Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] For me, it was during my college years that I actually, for the very first time, genuinely understood what it meant to know and follow Jesus.
[00:00:12] And so during that season of my life, I just started to sense these nudges, these promptings to actually think about and consider, would I do ministry vocationally? And it just seemed like way out of the box. I was brand new on the boat in this following January Jesus thing. But I just. By the time I came to graduation, I was convinced that this is what the Lord was asking me to do.
[00:00:38] At the same time as I was heading toward graduation with my engineering degree, I got nominated for this award in the College of Engineering called the Gold Medal Award that they give to an outstanding engineer. And so there was a essay that I needed to write, had to be nominated by a faculty. And when I got to be one of the three finalists, there was an interview that I had to do with the Dean of Engineering and some faculty and some prestigious alumni. And so I'm kind of nervous going into this.
[00:01:13] But here's the deal. Like, I didn't walk into that interview thinking, I am going to make a stand for Jesus.
[00:01:20] I just. Like, I'm just going in here to do this interview for this award.
[00:01:25] But the challenging thing was, was the questions presupposed that I was going to spend my life in and around something related to engineering and how I was going to make a difference in the world as it related to being an engineer. And so when they would ask those questions, like I said, I wasn't trying to steer it toward Jesus, but I was just trying to help them understand why that is actually not the path that I am going to take. And so I would try to talk about how Christ had impacted my life and what I wanted to do with that. Uh, you could tell that it was. It was confusing for them. Like, how are we gonna do this interview? Cause this just doesn't relate.
[00:02:00] And then there was this one guy that you could just see that he was starting to get incredibly agitated and irritated with my responses.
[00:02:07] And so, because the questions weren't making sense, he took it upon himself to try to challenge me and my faith. And I'm, like, I said, I'm a pretty young believer, but he is challenging me. This, you know, wise and learned person is challenging me about my faith. And he was so angry as he was asking these questions. And I felt so bad because it just got so awkward. And some of the other people that were around this table were trying to do everything they could to try to reign this guy in and try to redirect the questioning and they would try to ask me another question. And he would start back in. And like I said, it was awkward.
[00:02:41] It was never more awkward. And, and maybe so that you understand, he had this really thick Eastern European accent. And there was one point during the thing that he started to talk about different Christian sects. He was talking about S, E, C, T S, but I didn't ever know what that word meant. We just called them denominations around here. And so I thought he was talking about Christian sex. S, E, X.
[00:03:06] And I'm just like, why are we talking about this? I think Christian sex is just like all the other sex that's going on.
[00:03:15] So awkward.
[00:03:17] I left that interview and I just remember walking across campus and I'm like, lord, what in the world just happened there?
[00:03:27] But for me, it was an opportunity to see that if you choose to follow Jesus in this world, it's not going to make sense to everybody. It might actually irritate some people. And it wasn't just this guy. In this interview, as I started to talk with other people, my friends and people that were close to me and other professors that I had, they would say things to me like, you are wasting your education, you are wasting your potential in this life. You have all these opportunities and you are throwing it away.
[00:04:03] I realized that if you want to step in and follow Jesus, it is going to be countercultural and sometimes even counterintuitive. I was even asking myself like, am I crazy? Am I crazy for doing this?
[00:04:18] In this series, friends, we are talking about our mission statement as a church, and I'm gonna keep saying it over and over again. Our mission statement is, together we lead people in becoming all in followers of Jesus.
[00:04:34] We want every one of us to be people that are all in with him.
[00:04:38] But here's the question, how do we define what is an all in follower?
[00:04:45] And I'm not that interested in your definition. I'm not interested in the world's definition. But I am very interested in Jesus definition.
[00:04:54] How do we decide what he wants for us? How did he define it? What are his terms as it relates to being a follower of him? And what does he say that it means?
[00:05:06] Today we're going to look at just one simple verse, Luke 9:23. And here's why I chose this verse. This was an invitation that Jesus made for people to follow him. And here's what I believe to be true, is that the definition of what it means to follow Jesus is actually embedded in the invitation.
[00:05:28] What is it? What is it that we're agreeing to when we decide to follow Jesus.
[00:05:34] Luke 9:23 Then he said to them all, all of them, whoever, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.
[00:05:49] The first word is a very important word. It's significant because it talks about whom. Whom is he inviting.
[00:06:01] The answer, who ever Jesus is making it really clear. This is anyone, this is everyone.
[00:06:11] Jesus doesn't start out with some high lofty list of pre qualifications, prerequisites.
[00:06:18] He actually takes a bar that is very, very low.
[00:06:25] Whoever.
[00:06:27] And you know what?
[00:06:29] We all are a bunch of whoevers.
[00:06:31] And that's who Jesus invited.
[00:06:34] It's important to remember that when you look at the life and the ministry and the mission of Jesus, he was always about extending the invitation broadly.
[00:06:44] Remember Jesus, he grew up in a backwater town called Nazareth, a no name town.
[00:06:51] The New Testament of the Bible that we read and study was written in Koine Greek, the common Greek of the day, the common language, not classical Greek, which would have been much more beautiful and poetic. He wrote the Bible was written in Koine Greek.
[00:07:09] Jesus was doing everything he could, over and over to make what seemed like to people inaccessible. God seemed so inaccessible. But he wanted to make God accessible. And that's why he was continually confronting the religious systems of the day. Because they were doing everything they could to make God far from accessible.
[00:07:31] In that day, spirituality, it was just for the elite.
[00:07:36] You had to have a pedigree, you had to have education, you had to have some kind of a commitment to rigid discipline in your life.
[00:07:45] But Jesus, you know who he went for?
[00:07:50] Whoever.
[00:07:51] A different path. A different path. And on his path, farmers, fishermen, even children, sinners.
[00:08:06] Who ever whoever wants to follow.
[00:08:12] One of the first people that Jesus ever called Matthew, tax collector, hated and despised definition of whoever.
[00:08:22] One of the last people that Jesus made an invitation to his last breath before he was crucified to a criminal on a cross.
[00:08:33] Who ever hated and despised Jesus was about not qualifications. He was about everyone. He kept the bar low, but he made the commitment high.
[00:08:50] When Jesus says here that he wants us to follow him, we've got to remember historically that Jesus was a rabbi. This was an invitation to follow the rabbi. Now Jesus was different from a lot of the rabbis of his day, but in the same way he was asking them to follow him. And the rabbi of that day, he would have a group of followers, disciples, students, a group of them, Talmudim, that were expected to become like him.
[00:09:20] And in that time, the selection process, it Was incredibly rigorous. If you wanted to follow a rabbi, you applied much like somebody would want to apply to an Ivy League school. That's what it was like to be able to follow a rabbi. And the rabbi, they wanted to be incredibly discriminating because they had to have the best of the best because the excellence of their students that reflected the excellence of them as a rabbi.
[00:09:50] If we just have a bunch of riff raff, it's going to make me look like I'm not a great rabbi. I will not be respected and admired.
[00:09:58] Rabbis took applications, but not Jesus.
[00:10:04] He didn't take applications.
[00:10:07] He actually offered invitations.
[00:10:12] He throws out the elitist application process and gives invitations to who?
[00:10:19] To whom?
[00:10:21] Whoever.
[00:10:24] Anyone and everyone.
[00:10:28] But then he starts to raise the level of commitment.
[00:10:33] The requirements start. Whoever wants to be my disciple wants to be.
[00:10:42] Do you want to be?
[00:10:46] What Jesus is making clear is there's a choice.
[00:10:50] You get to decide.
[00:10:52] He offers the invitation. And it is an invitation. It is not a command.
[00:10:58] Because the invitation is to be in a love relationship with him where you follow not out of obligation, but out of love and gratitude to him for all that he's done for us. And you know that this is true. That kind of love, that kind of commitment, it can't be demanded, it can't be forced.
[00:11:22] You know this if you're a parent. There are so many of us. We desperately want our kids to know and to love and to follow Jesus.
[00:11:30] We can't make them do that, can we?
[00:11:36] Now we can do a great job of trying to help them understand who Jesus is, what he's like, what following him is like. The beauty of who he is and the beauty of following him and creating environments where they can see that lived out that they would be attracted to that. But at the end of the day, you cannot, you cannot force someone to love Jesus.
[00:12:00] And here's the deal, friends.
[00:12:02] The commitment and the sacrifice that Jesus invites us into, it will not make sense. It will not make sense apart from a foundation of love. Unless we are rooted in love, the things that Jesus asks us to do will seem completely unnatural.
[00:12:20] I think about when I was in college and I started dating Carmen.
[00:12:26] Nobody had to tell me to spend time with her.
[00:12:31] Nobody had to tell me to invest my financial resources to love and to care for her and to serve her. It just naturally came to me. What I needed somebody to tell me was that you've got to go to class.
[00:12:48] During that first semester that I started dating her, I had to drop a class. I got so far behind.
[00:12:54] I Mean, I told my parents I just had a bad professor and wanted to get a better professor. And summer school's a great time to get a better professor.
[00:13:04] But it was about love.
[00:13:06] Love compelled me to do the things that love does without a foundation of love, friends, without a foundation of love and gratitude as you move toward Jesus, the things that you're invited to do and sometimes even commanded to do, that we would spend our time investing in the kingdom of God, that we would spend our money investing in the kingdom of God, that we would give our energy and service to building into the lives of people in the kingdom of God. All those things will feel like a incredible burden.
[00:13:43] If we don't have a foundation of love for him, it will just feel like a burden.
[00:13:51] But Jesus doesn't want you to just do stuff for Him.
[00:13:55] He wants you to be all in because you love Him.
[00:13:59] So here's the question, friends, I've just got to ask, because it's my job to ask questions.
[00:14:05] What is driving your behavior and following after Jesus?
[00:14:10] Is it love?
[00:14:12] Is it love and commitment to him because of who he is and what he's done for you?
[00:14:17] Or is it just the stuff that you've always done in your life? Is it the expectations of other people? If I don't do this, people will think this about me. What is driving your behavior?
[00:14:29] That's why Jesus makes it really clear. Whoever wants to be, wants to be my disciple.
[00:14:38] That's the one that follows me, the one that is willing to follow me and love me above everything else. And I love how John said it first, John 4:19.
[00:14:47] That love we experience. We love. We experience that kind of love because he first loved us, because we know and experience the magnitude of his love. And. And that he gave his life.
[00:15:02] He gave. He died in our place to pay the penalty for our sin. That extravagant kind of love, because we've experienced it, we give it back to Him. We love because he first loved us.
[00:15:16] We pursue Him. We go after him because he pursued us.
[00:15:22] He came after us, the whoevers of this world.
[00:15:26] And we choose Him.
[00:15:28] We choose to follow him because he chose us.
[00:15:33] And friends, you have a choice.
[00:15:36] Do you want to be his disciple?
[00:15:42] And now, as Jesus continues in this text, he continues to raise the bar of commitment.
[00:15:49] And in my estimation, this next phrase came about because Jesus had the worst marketing team ever.
[00:15:58] Must deny themselves.
[00:16:04] Deny themselves.
[00:16:06] Can you think of a more unappealing message in our culture?
[00:16:11] Really, Jesus? You don't want me to make it about myself? Everything in our culture tells us to make this life about yourself, we say things like, you do you.
[00:16:24] You only live once. Yolo, baby.
[00:16:28] Do what makes you happy. Live your truth. Be true to yourself.
[00:16:34] If it feels right to you, it's right.
[00:16:38] You know what cracked me up about typing this into my sermon? Google finished these phrases for me. They knew exactly what the world thinks when we start these phrases because this is how the world thinks. And Jesus steps into that first century world and our world just the same, and he says, that's not what it means.
[00:16:59] Follow me if you're going to follow me. It's a different path. Deny yourself.
[00:17:06] You won't be able to be an all in follower of Jesus unless you're willing to take a different path. A path that's very different.
[00:17:14] Counter our culture.
[00:17:17] And here's what I observe.
[00:17:19] I see this sometimes in my. I've seen it in my own life and I see it in the lives of lots of people. It's like we, we can say, yes, I want Jesus to have everything.
[00:17:28] I want to be an all in follower of him.
[00:17:32] But we choose to compartmentalize different parts of our life. We kind of wall off certain parts of our life that it's like, Jesus, I want you to have everything except this.
[00:17:45] Like Jesus, I'm all in with you. Except this, this forgiving people.
[00:17:50] I don't know about Jesus, that doesn't make sense. They've hurt me.
[00:17:54] And actually, in some ways, it actually kind of feels good to be angry at them and to hold that against them.
[00:18:02] I want to be all in, but I won't do that.
[00:18:05] Jesus, love for enemies, Jesus, that just feels like crazy talk.
[00:18:11] Jesus, you love the people that love you and you hate the people that hate you.
[00:18:20] Jesus, that's how this world works.
[00:18:23] I will give you everything, but I will not give you that.
[00:18:28] Jesus, don't ask me to live my life within your boundaries around sexuality.
[00:18:35] Jesus, come on, seriously. One man, one woman inside the covenant of marriage for a lifetime. Jesus, that is so old school. I've got desires. I want to live it my way.
[00:18:51] Jesus, don't ask me to give my resources for the things of the kingdom. That money, I worked hard for that.
[00:19:01] It will never make sense to us following Jesus unless we understand that there's a place where we need to lay our life. We need to deny ourselves and say, Jesus, I don't care if it doesn't make sense to me. I don't care if it's 180 degrees opposite of what the world is telling me.
[00:19:19] I choose you, Jesus. I choose you and I am willing to deny myself.
[00:19:27] When I was on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ, there was a gospel presentation that we used a little booklet called the Knowing God Personally Booklet. And there were these circles in the back of the booklet that I always just thought were so helpful to try to help people understand what is the difference between living your own life and being a follower of Jesus. And that circle that just simply represents your life and that chair in the circle that is like the throne or the control center of your life.
[00:19:56] And to be outside of Christ means that Jesus is outside of your life and self is on the throne of the life. You call the shots. You do you.
[00:20:07] But if we want to put our faith in Jesus, if we want to become a follower of him, this is what Jesus invites us to, that he would be in our life and on the throne of our life and self, gets off of the throne and yields to Christ and everything we deny ourself.
[00:20:33] But you know what? It's like that self, it wants to keep crawling back up on the throne of, of our life.
[00:20:41] It wants to keep being the boss of our life. And that's why when we try to explain to people, to use language about what does it mean to give your life to Jesus? You know, it's not just about believing something.
[00:20:55] It's about putting your faith and your trust in something.
[00:21:00] That's why we use words like surrender.
[00:21:03] Surrender our life to Jesus. That we would bow our knee to him, that, that we would actually make him our king, him our boss. That's what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Yes, we believe, but we also make Jesus our king.
[00:21:21] And lastly, in this verse, I've just got to say this because I think Jesus marketing actually goes from bad to worse.
[00:21:30] And take up their cross daily and follow me.
[00:21:39] Take up their cross daily and follow me.
[00:21:46] Jesus logo is a cross.
[00:21:51] Those people, all they would understand that to mean is this is a Roman execution tool.
[00:21:59] That, that's his logo.
[00:22:01] What's his slogan? Come and die with me.
[00:22:06] And here's what I want you to think about. There's so many ways when we think about the cross, because we're looking back at the cross in human history. We see what was accomplished at the cross. Jesus, death, burial, resurrection. That brings life to us.
[00:22:23] They had none of that understanding.
[00:22:26] They didn't know about the cross.
[00:22:28] All they knew was that this meant giving your life in the most suffering way possible. That's all they could see.
[00:22:39] And to them, that was the invitation of Jesus.
[00:22:44] Because this Roman execution, it was More than just a way to take somebody's life. There are way easier ways to take somebody's life.
[00:22:54] But a crucifixion, it was about humiliation. I'm going to humble you before the world. You were going to hang naked and bleeding on a cross so that the world knows you don't mess.
[00:23:09] You don't mess with the Roman Empire and the cross.
[00:23:15] It was a symbol of suffering.
[00:23:19] To take up the cross meant you were going to suffer.
[00:23:24] It was gonna cost you something.
[00:23:27] To carry our cross the way that Jesus asks us to do that, it's going to cost us something.
[00:23:36] And so I've got to ask the question, has following Jesus cost you anything?
[00:23:44] Does it cost you anything?
[00:23:48] Because if it doesn't cost us anything, we might have to ask ourselves an even deeper question. Am I really following Jesus? Is he really the center? Am I really all in with him?
[00:23:59] As I was writing this, I remembered back to one of our baptisms. And if you've been around our baptisms, we make a big deal out of it for lots of really beautiful reasons. We have baptismals up here. People share their stories.
[00:24:14] People clap and applaud. They're so excited for them. We transmit this also. People can watch at home.
[00:24:21] It's a great celebration.
[00:24:24] But there was a college student one time that came and talked about wanting to be baptized.
[00:24:31] But he said he was a Muslim student at msu, and he said, you need to understand what this is going to cost me.
[00:24:39] If my family sees me, they will disown me.
[00:24:44] And it's not just my family. My whole network of relationships where I'm from will be gone.
[00:24:51] If I'm even able to go back home, if they will even let me come back, my safety will be in jeopardy. And even if I can get back there, the chances of me being able to get a job are almost nil.
[00:25:06] Costly, incredibly costly to him.
[00:25:12] But yet at the same point, he was saying, I'm willing to take up my cross and follow him.
[00:25:19] Take, take means it's a decision also that we make.
[00:25:25] And that's not usually how we think about death, is it?
[00:25:29] Death isn't something that we grab ahold of. It's something that we try to push off in our life. Death isn't something that we choose. It's something that happens against our will. But Jesus slogan, come with me and die, the symbol of the cross back in the ancient near east, in the first century, it was just as countercultural, just as counterintuitive as it is today.
[00:25:58] Take up your cross daily, Daily and follow me.
[00:26:04] Here's oftentimes how I think we see this invitation of Jesus.
[00:26:10] This invitation of Jesus is about what I need to do so that I can live with Jesus when I die.
[00:26:18] And Jesus says, no, that's not what this invitation is about. It's not about living with me when you die. It is about dying with me while you live.
[00:26:28] That you surrender everything you hold your life up to Him.
[00:26:33] And he says, daily, daily.
[00:26:38] Every day. Every day, Every day.
[00:26:41] Do you see it, friends?
[00:26:43] The commitment level is incredibly high.
[00:26:48] Incredibly high.
[00:26:51] So I've got to ask the question, who keep asking questions?
[00:26:55] Because these are the kind of questions that I asked early on in following Jesus. And it's questions that I still ask today. Is it worth it?
[00:27:04] Is it worth it to give up everything, to hold back nothing, to follow Him?
[00:27:13] Because I think we can believe in our heart of hearts that if I actually do that, Bob, if I really try to do what you're saying Jesus said and is asking me to do, that sounds like the most unfulfilling life possible. It sounds like the most miserable life, maybe the worst life possible.
[00:27:32] And if I do that, am I going to miss out?
[00:27:36] Am I going to miss out on the stuff of this world?
[00:27:40] That's what I think.
[00:27:42] I'm one of those people that got FOMO real bad.
[00:27:46] Fear of missing out.
[00:27:49] I don't want to miss out on anything.
[00:27:53] Jesus doesn't want you to miss out on anything.
[00:27:58] That's why Luke 9:23 is followed by Luke 9:24. This invitation is followed by a promise.
[00:28:06] Jesus said this for whoever.
[00:28:10] Again, whoever, for all of us. That's us, the whoevers. Whoever wants to save their life will lose it. Meaning if I want to try to grab ahold of this life, I want to grab ahold of the stuff of this life. I want to make my life about this earth, this life. He said, if that's your posture, you're going to lose your life.
[00:28:33] But whoever, whoever loses their life and whoever holds their life up to him, gives it to him, says Jesus, I follow you. Make my life whatever you want it to be. He said, those are the ones that are going to save it. Whoever loses their life for me will save it.
[00:29:00] It's our only hope.
[00:29:02] So our only hope to find life in this life is to give our life to him.
[00:29:09] Dying to yourself, dying to this life is where we truly find life.
[00:29:16] It was interesting as I was reflecting a couple days ago on this verse and just walking it through in my mind, this picture came to my mind of how this verse unfolds.
[00:29:30] And if you ask me, it kind of unfolds like this, like a funnel.
[00:29:37] And on the top of the funnel is where we have the fans of Jesus, people that like Jesus.
[00:29:46] I want Jesus, I want a little Jesus. I want a little bit of that in my life.
[00:29:50] At the top of the funnel is the whoever, everyone, anyone gets the invitation.
[00:29:57] But then the commitment level starts to raise. Who wants to be my disciple?
[00:30:02] Who wants their life to be marked foundationally by love and commitment to me?
[00:30:08] That's who I want.
[00:30:10] You know what you have to do? He says you must deny yourself.
[00:30:15] You must realize that this life is not about you, it's about him.
[00:30:21] He's the one that we put on the throne of our life over and over. And when self tries to get back up on the throne, we put self back down. We deny ourselves and we say yes to him.
[00:30:33] And then lastly, he says, we take up our cross.
[00:30:35] Take up our cross. We're willing to die to give our life to him.
[00:30:42] And then there's that word daily.
[00:30:46] This isn't just a one time thing that we step in and we're all in. It is a daily thing of saying yes to him. And when we get out to the bottom of the funnel, that's where we find the all in followers of Jesus.
[00:31:07] Do we want to be a fan?
[00:31:09] Takes little or no commitment at all.
[00:31:12] If we want to be all in, it takes everything.
[00:31:17] So what do we do? What do we do? How do we make this journey from fans to a follower?
[00:31:25] Jesus made it clear in the scriptures there's two words that he says over and over and over again. These two words are repent and believe.
[00:31:34] Repent meaning I'm heading in a direction and I turn and I go in a different direction. I am walking away in different areas of my life. Repent just means that I simply turn, I turn back toward him. I take a different path and I believe. I put my faith, I put my trust in him. I put my life in his hands. Repent and believe. This is what Jesus said, the very beginning of his ministry. Mark, chapter one.
[00:32:00] After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God, the good news of the gospel.
[00:32:08] He said, the time has come. He said, the kingdom of God has come near.
[00:32:14] Repent and believe the good news.
[00:32:19] Repent and believe. You pick a different path.
[00:32:22] You bow our knee to him. We give our life to him. We put him on the throne of our life.
[00:32:31] We deny ourselves. We take up our cross daily and we follow Him.
[00:32:40] And now I want to make something really, really clear because in conversations that I've had with people in and around this idea of being an all in follower, I think you could come to the conclusion that it's like, I just feel like that's like perfection.
[00:32:55] That's not me. I'm not there. You know what, neither am I.
[00:33:01] But here's the deal. Being an all in follower. Hear this friends. If you don't remember anything else, remember this today. Being an all in follower, it is about direction.
[00:33:12] It is not about perfection.
[00:33:16] Because if it was about perfection, Jesus would not have started with the whoevers of the world like you and me. And when you look at the life and ministry of Jesus, those whoevers were far, far from perfect. It was not perfection.
[00:33:33] But if you also watch their life, they had a direction. There were times that they would move off of the path and they would move back. Sometimes they got apathetic, their heart grew cold, but they would move back, they would repent and believe.
[00:33:49] It is not about perfection, it is about direction.
[00:33:53] Every step we take about where do I need to repent and believe and put my trust in Jesus.
[00:34:04] I like to give assignments.
[00:34:07] Some people tell me they hate that. That's alright, I'm gonna keep doing it because some people appreciate it.
[00:34:15] Here's your assignment.
[00:34:17] It's not complicated, but it's really, really difficult.
[00:34:23] I want you to think about that word daily.
[00:34:31] Daily.
[00:34:34] What does that mean for you?
[00:34:36] If Jesus was serious, it means that every day. And honestly, I think it's even more than that. It's probably moment by moment in our life that we would just be asking Jesus the question, how do you want me to die to myself today?
[00:34:54] How do you want me to deny myself in order to be who it is that you've created me to be?
[00:35:03] Where do I need to take self off of the throne and put Jesus back on the throne of my life? Jesus, where do I need to die today?
[00:35:15] You'll never get to a place in your life where you're done asking that question.
[00:35:21] That question's forever until you go to be with Jesus or he comes back.
[00:35:26] And I want to say it again.
[00:35:28] This invitation, this invitation that Jesus gives us, it is not about us living with Jesus when we die.
[00:35:39] It is about dying with Jesus while we live.
[00:35:44] Come and die and follow me.
[00:35:49] That's what it means to be an all in follower of him. Let's pray.
[00:36:00] Jesus, even as I'm standing here, I'm just thinking about all these places in my own life that need to be redirected.
[00:36:08] I believe that it's true, Jesus, that it's not about perfection, it's about direction.
[00:36:13] But I know that there are things in my life that need to be redirected toward you, places where my heart has grown cold and weary and apathetic.
[00:36:26] Jesus, I want to repent and believe.
[00:36:31] I want you to be on the throne of my life.
[00:36:34] And I pray that over my friends, I pray, Holy Spirit, that you would speak to our hearts and our lives, that we would know by that internal witness of your spirit what needs to change in our life. Where do we need to be redirected?
[00:36:51] Because, Jesus, we know that the invitation that you gave us, it's not about.
[00:36:57] It's not about us simply just trying to live with you when we die.
[00:37:01] It's about us dying with you while we live.
[00:37:06] Jesus, it's in your powerful name that we pray.
[00:37:11] And all God's people said amen.
