Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Good morning, everybody.
[00:00:08] I'm Ben Fleming. I'm the other senior pastor. And welcome to part nine of our Journey through the Book of John. We started right after Christmas and this will take us all the way through Easter. And I'm titling this message today. Worship, pragmatism and grace.
[00:00:23] And then I decided I prefer the alternative title of There's Something About Mary.
[00:00:31] So you'll see. Hopefully it'll make some sense here in a minute.
[00:00:36] Why don't you stand with me and we're going to read this passage of Scripture, a short one today. John 12, verses 1 through 8 says, Then six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was who had been dead, whom he had raised from the dead.
[00:00:51] And there they made him a supper, and Martha served. But Lazarus was one of those who sat at the table with him.
[00:00:57] And then Mary took a pound of very costly oil of spikenard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.
[00:01:07] But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, who would betray him, said, why was this fragrant oil not sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor? Poor? This he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief. John's being very honest and blunt and had the money box and he used to take what was put in it. But Jesus said, let her alone. She's kept this for the day of my burial. For the poor you have with you always, but me you do not have always. This is the word of the Lord. Father God, speak to us through your living and active word, Lord. I pray that it would teach us something about how to sit with and be with and become like you. In Jesus name, Amen. You can have your seats.
[00:01:55] There's something about Mary. All right, so this six days before the Passover and the cross is becoming something that's not really this abstract idea in the future. It's coming very close to Jesus.
[00:02:08] The authorities have already decided, based on what we know from John, chapter 11, that Jesus must die. And so. So there's kind of this clock ticking feel to a lot of the remainder of the story through the Book of John.
[00:02:20] And so where do we find him in this moment? We find him having dinner in Bethany with friends, specifically with Lazarus, Martha and Mary.
[00:02:31] A really beloved household to Jesus and a beloved place as well. Bethany is where Jesus wept over the loss of Lazarus. Bethany is where he called Lazarus then out of the grave. And. And then Bethany is where this friendship and new understanding of resurrection and the power of God met.
[00:02:49] And so it's in this house, a house that is, I'm sure, just heavy with grief and also glory. People that understand the massive spectrum of things that we go through and experience in this life, which, by the way, I love these places, being with people that have seen. Seen the gamut of life. They've experienced just about all the highs and lows. And there's this kind of experience and wisdom and understanding that comes from that experience. And I have to imagine that that is heavy in the house that they're in, in this moment.
[00:03:23] But then Mary, in the middle of all this, does something unforgettable.
[00:03:29] So, first of all, who is Mary? If you're like me, it can be a little confusing, especially reading through New Testament scripture.
[00:03:35] The New Testament is fairly long. There's a lot of words, there's a lot of people, and there's only like, seven different names. There's like eight. Mary's, a bunch of Simons, a couple James's. One's the brother of Jesus. You know, you kind of have to qualify. And it's Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of Jesus, and there's all these. So I just want to extend some grace as we head into this story. If I say Mary, and you're like, oh, no, which one is it that we're talking about? This is Mary, the sister of Lazarus.
[00:04:06] And so she's also the sister of Martha. And we see in Luke's Gospel, for those of you who are familiar, this story of her sitting at Jesus feet while Martha busies herself in the kitchen getting everything ready and providing hospitality. And it's one of those stories in which we learn that she understands the better part, Jesus says, because she has taken the time to sit at Jesus's feet while Martha is doing all the work. Which, by the way, Martha never gets enough credit for doing things exactly the right way. In this story, one of them is just sitting around, the other one is cleaning up and getting things tidy. Especially in our Western culture, right? This would make sense to us that we would look at this story and go, well, one of them is lazy and one of them is responsible.
[00:04:48] And we love Martha. And Mary shouldn't get nearly as much credit as she does, but she does.
[00:04:56] And Mary is actually laying out for us. I believe in this section of scripture, a beautiful pathway to discipleship that we don't really See, from just about anybody else in Scripture, because Mary's the listener, she's the contemplative, and she's the one who, in many cases, insists on staying close.
[00:05:16] In John 11, when Lazarus dies, it's Mary who falls at Jesus's feet, feet in grief.
[00:05:22] And now in John 12, she's at his feet again, but this time in devotion. And so there's this pattern that develops. If you look at the depth of the Gospels, it says that she's at his feet in learning, that she's at his feet in deep sorrow and grief, and that she's at the feet of Jesus in worship.
[00:05:41] And so Mary's posture reveals her formation in this way.
[00:05:47] Something about being around Jesus has taught her where she needs to be when Jesus is around.
[00:05:53] And from this, we can learn that discipleship isn't just about doing more things for Jesus and checking off the boxes, but it's about becoming a person who naturally does what Jesus wants us to do or what Jesus would do.
[00:06:06] And so Mary's become the kind of person who recognizes this fact and also recognizes the moment that she's in. And it's funny when you contrast it with so much of the behavior of the disciples, right? And the disciples do a lot of incredible and wonderful things, and they go on and they help create the church as well as, you know, a lot of these other folks. But there is this one wonderful moment where the disciples, because there are 12 dudes wandering around for long enough, they've probably gotten sick of each other over a certain amount of time, because that's what 12 dudes would do.
[00:06:31] Then they look at each other and they go, okay, there's 12 of us. This is great. We all get to follow after Jesus. But who's the best is probably me, you know, or me and my brother. And we get. But who's going to be at the right hand of God? You know, this is kind of what they. They want to discuss and what they want to argue. And while they're arguing about greatness, Mary all of a sudden has this prophetic understanding of what will be the burial of Jesus, even when nobody else seems to understand it.
[00:06:57] She's way out ahead of all the other disciples.
[00:07:01] She's listened long enough. And I believe that through that listening, her heart then has been trained.
[00:07:07] Dallas Willard says, this is the most important thing in your life is not what you do. It's who instead you become. It's who you become. And Mary is becoming. She's becoming someone who sees the way of Jesus.
[00:07:21] And so she takes a pint of pure nard worth a year's wages, we learn. And she pours on his feet and she wipes him with her hair.
[00:07:28] It's not a particularly efficient act of something to do with a resource, and it's not very strategic. And said, it's really deeply personal for someone who loves Jesus so much, and even more so in that culture. Letting down her hair in public was socially risky and not a great idea. She risked dignity and reputation and misunderstanding.
[00:07:48] In my opinion, this is an act of rejecting a natural pride that many of us lend ourselves to.
[00:07:55] Even in some cultures at this time, it was illegal to make a slave clean the feet of some people because it was too much. But she decides to honor him in this way.
[00:08:05] Now, I use pride on purpose, but I want to be very specific about it, because if you get confused about names in the New Testament like I do, maybe you get confused about the word pride like I do, because we like to play both sides with this word. Pride comes before the fall.
[00:08:19] Pride is a deadly sin. Also, you should take pride in your work.
[00:08:24] Have a little pride.
[00:08:26] But that's going to kill me, though.
[00:08:29] I don't want to take pride in my work. Die in the office. That's not the idea. Well, what's pride? I feel like we're a little confused about it. Specifically for today, without having a massive existential conversation about pride. I want pride to be defined as someone with a strong impulse or a prideful person to be someone with a strong impulse to tell God, you owe me.
[00:08:50] But when the impulse meets with success, I've noticed that we become shallow and transactional and we become concerned with how do I look? And all of a sudd. Our behavior changes if we have this base level of God, you owe me something. I've noticed this in my son's fifth grade basketball, okay, Basketball, I think, specifically lends itself to this kind of behavior that I'm about to show for you right now. But I noticed as the season went on, my son was new to basketball this year. He learned what a lot of other kids learn. And I myself learned when I played basketball, like I played basketball elementary all the way through high school. I do not love myself as a basketball player. Not because I wasn't good at it. I was pretty good. I was really good. No, I was pretty fine.
[00:09:35] But I was super angry.
[00:09:37] I was yelling at referees and cheap shotting guys, and I just was not a nice guy. I played all the other sports and I was a much more reasonable person. Basketball brought something out of me. That was not great. And I blame the basketball.
[00:09:51] But I noticed this thing which happened to me, and it began to happen to my son. Then we had to talk about it. We're trying to work on it. Is all of a sudden, for a lot of these kids, especially in fifth grade, it's almost as if the referee's whistle is attached to their hands and to their shoulders. Have you noticed this? It goes beep.
[00:10:11] Doesn't even matter what they're calling. They haven't even heard anything yet.
[00:10:16] Beep. Foul number four.
[00:10:17] Beep. Traveling beep. Ice cream.
[00:10:23] My gosh.
[00:10:25] And look, I've adopted a lot of, like, new wave things, and I like how the kids kind of hype each other up and they do a lot of stuff. I try to not be a crotchety old man, but when it comes to whining at referees and doing this move, I just. You ask my wife, I, like, contort myself in the bleachers. I just can't handle it.
[00:10:44] And what I've noticed is you feel like. And this is what I told my son, I said, you have to understand, these referees owe you nothing.
[00:10:53] This game owes you nothing.
[00:10:55] We've got some rules and there's some regulations and there's some things. But I want you to understand that your job as a player is not to grab whatever you feel like the referee owes you in the middle of a game. Your job is to play. It's to play hard, to be a good teammate, to hustle and to rebound and to score when you get the opportunity. But your job is not to regulate the referees and their behavior and their calls. You're going to play, and then the calls are going to happen, and they don't owe you a single thing.
[00:11:23] And he was like, oh, my gosh, dad, that's a lot. Relax.
[00:11:29] And I was like, give me a towel to wipe my forehead.
[00:11:33] And I noticed that you see players that eventually, you know, because this happens in every sport, all across whatever ages. But you notice people that kind of understood this and they developed this idea. It's a maturity. They play a lot differently and they carry themselves a lot differently on the field or on the court when they begin to understand that. My job isn't to try to control every single call that comes my way. My job is to be the player in this situation. I'm the player. I'm not the parent. I'm not the coach. I'm not the referee. I'm the player right now. And they hold themselves differently because they understand this reality. And I believe that God is calling us into this way of discipleship with him. That has to begin not with us saying, I have been created by God, but now God owes me something. Instead, it's that I owe God everything while he owes me nothing.
[00:12:21] That is the beginning of the foundation of our discipleship.
[00:12:25] And Mary has begun to know this because here's the thing. When we start as a prideful person, we believe that God owes us something. When that impulse is met with success, when we believe God owes us something and then we receive everything we believe to be owed, we become shallow and arrogant, and our faith is extremely transactional.
[00:12:46] And then on the other side, if we're a prideful person and we're met with difficulty, we become extremely bitter and often want to separate ourselves from God.
[00:12:54] Neither one of these results are what we're looking for. And it's not the example that Mary gives us in the scripture.
[00:13:00] We have to come to the point where we say, God, you owe me nothing, and I owe you everything. And then all of a sudden, we begin to carry ourselves with what I hope and pray will be the testimony of Westside Church with great tenderness and humility.
[00:13:14] That's the posture of the Christian.
[00:13:18] It's not as cool or romantic. It doesn't often come off as this massive, strong character that oftentimes we envision ourselves to be. I believe in strong Christianity. I believe in brave bravery and courage. And I also believe that any movement that we have with all of those attributes has to begin with this humble posture that is willing to sit at the feet of Jesus, which is a deeply uncomfortable place to be. Have you sat at anyone's feet recently?
[00:13:45] No one.
[00:13:46] Your back is uncomfortable. Your legs get all tight.
[00:13:50] You feel a little bit vulnerable. This isn't the place that we're used to sitting. We're used to trying to sit at the same level as those around us. And yet Mary puts herself at the feet of Jesus because something different is to be learned with this posture. And I hope that that is the case for us here at Westside.
[00:14:08] So love isn't measured like many people consider it to be measured. In this case, Mary is tapping into something different.
[00:14:16] And so John tells us the house is filled then with fragrance of the perfume and worship when it's real in this way kind of changes the atmosphere.
[00:14:25] And so Mary's act is prophetic. She's saying Jesus even says she kept it for the day of my burial. Everybody in this room is not really accustomed to this idea just yet that Jesus will have to be Buried after his death on the cross. But it's as if Mary knows something is going on, and somehow she understands what others resist, that the Messiah must and will suffer.
[00:14:47] How does she know this? Again, it's because she spent time at his feet. Feet.
[00:14:52] Spiritual perception grows in close proximity to Jesus. And so we begin to see reality as it truly is. When we live then close to Jesus, we make our home there. And Mary has learned to recognize the weight and the opportunity of the moment to come and sit in those places.
[00:15:12] And then Judas pipes up.
[00:15:14] He ruins everything, this guy.
[00:15:19] And he says something that on its surface, makes some sense.
[00:15:24] But again, Jesus. And John, the writer, is trying to get to the heart of the issue. He's trying to help you understand the heart of Mary and the heart of Judas. And so what Judas says is, why isn't this perfume sold and then given to the poor? Sounds reasonable and responsible and pretty socially aware. But John tells us this, that he didn't actually care about the poor.
[00:15:44] He's skimming from the money bag when he gets the opportunity. And he would have loved for all of those resources and finances to be a part of that pot that he could take from. And I believe that it exposes this thing that many of us are tempted in as well, in that there's this spirituality that sounds moral. It posts well on Instagram, it posts well on your other social media accounts. But instead, while it sounds moral, it resists actual surrender to Jesus.
[00:16:13] And so Judas reduces love to efficiency, while Mary then expresses love as this deep, caring and personal devotion from her heart and her soul.
[00:16:24] Now, to be clear, this isn't a contrast between Jesus loving, loving Jesus and then loving the poor, right?
[00:16:29] Read all of scripture, especially all the New Testament. Jesus places a high priority on the poor. And then the early church that goes out after the death and the resurrection of Jesus places a high priority on the poor. This isn't Jesus saying, don't love the poor. Instead, come into your churches and worship me. He's saying that the kingdom always moves toward justice and mercy. And in this moment, this act of devotion is prepping something that will have an impact to the poor and beyond and even to the rest of the world. Because devotion, real devotion in the middle of all of us is actually what precedes real, true and lasting impact.
[00:17:04] I think a lot of times we want the impact. We want to skip straight to the end. We want to be one of those terrible people that reads the end of the book before we decide to start the beginning.
[00:17:14] Some of you need to Repent.
[00:17:19] We got to give ourselves over to this. We have to devote ourselves to this to actually have the depth of impact that God is calling us to. Dallas Willard called this barcode Christianity where we try to scan in righteousness outcomes before becoming righteous people.
[00:17:34] I just kind of want to go through the by the way, some of you are called to the self checkout line and some of you are not.
[00:17:43] Okay, there's no judgment here. Just don't go there if you're not spiritually equipped for the self checkout line.
[00:17:53] You guys, some of us are still trying to tap our card before actually saying we're ready to pay on the screen.
[00:18:03] You gotta do that first or else the transaction won't. Let's just stay here for a moment. Just kidding.
[00:18:10] We love this idea of this. Really just transactional. If I can just come through and we do it, we use church for it. A lot of times. If I can just come through and I can hear the message. I'm gonna listen to the podcast and I'm gonna worship and I know the words and I know when to raise my hands at the appropriate times. Right. I know this part of the song. I know that you raise your hand on the chorus and not so much on the verse. It's not how evangelicals do it.
[00:18:32] I have decided to follow Jesus.
[00:18:38] I know the right ways I can come through. I can scan the barcode. I know the timing, I know the rhythms and the liturgy and I know all these things. But the liturgy is just an opportunity to create this deep impact and shape and formational change in the middle of all of us. It's not about all of the surfacey things and the barcodes that we scan. Instead it's about this righteous outcomes that come from us intending to be a righteous people.
[00:19:03] Judas wants this measurable impact, but Mary instead offers herself as a sacrifice to God and then Jesus defends her.
[00:19:14] So what happens is kind of a byproduct of all this is that then the house is filled with a fragrance because soon another offering will be poured out. Not perfume, but instead blood. And not on feet, but instead on the cross.
[00:19:28] And that cross, just like this fragrance of nard, this cross to so many people will just look like a waste.
[00:19:39] Who couldn't have looked at 33, 34 year old Jesus hanging on the cross and think, man, all the potential, all the things he could have done, man, if he would have instead used his life to live longer, to do these things, to overthrow the Roman government, how much more of a full life would Jesus have? Lived.
[00:19:58] What a waste. What a waste this perfume is. And many people would say that about your life if given over to Jesus, you could have done this or that. You could have grabbed power. You could have been more successful. You could have kept more than you've given away.
[00:20:13] What a waste.
[00:20:14] And in that way, the Son of God dying appears inefficient, impractical, and unnecessary to this watching world. But what appears wasteful is love, truly performed and shown and given at its deepest level.
[00:20:28] That's what Christianity is intended to be.
[00:20:32] It's not efficiency and it's not a power grab and it's not manipulation.
[00:20:39] It's not about gathering an army or creating a following.
[00:20:44] Instead, it's about this incredible deep love that we have for Jesus.
[00:20:50] And then Jesus gives opportunities from that place.
[00:20:55] And so her motivation isn't this kind of like tradition or guilt that a lot of times we fall into, right? It's not moralism.
[00:21:04] And a lot of times we, again, we attend church or we participate in this religion at some level because it's not tradition or because it is tradition and because there is like this guilt that you have if you don't come or don't come on time. I notice how many people of you were late this morning as I wander around in the atrium out there getting more coffee and coffee.
[00:21:25] And the moralism is tempting as well. But I think the hymn writer said it best when it says, when I survey the wondrous cross, right? You guys know this hymn where the whole realm of nature mine that were a present far too small Love so amazing and so divine it demands my soul, my life, my all so pure love for the Savior who means to die. If we don't accept this, then we will see. We will miss seeing what Christ has done for us.
[00:21:54] And until we see that Jesus owes us nothing, we won't see what he's actually doing done.
[00:22:01] We must then be reformed in all of these things, made new again in Jesus.
[00:22:10] And when I say reformed, I don't mean all the reformation movements that have happened in the past, but truly being reformed as a metal that needs to be used for a new use.
[00:22:21] And in order to do so, it must be heated and then softened and then bent and moved into a new shape so that it might perform what the owner's intention is. So may our lives be that we might be made soft so that we might be molded into the uses of God.
[00:22:42] And in a beautiful way, Mary's act mirrors what Jesus is then about to do.
[00:22:48] She pours out what is Precious. Just like Jesus pours out himself.
[00:22:51] She gives us years wages, and Jesus gives eternal life.
[00:22:55] And then the fragrance of that love has filled the world ever since.
[00:23:02] It's almost like we can smell that sacrifice when we stop and contemplate just enough, we can smell that sacrifice that Mary made all those thousands of years ago.
[00:23:17] But we have to be reminded that this didn't happen in just a moment, right? It happened over time again, she's at his feet listening. She's at his feet grieving. She's at his feet worshiping.
[00:23:25] And then that is all led to and built to this moment right here.
[00:23:30] Mary's act is like, soaked in this grace.
[00:23:34] It's not an accident. It's the fruit of a life lived right near Jesus.
[00:23:42] And so the question that we have to ask ourselves today is, is not, would I pour out the perfume and give this amount of resource out for someone?
[00:23:51] I don't know if I know very many people that I would give an entire year's wages to. By the way, I don't know if I love anybody quite that much.
[00:23:58] My family, maybe.
[00:24:05] So the question isn't, would I pour out the perfume? I think the better question is, am I becoming the kind of person who would?
[00:24:14] Who are we becoming? And not just what we would do? And so I've got three invitations for you as we close up our time together today. Number one is to stay at his feet.
[00:24:22] So before strategy, before ministry outcomes, before going out to find our success and building our own little empires, I encourage us to sit with him instead, let our inner life be formed by this slow movement of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and lives.
[00:24:42] Stay at his feet.
[00:24:45] The second thing is this. I would invite you to recognize the moment.
[00:24:50] There's these holy moments that happen that can't be postponed. And I'm not the kind of preacher or pastor that would try to kind of formulate this fake sense of urgency in order to create outcomes that would be favorable to me or to the church.
[00:25:05] But I have noticed that the older I get, the faster time seems to go.
[00:25:10] Elementary school, my kids was a time warp. By the way, I got an email from Skyview Middle School the other day that was like, welcome your child to Skyview next year. And I was like, wrong. Email wouldn't be me.
[00:25:26] Goes faster and faster.
[00:25:28] And so again, this isn't about some conjured up sense of urgency, but I hope that we can recognize a moment where forgiveness must enter the picture.
[00:25:42] I wonder if we can recognize the moment where asking forgiveness has to enter into the Picture.
[00:25:49] I wonder if we need to tell someone that we love them, even though it might be deeply uncomfortable.
[00:25:56] I wonder if there's a risk, a risk in sitting next to Jesus that we have to take.
[00:26:05] So don't postpone these moments.
[00:26:08] Mary certainly seemed to recognize hers, and she was willing to live a life with costly and sacrificial love. And I hope that we are willing to do so right now as well.
[00:26:23] And then the third invitation is this. I hope you let your life carry fragrance, this sweet fragrance.
[00:26:32] I hope your life is lived and you carry yourself in such a way where the atmosphere changes toward peace and contentment. When you walk into a room, as I've experienced that on the other side, I've been in restaurants or in pubs or in environments and locker rooms where someone walks in, you go, I don't know why, but I feel like there's going to be a fight here in a few minutes, right? They change the atmosphere. It's like the room tilts in their direction.
[00:27:00] I wonder if the same, but the opposite could be said for the church.
[00:27:07] There's this really wonderful.
[00:27:09] And I'm going to butcher it, but I'll try not to. There's a.
[00:27:12] There's a biography called Burning in My Bones about Eugene Peterson, the author and pastor.
[00:27:19] And he talks about how his dad had this butcher shop when he was a kid, and he called that butcher shop the holiest place in the whole world.
[00:27:29] And people would come in and it was rich people and poor people and, you know, and he would cut up different items of meat. He would give some things away for free, and he would have, like, this community and communion with them.
[00:27:40] And I don't think his dad was particularly ultra religious or Christian person, but the holiness came from that kind of community.
[00:27:46] And then he said the only thing that would upset the atmosphere in the butcher shop was when the preacher would come in and he would talk all high and mighty and with religious verbiage and try to create this atmosphere about himself that was unbecoming to the butcher shop.
[00:28:04] I wonder if we can hold ourselves the fragrance in a Christianity that doesn't upset the holiness of a generous atmosphere, but instead helps continue to cultivate one.
[00:28:15] I wonder if when people see us and hear us speak of Jesus, that they consider grace and mercy and forgiveness at the top of the list and not trying to win and accomplish some kind of culture war.
[00:28:26] I wonder if there's a sweetness to us that we can provide in every room and family and workplace because this devotion to Jesus, I believe, has us to it your family will notice, your church feels it, and your community can sense that on you.
[00:28:43] And then Jesus, as only he can, sums up this entire idea and story in John 12, verse 23 through 26, says, But Jesus answered them, saying, the hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. And most assuredly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it remains, remains alone. But if it dies, it produces much grain. And he who loves his life will lose it. And he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, let him follow me. And where I am, there my servant will be also. If anyone serves me, him my Father will honor.
[00:29:21] Jesus is speaking to this sacrificial life, and of course he's speaking to what is about to happen to him as death and the cross giving of his life so that we all might live.
[00:29:32] He's also expanding on this sacrificial worship that Mary has, knowing that she's giving up everything that she has and is to follow Jesus in order that something that produces much fruit may come after.
[00:29:46] May our lives be considered the same, that we would be a people formed into being, willing to be those that would give up everything that we have to follow after and to care for Jesus. Amen.
[00:29:59] And so I'm going to give one more invitation, a real simple one.
[00:30:03] And I'm going to ask you, are you someone that wants to begin to follow Jesus today?
[00:30:11] So with every head bowed and every eye closed here for just a moment, I just want to ask you real simply, this is the.
[00:30:20] The original of requests from a platform in a church, from a preacher.
[00:30:25] Do you want to give your life to Christ today?
[00:30:29] Do you want to give up everything that you have or know to begin to follow after this way?
[00:30:37] Maybe you've never made that decision before. And now is one of those. Those moments that you get to recognize it's a Holy Spirit moment that can't be postponed. I want to invite you into that place today. So if that's you, you want to give your life to Jesus, you've never done this before.
[00:30:51] I'm going to ask you to raise your hand in three, two, one, go.
[00:30:54] Put it up. Put it down. Good. I see those hands. Good. Be bold. Anybody else?
[00:31:00] Amen.
[00:31:03] So what we're going to do here in just a moment, this is for those that raise their hand, but everybody in the room, out of their generosity, is going to say this prayer after me.
[00:31:14] It's not a magic potion.
[00:31:17] It's not about saying the exact right words after the exact right preacher in the exact right moment. This is just a push off the dock for your soul to begin this journey.
[00:31:29] And so everybody say this prayer for me. Say, dear Jesus, I give my life to you because you gave your life for me.
[00:31:38] I believe you died on the cross for my sin and you rose again for my salvation.
[00:31:45] I'm not exactly sure what it means yet, but I want to follow you in Jesus name, Amen. Give a big round of applause for those who just gave their lives to Christ.
[00:32:02] Lord, I pray that as we live our lives in this sacrificial way, believing that something has to die in order to be new life to spring from it.
[00:32:12] I pray that as the world calls it waste, we would remember that heaven simply calls it love.
[00:32:21] We pray in this house and in this whole world as we continue to try to bring that heaven into earth, we'd be reminded that it's still filled with this fragrance of devotion and worship.
[00:32:33] Come Lord Jesus, we give you praise and glory and honor. In Jesus name, Amen.
