is, she will go back to drinking. I don't care how many puppy dog eyes she gets. It's not enough to affect the change in her behavior. She will go back to getting drunk, or she will pick another addiction that works the exact same way because we haven't changed the hope. We haven't changed what she's hoping for. We haven't changed why she's doing what she's doing.

Because if she's just getting drunk to numb the pain, the pain isn't going anywhere. She needs a hope that can bear that pain. to be more specific and to be more in tune with what we've been reading in verse five, in chapter, Romans chapter five. She needs a hope that can make sense of and bear that suffering that she is going through. If your hope cannot bear the suffering that you were going through, you will be addicted to something. You will be escaping some way, somehow. You will be self-sabotaging all the time because your hope cannot cover it cannot explain it cannot handle what you are experiencing your hope is too small and When you give that hope when you give that a hope to to that man cheating on his wife or that Alcoholic when you give them a hope that does not put them to shame I'll hope that if they would explain that hope it would not be something that people would have to stifle after

It would be something where people would go. Oh, okay. I mean wow, that's that's huge that's big. When you give him that kind of hope, a big hope that encompasses more than the weekend, that encompasses more than a little bit of pleasure, they begin to want things like joy. They begin to want things like forgiveness. They begin to see their life a little bit more holistically, and they begin building toward a new future that that hope populates. Do you see the transformative power of a new hope when you have something that you are actually hoping for? Then you will change your behavior because then you are going for something different. If it's just to numb the pain and have a good time with your friends on the weekend, then yeah, I mean, you're going to do whatever makes sense to them. And if I'm not addressing that, I can cajole you, I can guilt you, I can say whatever

I want to say I can do everything humanly possible and I will not change your behavior It'll all be the same behavior. You might trade out exactly how you do it But it's gonna be the same behavior When somebody has a big hope they begin to want things that only Jesus can give they begin to see that that all these things This this forgiveness this this life worth living this joy this peace is only found in Jesus and this is how God affects change in people. He changes out what they hope for and if we are going to change, if we're going to help God change people then we are going to need to include ourselves. You're going to need to include yourself. Being a Christian does not mean that you are above suffering. I I don't care what that perfect Christian Instagram post says, okay? They're living a tough life.

And anybody, listen, I don't wanna throw rocks too hard. But anybody that portrays Christianity as just like one level of joy, one level of ecstasy to another, it's just nothing but cloud nine to cloud ten to cloud 11. That person is either delusional or lying or has only been a Christian for five minutes. That's the only options out there. Okay, it's just, it's the only options out there. Following Jesus is difficult. Following Jesus costs you everything. Following Jesus means that you will suffer. It is part of the deal. It is not something that Jesus ever hid. It's there. Now, is there, there's joy in that. There's peace in that. I don't want to undersell that, right? There is Holy Spirit living that is real that we need to embrace, that we need to lean into. Yes, but that is not void of suffering. That's actually in the midst of suffering. That's the air you breathe. It's everywhere.

And so in other words, and I really want to lay into this, like, Because sometimes we read Romans five and we talk about how it says like, hey, you're going to go through suffering, but you were choice in that suffering. Okay. And it can make it sound like, you know, like I'm being beat up by a mob of people and I'm like, I'm so happy that I'm getting beaten down, that I'm losing teeth, I'll never get back. You know, like, no. And when people describe it that way, when Christians describe it that way, or people that are opponents of Christianity describe it that way? It's a paper thin argument. It's not real.

People, Christianity doesn't purport to act that way, right? Why then, how then do we talk about rejoicing in the midst of suffering? Well, so I'll put it this way. As a Christian, we do not make ourselves rejoice. In other words, in the midst of suffering, we don't say, okay, I'm really depressed, but I'm going to be happy right now. That's not how it works. That's not what it's supposed to be. Rather, you have a joy. A joy comes to you from a deep place knowing that your hope can sustain all that you're losing over here. Your hope is big enough to deal with whatever you are losing through suffering. If your hope is to not suffer or to not lose one little thing or just to if your hope is just really this small suffering is going to eat that for breakfast, and then you will sink into despair very quickly. The reason that Christians can rejoice in suffering is because they have something that cannot be taken away. That whatever we lose,

whatever we lose, and it could be reputation, career, children. I'm not talking about losing 20 bucks on the Cowboys game, I'm talking about losing for real, losing chronic pain, losing when a Christian loses those things. When a Christian should be by any worldly standards at the bottom of their life, they still have hope in Jesus. They still have hope that they, that what they have will not be taken away, that the hope that they have that's over here does not depend on them. It is not something that they have manufactured. It's not something that they believed when they were a kid, but doesn't really make sense as an adult. It's not anything like that. It's something that God has done in them, through them, for them, that they can never change, that they can never alter. It's something that is a bedrock that will never fade. This is what Jesus is talking about when he says

to build your house on the rock, not on sinking sand. Sinking sand would be, you know, this little, the small hope here, just living for the weekend or, hey, I just wanna have kids that are nice. Hey, I just wanna have a marriage that looks okay. Hey, I just wanna have like an Instagram that is popular. Hey, I just want to make a little bit of money. Hey, I just want to make a lot of money all that's really Really really small and won't be able to handle whatever you suffer because what you suffer will take that away This is Jesus in the and the rich young ruler, right? Jesus is asking the rich young ruler Or the richer ruler asked Jesus like hey, I've kept all these commandments. I'm doing everything I need to do. I'm religious good and And then what does Jesus say? Okay, well, you know, sell everything you have and give it to the poor. Why? Why does Jesus do that?

It's because he, does he hate money? Is he a commie? What's, why does he tell this rich young ruler to do that? Well, it's because he's talking to that rich young ruler and that rich young ruler has placed his hope right there in his wealth. Trust fund, right? That's, that's where that guy's hope was. And Jesus knew that. And Jesus says, oh, okay, well, just eradicate the only hope you have. Then we'll talk. And that's Jesus, right? That's the one we worship, right? Jesus is not, he's not playing with your future, right? It's not a trivial thing to build your life on the wrong hope, okay? It's not a small thing. It's something Jesus takes very seriously. And it doesn't matter if you're just turned 11, happy birthday, Ian Beckwith, Or if you just turned 111, okay, I'm not gonna make a joke. Sorry, I was gonna call somebody out, I'm not gonna do it. It doesn't matter if you're young or old,

it doesn't matter if you have a lot of life experience or not, it doesn't matter if you've had a life of relative ease or if you have really just scraped by your entire life, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you are going through, the suffering that you're going through. The Lord Jesus Christ wants to use that to form in you endurance, character, and a hope that is unfading. A hope that you can build your life upon because as you change and as others change around you, a funny thing happens on the way. It's that your hope becomes real. Your hope becomes tangible, right? If you are living your life and and it's it's relatively Unstressful, right but you still have like this strong hope in the Lord, right? I mean just it's just it's mass I mean it could take any amount of suffering, but you're just you don't happen to be going through some major suffering at this point

What suffering does what what big suffering does like what brain cancer would do? Okay, is it would it would show? You and everybody else it would make that hope become tangible Why because you have brain cancer, but you are not despairing of your life you are You might be staring down a death sentence, but you have joy. How do you do that because your hope is not in your health

Your hope isn't living until you're a certain age That's not what your hope is. It shouldn't be. It's not a great hope. When we go through that kind of suffering, our hope is made tangible. It's made visible in a significant way. Other people can see that hope. When you should be, when you should be down, when you should be despairing in a worldly sense, but you're not.

And I keep talking about this hope as if it's just kind of neutral or like nothing, but our hope has a name, right? Hope's name is Jesus, okay? Our hope has a name, it is Jesus. And this is what we see in verses six through eight. So verses six through eight, this is like, this is just good therapy, right? You know what, just, we never do this. Let's read it together. If you're comfortable reading out loud, I'd love to read this together. I know it's a lot of verses, but we will power through it, okay? So here we go. For while we were still weak at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person. Though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. We help people change by pointing to grace. We help people change by living in this grace, right?

If you wanna help people change and think that you are the cure, you will not affect change in people, not real change, not significant change. This is why we talk about your testimony all the time. Because you testify into God's goodness in all kinds of ways, all kinds of situations, when you do that, you are displaying hope in a real way. And it could be even something that isn't currently happened, but that happened a couple weeks ago. So like maybe Dan Hay is talking to somebody, some non-Christian that he's just kind of hanging out with. And he's like, you know what? Like, man, eight months, seven months away from the house.

The Lord showed me so many things through that. And I hope in a totally different way. I mean, I enjoyed my house before, but now I really enjoy my house. I saw my house as like maybe an area for ministry. Now I've got like some plans for that. In fact, through that experience, the Lord showed me, I'm just making this up, we actually haven't talked about this, through that experience though, through that experience, I had a lot of idols of comfort. Like I loved comfort and I wanted to be comfortable the time and the Lord showed me that that needed to die. Right? But how are you going to learn that if you're not going through that suffering? How's anybody going to else understand how suffering works in somebody's life, in a Christian's life, if you aren't giving testimony. Testify. This is the essence of Christianity that we experience grace and hope in a real way, in a big way, in a way

that can handle suffering, that can withstand the avalanche of despair, that can push it back. We experience hope and grace in this real way, in this big way, and it exposes all of our small hopes for what they are. Insignificant, little. How do we help God changed people. We begin by embracing that change in us. We continue by suffering well. And the whole time we are praying through, we are hoping through that suffering. Because we know that whatever we suffer will not be the end of us. It will not take away something that cannot be taken away. That is why we can suffer well. That's why we can rejoice. We don't make ourselves rejoice. We rejoice because we can. because it comes from a real place. By the grace of God, anybody that follows Jesus, anybody has a real, tangible hope that can last through anything. And it's a hope that becomes more real, more present in the midst of suffering,

but it's there even without suffering. We did nothing to earn this hope. It is by grace alone. But we are encouraged to take what we have been given and to put both arms and both legs around it and to hang on for dear life. That is the essence of Christianity. We are to place our entire lives upon this hope. If you have not ever done that, if you have not ever taken a moment to decide to follow Jesus, if you have not taken a moment to say, Hey, what is my life actually built upon? What decisions am I making? What am I actively hoping in? And my encouragement to you is don't ask yourself that question, ask yourself, what do my actions show

about my hope? Do my actions show that I have a small hope that can be easily shaken? Do you despair easily? Do you fall into depression at the first wrong thing that goes on? If you do, you probably have a small hope. And the Lord Jesus says, no, no, no, you can hope for something much better. There's actually something that I've done that's available to you, a hope that does not fade, a hope that does not put you to shame. A hope that can handle all your suffering.

It doesn't make it better, but it makes it worth it. If you have not done that, I want to encourage you to do that. We're going to have our time of invitation. We're going to call up Dan and Sadie. And during our time of invitation, I'm just going to be praying for people. I would encourage you if the Lord is not convicting you to make a decision today that you would pray for the Lord to convict other people. We're going to sing a couple of songs. And as we do, I'm just going to be at the front. If you want to come and pray, if you want to come and make that decision, if you want just somebody to talk to about it, You're maybe not ready to make a decision, but maybe you want to talk to somebody about it. That's great. You can come talk to me. You can talk to somebody that you came with. You can talk to somebody sitting next to you. Our people, there are people all around

in this service right now that have built their hope upon Jesus, that have received the hope that that can withstand any suffering. Let me pray. Jesus, you are the hope of all of us here. You are the hope that doesn't fade. You are what we can depend upon. You are what we can hang everything upon. You love us. You care for us. You have made a way for us to spend eternity with you. Help us to embrace that.

In eternity we pray. Let's stand and sing. Worthy of every song we could ever sing. Worthy of all the praise we could ever bring Worthy of every breath we could ever breathe We live for you, live for you We came above every other name that could ever stay Worthy of every breath we could ever breathe We live for you, we live for you And the whole is no one like you There is none beside you Open up my eyes in wonder And show me who you are and fill me With your heart and lead me In your love to those of Every song we could ever sing

Worthy of all the praise we could ever bring Give every breath we could ever breathe We live for you, live for you He's us, the name above every other name He's us, the only one that could ever sing Worthy of every breath we could ever breathe We live for you, live for you And home is no one like you, there is none beside you Open up my eyes in wonder and show your heart and lead your love to those who deny I wouldn't I trust, it shouldn't I trust each day When there is none beside you, open up my eyes in wonder and shine Harden me, and hope one lie is none beside you Open up my eyes in wonder and shower heartedly in your love to Keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of His glory with great joy to the only God our Savior. Through Jesus Christ our Lord be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever.

Amen. Christmas.