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Welcome to Mariners Church Weekend Message Podcast. Inspiring people to follow Jesus and fearlessly change the world. Discover your purpose and get connected by visiting MarinersChurch.org or click the link in the show notes.

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I'm so glad you're here today. If we haven't met, my name is Eric and I'm excited to teach the scripture to you. I do want to just say a couple things. I'm so proud of our church. I am really proud. DK mentioned a moment ago that high school students who spent Friday night, all day Saturday and this morning really learning how to study the Bible. And so I'm so proud of you high school students for taking the time to do that. I really am. It was my senior year in high school that I really became addicted to reading the Bible and it impacted everything, still does, everything about my life. And so my prayer is that the Word would continue to just do the gracious work of changing you. And I'm so proud of you. I really am. It's so exciting. Church. I'm really proud of you because last weekend we talked about Seek the Good, which is a season where we're going to serve cities in Southern California, those who are in need. We want to serve the poor and the marginalized, and we do this every fall. We call it Seek the Good. Last week, we took a special offering to resource our outreach hubs, which we do food pantries and ESL classes and many ways that we serve local cities in Southern California. And so I said, hey, let's, let's take a special offering. $500,000. All of it's going to go towards our outreach hubs. And you were so generous. I said, hey, let's try to raise 500,000. Let's just do it real fast. And you gave over a million last week towards that. So thank you so much. Really exciting. Every, every penny is going towards the outreach hubs that we have to serve vulnerable communities in those cities. And so I'm so thankful for your generosity. You also were handed this when you came in today. Seek the Good, which these are some opportunities that you have to serve between now and Christmas. Now, there's more on the website, so if you go to the QR code and you scan it, you'll see more. These are just a highlight of some of the events. Many of you serve already in our local outreach ministries, and I'm so thankful you, you serve regularly, but some of you, you're new to our church. You haven't plugged into serving in outreach. And this is a great way for you to learn what we do to serve people in our city. So you basically would go to the website and you would sign you and your life group or you and your family and some friends up. And it's a lot of serving communities. So we have a military Christmas party to serve the military. A refugee Christmas party to serve with voices of refugees. We have an angel tree Christmas party to serve families of the incarcerated. You can see them all listed. A foster family Christmas party to serve families of those who come alongside foster children. And so really in many special needs events to serve families who have kids with and teenagers with special needs. So some amazing places for you to get plugged in. I encourage you to seek the good of the cities where God has placed us. And so I hope you'll get plugged in during this campaign. But you can just scan the QR code and see all of the opportunities. We're going to talk about servanthood today, actually, as we're walking through the book of Nehemiah, which we're looking at some of the fruit in Nehemiah's leadership journals and then the roots beneath the surface that produced the fruit. And we've been saying that all of us are leaders, even if you haven't thought of yourself as a leader. Because if you're a Christian, Jesus not only saved you, but he also sent you in to the world. And so wherever it is that you are placed by him in your family, in your neighborhood, in your career, you are to influence others and you are a leader. Therefore. So we're looking at different fruits of leadership and then the roots that create that fruit. Today we're going to talk about servanthood. Several years ago, Dan Cathy, who's the former CEO of Chick Fil? A, he visited our church. He was super kind and gracious. And my wife Kay and I spent some time with him after. And we spent some time in the chapel. He took this picture of us and then he mailed us the picture. He signed it. He didn't only mail the picture, he sent video messages to Eden and Nevi, my daughters, who were in junior high at the time, because I told him that a large portion of our disposable income went to his restaurant. Because my kids love Chick Fil? A so much. And so he was thanking them for being great customers. He sent them stuffed animals. He sent them gift cards for free chicken sandwiches. I mean, it was just awesome how kind and gracious he was. Clearly you could see in this man, Dan Cathy, this servant's posture, this servanthood heart that he has for others. Several months ago, I meet this business leader from Atlanta. And this business leader, not only does he lead a company, but he also is the volunteer parking lot leader for his church. So he leads. He's a volunteer, but he leads a team of volunteers to run the parking lot. And I was asking him questions about, man, how do you do it? How do you motivate those people? Cause I know our parking lot volunteers at our church are awesome, and they honestly see the worst parts of all of you in the parking lot. And so how do you motivate? How do you motivate these people? And he said, man, I try to gamify it. What we do is we get there early and we try to have all the trash picked up before this one guy. We have this one guy who comes to our church, and he always parks the furthest away you possibly can park. And the whole time he walks from his car to the church building, he just picks up trash. And so I tell my crew, let's try to get to where there's no trash for this guy to pick up. I said, that's fascinating. Who's the guy who parks the furthest away and picks up trash? He said, you're not going to believe it. It's Dan Cathy, the CEO of Chick Fil A. He parks the furthest away you can and picks up trash the whole way. He walks in. Pretty amazing. I'm inviting you to do that. Yeah. If you're clapping, I'm assuming that you want to park further away and pick up trash the whole way as you walk in. So Dan Cathy is a servant. Being a servant for Dan Cathy is not just what he does, it's who he is. You've heard the phrase servant leadership. In fact, some of you, you work for a company where that's a value hanging on a plaque in the hallway. But the phrase servant leadership really is new. It's. It's been around for about 50 years. In the 1970s, Robert Greenleaf introduced the phrase servant leadership. He wrote the book Servant Leadership. And in his book, he says there's a difference between someone who is a leader first and someone who is a servant first. He said the person who is a leader first will sometimes serve as an activity, but someone who is a servant first always serves because it is their identity. And it's not just something that they do. It's who they are. It's who they are. And he concluded in his book Servant Leadership that the most effective leaders are those who are servants first. This week on the if I had more time podcast. I interview Cheryl Bachelder. She was the CEO of Popeyes, and she's a Christian, a strong woman of faith, and she has written a lot about servant leadership. She believes that the reason Popeyes was turned around, she was credited with the turnaround at Popeyes, is because she introduced to her leadership team the whole idea of servant leaders, that we are going to serve our customers and serve our team. And she's a servant leader, she says, because of her faith in Jesus. But she also believes servant leadership is the most effective type of leadership. And so servant leadership, servanthood, it is the fruit. But how do you get it? How do you get servant leadership in your life? We're walking through Nehemiah and we've seen Nehemiah is a servant. He started in Nehemiah Chapter one, being a servant to the cup, to the king of Persia, he was a cup bearer to the king of Persia. We got to Nehemiah chapter 2. He moved from Persia to Jerusalem to be a builder, to serve the people, because his heart was broken because their wall was down and they were in disgrace and he wanted to rebuild the wall. So his job changes. Throughout the book of Nehemiah, he has a. His career changes, like many of your careers are going to change. He starts as a cup bearer, then he becomes a builder, and then later in the book of Nehemiah, he becomes a governor. The reason he was able to adjust to all of his roles is, is because beneath all of it, he's a servant. And servanthood is not simply something he did, but it is who he was. And so what is servanthood? We're gonna see in Nehemiah chapter 3 some leadership lessons about Nehemiah's servanthood. But here is how you become a servant. Servanthood's the fruit. But the intermingling roots beneath the surface are really important. Servanthood is the intermingling of thinking big and acting small. Thinking big and acting small. Now, some people do the opposite. Some people think small about life and about their goals, and they act big. They act like they're all that. The opposite is servanthood thinking big and yet acting small. Now, this statement, think big and act small. It's a really important statement for me. It's a value that we lead our team here at Mariners as a staff, we celebrate this value once a month. We hire based on this value. We do annual reviews based on this value. We. We want to be people who think big. We have big plans and big dreams about what God wants to do in Southern California. And we're going to think big because our God is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine. But we don't want to act big. We want to walk in humility and act small. None of us are above setting up chairs. None of us are above picking up trash. We want to think big and we want to act small. It's a value that we have here, and the intermingling of that is servanthood. So the fruit is servanthood, but the roots beneath the surface is where I want us to spend time. Thinking big and acting small. This chart, I think, will be helpful for you. It's on page 61 in your book, and I'm going to walk you through this chart. Looking at Nehemiah's leadership in Nehemiah, Chapter three, it's hard to do both think big and act small. It's why very few leaders are truly servant leaders, because you have to hold a bunch of tensions together at the same time. Serve God and serve people. Serve the vision and serve the team. Serve the future and serve today. This is what servant leadership, thinking big and acting small looks like. Okay, I'm going to pull leadership insights from Nehemiah 3 and walk you through this chart in Nehemiah's life. And I believe this will be instructive for you, but also inspirational. First, Nehemiah, he was thinking big. By serving God, he served God. The reason Nehemiah developed this burden and this belief that became this vision to rebuild the wall in Jerusalem is because his heart was broken, because he believed God's name was being defamed. Nehemiah knew the Old Testament. And in the Old Testament, in Psalm 48, 2, the Scripture says that Jerusalem was to be the city where God's name dwelt. So it was to be a city that all of the neighboring nations looked at and said, all this is where Yahweh. This is Yahweh's city. But Nehemiah hears that the wall is torn down, and so the people are in disgrace. And for Nehemiah, this is very holy. This is very spiritual, because, no, this is supposed to be the city where they see the awe of God. But now they're making fun of Jerusalem. This is a place of disgrace. And so he was burdened by his desire to serve God, to think really big, that the wall could be rebuilt. And it was crazy to think the wall could be rebuilt. No way. No one thought the wall could be rebuilt. Those people who actually lived in Jerusalem, they thought it was impossible. They had become accustomed to their disgrace and their apathy. In fact, if you look at the Book of Ezra, it's another book in the Old Testament. You'll see that before Nehemiah, there had been a group of people that went to Artaxerxes and had said, hey, we want to go back to Jerusalem and build the wall. Artaxerxes said, yes. They get there and the neighboring nations write letters to Artaxerxes, complaining. And Artaxerxes shuts the project down. So Nehemiah was about to attempt something not that had never been done before. He was going to attempt something that had been tried to be done before and failed. It's even harder. He was going to move to Jerusalem and attempt to rebuild the wall in 52 days while being surrounded by neighboring nations that hated him, while trying to lead a group of people that were used to the wall being down and fine with it. The only reason that Nehemiah believed this could happen, this is him thinking big, is because he served God. And he believes that our God is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine, that what is impossible for man is possible with God. Which is one of the reasons that those of us who are Christians more than anyone else should be able to have big dreams and big visions and big goals, because we serve a God who rules and reigns over everything and owns everything. And so this is Nehemiah thinking really big. And his big thinking, though, came from his posture towards God. So, number one, he served God. But notice, he also served the vision. We saw his vision last week in chapter 2, verse 17. Many have studied his vision, even those who are not Christians, because it's a real sticky statement. Chapter two, verse 17. He says, Come, let's rebuild the wall so we will no longer be in disgrace. So it was plural. He was inviting people to join him. Come, let's together build this wall so we will not be a disgr any longer to all of the neighboring nations. Now, small visions don't inspire and don't require lots of people, but big vision requires and inspires lots of people. And now what Nehemiah does is remarkable because he not only shares this broad vision, but he's able to execute it. And this shows him thinking really big about how to execute such an impossible task. If you look at page 61 in your book or your magazine, you'll see a map of the wall and the gates alongside the wall. Nehemiah, this is him thinking big and serving the vision. He's going to line people up all across this wall to build it. This takes a lot of people. If you've ever tried to lead a group of people, you know how difficult it is to coordinate people. Harvard Business Review did a study on why execution fails in large companies. And here's what HBR concluded. Execution typically works in one vertical, so like one department or one division. But execution often fails when it has to go across multiple divisions. When it requires lateral leadership, basically execution with one team is easy. But when you require broad scale adoption across the entire enterprise or organization that requires coordination across multiple silos, it's really, really challenging and often fails. Which is what makes Nehemiah chapter 3 so insightful at how Nehemiah is able to position people and lead people across this entire wall laterally. Let me just show you this. If you have Nehemiah 3. I know it can be like a boring read because it's just a bunch of names, but there's a whole lot of leadership insights within Nehemiah 3. Notice how he leads people to coordinate he positions. The men of Jericho built next to Elysiab and next to them. Every time you see next to them or beside them, you should underline it. Next to them, beside them, next to them, after him, next to them, after him, next to him, beside him, after him, next to him, after him, next to him, after them, after him, beside them, next to him, after them, next to him. This is Nehemiah coordinating. This is thinking big. This is Nehemiah coordinating people across a wall to impact an entire city. Nehemiah also served the future. Now leaders, we hear this. If you lead at all in an organization, likely someone's given you an article and you are responsible as a leader. You've been told to serve the future. You're to think of future leaders, to develop future leaders. You're to serve the health of the organization in the future. The reality is it's really challenging to live the pressure of today as a leader and think about the future. It's really hard. Several years ago I was invited to give a leadership talk to a group of. This is when I was in the marketplace. I was often invited to give these leadership talks. Now that I'm a pastor, they don't ask me anymore, but back in the day they did. And so I gave this leadership talk to about 100, 150 CEOs of hospitals. They asked me to speak on leadership. And so I was giving this, this session on leadership. And I have a framework that I passed out and asked people to self assess themselves on. Where do they spend most of their mental energy and their time. Is it towards today or is it towards the future? How much of their time goes to the future and how much of it goes to today? And so they filled out the framework and then I passed out a microphone and basically asked for feedback on where is your time going? And the majority of the hospital CEOs admitted it's really hard to think about the future because of the pressure today. The inbox, the calendar, the emergency meeting always pulls me away from thinking about the future and pulls me into the pressure of today. How was Nehemiah able to think about the future? Because the end of Nehemiah, Chapter two, the end of it. There's people criticizing him like crazy. He could have easily just stayed in the mundane of today. He was thinking about the future because he thought, I am going to serve these people by rebuilding this wall so the city gets repopulated and people move back here. The way he was able to keep going is he pulled his eyes up and and served the future. That's a servant leader who thinks about the future. So Nehemiah was thinking big, but he also was acting small. Notice how he acted small. Nehemiah served people. He wasn't only serving God because he served God. He also cared for all of the people that he was serving. Being a Christian should make you the kind of leader who cares about the people. Nehemiah believed that because God is who God is, he's the Creator who put his image on every single person and that every person Nehemiah led and every person that Nehemiah interacted with was someone created by God and loved by God. This caused Nehemiah to care deeply for the people. He viewed people as more important than himself. He was willing to leave a posh job in Persia to come and work in a broken city for the sake of the people. And because he loved the people so well, he was able to pull diverse groups of people to himself. In fact, you see the diversity of his team in Nehemiah Chapter three. There's so much leadership insight here. Notice the kinds of people he had on his team because he loved them and served them. Religious leaders joined him, civic leaders, skilled workers, including goldsmith, perfumers and merchants, families, volunteers from surrounding regions. So Nehemiah pulled people to himself because they sensed in him a desire to serve them. In fact, people were so inspired that they did really crazy serving tasks because they were inspired by Nehemiah's service to them. Look at this verse in verse 14, Nehemiah, chapter 3, Malachi. I have no idea If I said his name correctly, but you don't know either. Malachi, son of Rechab, the ruler of the district of Bethakaram, repaired the dung gate. He rebuilt it and installed its doors, bolts and bars. The dung gate. It wasn't a creative title. It was a descriptive title. The dung gate is the part of the wall from which the refuse, the dung, the sewage of the city left. And this guy repaired that gate. Scripture doesn't say if he volunteered or if Nehemiah said dungate to this guy, but he was a leader of a district and he repairs the dungate. Surely he was inspired by Nehemiah who was will to leave Persia to come work on a broken wall and this caused him to want to serve. So Nehemiah served the people. Nehemiah also served the team collectively. And so as a leader who is a servant leader, you listen. People don't exist for leaders. Leaders exist for people. The role of a leader is not to get people to serve the leader. The role of the leader is to serve the team. Nehemiah served the team. So here's what Nehemiah wanted to do. He wanted the people who worked along the wall, it was gonna be be rebuilt in 52 days. If you had to rebuild a wall in 52 days that everybody thought was impossible and you had a large group of people, you see Nehemiah 3, all the names and all the people and families that are listed and you wanted them to be most passionate about rebuilding, what would you do? How would you get them to be most passionate? Where would you place them? Like, think strategically for a moment. Where would you put people if you wanted them to be most passionate? If you wanted them to care deeply about this wall being rebuilt? Where would you place them? Because you know this as a leader, you want to place people where they're most passionate, where they can most win, where they can most succeed. Where would you place the people? Notice what Nehemiah does. It's so insightful. It's so insightful. This is God's word. You make. Some of you thought that God's word doesn't apply to your daily job. It does. Notice the insight. Where does Nehemiah place the people after them? Jedidiah made repairs across from his house, Benjamin. Opposite their house, beside his house, opposite his own house, opposite his house. And this guy, he didn't have a house. He just. He. He just had a room. This dude just had a room opposite his room. Nehemiah knew that the people would be most excited to serve in a place that mattered to them. So Nehemiah collectively served the team. He also brought affirmation to the team and accountability to the team. Affirmation. Plato said, famously, the famous philosopher, that whatever is celebrated in a country is cultivated there. So you, as a leader, you know that you want to lift up values that matter to you among your team. According to Plato, the way that you lift up a value is you celebrate the value. Now, check it out. Nehemiah steps into Jerusalem. The scripture says that the people are filled with apathy. And so the value he wants to lift up is diligence and fervor. Well, how do you cultivate a value? According to Plato, you celebrate a value. Here's what Nehemiah does when he sees fervor or diligence. He celebrates it in the Bible. He writes it down in his Leadership Journal. Verse 20. Baruch diligently repaired another section. He celebrated this. He celebrated the diligence because he's trying to lift up the value of zeal and fervor and diligence. So he brings affirmation because he's collectively caring for the team, but he also brings accountability. Some people have thought accountability is discomfort. But Nehemiah's name, Nehemiah's name actually means God comforts. Nehemiah brought comfort to the team by bringing discomfort to those who need to be held accountable. You actually comfort your team when you hold people accountable who need to be held accountable. And because the value of zeal was something that Nehemiah clearly cared deeply about, when people weren't showing zeal, Nehemiah held them accountable. This is fascinating to me. This is verse 5. Nehemiah is speaking about the Decoyites. And he says in the Bible. He talks smack about them in the Bible. Their nobles did not lift a finger to help their supervisors. He drops a diss track in the Bible, calls out these people in Scripture for not showing the zeal, for not showing the fervor. So Nehemiah was willing to hold people accountable because he was collectively caring for the team. But then Nehemiah also served today. He served today. Nehemiah served the future by thinking this wall must be built. But he didn't only announce that grand vision. He then worked alongside the people on the wall. He was a leader who was not stuck away in an office somewhere. He was among the people. He was serving today. He was serving today. Okay, how do you possibly pull all of this off as a leader? If you look at page 61 at the chart, it can be really overwhelming. You're saying, eric, for me, to be a servant leader, which I know, according to research, makes me most effective. But how on earth am I to do all of this? There's a whole lot of ands here. Serve God and serve people. Serve the vision and serve the team. Serve the future and serve today. How am I possibly going to do all of this? This feels intimidating and overwhelming, and it is. To be a servant leader is so rare. The only way you can be a leader like Nehemiah, who is a servant, is if your heart is overwhelmed that Jesus has served you. The reason that Christians are most equipped to be servant leaders is because we are the group of people who have a savior who has a savior who stepped into this world to serve us. And as your heart is overwhelmed with how Christ has served you, then you are motivated and sustained to serve others. It's the only way you can pull this off. The only way you can be a servant leader is not if you tell yourself, I can do this. The only way you can be a servant leader is if your heart is overwhelmed that Jesus came here to serve you. That Jesus, God the Son, entered this world and he washed the dirty, grungy feet of his disciples, but he also entered this world to wash all of you and make you a brand new person, to cleanse you, to make you his own. Nehemiah is inspiring because he left the palace in Persia and he stepped into the brokenness of a city. God the Son, Jesus the Christ, who loved you before you ever thought of loving him, left everlasting paradise and stepped into the brokenness of this world to pursue you and make you his own. Nehemiah stepped into a broken city to live for those people. Jesus the Christ stepped into the brokenness of our world and he lived perfectly on your behalf. But he also was willing to die for you as he went to the cross and absorbed your sin and your shame in his flesh to change who you are. You want your identity to change. Jesus entered this world to change your identity, to change who you are. The scripture says that before you meet Jesus, you are spiritually dead. I was. I have a Paul spirit, physically alive, but spiritually dead. Spiritually dead. That you look for life in this world, but it's never enough. It never satisfies it. You're never gonna be made, full or whole, dead. But Jesus enters this world to serve you, and then he makes you alive. He changes who you are. The scripture says that before you meet Jesus, before He serves you, that you are spiritually blind. You can't see, you can't figure out how to navigate this life. You can't make wise choices. You're blind. But Jesus enters this world to serve you, and he changes who you are. He makes you alive and sight. You can now see that before Jesus changed you, according to the scripture, you were spiritually lost. Some of you still right now feel lost. I'm not sure where to go. I don't feel like I have purpose or hope in this life. The Bible says that before you meet Jesus, you are lost. But Jesus enters this world to serve you and. And then you are found. The message of the Bible is so beautiful. The message is not. You find God. Come on, you can do it. You find God. No. The message is that God the Son, Jesus came here to find you, to find you and make you his own. This is how he served you. The scripture says that before you become a Christian, before Jesus changes you, that you are a servant, but you're a servant to sin. You're a servant to foolishness. But then Jesus enters this world and changes who you are. If you believe in Him. And then you become a servant who's a servant of him. And he's the only one who gives you real life. He changes your identity. He changes your identity. If you place your faith in Jesus and believe in him, he changes who you are. In fact, scholars say that what Jesus did for you on the cross, when he came to wash away not just your feet, but all of your sin. Scholars call what Jesus did for you on the cross the Great Exchange. And it matters to me so much that you would know what this means. As your pastor, I long for you to believe this, the Great Exchange, that as Jesus died for you, he made a trade with you that he gives you, if you believe in him, all of his righteousness in exchange for all of your sin, he traded with you. So that's why he dies for six hours. Because he's paying for your sin, which he absorbed in his flesh on your behalf. And the trade is then he gave you all of his righteousness. Which means if you believe in Jesus, that God the Father looks at you after you've believed in Him. He looks at you as if you were perfect, though you've never lived perfectly, nor have I. He looks at you as if you were perfect. Because when God the Father looks at you, he doesn't see your sin. He sees the sacrifice of Jesus covering all of your sin. He sees Jesus covering all of your sin, so he sees you as perfect. On the cross, Jesus was treated the way I deserve to be treated. I deserve to Die for all of my sin. And Jesus died in my place. And then I am now treated the way that Jesus deserves to be treated. I am given everlasting life, not because I've been good, but because Jesus has been good for me. And Jesus gave me all of his righteousness. You believe in Jesus and he sees you as absolutely perfect because the sacrifice of Jesus covers everything in your life. And this changes completely who you are. So what I want to do over the next couple of moments is I want to give you an opportunity to be completely changed and forgiven by Jesus. I'm going to ask us over the next couple of moments to be as still as we can. I'm going to say it again because I don't know if everybody heard me. I'm going to ask you out of respect for God and people around you, to understand. The next couple of moments is the most sacred moments in the world as people are going to move from being lost to found, from being dead to alive. Jesus did all of the work for you when he died, for you. But for you to be changed and become his and forgiven, you must receive what he's done. You must believe in Him. Here's what the scripture says to do for you to become a Christian. Romans 10, 9 says, if you will confess with your mouth. So you have to confess. If you will confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. So you becoming a Christian, or you receiving forgiveness or salvation, you going from lost to found, dead to alive. It's a process. And then there's a moment where you say, yes, it's a process, a journey, but it's also a moment. Many of you have been on the journey, and I'm so honored that you have included us, our church, me as your pastor in your journey. Some of you came to church for the first time in like 20 years or ever this fall. I know. Cause I've talked to some of you in the past, and you're like, man, I don't even know why I'm here, bro. I just. I haven't been in it forever. I'm like, man, it's good to have you. And then you're back, like three weeks later. You're like, I can't even believe I'm here. I'm like, man, I'm so glad you're here. And deep down I'm saying, I know why you're here, man. And I do know why you're here. You're here because The God of the universe loves you and wants you to be His. He's been going after you. He has been. And you're like, he does. I. I don't know all the stuff I've done. He knows everything you've done, and he loves you right now as you are. He doesn't love a future version of you. He loves you right now, and he wants you to be His. You've been asking questions. You've been hearing the Bible, you've been hearing about Jesus. So you've been on a journey, but there's a moment where you have to decide, I'm in. I want his forgiveness. I want to be His. I want to be a Christian, I want to be his son, or I want to be his daughter. Some of you are on a journey, and this is the moment when you say yes. Some of you, you're not ready to say yes yet. And I'm not going to pressure you. I'm honored that you're on the journey and you continue on your journey. But some of you, this is the moment. You know it is. You know it is. This is the moment when he's inviting you to say yes to Him. There's a moment when you identify yourself with Jesus, you receive his forgiveness. If you will confess with your mouth, believe in your heart, you will be saved. So for a couple of really sacred moments, I'm going to invite you, if you're ready, to have the moment when you become his, when you go from death to life, the moment when you become his son or his daughter, to confess faith in him, to believe in him. And I'm gonna ask you in a moment to one at a time, stand up and confess. I believe symbolically, when you stand up, it's like, I'm not trusting myself anymore. I'm leaving my old life behind. I believe in Him. And some of you are thinking, why would I do that in front of such a large group of people? When Jesus died for you, it was in front of everybody in Jerusalem. And when Jesus invited people to follow him in the Gospels, it's never private. It's always public. It's always public because when you follow Jesus, it's gonna become public anyway because he's gonna change who you are and everyone's gonna end up knowing anyway because he changes who you are. He makes you a brand new person. And every major decision in your life has been public, from high school graduation to where you're going to school, to your first job, to your soft launch with your date on Instagram. I mean, it's all public and all of those are great, but none of those are important as they this, this is the most sacred moment because it changes not only this life, but where you spend forever. And so if you are ready to become his, to believe in him and receive his forgiveness, I'm going to invite you now. And I don't want us to clap. I just want this to be really sacred. We'll clap at the end. If you're ready to receive his forgiveness and believe in him. You stand one at a time and you confess. I believe. All right, Extend your hands, please, and let me pray a prayer of blessing over you as we go. Jesus, I pray you'd bless your sons and daughters this week, that you would remind them that you are gentle and approachable and that you love them, cause your face to shine on them. I pray they will experience your mercy and your joy this new week. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Go in peace. Have a great week.