This recording is from Christ Kingdom Church in Waterford Lakes, East Orlando. Visit us online at christkingum.org for our calendar, driving directions, and more audio recordings. Scripture today is from John chapter 9. It should be up on the screen, yeah. Starting at verse 1. As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents? That he was born blind. Neither this man nor his parents sinned, said Jesus. But this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world. Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with saliva, and put it on the man's eyes. Go, he told him, wash in the pool of siloam. This word means sin. So the man went and washed and came home seeing. His neighbors and those who had formally seen him begging asked, isn't this the same man who used to sit and beg? Some claim that he was. Others said, no, he only looks like him. But he himself insisted, I am the man. How then were your eyes open, they demanded? He replied, the man they called Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes. He told me to go to Siloam and wash. So I went and washed and then I could see. Where is this man they asked him? I don't know, he said. They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind. Picking up at verse 24. A second time, they summoned the man who had been blind. Give glory to God, they said, we know this man is a sinner, he replied. Whether he is a sinner or not, I don't know. One thing I do know, I was blind, but now I see. And in 31, we know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. To this they replied, you were steeped in sin at birth. How dare you lecture us? And they threw him out. Jesus heard that they had thrown him out. And when he found him, he said, do you believe in the Son of Man? Who is he, sir, the man asked? Tell me so that I may believe in him. Jesus said, you have now seen him. In fact, he is the one speaking with you. Then the man said, Lord, I believe, any worship to him. Let's pray. Father, I thank you, Lord, for giving us your perfect and fallible word. I pray that you will use this, Lord, through the preaching of an imperfect person to communicate your will and your message and your good news. I pray for the congregation, Lord, open our hearts, open our minds, clear minds for anything that's distracting us, open our ears, help us to see like this man, help us to hear. And I pray all this in the image, Jesus, amen. Thanks, Kurt. There are the fifth graders who should be dismissed, right? There are the fifth graders who come here first. There are the fifth graders who come up here, come this way. You guys come up here and get on stage real quick. Ginny, do me a favor. Will you pull this little ball back? OK, up here and then let it go. Let's see what happens. Oh yeah, that's one of my favorite toys as a kid. All right, you guys can go back to your class, but you're assignment. You're assignment. You're assignment is to let your parents, ask your parents, is to ask your parents when you get home, what does that mean? Well, I did pastor Puckett have that up there this morning. So y'all ask your parents, they'll explain it to you or you're sibling, whoever brought you to church with that. Anyway, I didn't want them to miss that. That was kind of fun. So did you get it? Yeah, it was kind of fun. It's addicting, so just don't get restarted on this. Anyway, there is a sermon insert in your Bolton, and that might be a helpful tool as we go on here this morning to follow along with that. I'll share some things you might want to jot down as we go on. Well, the last two weeks, because it's actually this visionizing series has been a series. We've been doing this this our third week, our last week of this particular series, which by the way, let me go ahead and tell you we start next week what it means to follow Jesus following him. That will be our theme all the way up until Christmas this year. So I hope you'll continue to come week after week here. Or if you have to miss a week, listen to it online, but stay with us on that. Last two weeks, we looked at Matthew 4 verse 19, which Jesus says in this, come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. Ten words there are total, but ten words that changes everything for the follower of Christ. Two weeks ago we looked at the first three words, the come and follow me. Still not working Andy, sorry, there we go. Was that you or me? That was you, yeah. We looked at the come and follow me command here of that. The key point of your remember it was to be it. Next slide, Andy. Next slide, Andy. Andy? Andy. Next slide. Dude, you gotta be, we gotta be tracking here with me. Okay. We talked about the point of that was to be it. When Jesus says come and follow me, he, in essence, is saying be a follower of me, come. Let this be who you are. Let it define who you are because it should. It's fundamental to being Christian. The word Christian means a Christ follower, a one who is like Christ. Sadly doesn't mean that in reality in so many ways here, at least in our country here today. But it implies it changed must be made to come and follow him means you're at one place, A, and you're going somewhere else, B, you're following him. It also means that we aren't leading our lives anymore. If we're following him, he's the one that's in charge. He's the one that's leading the way. It's the most important thing you could ever do. And if you remember my challenge was two weeks ago, to make that your commitment this year, to make it your sole focus to be to follow Jesus. And if you've been following him for years to follow him more deeply this year, to discover and let this Holy Spirit lead you what it means to step out in faith a little bit deeper this year, to focus a little bit more, to take risk in following him. And maybe some of you are like, look, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm a Christian, I grew up in a church. This, I do church things, but you're talking about following. What does that even mean? And I'm inviting you to explore that with us this fall. They keep looking deeper about what it means to really align your life to follow with Jesus who's alive and living today. And some of you here with us are like, thinking, look, I just got dragged here this morning, and somebody promised me lunch and I gave a church, and so I'm here. I'm glad you're here to explore. We explore with us. We seek out who this person Jesus is over the next few weeks. So I'll make you fishers of men. Be it, be a follower of him. That's one of the big challenges this year. The next one, there we go. Was that me or you? It's still, all right, I'm just gonna put this down, quit pretending, it's me, it's Andy. The next part of that command from Jesus is that I will make you fishers of men. I will make you fishers of men. The beauty of this is that the be it being committed to following him leads to the aspect of his work in your life, and him making you, and leading you to be one that follows him faithfully in making disciples, continuing on the ministry of Jesus. Surrender to his work and his purposes in your life. I think this is where we go, Australia a lot of times, as those in Christians that are in the church, we're like, all right, I'm all about being a follower of Jesus. Cool, because it wasn't dying good at hell. I mean, come on, you know, but when it's like, well, Jesus is like, all right, we're going this way. We're like, well, wait a minute. I thought I was just kind of stepping into the classification of I believe Christianity over other world religions or I'm not an atheist, and I'm stepping into classification. Jesus said, come and follow me. And what is he wanting you to do to continue on? Remember, we looked at last, we Jesus said, greater things will you do because I go to the follower, I go to the father, I'm sorry, that we will continue spreading over the earth to be the hands and feet, the mouth of Jesus, spreading what he started, and that was making other followers of him, others pointing others to him. And by the way, it's all about placement, which is where we're going to tie it all in together here this morning on this impact Sunday. It's how I'm going to unpack, impact. It's all about placement. Now, people will tell you this, now, Andy get ready, we're about to fire some slides here. People will tell you this, right? Parents know it's all about placement, right? Next slide. I'm sorry, next slide. Well, it'll be this, you know, slide seven? Next slide. There we go, there we go, sorry about that. Parents will tell you this, that's all about placement. Moms, okay, how important is placement? I'm not going to ask you dad's because we think it's, well, it's kind of optional, right, how that works. Moms know with a new baby, it's all about placement. Well, it's not just moms, hunters know this too, next slide. Oh, yes, it's all about placement, okay? It makes a big difference, but you might be eating for dinner one or time, at least some of our family that's from Georgia, I will tell you that. Photographers know it's all about placement, next slide. Placement, oh, placement is key, like different swing just a nothing shot and a, ooh, a very cool shot. Golfers know this, right? Placement, oh, so, so important. Advertisers know this. I thought this was pretty creative. And not to be left out, some of the smartest ones are college students. Placement, very, very important.
Next slide, however, the scheme, or in the scheme of eternal things, in the scheme of ultimate things, things that matter, like when you contemplate your death or the death of a loved one, things that matter, when you look at the realities of the horrors that are going around in the world around us, and you wonder what's going on. The big scheme of things that's often lost, is the importance of placement. We're born with something missing, every single one of us. In fact, we all feel it. We might not even talk about it or be that honest about expressing it, but we all feel it, because we're all kind of desperately stuff it with something that might fill that void. We talked about that even a month or so ago, the God-shaped void that continues to plague us. We all will either find the real missing piece in our lives or we'll sell for cheap substitutes the rest of our lives. Or many of us will do the cheap substitutes for a long time till we find the one real thing that we were missing all along. Well, this morning I have good news and I have bad news. Let me just be honest with you. So, let me just, it's only fair, right to ask, which do you want first? The good news are the bad news. Good news, I heard a couple bad news. All right, okay. I got this brought up a few jokes here. I mean, you've all heard good news, bad news jokes. Here's one of my favorites. A pastor told the congregation I've got some good news and bad news like I just did. The good news is the Lady Softball team won their first game. The bad news is they were playing the men's softball team. There's an example of how this works. Now, if you're in the medical professional, I'm sorry, you're like free gain because most of the good news bad news jokes that are out there have to do with the doctor said, right? The doctor tells his patient that he has good news. You're going to have a disease named after you. Sometimes hard to figure out what that is good news, really good news sometimes. You know, sometimes good news and bad news really are no joking matter at all. Some of you know, a couple of weeks ago, I got my mom, we were seeing Chick-fil-A with my mom and she got a text and she just looked at it and showed it to me. And it was from my brother saying, I think I'm having a heart attack. You know, not the kind of text you want to get as a mom or a brother in that matter. So he was rushed to the hospital, we went to the hospital with them. The bad news was that he had heart problems clearly. We know what we had come out of all this was the good news of knowing, you know, this has been discovered early on before it was actually wasn't a heart attack. But it was a 50% blockage of one of the main arteries around there and they were able to do some serious testing to figure out what is going on, what is risk or what we can do. And now going forward, he actually has a plan that could probably actually, if it hadn't happened, this could actually save his life going forward because now he can make adjustments, things can be monitored and so on. So sometimes good news and bad news is no joking matter whatsoever. And I do have good news and bad news this morning and it hinges on this next slide that placement is everything. Placement is everything and as I'm not sure if you can see as this little picture demonstrates here, in order to be it, there has to be an impact that's made in your life and the do it will flow from the be it until you picture eyes and you encounter the presence of a living God and trust and believe that he is a living God. There will be no change in who you are as a person. And therefore there's no change in who you are as a person. There will be no change in how you act and the choices you make as a person. And by the way, just to be blunt, it's why so many look around and go, Christians, what does it mean to be a Christian? You guys already, different than people are non-Christians. You just kind of have stuff to do on Sunday morning. You have things you say you believe and you may be listened to slightly more religious Christmas carols at Christmas time than the rest of us. That's about it. I think so many ways the church has lost the encounter with the living God, which by definition will impact and change everything in your life. And it did in this lineman's life that we read about this morning. We'll talk about him in a second. So here's the next slide, Andy. Here's the good news. The good news is this, Jesus Christ was placed on earth for full impact, the full impact for his followers to have by his presence. He lived, he died, he rose again from the dead, to forgive sinners and set them free from its guilt and its power. That's good news. And next slide, remember, placement is everything. If there hadn't been somebody to really come and take the place for sin and death and its consequences for you, for me, then this would be nothing more than a fairy tale to read about. It can make you feel warm in your heart for a few minutes so that you can fall asleep at night or so that your children can. And then poof, it's gone. But the reality is, as God made him who knew no sin to be sin on your behalf, that you might know the righteousness of Christ. That's the reality, that's the word. That is good news. The good news that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and know what he is alive. He's not somebody that we memorialize and think about. It's why we'll meet do communion every week. We talk about, I will never mention to you that this is immemorial. This is not immemorial. Immemorial is for somebody that is dead, that's no longer there. This is for a spiritual reality communion with the living Christ. There's something spiritually happening here with his presence. When we do and obey him to come and remember his body broken for us, his blood shed for us. This is immemorial. This is never to be called immemorial service. We're not remembering somebody that's gone. We're worshiping somebody that's alive. That's good news if you're a follower of Jesus here today. The good news is Jesus too is still calling followers. It wasn't just for those 12 guys back 2,000 years ago. It wasn't just for a few key people along the way that kind of done some important things. St. Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin Edwards or whoever you want to look back in church history and go, wow, look at that follower of Christ. He's calling all those places faith and trust in him to once again come and follow me. And the good news is Jesus Christ is coming back one day and he's bringing a kingdom. He's bringing a kingdom of new heavens and a new earth. You can read all about it in Revelation, chapters 19 through 22, especially. But this is not all the news. Next slide. There's bad news. You know the bad news was coming. The bad news is that after sin entered the world and the Garden of Eden, men and women chose to place themselves independent from God and the rebellion to God, hiding from the impact of his presence. Remember placement is everything. What is the very first thing Adam and Eve do after they've taken of the forbidden fruit? They hide. They hide in shame. Next slide. Placement is everything. Following Jesus doesn't happen automatically either. We naturally, in fact, reject the call to follow him. We're born with this bent to reject and move away from God and be independent and continue to be rebellious. We have Adam need to thank for that, right? But don't thank man. I can't believe they did that. If I were in their shoes, I would have done something different. No, you wouldn't have. They were perfect. There's not been a single person in this room that ever has been perfect for a single moment in their existence. But Adam and Eve can say they were. They were. They were perfect human beings, the perfect specimen of those made in the image of God. And they chose to walk away from it. So our best representatives failed. And we need a new representative, which we'll get to in a moment. We naturally reject the call to follow him. Listen to what the Apostle Paul says. Remember the Apostle Paul, the guy that was out punishing killing Christians? In fact, he was on his way to do some more of that in the road to Damascus, right? When he met Jesus, oops. He met the guy that he said didn't exist and everybody who followed should be killed. He met him and Jesus called him. That's a real career bust. When you've set your career out on proving Jesus does not exist and punishing everybody that does think he exists and then you meet Jesus. And then Jesus says to follow me and so on. It's not the career move he was looking for. Listen to what the Apostle Paul says. Now as a follower of Jesus, Romans three, he says, as it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away. They have together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one. And by the way, he was the one that called himself Pharisees. He was the one that was keeping the law better than anybody. And what is he quote from in an Old Testament? There's no one who's good. There's no one who even seeks God on their own. And in addition, the fact that we reject naturally the call to follow him. When we do, and even if you do choose to follow him, the following has a cost. And Jesus makes that very clear himself. Luke 9, he says, then he said to all of them, if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. Whoever wants to save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? Jesus makes it clear that following him has a cost. Those good news, there's bad news, and placement is everything. But let me tell you, the bad news actually makes the good news even better. Next slide. And it's today's news. The scriptures repeatedly say, and Jesus himself will say, today is a day of salvation. Today is a day to choose. Today's news is what really matters right now, isn't it? Yes, learn from yesterday's news. Maybe anticipate or think about tomorrow's news. But the only really news that you can do anything about is news that you have today in front of you. We can't go back to yesterday, and we aren't promised tomorrow. But we have today in this blind man, this man born blind, don't forget that aspect of it. Born blind woke up one day, and it was his today. It was his today's news that particular day. He woke up thinking it was probably just a normal day. He woke up with a day filled with darkness. I mean, can you imagine that? Now, you've ever been like me. We used to do this sometimes with our kids. We really wanted them to sleep in a little bit longer. We would make it very dark in the room. We had all kinds of ways to make that happen, which we can tell you about later, those of your parents that are young kids and stuff. And sure enough, they would sleep longer if it thought was right. Could they kind of wake up and go, well, I guess it's still dark. I'll roll back over and go to sleep. We're like, yes, on that. Can you imagine being blind? What's the difference between asleep? What's the difference between being awake? Nothing visual changes whatsoever. That would be a very strange thing. So he woke that day filled with darkness. He woke that day filled with a sense of rejection. Why? Because he was constantly being rejected. Yes, we live in a country, we live in a day and age when those who are handicapped are given special privileges and attention, and you might not get a chance to part closer to the front of the store of your handicap. This was not that day, 2,000 years ago. In fact, we're told from this context, even the disciples asked Jesus, all right, Jesus, who's sinned first? Was it this guy's personal sinner? Was the sin of his parents? That was the mindset. In fact, the Pharisees later in this passage come back and say, look, you were born steeped in sin. Why would they say that? He was born blind. That was thought to be a curse of God. Not only were you rejected by people, but the people rejected you because they thought, God, I rejected you. That's how you're growing up. How's that kids for self-esteem growing up in school? How's that entering adulthood? Talk about caring baggage. Oh my gosh. Yet you all full of baggage, didn't you? Is another day to be filled with begging? Because that's all he could do. It was a day filled with loneliness and isolation. That was what was ahead because that's what happened yesterday and the day before. You know, and I'm sure he cannot see the eyes staring at him. I'm sure he could feel the eyes staring at him day in and day out. But then that particular day, he heard a crowd of people coming by. That wasn't a story out of the ordinary. Can you imagine him in his mind? Thinking, all right, cue the begging. Alms, alms, whatever he would say or do. Cue the cup's hands, hoping for a scrap of bread or maybe a rich man came by, maybe a small coin. Cue the getting ready to be pushed aside or mocked by people or hushed by the pastor buyers. If you got a little bit too loud or a little bit too close. Cue the parents saying, keeping their children away from him because who knew what kind of disease he might carry since he obviously didn't know how to clean himself and he wasn't a righteous man to be born blind. The list goes on. But the blind man didn't realize that he was placed in the path and impact that particular day. And everything would change that day. The man born blind was familiar with the bad news of his physical condition. But he was going to meet the good news of the one that could not only change his physical eyes but open to spiritualize as well. You know, very interesting in this passage, Jesus doesn't just immediately touch him and heal him as he's done many, many other times. There's even been times where he's just simply spoken the word and people that are even there are healed. Jesus does something very unique and very different here and this interaction with this man. Let me put yourself in the blind man's shoes, okay? You're used to being ignored, you used to be rejected, you used to be pitied and all that other kind of stuff. And here comes a man, a stranger who walks up the big crowd. You have no idea what kind of stranger this is. Is this a, you know, what kind of local gang type thing and they're coming over to abuse him and mock him? Is this some kind of rich man that's trying to make a presence and show how right to see his by dropping a coin in his hands? You know, those are the kind of things that are going through his mind. And yet here comes a guy and he comes up and he spits on the ground in front of him. Now, you might have even thought, oh, this dude, this dude's got bad aim because he was probably clearly aiming at me. And why else would you spit on the ground right beside him? And if that wasn't enough, he reaches down and Jesus makes a mud take with that spit. I mean, that, I was thinking about that. That takes a lot of spit, right? To make anything that would form mud enough in your hands to cover two eye sockets. There's a lot of spit going on here, okay? And I think about it now, this blind man has, somebody who doesn't really even know who he is, take that concoction and start rubbing it in his eyes. Now, I don't know about you, even, I would think even if you're blind, I mean, that's a sensitive part of your body. You know, even if you're blind, I would think dirt in your eyes would hurt and be irritable. And Jesus is, I'm sure doing it gently, but he's sticking saliva-filled dirt, mushing it in his eyes. And if that wasn't weird enough, he then sends him on a walk, we're not sure exactly how far the walk was, but there's certain pool of water. And he's blind. Jesus doesn't offer to walk with him, doesn't ask a group of guys to pick him up. He sends him blind with mud saliva eyes to go wash.
Here's the key, this blind man had a choice to make at this point. When he make possibly a bigger pool of himself by walking across town with this mud facial and having even one more reason for people to be laughing at him, mocking him, ridiculing him or even just feeling more pity for him, when he gets his hopes up that this person was doing something to his eyes, he probably had heard this person's name was Jesus. We know that because later he'll tell the Pharisees, a man named Jesus, so somewhere he had picked up the name. Maybe he knew Jesus was a healer, maybe we don't know what he knew, Jesus healed people or not. But I would think, you know, if you're in his shoes, you don't want false hopes. You want to be thinking that, yeah, I'm going to get healed. And you know, the law that's happened here is that I've got mud in my eyes. We're not even told by John Medge who wrote, obviously this passage, that Jesus even said that this would restore his sight. Jesus did something really strange to his eyes and said, go wash. He could place himself in alignment with the spoken word of Jesus Christ or he could go on with his normal average isolated day, wipe it out, go, thanks for nothing, buddy. Carry on and look for the next crowd of people to beg. He had a choice. It was today's news for him. He chose to believe next slide, Andy. He put himself in the place of impact by following and believing and you when I'm washed. And as he did, he not only cleaned his face but his eyes were open. He imagined seeing for the first time. Once the man is impacted by Jesus, here's what I want you to catch too. Once he's encountered Jesus and by the way, the encounter wasn't really fully complete until he had finished in obedience to Jesus and his eyes are open. And everything's changed for this man. Everything has changed since the day he was born for this man. It will never be the same. And what does he do? He makes an impact and he's not even trying. That's why I had this read the last part of the story. He immediately begins to make an impact. He speaks to those on his way back from the pool. On the way back from the pool, people go, who is this guy? It looks like the guy who's been born since birth has been begging, but certainly it can't be because he can see. One that'd be cool if that was what happened to all of us who came to faith in Christ. People would say, you know that? That looks like Scott Puckett. But I can't be Scott Puckett. Because Scott Puckett used to act this way and this guy's acting totally different. He looks different. People don't even believe it's him because he can see. This is twin brother separated of birth that's come back in the town. And he's like, no, it's me. I am that guy. He's brought before the Pharisees to testify because all this happened on the Sabbath. And that's probably part of the reason why Jesus was doing a little work with the hands on the Sabbath. Part of another reason why he had this guy go walking which you were only, you weren't even allowed to go a certain distance on the Sabbath. Jesus is a setting things up here to make this really hard for Pharisees but also to draw them to himself that they would be humble enough to come, which most weren't. But he testifies before the Pharisees. In fact, his parents are brought in. His parents come in. They're brought to parents and to say, look, is this really your son? And the parents come in. And the parent, you know, this gives you a little bit of insight into the relationship. His parents come in and they're afraid and you get arrested, okay? You would think right parents would come in and be like, oh my gosh, my son can see and hugging him and hugging him. That didn't happen. His parents probably have thought he'd done something cursed by God. So that's the bag it's this guy had. His parents wanting to defend themselves make sure they're like, well, this is our son but we have no idea. He can speak for himself. He's an adult. Can we go now? That was a parents attitude. And he said, I'm the man. Even when he's pressured to defame the name of Jesus and we read part of that, he remains strong in his testimony. Why? Because he can see. When Jesus comes and finds him, he affirms his belief and he worships Jesus. His life was impacted by the presence of Jesus. And then therefore what followed from that was he made an impact wherever he went. I'm not saying people received it all, but he testified faithfully to what Jesus had done in his life. And by the way, that is what it means to share our faith. Those of us who follow Jesus is to be sharing what Jesus has done in our lives. I'm sorry if somebody somewhere along the way has made it made you feel like you have to understand all these apologetic books and be able to have a clear, articulate presentation on that you can give to people and then you can answer every question they might give to you. All right, it's great if you learn some of that stuff. That's fantastic. But you are already equipped. The day you meet Jesus to tell somebody else, there he is, there he is. That's what this man did. He suddenly pointed people where Jacob found him or who had done it. Next slide, Andy. What about you? What about you? Jesus is building his church. You can place yourself in the path of impact today. The only question is will you? The only question is will you? If you place yourself in the path of impact of Jesus Christ and you follow him, which is what that means, to follow Jesus and place yourself in that spot, he will transform your life and how you live and it will impact your world around you. You did it for the blind man who had nothing to bring to the table and it will do it for you and me because we're not anything of ourselves to bring to the table either. It's all about Jesus. Placement is everything. Focus on him, following him, aligning yourself for impact. To be impact, you need to be following him. You need to be under the ministry of God's word, which we have an accessibility to that that other generations have never had, right? You've got it on your phone if you want it. You've got to deliver to you in emails. Some of you, I know, tell me you get emails that they have God's words. That's awesome. We have accessibility like no other generation has. To live a life of prayer, we have the ability to come boldly before his throne and you live and thank you for you in the prayer ministry helping remind us giving us tools so we can come and pray. We have that ability to do that through Christ. We have the ability to follow the leading of his Holy Spirit. His Holy Spirit has been poured out and all those who believe in him and we have the opportunity to follow him together not alone living in community with other followers of Jesus, faithfully participating in weekly worship, committed to a small group of people to do life with which by the way is how, if you're a part of this church, is how the tools of God's given us that we're using as a church. This time on Sunday mornings in a time in a small group during the week. I want to challenge you this year. If you want to be impacted by him through the ministry of this church, that's how it happens. Another church does, every other church I know in the area by the way does similar things, kinds of things here, at least the good ones. And I know the pastors, they're my friends. In two weeks from Tuesday, we'll sit in a room together just as pastors in this community and we'll share our hearts together. We do that once a month. Get involved in this church or another church. If this is your church, plug in. That's what impacts Sunday is all about. It's about the impact of Jesus Christ coming and his power flowing through you in powerful ways. We not only follow him together, we also follow him with our time, with our treasures, with our talents. And I want to challenge you that, as Jesus said, where your treasure is, through your heart will be also to be giving faithfully of our finances, to be giving faithfully of our time. You're gonna have opportunities you go out to these ministry booths after the service year to see all kinds of ways that you can invest your time. Let me tell you, I know there's competition out there. I know that your kids' schools, I know that your work, I know that your social clubs and activities are all kinds of competition for your time. But let me tell you, there's only certain things that you are gonna literally do with your lives that are really in account for eternity. And don't fall into the trap, parents, about, you know what? I want to, we're gonna invest in my kids and we're gonna just make it about kids because we're only having a short period of time. If you make life about your kids for your kids, you will destroy them. Let me say that again, parents. If you make life about your kids for your kids, you will destroy them and you will set them up for disaster. Cause they'll grow up to be adults who think that life is really about them. Join me as another parent, living in this culture in this community that is repenting regularly, bringing falling into the trap. I'm just doing what the culture says. So my kids can be cool. So my kids can have this talent or this opportunity or disability. Set your kids up to experience your life to encounter the living God in their lives. Best way you can do that, parents, is you encounter the living God in their lives and let it spill out over them. Kids will only do what you tell them to do while they're living in your home if you're lucky. They will live their lives doing what you have done the rest of their lives. Cause they know what you really believe, what you really don't. But you can imagine what would happen if just the group of parents in this church or future parents and those future parents here. If just this group of people begin to live in such a way and point our children, can you imagine the generation that might come up from just one church of children who are on fire living for the living God and not for themselves. You wanna know why the statistics are all out there saying that kids are walking away from the church by the moment they leave home and they go off to college. Why? Because there's nothing there to keep them there. But you give them the living God, you give them the real Jesus Christ and they'll fall in love with them. Not mine and your self righteousness. They're not gonna fall in love with that. They're gonna reject that. Not yours and mine hypocrisy. I'm talking about give them Jesus Christ and they'll follow them. It's getting over time. It's getting over our talents. The Holy Spirit gives gifts. Gosh, the Holy Spirit does not give gifts for the building of your self-esteem. Let me say that again. The Holy Spirit does pour out and give gifts as all in the Bible, Romans 12. Ephesians 4, et cetera. But it is not for building your self-esteem. It's not so you'll feel like, look at me. Look what I can do. I have the ability to teach. I have the ability to exhort people. You know, I can't have the gift of prophecy. Well, I think I have the gift of giving and hospitality. Ba, ba, ba, ba. Okay? The Holy Spirit gives you nothing ever for your self-esteem. That's securing Christ. There's nothing that can be given or added to it or taken away from it. The Holy Spirit gives you a gift and it says in the scriptures for the building up of the body of Christ. Some of you have gifts right here in this room and you're not doing anything with them. And I'm not saying we've got all the opportunities and the answer is here, but we have some. And you're gonna learn about some of those as you venture around as some of the booths here this morning. Some of you have opportunities in gifting that you haven't even presented that your local church might use here. I'm excited about hearing about those. I was talking to a friend of mine, a guy who might remember me telling the story this guy that he used to pray for, that he used to come into Panera on Sunday mornings with his kid and his wife and always saw him on Sunday mornings that I was preparing for my sermon, but he always stayed. He wasn't going to church. It's things who he, all right? Then all of a sudden, I noticed who he quit coming on Sunday mornings. I didn't know what happened to him. Who he became a Christian. Thank God for the ministry of Abel on church, Dale Brooks. Over and Abel on. And now what does who he do? He continues his business like he does on the side here, but he goes and he has a ministry in Israel. Israel, okay? Bomb shelters for schools and going and providing, he's adopted a platoon of Israeli soldiers. And so he goes there often and they will watch the bombs going across wherever exactly that's happening there. And he's sharing his faith in Israeli soldiers. Jewish Israeli soldiers just to clarify, right? Are coming to faith in Jesus Christ. And this was a guy seven years ago that was just hanging out at Panera through church time. I'm good with hanging out at Panera, and don't get me wrong, right? Okay, let's time go to church. Let's go to church. So I don't see much anymore when he's at Panera anymore, but I saw him just this week as he came in. Let me sit and talk. His life was impacted by Jesus Christ. His wife's coming to faith in Christ. His son now is coming to faith in Christ. Okay, and you can't wait to do his side job, which is making trips to Israel on top of running a business that he's the president of. Man, he's never gonna be the same. Who out here is God calling to do something crazy like that? So I think that's pretty crazy, although I'd like to go on a trip with him. I think it's pretty crazy. What does God do in your right here? What's he calling you to? What year from now might we be celebrating how he's working, how he's moving? It's gonna be exciting. Let me just close with the story. I remember when I was a kid growing up, I don't even remember what amusement park it was. I was small enough to be at the age where I was supposed to be holding my mom's hand or my dad's hands who walked around. You might remember mom where it was. We were someplace where there was, maybe it's Bush Gardens or something, but there was a parachute show. There's a big crowd of people in the middle of the amusement park area. And these parachuters were jumping out of planes and they were gonna land somewhere in the amusement park. You know what I'm talking about? Now just nod your head like you do. So you were there. So, and I remember at some point or another, I got really captivated with the parachuters coming in. And I either get me right like go their hand or if I just quickly kind of moved to kind of see what they were coming in where they're gonna land, it was gonna be like, I'm five, four or five years old or something, I'm not sure. And I'm watching this and it is pretty amazing. You see a parachuter come in and land on cue and whatever else in that and that was pretty cool. But then I stopped in my tracks and I thought, look, looked around, my brother wasn't there, my mom wasn't there, my dad wasn't there. And then I didn't get a rip about the parachuters, okay? I just was thinking, oh my gosh, I'm lost. I quit looking for anything else around me except for one thing. Mom or dad, brother, he'd been okay too at that point. But I mean, mom or dad would have been best. You know what? And I just sat there and I think I cried and I waited to be found as I searched the crowd. Now don't remember how long it took. It seemed like it took a couple of weeks but I think it was just a few minutes before I hand grabbed my hand. And I got, I think, a little talking to you too, which I needed is nothing more complicated than that today. You, me, are both tempted to follow other things to be distracted by the things of this world. Just stand, just crowd to him, just look for him. I love the promise of you're in my 29th, 13th. If we seek him, if we search with him, all of our hearts will find him. He actually says, you will seek me and find me when you search with all your heart. I think that's the quote. What an awesome promise. Cry out to him, let him find you. Let me tell you, he'll find you this morning, wherever you're willing to stop looking at the junk that's out there and setting your mind on this accomplishment or this money or this job or this particular expertise or raising your kids this way or being this kind of person, whatever it is that's out there that's not worth living for. Fill in the blank and cry out to him, he'll find you. And then he'll say, like, I needed to hear from my parents, follow me, don't take your eyes off me. Here's my hand, hold it, let's go. He will carry you, he will take you. Let's pray. God just asked us, we come now to your table that we reminded that we were once lost but we've been found, those of us who are in Christ. You left heaven to come to earth to come looking for us and you came and you found those that cry out to you that seek and look to you and that humbly ask for you to come and meet them and you come and you came and you will come again here today to meet us. Will you do that now? Will you come? Will you help us to follow you? Strengthen us. Align ourselves to be impacted by your power and presence today so we can be and serve you. Have you called us this year ahead? So Father, now I'll continue to respond with this as we go in Jesus' name. Amen.