[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to the message podcast of High Ridge Church, Longview, where our vision is to help, you know, God, find freedom, discover purpose, and ultimately make a difference. We are so glad that you're here, and we pray that this message impacts your life as you apply the spiritual truths from God's word in practical ways.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Let's listen in. I am glad that you're here. I think God's got something special to speak to you, and so grab your Bibles, if you would. We're going to spend some time in the book of Exodus, Exodus, chapter six. I want to apologize for not being able to be there in person, but actually today I am ministering at our High Ridge Mineral Wells campus. They've had some huge wildfires this past week and lots of people have been affected by thousands upon thousands upon thousands of acres just burning. And so we're going to go there and just show some love to them today and take the pulpit and just try to encourage them as much as possible. Just, just. It's important that you know that you have family. You have High Ridge family that's, that's located all over the US and we're a family of churches and it's good that we stay connected to each other. And so that's where I am today. But I thought I would record this for you and give you a chance to, to stay in touch with what we're doing right here in Longview, Texas. So Exodus chapter six is where we're going to spend all of our time.
It's important also that, you know, our groups are launching in just a couple of weeks. So September 13th groups are launching. We have a super series, which means from the littlest of littles all the way up through, through 127 years old, we're all going to be walking through the same kind of discipleship material together in small groups, meeting all over the place. So if you have not registered for a group, highbridgelv.com groups and then click on find a group. And there are groups meeting all over Longview, all over our outlying cities, and we would love for you to be a part of a group. It's important for you to find your tribe to connect to the body of Christ. On a smaller level, we don't just come to church on Sunday and meet in rows. We meet in circles. Right. And, and this is where God does some incredible work. So get in a group. Please hear me. Get in the group. Those are kicking off in just a couple of weeks, so you have some time to find to find your people, to find your tribe, to get in on the right group. And please don't wait till the last moment because these fill up very, very quickly and, and I don't want you to be left out. So groups are a big deal. If, if you're interested, by the way, in leading a group, that's a big deal.
Maybe you have no idea what that looks like. We're going to have a group leaders interest meeting right in, inside of our youth building today. So that's happening at every service.
So if you're listening to this service and you're sitting in the service, in the very next service that happens, we're going to have one, or you can skip, skip out for a couple of seconds, go over there, meet Pastor Paul and some of our other group leaders and say, hey, I think I'd like to lead a group. What does that look like? And we're not going to make you sign in blood or anything. Just it's important that you know that if God has called you to lead and you feel like this is the place where God has planted you, at least come by and meet the people and see what that looks like. We'd love for you to be a part of what God is doing. So Exodus, chapter six.
I believe, I believe it's important that we, that we talk about not just the things that are on our walls. We've talked about what it means to know God, find freedom, discover purpose, make a difference, the four big signs that we have on our wall. But it's important to kind of know where that comes from.
And so I want to bring a message today called the four cups. And so I've got four cups here with me. And I'm not much of a pastoral illustration kind of guy. I don't bring, you know, ladders to the platform or, you know, a big thing of chain from Home Depot for sermon examples. I don't do that a lot, so, so bear with me. It's not, not a big part of my shtick, but I do think it's kind of good to have a visual representation of, of where are where our vision, the vision for our church, where that comes from.
And honestly, I even have a problem with the word vision when people say, what's the vision for your church?
Because it's not my church, it's his church, it's God's church and I just get to be the steward of it. By the way, your finances are the same. They're not your finances, they're his finances. You're the steward. The question is, are we a good steward or a foolish steward? A wise steward. And so this church has God's vision. It has to be lining up with what God wants for his specific church. Now, the cultures in different churches, those things change all the time. Your culture might be different at one church than the other, but the vision for God's church, for his sheep, it needs to be his.
And so we find this exact same vision repeated over and over in Scripture, Old Testament, New Testament. And once you see it in Scripture, by the way, it'll kind of haunt you. You'll see it all over the place. But God has a plan for his people. And we find it here, here in Exodus, chapter six, written out very plainly. And it's where we get to know God, find freedom, discover purpose, make a difference. From those are simplified terms to help people that do not know Christ to understand that God wants to take them on a journey. And this is how. This is the vision of where God wants to take them in order to have. To have a soul that's fulfilled, a soul that is clean before the Lord, a soul that's becoming who God has called it to be. And so it's. It's written in the Scripture. It comes down From Exodus, chapter 6, When. When God promises deliverance to his people, he speaks to Moses and he says, this is. This is what I'm going to do for my people. This is the plan I have for their lives. And he doesn't specifically say, I want them to know God, Find freedom, discover purpose, make a difference. But he gives four I will statements in Scripture. And those four I will statements are a big deal, especially to Jewish people.
You might be familiar with the Passover.
It's a major holiday that the Jewish people celebrate. You might have even been invited to a Seder dinner that celebrates the Passover.
I will tell you this. If you ever get invited to a Seder dinner, don't come hungry, because it's not that kind of dinner. It's a very liturgical, very historical.
It's much different than just come over and let's hang out and have a barbecue. It ain't that it. It's very symbolic in the way that they do it. And at every Seder dinner, as they're celebrating the Passover, they celebrate that with four different cups of wine. And you're like, that's the kind of meal I want to be invited to. Only if you're not Baptist. I'm just kidding. That's out of line. Can't say that we'll go back and cut that in post, not a problem. But there's four different cups that they drink at different parts of the meal. And, and they coincide with these four I will statements that God makes to Moses to his people. This is what God promises to do for his people.
And by the way, it's not just the Passover that they celebrate, but we recognize this in the New Testament when Jesus is doing the Last Supper with his disciples and he does the Passover meal with them. And then Jesus makes some modifications and says, this is who I am. I'm here to fulfill this. So the promise of God has always been there and it's reflected in these four I will statements that are celebrated with the Passover. What we now know is the vision that God has for his church, for his people, that are reflected in our four statements. So this is called the four cups. And read along with me, if you would. This Exodus, chapter six. Pick it up. In verse six, God says this to Moses when he's promising deliverance. Therefore say to the Israelites, I am the Lord and I will. Here's the first I will statement. I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. We see this recognized in modern lingo as God saying, I'm going to save you. I'm going to pull you out of the yoke and the bondage to the Egyptians or the bondage to your sin. And God promises that salvation. He says, I will free you. I'll bring you out from the bondage of the yoke of the Egyptians. And here's the second I will statement. I will free you from being slaves to them. It's interesting that God says, I'm going to bring you out of slavery, and then I'm going to bring you out of the, the slavery that's inside of your mind. God says, I'm gonna, I'm. I'm gonna help you understand that just because I brought you out of a situation doesn't mean that situation has been brought out of you. So there's a process that God says, I want you to be saved. And then I want you to. To start finding freedom from the things that make you believe that you're still a slave.
Now we see this reflected all the way, all the way back in each of our own lives. You know, you might have said a prayer or repented or really turned your life over to Christ, but you didn't change. Over and out. You say, I love God, but I still cuss a little. I love God, but I still kick my dog or whatever it may be.
We understand this, that there's some stuff I got to work on. There's stuff that has to come out of my heart.
And God says, I understand that. That's the process. So you're not just, not just saved, but God says, now I got to get that mindset out of you. We got to get some freedom into you. I will free you from being slaves to them. And God says, number three. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm.
I love that. And we see this reflected in Christ as well, when, when Jesus stretches out his arms on, on the cross. And this is a picture also of, of God says, I'm going to, I'm going to redeem you with an outstretched arm. God said, I'm going to show you my power. I'm going to show you the, the, the wonderful, powerful, amazing things that I'm going to, that I'm going to do in, in your, in your life and with your freedom process. I'm going to redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. He is, he is a powerful God that does, he still does mighty things.
And then God says, here's the fourth. I will, I will take you as my own people. Notice that the heart of God has always been to put us into a people, not to do it alone. But God wants you to be his people, his family. He puts you into the body of Christ. And this is a big deal. He said, then I'll be your God, and, and then you'll know that I am the Lord. And so at every Seder dinner, at every Passover, they would celebrate those four I will statements by drinking another cup of wine. And so the four cups are kind of reflected in that. And if you've, if you've, ever been a part of that, you understand it. For those of us, you know, raised up in America, I don't know anything about Passover and Seder meals and the, the Communion, the Last Supper. Like, we weren't taught those things. We're just taught, go to church and pay your tithes. But there's, there's a vision that God has for his people. And it's one of the things that, I think it makes churches extremely ineffective that we don't know what does God want for his people.
And God says, this is what I promised. This is what I'm going to do. This is my hope for you. This is my promise to you. And so I think that that changes a lot of things inside of our hearts when we recognize that most people Just want God to change their circumstances. But God wants to change stories. He wants to change the story of your life. He wants to change your future. He wants to show you why you're here and what your purpose is. He wants you to, to live a life that makes a difference.
Doesn't want to just be a Santa Claus. And by the way, can God change circumstances? Absolutely he can.
But God really wants to change your story.
And so what does it mean when we're talking about these four cups? And so I want to break those down just a little bit more so we can make it clear in our own minds of what High Rage Longview is all about. What does it mean to, to know God, find freedom, discover purpose, make a difference. It's based on those four cups. And so the first promise, God says the, the first I will statement, God says, I will bring you out. So that in the seder service is called the cup of sanctification.
Now that's a, that's a very churchy word that we don't, that we don't use anymore. But it just means I'm going to change locations. I'm going to, I'm going to set you apart. I'm going to take you from this and move you over here.
God says, I'm going to, I'm going to change your location. God makes a promise in this that I'm going to. I'm going to save you, he says. And he says, still today, through the blood of Christ, God, man, God can save anybody. God can save anyone. Regardless of circumstances, regardless of your sin, God makes a promise. If you call upon me, I will save you. If you, if you, if you choose me, if you ask me to forgive your sins, God says, I will hear you. I will forgive your sins. God can absolutely still save. He is mighty to save. He saves us from our sin.
And so that's the cup of sanctification. You're, you're. God says, I'll pull you out of Egypt. I'll rescue you. I, I will save you. I, I love that. It's, it's kind of built around that word rescue.
That's a big deal. I, I don't think, I don't think we, we. We really understand the depths of the rescuing that each of us needed with, with, without Christ, we, we don't understand where, where we were in our life of sin. Sometimes we, we forget what it meant to be rescued because we're good people, we do good things. We, we don't really recognize the depths of our sin. But the Bible says the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. We needed rescuing, I needed help.
God's first promise, Let me say it this way. God's first promise wasn't, wasn't freedom, it was separation. God says, I'm going to separate you.
So the important thing to see here is God doesn't say God, God doesn't say you will do this. God says, I will do this.
God makes a promise. He doesn't say you will get saved or you will save yourself. I can't change me. I could not save myself. I could not self rescue and neither could you. We are not saved by our own works, we are not saved by our own grace. It has to be the grace of God. God says, I'm the one that's going to do this.
You can't save yourself. Ephesians 2:8 says, for it is by, by grace, not your grace, his grace, by grace that you've been saved. And this is, this is a gift, this is, this is not from yourselves.
I need a rescue. I needed salvation. I needed separation from the chains of my sin. And God says, I promise you this, you call on me and I will save you. God's heart has always been to save people. As a matter of fact, I believe God wants us to be fruitful and he, he wants us to be fruitful even more than he calls us to be faithful.
Case in point. Look, look at the, look at the story of, of the, the stewards when, when the, the landowner leaves and, and, and he gives these people a certain amount of money and he says, you know, I want you, I'm going to come back and I expect you to do great things with it. And what we would call faithful, the one that just kept it and hoarded it and buried it in the sandy, he calls it wicked.
God says, I want you to do something with your life. I'm going to, I'm going to give you a great and wonderful gift. I'm going to, I'm going to save you and then I want you to do something with it. So when we talk about the, this cup of sanctification and grace and this promise that God says, I will, I will bring you, bring you out, God wants us to recognize that his heart has always been to bring people out of that life of sin. This is why in our church services you will never, hardly ever find a Sunday morning service where we don't give an, an invitation to get to know Jesus to, to, to be saved. Why? Because I never assumed that everybody that's watching this, this, this sermon is, is right with God.
There, there was a Sunday where I was sitting there and I needed somebody to love me enough to give me the gospel and to tell me that God had a plan for my life, that I needed, I needed rescuing, I needed salvation. And I'm so thankful for faithful ministers that still preach the gospel and that I needed to be saved. And here's the promise from God. He says, I will, I will save you. I will bring you out. So the first promise of God was not to change our behavior, but to change our position.
God says, I'm going to bring you out and no longer are you Egyptians, now you're Hebrews, now you're my people. No longer are you slaves, now your sons. No longer are you orphans, now you're family. God changes our position long before he changes your behavior.
So to get saved doesn't mean I'm automatically going to change my behavior. That, that's going to come in step two.
But God says, I'm going to change your position.
I'm going to remove you from where you were and put you over here. That's the cup of sanctification. So salvation is not just escaping hell, but it's the beginning of a relationship, a beautiful relationship between us and the father. Here's the second cup that we see the celebrating the Seder services. And this would be the cup of deliverance. Now, for those of us raised in the, in the Pentecostal world, we know that word of deliverance as something different than what other other people might know as. But you know, to get delivered means you're going to go down front, they're going to bring out some buckets, you're going to vomit in the bucket. That's what's going to happen because you got devils cast out of you. This, this is not necessarily what he's talking about here. The cup of deliverance, honestly, is the, is in my opinion, the cup that most Christians never drink.
They're saved, but they never allow the Lord to start dealing with their yesterdays, to start dealing with the Egyptian slavery mindset.
They're going to heaven, but they're not becoming all that God has called them to be. They never want to allow the Lord to begin to work on their issues, to work on their junk, to work on their, on their hurts and habits and hangups and their yesterdays and their faults and their traumas. We all have them. We need to be delivered. We need the sanctification process, we need the deliverance process. And God says, now that I've brought you out of Egypt. Here's what I promise you. I'm going to bring that Egypt out of you.
I'm going to get that mindset out of you. Because you're thinking too much like a slave. You're thinking too much like an Egyptian. No, no, you're. You're a son now. You're no longer a slave. You're part of my family.
You have intrinsic value and worth. You just don't know it.
And so I want to dig all that stuff up out of your life so you can become who I've always meant for you to be. And we need that. You know, we call that discipleship. We need discipleship. And that's going to happen, by the way, in relationship with other believers. We're to disciple one another. We're to pray for one another. James 5 says, Pray for one another and confess our sins to one another so that we can. We can find healing. So we confess our sins to God to find forgiveness, but we're going to have to get in a group of people and start confessing our faults, one to another, praying for each other, so we can find healing. And this is something that most believers will never do. They'll drink the first cup. Oh, I love that. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for rescuing me. Thank you, Lord, for your sanctification. But when it comes to the deliverance process, ooh, I'm afraid people will look at me differently if I actually talk about what I'm struggling with, what I'm hanging up on.
There's a cup that you need to drink, and that cup of deliverance is a big deal. So healing doesn't happen alone. It happens in biblical community.
This is, you know, we. We go into God to ask for forgiveness, but we go to his people to find healing.
And once you start confessing it, once you. Once you find some people that you can trust and you can take that mask off, once we get you in a small group where you start getting honest, you're going to be shocked at how quickly things begin to get dealt with. You'll find yourself not struggling the same way anymore. The more you just. You speak it out and say it, and you find accountability and you find some healing. You. You recognize, like, this isn't as strong as I thought it was. I can do this. I get some encouragement. Those things begin to break off your life because it goes back to a promise from God that he will deliver you. He will absolutely help you. So salvation removes the penalty of sin, but freedom breaks the power of sin.
If you're willing to drink from that cup, here's the third cup that we see in the Seder dinner and the Passover meal. The fourth, the third, I will promise that God makes. And God says, I will redeem you. That's the cup of redemption.
I will redeem you. So that word redemption is a little bit different in church circles than it is to other people that don't understand the word. We might think of, you know, you redeemed a coupon or you redeemed a gift code or whatever, you might think. But to redeem biblically means to restore something to its original purpose.
God has a purpose for your life, and we have purposes for our life. We think that, you know, this is my purpose, I'm going to do this, or I'm good at that, or we have all these different things that even people will tell us is the purpose for our lives.
But there's an original purpose. There's a purpose that God has because he created you. He designed you. And once we've walked through sanctification, where God pulls us out and where God begins to deliver us from those other things that have kept us from becoming who God has called us to be, we can be redeemed.
God says, I'm going to tell you who you were always supposed to be.
I'm going to show you.
So Ephesians 2 says, we are God's handiwork. God created us. He made you just the way you are for a specific reason. It says, we were created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do long before you knew what they were. God says, I had something for you.
This is where we get our line to discover purpose, discover who God has called me to be, what I was always meant to be. The things that God has put inside of me that. That helped me to. To become something more than what I've limited myself by. So God does. He doesn't just fix what's broken, but he gives us purpose. We have. We have a ministry. Each of us. We have a testimony. We have gifts. We. We have things that God has resourced us with. God says, I'm going to use that to redeem you, to show you exactly why you have those things and why I made you that way. So God doesn't just redeem your past so that you can forget it, but he redeems it so he can. So he can use it for his glory.
And I love that man.
It's a powerful testament to what God can do. I've seen these at work in my own life, and I hope you've seen them at work in yours. But this really is the vision for the church.
God wants to make sure that we know him, that we can find freedom from our yesterdays, that we can discover that purpose. Now, if you think about it, right before Jesus goes to the cross, we have what's known as the, as the Last Supper. I heard an old joke about that that says, what's the last thing Jesus said at the Last Supper?
And it's, everybody get on this side of the table if you want to be in the picture. Which is, that's a horrible joke. I'm sorry, we'll cut that out in post.
But at the Last Supper, it's not just them sitting down to have a meal. They're actually doing the Passover together. Jesus is leading the Passover, having a seder meal with his disciples. And so he has the, the four cups of wine. He has the, the matzah, the, the crackers. And, and he would, he would, he would break that and he would, he would tell him, this is my body.
And Scripture tells us this. When Jesus gets to that, that third cup, this is Luke 22, verse 20, it says, after supper, Jesus took the cup. And this would have been in, in the order that Jesus is doing this is that, that cup, that cup of redemption?
And Jesus begins to make a left hand turn when he starts saying, this is not just another cracker. This is my body. This is not just the lamb. This is the Passover lamb. And, and the Passover lamb is, is me. Jesus begins to say, I'm your redeemer.
This is fulfilled in, in me.
And that would have, that would invoke some curiosity from his disciples that are like, wait, that's not how this is supposed to go. Our people have been doing this for a couple of thousand years now. We, we know how the Passover is supposed to go. We know the words that are supposed to be spoken. It's very symbolic, it's liturgical, it's very historical, it's very rigid. This is what's supposed to happen. And Jesus like, except there's something new happening here.
So Jesus, Luke 22:20, after supper, he took the cup saying, this is the new covenant.
And it's not just wine. He said, this is, this is my blood which is poured out for you.
Wow. All of a sudden those symbolic things of a lamb and blood over the doorpost that God had used to deliver his people that they were remembering comes alive just like that and they recognize, wait a minute. Jesus has a purpose and I have a purpose. And it's more than just to remember the past, but it's to walk into the gifting that God has called for me to walk in.
Jesus had been walking them through this process without them even knowing it. Now, in this Passover meal, right before he goes to the cross, he takes that third cup. He said, it's a new covenant, the covenant of grace.
It restores you to your purpose. And so Jesus, you know, he surprises them by saying, I'm the Passover lamb. I'm the spotless, the sinless lamb. Remind yourself of John the Baptist when he sees Christ coming. Before he baptized him, he says, but behold the Lamb of God, which takes away the sins of the world. People would have said, what are you talking about? You're the Passover lamb. He is the Passover lamb.
Jesus Christ is the sinless, spotless lamb, once and for all sacrificed on a cross for me and for you to fulfill the plan that God has for every single person. He wants them all to come to repentance, to know him, to find freedom that can only be found in Christ and to be restored to the purpose that he always has had for them so that he can make them into his family. You see, true purpose can never be found outside of Jesus Christ. You will never find your purpose anywhere else. You will make up purposes, or you'll follow somebody else's wisdom or their advice or what their vision is for your life. You will never find purpose outside of Christ. You have to know him. You have to let him do the work. You have to recognize the new covenant of your redemption. It's only found in the blood of Jesus Christ. Isn't that beautiful?
There's a fourth cup, which is kind of interesting. All these are processes, but then it gets to this, this fourth cup. And the Jewish people call this the cup of praise.
Why do they call it a cup of praise? Because you've had four cups of wine. Woo. Let's pray like. No, it's not really that, but praise is a word that we use in church circles that usually means music.
You know, it's kind of what we did at the beginning of this service. We're going to. We're going to praise God. And that's a. That's a beautiful, wonderful thing. But that's not really what this means. A cup of praise to Jewish people doesn't mean music necessarily. A better word for that, for the cup of praise. When they drink that symbolically, what that means is Fulfillment. It means a fulfilled life.
It means I'm doing what God's called me to do. This is my purpose. This is what I was meant to do all along. This is me gathering with a group of believers, becoming who God is called us to be. We're walking as his holy people, a church that is mobilized to make a difference.
It's the cup of praise. So God. God's plan has always been to take individuals and to put them into a family. We see that in Exodus, chapter six. He says, then you will be my people.
You'll be my people. God's heart has always been to make you into a we.
It's. It's. It's bigger than you. It's. It's bigger than what you could ever accomplish on your own. He wants you to be a people.
And a lot of believers still resist that. No, I don't want. I just want to come to church and kind of do my own thing, be anonymous. I don't want to be a part of what you guys are doing. I'm not going to drink the whole Kool Aid. That's not God's plan for you.
God's ways are better. His thoughts are better. His ways are higher.
He wants you to be a people.
He wants you to stand together. He wants us to be part of his family and to be mobilized to make a difference together.
And. And Jewish people call that the. The cup of praise. You. You won't be really fulfilled until you understand that fourth cup.
So God. God's plan for me is, is to find fulfillment living beyond myself.
It's. It's bigger than you. It's bigger than me. So it's interesting that at the Last Supper, when Jesus is.
Is drinking these cups and breaking that cracker and handing it to each of them, most scholars would agree that Jesus never drinks that fourth cup. He doesn't finish the meal.
And if you kind of read it and you read it in the context, you'll recognize that where these parts of the story go, and they don't really tell us that Jesus ever drank the fourth cup, that cup of praise, that cup of fulfilled life. And he never finishes the meal, which is interesting. But I want to show you this.
When Jesus was on the cross, we find this in John, chapter 19. And I've never seen this before. I was looking it up this week.
Verse 28, Jesus on the Cross. One of his last words says, I'm thirsty.
And what do they do? A jar of wine vinegar was there. So they soaked a sponge in it, and they Put the sponge on a stalk of a hyssop plant and they. They lifted it up to Jesus's lips.
And when he had received the drink cup, number four. Jesus says, it's finished.
It's done.
His fulfillment of prophecy was done.
The fulfillment of God's promises was complete. In the work of Christ, so that we could be who God has called us to be, we have a way.
Not through our best works or our best efforts, but Jesus himself was the Passover lamb. And we understand that this is God's vision. God's heart. It's reflected in Christ himself.
He is the covenant. He's the new covenant. He is our hope.
And God's vision for his people has never changed, even if we understand it differently as we look at the life of Christ. The perfect sacrifice was complete on the cross. The debt was paid. The way to the Father was opened. A new family was born. It's God promises, it's his vision and it's done.
Jesus says it's finished. So like I said, you know, it's.
It's difficult to a lost person coming to church for the first time or for some, you know, prodigal that might have gone to Sunday school a few times, and they come into church and we're like, you know, what's the vision for the church? What are we doing here? Like, oh, let me tell you about the four cups of Passover and Seder. They. That's not going to make any sense to somebody that doesn't know Jewish customs in history. So we've simplified it and tried to make it into. Put it into language where lost people can understand.
We want you to know God.
We want you to find freedom.
That happens in groups. We want you to discover your purpose. We have a fantastic class to help you find the things that God has uniquely crafted you to do so that ultimately your life can be a life of fulfillment. You can make a difference with whatever time that you have left. It's the journey that God has for his people. It's the journey God has for you. It's the journey he has for me. It's the vision he has for him, his church. And when we begin to line ourselves up with his vision, when we start trusting in his promises of what he said he would do, things begin to get a little nutty because now you're putting your church, your life, your family underneath the vision that God has for you.
And things begin to get blessed when you do it God's way. Let me just tell you, the fourth cup reminds us that God's greatest blessing isn't that he saved us from Egypt, but that's. He made us his people.
He's God with us. He's.
He's us, and he invites us to become his people.
So if you're far away from God, if you've. If you've maybe were raised up in church, but you've never really submitted your life to Christ, or maybe you know that you're saved, but you've. You've never.
You've never really asked the Lord to start dealing with your stuff.
Or maybe you've decided, I don't want to drink the cup of that I deliverance stuff, the redemption stuff. I don't really want to want God's purpose for my life. Maybe you find yourself halting somewhere along the journey. Let me just tell you, his ways are better. It's good. Why? Because God's good and the plan he has for your life is good. And so if you don't know him today, I want to help you. Just like somebody helped me one time. Somebody loved me enough to introduce me to Jesus, to tell me that my life had meaning and purpose.
Somebody loved me enough to tell me I was not okay just living my life, my way.
And I'm so thankful that somebody was that gracious and kind and compassionate and loving that they would lead me to Jesus.
If you want to know him today, I'm going to lead you in a prayer. And maybe you're a person that said, I was raised in church and I've done the things, but I've just gotten away from God. I got off that journey. I've found myself running. I've gotten busy. I get it.
But if you could see it right now, God himself is reaching down his hand to you and saying, come home.
It's time to come home. God has a plan for your life. He has a vision for your life. He makes promises to you. And God will always make good on his promises. Come home, he says.
So if you say, that's me, Pastor, I want a relationship with Jesus, or I need to come home to Jesus, then I'm going to lead you in a prayer. I'm going to ask that you say these words out loud with me once again. I'm not going to embarrass you in any way. I'm not going to make you walk some aisle or something, do anything embarrassing. I would never do that. We're going to pray this prayer out loud. And as a matter of fact, all of us listening to this video, we're going to say this prayer out loud right now so that nobody feels embarrassed. But we need to say this.
So would you bow your head and close your eyes with me?
Saints, let's say this out loud. Just say, jesus, I believe you are the Son of God.
I believe that you came and died, and I believe you rose from the grave so that I could have life and forgiveness for all of my sins.
Please forgive me and I'll give you the rest of my life in Jesus name.
And with heads bowed and eyes closed with nobody else looking around. I'm not going to embarrass you in any way, but if you prayed that prayer and you say, pastor, I meant that prayer. I'm coming home to Jesus right now. I choose him. Would you just lift up your hand all across this place. Would you lift it up nice and high and proud. Just, just for one second. Would you lift up your hand? Good, good. You can put your hands down. For those of you that just prayed that prayer, there's a phone number coming on a screen. Would you look up at the screen right now? And I want to invite you to text me, text the words I prayed to that number. And then I'm going to send you the link to some things that will help you take your walk with Jesus to the next level. Good for you. I'm proud of you.
Everybody else, go ahead and look up with me if you would. And let me just. Let me say it's been such an honor bringing God's word to you here today. I pray that you've learned something. You've been able to dive a little bit deeper into the scripture and now you know kind of why we're here and what God wants for us, you know, why we put stuff up on our walls.
And so hopefully it helps you to be able to trust that this church is. Is trying to do things a little bit differently. We're trying to do things God's way because his ways are. Are better. And hopefully that translates into your home and into your family, into your Monday. You can do things God's way. So would you stand to your feet with me? And I'm going to turn it back over to your service toast and I pray you have an amazing afternoon.
[00:33:52] Speaker C: It's a great message.
So glad that you are here today. I pray that as we go out this week, those words will continue to resonate in our hearts. And I'm going to invite our elders and their wives to come forward at this time. We're going to make them available to you for prayer. You might want prayer related to something that you heard in the message today, or it may be something completely unrelated, something going on in your life or your work or with relationships. Whatever it may be, we want to make prayer available to you. It's free.
We're not going to charge you for it.
And don't leave here today. If you would like someone to pray with you and lose out on this opportunity, really want to encourage you to take advantage of it. I'm going to pray over you and bless you as you go out. Father, thank you so much for today.
Thank you God that we can come together. We can worship in your presence, we can hear your word spoken to us and we can grow and we can learn and we can get better in our walk with you. Thank you Father. Be with your people as they go out through the week. Be with them. Let them be aware of your presence in Jesus name. Amen. God bless you. Have a great afternoon.
[00:35:02] Speaker A: Thank you so much for listening in today. Our prayer is that you are encouraged and strengthened by the message. If you haven't done so yet, be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave us a review wherever you're listening.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: If you want to be a part
[00:35:15] Speaker A: of our online community, connect with us through Facebook or Instagram with the handle hyridgelv or you can check out our
[email protected] lastly, if this ministry has impacted your life and you'd like to support its work, visit highridgelv.com we appreciate your support and we're believing with you today for God's best in your life. Have an incredible week and we will see you next time.
