← Jentezen Franklin at Free Chapel
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Hello, this is Jensen Franklin, and thank you so much for joining us for this week's podcast. Our goal is to provide you with biblically based teachings that will challenge, inspire, and equip you to live for Jesus. If you haven't already, I'd love for you to go ahead and subscribe today to this podcast so you can get the latest updates from us and you don't ever have to miss a new message. Let's go right into the service. Record it at Freechapel. I believe it's going to bless you today.
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Another mighty shout of praise today, Church. Is he worthy? Is he worthy? Is there anyone else worthy of all of our praise, all of our awe, all of our honor? There's no one else worthy but Jesus Christ, the living God, the same God from yesterday today, and he will reign forever. Do you believe that this morning? He's a good guy. He's a powerful God. Do you love him this morning? Is that the cry of your heart? I know it is. Mine and my life. Be lifted high in our world. Be lifted high. Because without you, your name being lifted higher than any other name, everything thing will fall. And so today we. We will lift your name high, Church. We will say, the gates of hell shall not prevail against the body of Christ. Do you believe that today? Do you love him? Give him one more shout of praise. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Halleluj. It's hard to transition out of that. Amen. I don't know about you guys, but over the last couple of weeks, this is the only place I've wanted to be, just in his presence. I don't want it to end. I just need to sit and saturate in the presence of God. And if you've never felt peace and you're in this room and you can't quite put your finger on what it is, that is the presence of Jehovah that's in this room. Yahweh, the creator of everything, he's here. He's in this room today. And we lift his name high in everything that we do. Amen. Well, greet someone around you. Tell him, welcome to church. Say, you look great today and you may be seated. For those of you who don't know who I am, my name is Courtney Vince, and my parents are the pastors of this church, Pastor Jensen and Charisse. And they were asked to go preach. Well, my dad. My mother, not my mother, wasn't, but my father was asked to go preach. If you know my mom, you know why that's funny. But My father was asked to go preach at a church in Hawaii. And I told him, told him that I would go in his stead if he really wanted to be here at Free Chapel with you guys. But. And I was willing to go and do that for the Lord. And he said, you know, which would you rather do? And I said, of course I would rather be with Free Chapel than in Hawaii. So how many of you just noticed that I'm here and he's there? So I love you more, essentially. You're welcome. I'm kidding. But today they actually flew back. I talked to them last night while they were getting on a plane. And this afternoon they will be in Arizona attending Charlie Kirk's memorial service. And so grateful for Charlie, honor his life and the Jesus that he proclaimed. Amen. And, yeah, my dad will be back next week. He'll be back before then. Because coming up this week, in this house, where are my ladies? We have Divine Conference, our annual women's conference here at our Gainesville location. And then we will all go out to California and do it again out there at our Orange county campus. And when women gather, when they believe, when they seek the Lord, things begin to change. I believe that. And so be in prayer this week. And if you did not buy your tickets in advance, there is nothing I can do for you. We are completely sold out. You can send me all the Instagram DMs you want. I don't even know if I have a ticket at this point. But we hope that you buy those in advance next year so that it doesn't sell out. Amen. But I believe that I have a word from the Lord today. How many of you are excited to be in the house of God? I sure am. And if you have your Bibles, if you'll turn with them in them with me to Matthew chapter 14, I'm going to start there today. I'm going to talk about a very famous Bible story, but I want to pick something out of it that has really stood out to me in different seasons of my life that I believe and I pray will bless someone here today. And so we'll start reading in about verse 13 and go to about 21. So when Jesus heard it, he departed from there by boat to a deserted place by himself. And when the multitudes heard it, they followed him on foot from the cities. And when Jesus went out, he saw a great multitude. And he was moved with compassion for them and healed their sick. And when it was evening, his disciples came to him saying, this is a deserted place. And the hour is already late. Send the multitudes away that they may go into the villages and buy themselves food. But Jesus said to them, they don't need to go away. You need to give them something to eat. And I just like how salty sometimes Jesus was with his disciples. It makes me feel a little bit more like he's a lot like you and I, right? He's like, there's only a couple thousand of them. Feed them. What's your problem? Why are you talking to me? I just healed all of them. I love that. But, you know, he said, okay, well, bring. We only have five loaves and two fish. And he said, bring them here to me. Then he commanded the multitudes to sit down in the grass. And this is the part I want to focus on this morning. And he took. Everybody Say he took the five loaves and two fish. And looking up to heaven, he blessed. Everybody say, he blessed. He blessed it, and then he broke it. Everybody say, broke it. And then gave the loaves, plural. He multiplied it to the disciples, and the disciples gave it to the multitudes. Say they all ate and were filled, and they took up 12 baskets full of fragments that remained leftovers. Now, those who had eaten were about 5,000 men, besides women and children. How many of you have heard of this Bible story? Good. And if you haven't, don't worry about it. But it's an important story in the Bible. In fact, it's the only story in the Bible that is in all four Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. That beside the Resurrection, it's an important thing that it's mentioned. It's the only miracle in the Bible that's mentioned outside of the Resurrection in all four Gospels. And so what that tells us is we shouldn't just skim past it. We should focus in on every word and every detail of what's happening in this story. And Matthew tells us that it was 5,000 men beside women and children. So most Bible scholars believe that in all likelihood, it was closer to 15 to 20,000 people this day. This was not a small gathering. It was a massive group of people. And Jesus took five barley loaves, in all likelihood that a young boy's mother had packed in his lunchbox five barley loaves, which would have been the poor man's food, and two fish. And sometimes I think we think these were big, massive salmon or catfish, but in all likelihood, they were likely small sardines. And a lot of times we read stories like this, and we think he took that and he made this great, beautiful, exceptional thing, and we skip right over the process in which he took to get there. And he's such a good God, and he's so powerful and he's so mighty. But I feel like sometimes we skip to the end result and we look over the important steps that often have to take place before a miracle can happen in our lives. Jesus didn't just snap his finger and make food appear. He took it, he blessed it, he broke it, and then he multiplied it. Repeat this after me. He took it, he blessed it, he broke it, he multiplied it. And if we're honest, I don't know about you guys, but I really like the blessing and I really like the multiplication. Not the biggest fan of the taking and the breaking. Maybe you guys are better than me, but I just. I don't really enjoy that. It's not something that I look forward to in my life. It's not something that I ask God for. We sometimes treat God like he's a genie who exists to give us what we want, when we want it, and how we want it. We pray quick prayers when life feels overwhelming, when nobody else picks up the phone, and we expect God to then answer us, when he's our last resort, and figure out our situation and our problem that we're facing, how we want it done on the timeline that we need it done, and exactly how we say to do it. But that's simply not how it works. When life doesn't look like we thought it would, the story isn't unfolding how we pictured it. We get discouraged and disillusioned. I never thought I'd be 35 and divorced with two kids. I never thought that I'd be filing for bankruptcy in this season of my life. I never thought the cancer would come back. I never thought that my family, our family, would be sitting in such a place of grief and pain because someone in our family took their own life. Life comes hard and it comes fast. And the lights go out and pain sets in, and it feels like life has gone completely off the rails. Have you ever been there? I have. And sometimes when we're not seeing any evidence of God doing something, we fear that he's doing nothing. What do you do when the hurt feels hopeless? You trust the process of the miracle. And so there's four quick points that I have to give to you today that I believe will help someone in this room. If you're going through a process where you need help and you're feeling like you're in one of these seasons, I believe the Lord gave Me this word for you today. Point number one, if you're taking notes, is he took it. This is the first step that Jesus took the bread and the fish, before he can bless it, before he could break it, and before he could multiply it, he had to take it. And that's the step that many of us resist if we're being honest, because when we allow him to take it, that means that we're no longer in control. And can we admit that we don't really enjoy not being in control? And if I can't get an amen from a woman in here, you're all liars. We like control. We think that we should orchestrate our own lives and our hands need to be in all of our children's lives. And go, I've got this perfect scheme and plan for my marriage and if my husband would just get in line, then everything would work out. And God, I don't know, I'm not the problem, he is. And Lord, if you would fix all of them and deal with them, that would just make this a lot easier for me. But the problem is that's not us releasing situations and circumstances and our problems into his hands. It's not even us releasing our lives into his hands. And all the while we walk around exhausted, anxious and overwhelmed because we want to carry around God sized burdens on human sized shoulders. But Matthew 11 tells us, Come follow me and I will give you rest for your soul. But this is an important part of the Scriptures. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. It's not just a simple exchange, it's a discipline that we have to begin to walk in learning from the Lord. First Peter 1:5:7 says, Casting all your cares upon him, for he cares for you. But here's the problem many of us have is we don't want to cast it because we're clutching it. A cast is when you're fishing, you don't do this. I'm just gonna put it right here and I'm gonna wait. Casting is fully releasing so that the thing that needs to be caught comes back. He can't touch what you keep clutched. The same posture that we receive with is the same posture in which we retrieve release. What are you clutching today that you shouldn't be clutching? We walk to God like this and say, okay, God, I know you're the creator of the universe, but I just to want, I'm gonna hold onto it and if you'll just touch it, I would really enjoy if you could do it. And can you do it before Thanksgiving. Because if you don't do it before Thanksgiving and nobody's getting along, it's gonna be a real issue. Okay? And they're, you know, these are the problems. And yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that you might be trying to do something in me, God, but really, I need you. Just touch it, hold it. I'm gonna hold it. You touch and I'll hold. And we play this game of tug of war with God over our lives. He can't bless what you won't let him take. When you give God your broken marriage, your hurt from betrayal, your diagnosis, you're not losing control, you're gaining the healer's touch. It's time for us to stop playing tug of war with God, with our lives. You say you trust God with your children, but you're carrying the weight of every choice they make. You're lying awake at night, replaying conversations, concerned, trying to figure out how truly you can control and manipulate their lives when God says, if you would just give them to me. You say you trust God with your future, but you're clinging to that relationship that you know is not of the Lord. You say you trust God with your marriage, but you refuse to release the bitterness and unforgiveness that has built up over time. Trust is really this. Trust is simply disciplined thinking. Giving it to God isn't just a moment of saying, lord, take this, then snatching it back up five minutes later. It's a lifestyle of trust that's built through prayer. And the Word. Prayer is how you stay close to him, learning to lean on his strength in. In the moments of your weakness, because that's where his strength is made perfect. Trust is choosing the Word and how you feel. Fill your mind over and over with a daily renewal of truth so that when the lies come, this truth will rise up above it so that you can stand on that prayer is how you stay close to him, leaning on his strength. The Word is how you fill your mind with his truth when the enemy comes. Romans 12:2 tells us we're transformed by the renewing of our minds. 2nd Corinthians 10:5 tells us we need to take every thought captive to obey Jesus Christ, not Him. We need to take every thought, every single thought captive to obey what? The word of Jesus Christ. Not our emotions, not our feelings, not what's convenient. But taking every thought captive to obey the Word of God, that trust doesn't just happen by accident. It's a discipline. Every time worry comes, every time fear speaks, every time lies surface, you have to train your mind to replace them with truth. Train your mind with truth. If you don't train your mind with truth, it will always be troubled with lies. Trust is disciplined thinking, which is ritual thinking. It's choosing to say he's God at the top and He's God in the bottom. He's God in the healing and He's God in death. He's God when it's good and He's God when it's bad. He's God when I'm blessed and He's God when I'm broken. He is God and God alone. And here's the reality. If we don't stay in the Word, we won't have the truth to replace the lies with. If we don't stay in prayer, we won't have the strength to keep releasing what God is asking us to let go of. Prayer teaches you to release. The Word, teaches you how to renew. Once you release it and it's in his hands, then and only then can he bless it. Point two is he blessed it, and this is the one that everybody should shout about. Y' all are pitiful. I guess the Lord's not blessed anybody in this room. God bless me. God call me. God use me. God give me all the things. Right? This one's easy, we think. Notice Jesus blessed the bread before it ever changed. He looked at five loaves and two fish, not enough to feed thousands. And what did he do? He blessed it anyways. And here's what that means for us personally. He looks at the mess that is you and his eye, and he blesses us anyways. And I am so thankful for that today. Are you the miracle of not enough being placed into the hands of a more than enough God? Sometimes we wait for circumstances to shift before we believe we're blessed. But the blessing isn't in things working out. The blessing is in his presence. Before David was anointed king, he was a shepherd boy. And the Bible tells us in first Samuel 16, then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from when? That day forward. But David didn't then go to a throne room. David went right back to the field. And on the natural, it didn't look like anything had changed. But in the supernatural, everything had changed because God's presence went with him. Some of you have been blessed and you think it's about the situation that you're looking at and you're facing. But it's not the blessing is not in the things. The blessing is in his presence. You prayed for marriage, and maybe God gave it. The blessing isn't just in the butterflies and the honeymoon phase. The blessing is in God's presence in the covenant. Even on the hard days, you prayed for healing, but sometimes it doesn't come instantly. The blessing is in the strength to continue to walk week in and week out outside of treatment. It's to continue to walk in peace with the Lord when nothing in front of you is certain or sure. He wants you to know his presence and not just his provision. Here's the tension. When you're in a season of blessing, we often get comfortable. We stop praying. We stop depending on him like we did when we were desperate. That's why God doesn't just bless to bless. He blesses with a purpose. He always has a purpose and a plan. But the problem is we only want security. We only want comfort. We only want happiness here on earth. But we are called to a higher calling. We are called to carry his presence, to walk in his purpose, and to lift people and point people to Jesus. The blessing isn't in the things. The blessing is in his presence. But here's the part we don't shout about. The blessing always comes before the breaking. The third thing that Jesus did was he broke it. This is the part of the miracle process that none of us want. The breaking, the crushing. We love the blessing and we will shout about the multiplying, but nobody volunteers for the breaking. We don't want to lean into the pain of the breaking moments of life. Because somewhere along the way, not through a biblical worldview, but through an earthly worldview, we began to think that walking with Jesus meant the absence of trouble. John 16 tells us, I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world. Notice he didn't say might. Notice he didn't say. Possibly he said, you will have trouble. But then he gives us the promise of his presence in the midst of brokenness. God breaks us to make us into something new. Isaiah 64 tells us, I am the potter, you are the clay. If he breaks us, it's in order to make us into what he needs us to be. Charles Spurgeon said it like this. Whenever God means to make a man great or a woman great, he always breaks him into pieces. Pieces first. He can pick up all your pieces and put you back together much better than you started. You can't have the same issues going into the next season of life. It's time for you to move forward from that trauma. It's time for you to let him break open some wounds that you've always just kept the band aid on. Some of you walk around with massive scabs all over your body in a spiritual realm, and every time you bump into something, they start bleeding again and it's painful again, and it hurts and everything triggers you and everything makes you angry and everything immediately brings up that wound that took place years ago. God is not interested in you continuing to walk around in pain and in suffering all the time. The great physician is in the room. And when God comes in to heal an issue an apartment of our body, he does not allow scabs to develop. He's not interested in a band aid for your broken heart. He comes in and he sews you back together, and maybe you pull that scab off to start and there might be a little bit more blood and it might be a little bit more painful to begin with, but then he's going to sew you back together and you might have a scar, but that scar is going to be there so that you can show other people the pain and the suffering that you've gone through. But on the other side of it, God made a way where there was no way. God brought me through with a purpose and a plan for my life. I'm telling you right now because I've lived this. My dad's gotten up here before after I preached, and it was almost insulting. It was insulting. He turned around to the band and he said, courtney got up here and preached. I just want to say I never saw that coming. How am I supposed to take that? This is my father. This is not a random stranger. My actual father. I am literally his child. He turned, I mean, for several minutes, turn. I mean, I did not see it coming. In complete and total disbelief. Do you want to know why? Because more than anyone, he saw me at certain moments where I was broken beyond belief, where it looked like the end of my story was very near, where it looked like God couldn't make anything beautiful out of my life, when it looked like all hell was winning and all of everything was falling apart and there were no answers and there was only pain and there was depression and there was self hatred. He saw me in my broken space and I understand. That's fine. He didn't see me coming, but my God saw me coming. He knew I would use this brokenness in your life and I will make you whole, and then I will anoint you so that you can get up and preach and tell people about the gospel of Jesus Christ. That nothing hell has done to you can remove the call of God off of your life. You are chosen. You are anointed. You are qualified not by anything special about me, but by the blood of Jesus Christ that has completely and utterly changed my life. But I couldn't have had certain things if I had not gone through the crushing muscles only grow when they're torn down first. Without tearing, there's no strength. A seed must be buried into the ground and crack and break open before anything new can spring forth. Grapes look beautiful on a vine, but it's not until they come off the vine and are crushed that they can produce wine. Olives are bitter and useless when first picked. They must be beaten, soaked, salted and pressed before they can release the oil. Some of you are so focused on your breakdown, but God is focused on your breakthrough. He's interested in making you into a new wineskin. Matthew tells us never. Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skin will burst and wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins and both are preserved. The vessel and the outpouring new wine requires a new container. Breaking seasons reshape you so that you can hold what God is about to pour out in your life. The blessing isn't in the grape hanging pretty on the vine. The blessing is in the crushing that releases what's inside. How do you know how to smack the devil in the mouth this morning? Is refuse to give God your pretty praise. I'm not just interested giving you my hallelujah. This feels so good. And God, everything's great. No, I'll give you my ugly praise. He wants your broken worship. He wants your painful hallelujah. He wants your gut wrenched. You're still worthy of it all. The anointing oil that consecrated priests and kings always started with crushed olives. No crushing, no oil. Some of you are asking for God to use you right now. And he is. Through the crushing, he's making you into what he needs you to be. And here's what's powerful. It's a lengthy, lengthy process. The crushing releases what's most valuable, the oil. Fresh olives are bitter, even toxic. They must be washed, beaten, pressed, and cured to be usable. It's a lengthy process. For an olive to be cured of bitterness. It takes crushing, it takes soaking, and it oftentimes takes salting. The word of God is the salt for Us. Some of you are asking God to use you in a business realm. But you're not ready yet because you won't get into his word. You won't begin to release things that only he can hold. Once he takes you to that next level. Fresh pain equals fresh oil. Crushing does not destroy you. It anoints you. God breaks us to make us. James, chapter one says it like this. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. The breaking is not to destroy you. It's not because he's a mean God. The breaking is to develop you. God allows the pressure, the trial, the crushing. Because on the other side, you won't be lacking anything. You'll be complete. The breaking doesn't leave you with less, it builds you into more. We serve a God who wastes nothing. No heartbreak, no pain. He uses it and creates it into anointing oil and new wine in our lives. Maybe the breaking for you looks like a marriage that ended even though you prayed that it wouldn't. Maybe it's a friend who betrayed you, a family member who turned their back on you. Maybe it's a diagnosis that knocked the wind out of you. Breaking moments feel like the end, but in God's hands, they are the beginning of something new. Because we serve a God who what the enemy intended for evil, he always turns it for our good. Blessing is nice, but brokenness is necessary. Jesus could have stopped at blessing the bread, but the bread had to be broken in order for it to be broadened. As long as it stays whole, it stays small. But once it's broken, God can begin to multiply what he needs to multiply in your life. That's what brokenness means for us. It means coming to the end of myself, coming to the end of my strength, my plan, my pride, my way. And it's in that place where I can't, but he can that the real miracles begin to take place. Brokenness feels like an end, but in God's hands, it's always the beginning. He breaks us not to destroy us, but to broaden us, to expand our capacity to multiply our lives beyond what we thought was possible. I believe that's what he's doing in our nation and our world right now. I see a broken, broken world. But the hope to which I am called tells me that when I see brokenness, the light of all the world, we are Jesus to the world. We are a light shining, a city on a hill that cannot be hidden, that cannot be broken. And in a world that is addicted to outrage. What if we became agents of peace? What if we actually did what Jesus called us to do and in a place where it's not popular, we began to love our neighbor even. Especially when that's what made it so crazy about what Jesus said is especially when you disagree with them, especially when you don't like them. We don't get to control the headlines, but we can control our response. You have control over this. And we need to start walking and living with an anointing and an oil that heals, that brings comfort and brings peace to our world. Not more division, conflict that James tells us. Whenever there is malice, ha hate fighting amongst you. This is demonic activity. We battle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities of darkness. And so if you can't look at where the temperature of the world is today and see that the enemy is at work and he wants us to have division and conflict and hate in our hearts towards one another, then I've got another thing to tell you. You're wrong. He is in control. But we are carriers of his light here on this earth. It's time we live. Like was broken, but it was still in the hands of Jesus. You may be broken this morning, you may be shattered, you may be in pain, but you are still in the hands of Jesus. Then he did the part that we all want to shout about. He multiplied it. The miracle took place. From five loaves and two fish came a feast for thousands with 12 baskets left over. Nothing wasted, not a crumb forgotten. What feels like subtraction in life is often multiplication in his hands. When Jesus saves you, he multiplies his house salvation through you. When Jesus heals you, he multiplies his glory in your life. When Jesus restores you, he multiplies his testimony to the world. Your miracle is not about you. It's about him being multiplied through you for his glory. Multiplication isn't self help, it's Christ's help. It's not about your name being bigger, it's about his name being lifted higher. Your miracle is not just for you. It's so he can multiply his glory through you. And I need you to understand this story in the Bible, it's not just about bread. It's about Jesus himself. It was a picture pointing to Jesus. Isaiah 53:5 says, But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought you and I peace was on Him. And by his stripes his wounds we are healed. Isaiah 53:10 says, it like this. Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him. Let that resonate for just. Just a moment. Struggle to get through this without crying every time I read it. Isaiah 53. Go home and read Isaiah 53 tonight. If you want to know who our Jesus is. Go home and read this whole chapter. And though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, one version of the Bible say it said it pleased the Lord to crush him, not because God delighted in his Son's pain, but because he delighted in the salvation that would come from his suffering. In Gethsemane, Jesus was so overwhelmed that his sweat began to turn to blood. He knows anguish. He knows grief. He knows what it feels like to be crushed. And he faced every bit of it alone so that you and I would never have to. What a God. What a God that would love me and you so much that he would send his only begotten son to be taken by a world that would reject him. To be broken and beaten and bruised for our peace, for our sin. He was broken open. Daca, the Hebrew word there, it literally means beat to pieces. To crush, to be broken and bruised. Bruised. It pleased the Lord to break his only begotten Son because he knew what would pour out of him was the blood of Jesus that would begin to make a way of openness for us to the heaven. Emptying the grave was one thing, but entering it was another. Everybody wants the victory of an empty grave, but nobody wants the weight of entering into one. Exiting the grave is glory, but entering the grave is crushing. It's overwhelming. And Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, he prayed to his Father and he said, take this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. That prayer did not change the cross that he was about to take. The brutality and the violence of the suffering and the pain that he picked up that day. But what it did change was his perspective. It then became for the joy that was set before him. He endured the cross, the crushing, the breaking, the pain, the suffering. And he did all of it so that you and I would never have to walk through one moment alone. When he died on that cross, he did not die once. He died a billion different times, picking up the weight of all of our sin, carrying it. And he loved us so much. Why? Because he saw you coming. Because he knew that life was going to be painful. But he needed you to have hope. He needed you to have salvation. He needed you to have atonement. Maybe today what you really need is a change of perspective. You've been praying God, change my situation. But maybe what he's saying is, let me change your perspective in the middle the of of it. Maybe you're in the taking season of life and your white knuckle gripping on control over your marriage, your kids, your finances, your future. And I believe what God is trying to say to you today is, will you let me take it so the miracle can begin? Some of you are in the blessing, and life looks fine on the outside, but you've stopped pressing into his presence because you're comfortable. God says, don't stop here. The blessing is not in the things. The blessing is in me. Maybe you're in the breaking, and you're walking through betrayal and heartache and pain and a diagnosis and your children being lost. You feel shattered. But God is saying, this breaking isn't the end. It's a setup for multiplication. Maybe you're ready for multiplication. Maybe you've been through the process and you're trying to stand here and say, how does my life count for you, God? What can I do to make my life be multiplied for you? It doesn't have to include standing up on a stage and proclaiming it with a microphone. It's an everyday act where we can show any and everybody we come in contact with the love of Jesus Christ. There is blessing in the breaking, and there is multiplication on the other side of surrender. Now, before I ask you to stand up, I need you to understand my dad and I were talking about this last night, that this is the most important part of the service. Don't rush for the doors. Don't try and run out heaven and hell, life and death is in the balance. And so everyone, stand to your feet. I want to give you an invitation this morning. Everything we've been facing and going through in our world today, maybe you're in this room or at one of our campuses now or online, and you're desperate because everybody's been talking about a rapture, and everybody's been talking about Jesus coming back. And some people are dreading it and some people are super excited about it. And you don't even know what you feel except for fear, crippling fear, and anxiety about what the future holds. Because if Jesus were to come back right now, do you know where you would stand? Do you know who you belong to? He says, depart from me, for I never knew you. Not you never knew who I was. He said, I never knew you. It's a sobering, sobering scripture. Does he know you?
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I really want to say thank you for joining us this week. If you haven't already, make sure you click on the subscription button and leave us a review. It helps this podcast reach each other even more people when you comment when you give us your feedback. For more messages and inspirational materials, download the Jensen Franklin app. Or you can head over to JensenFranklin.org I want to thank all of you who give generously to help us produce weekly content like this to reach the world with the message of Jesus. God bless you and we'll see you next time.