Hope Church LV Sermons
The 505030 Initiative
I don't know how some of those things hit you when you see them on a screen like that. Did you hear those numbers? I mean, if we're not careful, we come in a place like this that's filled with people mostly who know the Lord and love the Lord and man we worship and we sing and we exalt the name of Jesus and if we're not careful, we can totally lose sight of where God has placed us 95% of our city today does not have a relationship with God. How many of you this morning are grateful that you have a relationship with God? Most of your neighbors did not wake up today with that joy. If you take just the zip codes around us, our church campus is located in 89183. You may not have even known that. That was a new zip code that was created while we were in the construction process. We're in 89183. Just to the north of us is 89123. Just to the south of us is 89052. Those are the three zip codes and closest proximity to our church. In those three zip codes alone, there are 134,000 people that do not know Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior. My heart today is heavy over those things. Do you see those statistics of how many people every year in Las Vegas died 12,045 people every year in eternity from Las Vegas? 95% not knowing the Lord. That means every year over 11,000 people die in our city and enter into a Christ-less eternity. Pastor, aren't we supposed to come to church to be encouraged and have our spirits lifted up? Listen, there's time to encourage. There's time to be lifted up and then there's time to come face-to-face with the reality of where we live and why Jesus put us here. You see, 11 years ago when God birthed his church, do you realize 11 years ago this month is when we began? Last Sunday of this month, 11 years ago, had our first public worship service. When God birthed this church, it was not so that we could have a dynamic place to come together and praise and worship and just be encouraged. You see, when God birthed this church, it was to penetrate the lostness of our city so that people that don't know him could come to know him and I rejoice to tell you today that over the last 11 years over 2,000 people have trusted Jesus Christ right here in our fellowship and we rejoice in that but there's still 134,000 just in the immediate zip codes today that are facing a Christless eternity and that's just a more pleasant way of saying they are living with the reality that they are one breath away from hell. I was thinking about those things and I want you to see Jesus in the New Testament this morning responding to that very hard attitude. If you have your Bible, I want you to open it in turn to Matthew chapter 9. In Matthew chapter 9, Jesus is among the people. The Bible tells us, we won't take the time to read the backstory but the Bible tells us that he's walking among the cities and the villages and he's healing and he's teaching and he's meeting people and in the midst of the multitudes as he walks through the city as he's just paying attention to what's around him. We find in Matthew chapter 9 beginning in verse 36 his response and I believe if Jesus were physically in Las Vegas this morning walking through our city you could read very much the same thing about exactly what would be in his heart. Listen to what it says, seeing the people. He felt compassion for them because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Therefore beseech, that's a good Bible word, huh? Tell you what it means, beg. It's the picture of someone on their knees crying out with a sense of urgency. Jesus said, based on what I'm seeing, beg. Begg, God, to send out workers into the harvest. I want to share with you a few things I notice about Jesus in these verses. Here's the first one. Jesus sees people. Do you hear how to open this text? Seeing the people. Jesus sees people. Now the word see here is an important word in the in the New Testament there are multiple Greek terms that we translate into English with the word see. For example, the word blepo is a Greek term that we translate see in the Bible and it simply means to see. It means you just, you saw something. Didn't pay much attention and re-notice it but you saw something. This word see is the Greek word arro and it means something more than just to see something. It means to see and take notice. It means that you contemplate, you're paying attention. A few weeks ago my family took a few days and went down to Southern California to get away to the beach for a few days and we're out there on the beach and three of our kids are older now. They're high school ones in college and we don't really have to watch them as closely. We still have an eight-year-old and she just started third grade and you know when you're on the beach and you got to eight-year-old and you got to keep your eyes on them. You're watching them but you know how you do that as mom and dad, right? I mean you're watching them. You see them but you're kind of not really paying attention. I mean you're you're paying attention enough to you know where they are but and your little kids they know that, right? Because when they're doing something and they want you to notice them you can be looking at them but they know you're not noticing and they will do whatever it takes to get you to notice, right? Because they want your attention. They don't want you to just see them. They want you to see them. They want you to notice. That's the difference here. We live in a city of almost two million people. Every day we go to stores and where we're at the mall or at the ball field and we're driving down the road. We see people but do we see them? Do we notice them? Let me give you a definition of the word see. Here's the word. It's a genuine awareness of people from God's perspective. You see people at the store. You see people on the street. When you're driving your car you see people on the road. When you're stopped at the intersection you see people next to you. When you're at the office or at school you see people all around you. What I'm asking you this morning is do you see them? Do you genuinely become aware of them from God's perspective? Jesus does. It's what the Bible says. He sees them and the Bible says when he saw them he noticed three things about them. The Bible says he noticed they were distressed. The word distressed is a word that means battered or bruised. It depicts somebody who's weary from the journey or that has a burden which seems to have no end. It's the word tired. They're exhausted. They're wearied from the weight of sin and the lies of sin. The lies that have promised success and failure and happiness and contentment and they'd bought into that lie and their lives were wasted and wearied and worn because they never received the promises that sin offered. They were wearied from religion. Specifically the people Jesus was talking to had been misled by these these Jewish leaders into this system of religion that somehow they could earn a right standing before God. They were just weary from life in general they were just tired when you're server at the restaurant that didn't get your order or your thing just right. How do you see them? You ever thought that maybe they're just tired? Life didn't turn out the way they thought it would. The Bible says they were dispirited. It's a word that means to be cast down. It depicts somebody who's been beaten and they're laying on the ground just waiting to die. It's the idea of being defeated. He saw them as having reached the end and given up. Let me say it another way. They were just done. Then the Bible says that he saw them like sheep without a shepherd. You know what that means? It means they were hopeless. They didn't have anywhere to turn. You know one of the biggest problems we got as Christians? We've forgotten what it's like to be lost. See some of us been saved so long. We've forgotten what it's like to be lost. I was reading one morning in a quiet time a couple of years ago at a Psalm chapter 9 in verse 10 and when I first read the first part of that verse my immediate reaction was one of rejoicing and then I fell under deep conviction. Here's what the verse says. Psalm chapter 9 verse 10 says those who know your name will put their trust in you. And my immediate reaction was man that's right. Man I know his name and if tomorrow morning I wake up to horrific news. If tomorrow I get a phone call that things have begun to fall apart because I know his name. Let me tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm immediately gonna run into his presence. I'm gonna call people that I know and I'm gonna ask them to start praying. We're gonna bombard heaven. We're gonna seek God's face and we're gonna do it with confidence because we know that God's in control and he has a plan. But listen to me 95% of the people who live in our city don't know his name. And they wake up with the same problem, the same life circumstance. And they're like sheep without a shepherd. They have nobody to turn to. I'm not talking about just a few people in our city. I'm talking about 95%. If I were congregation this morning where our city it would be only this extreme section over here to my left and you're right. Everybody in this far left section you stand up. Everybody just stand up for a second. There's the saved people in Las Vegas. Here's all the lost people. Now let that sink in for a minute. Aren't you going to sit down? That's our city. Jesus saw them in light of God's divine purpose for them. A relationship with himself and he knew they'd been created for something greater. Do you see them? I know you see them. Do you notice them? And listen I'm talking to me as much as I'm talking to you. I live here too and it's easy to get caught up in the things of life and forget why we're here. How is it that we miss them? How is it that we can miss 1.9 million people? Well one of the reasons we miss them is because of seasons of life. Sometimes we just get so busy. The kids are job, the schedule. Listen to me. God put you here for something greater than just planning retirement. But it's easy to get caught up in that. Listen I'm not saying that's a bad thing. The Bible teaches principles of wisdom means that we do plan but that's not priority. It's not that we're to get so caught up in pursuing our career and education and raising our family and the things of life that we forget about the lostness around us. Sometimes we don't see them simply because we're just self-centered. We get so preoccupied with our own needs and our own circumstances and we don't notice the people around us. We can get caught up in spiritual activity. Listen we get so caught up in doing ministry that we forget about reaching people. You know one of the great dangers in being a pastor is you spend all your time around save people. That's the truth. You have to be creative to cultivate ways to build relationships with people that don't know Christ. There was a story in the fourth chapter of the gospel of John. You don't have to really turn there but in John 4 there's a story where Jesus meets a woman at a well. If you know the story raise your hand. Heart you know the story right? Jesus meets this woman at the well and you know what's happened. The disciples have gone off and left Jesus alone. They've gone off to find some food. They're thinking with their stomachs. They're hungry. It's time to eat Jesus. Jesus says I'm gonna stay at the well. They said we're gonna get some food. So they go off to find food. Jesus is at the well and he's there because he knows this woman is coming and he meets this woman who is very much one of these distressed, dispirited sheep without a shepherd type people. She tried every kind of relationship. She tried multiple husbands. She was now living with a guy that wasn't her husband. She tried it all and was empty and she meets Jesus at the well and long conversation we won't get into but Jesus winds up there sharing his love and grace with her and she embraces the gospel. She runs back to the city of Samaria. She starts telling everybody in Samaria and then all the city just comes marching out to meet this Jesus and here they come. All these, I don't know if it was dozens or hundreds but the Bible says it was this throng, this host of people coming to Jesus and while Jesus was finishing up with this woman and she was leaving the disciples show back up with dinner and the disciples are kind of shocked that Jesus is talking to this Samaritan woman because that's not really their culture but it's funny the Bible says none of them would say it out loud. They just thought that on the inside. Like he couldn't hear it and the Bible tells us that when the disciples came back they said, "Lord it's time to eat." Jesus said, "I don't need your food. My food is to do the will of him who sent me." And they looked at each other and said, "Who gave him something to eat? I'm not making it up. You can read the story. It's in there." And here comes all these people and the disciples, all they think about food, mad because somebody else fed Jesus for they could. And this is what Jesus says to them. John 4 35, "Do you not say there yet four months and then comes the harvest? Behold, I say to you lift up your eyes." Now we've heard that verse so many times we hear it kind of flowery, lift up your eyes and look on the field but when you read it in its context, when you read it in the construction of the Greek text there's passion. If you were to put it in our vernacular, here's what Jesus said. Open your eyes. You're talking about food. You're worried about culture. Would you open your eyes and look at the fields? Jesus is saying with a sense of urgency would you think about where you are? Here's a life application question I want you to wrestle with this morning. Do I see people from God's perspective? Do I see people from God's perspective? Now let me help you wrestle with that question, all right? Here's how you wrestle with that question. Who in your regular pattern of life is on your heart? The grocery store that you frequent, the cashier there that you always talk to. You ever thought about whether or not they're saved or lost? The neighbor that lives on either side of you. You ever thought about whether or not they're saved or lost? The co-worker that you see every day. Is it on your heart whether they are saved or lost? Your kids teacher at school. Are they on your heart about whether or not they're saved or lost? Unless you live in some kind of bubble here in Las Vegas. 95% of every one of those people in your life, if they die today and 12,000 of them will this year, they'll spend eternity separated from God in a place called hell. Do we see people that way? Second thing I want you to see about Jesus, not only does he see people, he feels compassion for people. Do you hear what the text said? Seeing the people, he felt compassion. Jesus didn't just notice them, he responded. The word compassion is the strongest word in the Greek language for this idea of compassionate pity. It describes a compassion that moves a man to the depths of his being. It's literally a Greek word that describes aching on the inside like in an internal organ. It's a deep hurting on the inside. Jesus saw them and he saw them from God's perspective and when he saw them, it broke him on the inside. He hurt for them. You know what's wrong with us in the American church? We've become so self-absorbed. We'd rather argue about the finer points of theology or the style of music in our churches or the nature of how long the service is running. We'd rather debate those issues than we would hurt on the inside for the lostness of the people around us. How does that look from the perspective of our God? Jesus hurt. I love the way Eugene Peterson described it in the message. Listen what he said. Here's his translation of that. When he looked out over the crowds, his heart broke. I want you to think about something and I don't want you to answer out loud and I'm not trying to put anybody on the spot and I'm telling you, I'm wrestling with this question in my own heart. Does your heart break from lost people? What is our response to lostness in our culture? Jesus' was compassion. You know what I'm afraid ours is too many times in the church? ours is condemnation. We see lostness and instead of it looking like hurt, it looks more like hatred. And then we wonder why they don't want to come, be around us. You don't clean it up then come to Jesus. You come to Jesus and then he cleans it up. That means in a church that's passionate about lostness and reaching lost people, guess what? There's going to be some stuff in the church that's a little bit messy. Not everybody's going to fit into the box. Not everybody's there yet and listen, if you think you are, you are gravely mistaken. Just ask your spouse. Compassion is a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow. For someone in a bad situation accompanied by a strong desire to help. That is very important. Compassion is not just feeling sorry for them. Compassion moves us to be willing to get involved in the lives of other people. If you and I are going to penetrate the lostness of our city, we must be willing to roll up our sleeves and get involved in the lives of other people by relationally investing in them because it is that relationship over which the gospel will move from one life to another. Eric Swanson is a good friend of mine who wrote a book called The Externally Focused Church. In that book, listen to what Eric Swanson says, look at it on the screen. I love this. It is in meeting needs through service that meaningful relationships develop. And out of relationships come endless opportunities to share the love of Christ and the gospel of salvation. Barriers to the gospel melt away when people are served and blessed. It has been said, there is only one way to God and that is through Jesus. But there are a thousand ways to Jesus. By creating a thousand entry points to the community, we create a thousand opportunities to show the love and share the good news with the city. It is getting involved in their lives. It is not just pointing the finger of what is wrong. As you study the New Testament, you will be amazed at how many times you find Jesus seeing people responding with compassion, getting involved. The Bible says it in Matthew 14, the Bible says he saw a large crowd that was sick and he felt compassion and he got involved. In Luke chapter seven, he saw a woman whose son had died and the Bible literally says he felt compassion for her and he got involved in the situation. The Bible tells us in Matthew 15 that when the disciples were telling him about all the people, how they were hungry, they had a need that Jesus, the Bible says, felt compassion for them and he met that need he got involved. The Bible tells us in Mark chapter one about a leper and his loneliness and his need and the Bible said when Jesus saw him, he was moved to compassion over and over and over in the New Testament, Jesus saw people for who they were without God and he saw them in need and the Bible says it moved him. He heard on the inside and he got involved. Now listen to me. Where does Jesus now live? He lives in you and me, right? Christ by his spirit now lives in us and collectively the Bible says in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 that we are the what? Body of Christ. If this is how Jesus lived then, how do you think he desires to live now through us? One of the dynamics of following Jesus is demonstrating his compassion by getting involved in the lives of others in need. We must look for God's activity in the lives of others who are hurting and get involved. Let me give you another life application to wrestle with. Am I broken for the people in my life? Am I broken for the people in my life? Let me help you wrestle with that question in the past 30 days. I want you to think about the last month in the last 30 days of your life. How have you been intentional to get involved in somebody else's life with the purpose of meeting a need and building a relationship so that through that relationship the gospel could go from your life to their life? I want you to think about the last 30 days. In the last 30 days, how do you see this playing out in your life? You've seen somebody. You've been hurt, moved on the inside and you've responded by getting involved in their life. It's not a pseudo relationship. We're not building a relationship and getting involved just so we can share the gospel and put a notch in our belt. That's not what we're doing. We're building a genuine relationship because we see them as God sees them and we heard from them and we want them to know the truth of the gospel. It's a biblical response. Here's the third thing I want you to see about Jesus this morning. Jesus invites us to join in his activity of reaching people. If you go back to our text in Matthew chapter 9, you get this powerful verse in verse 36 and I hope you're able to, sometimes as a communicator or preacher, you feel so inadequate to try to paint the picture. In verse 35, Jesus moving through the streets. He's engaging people in the city and verse 36 says, "Man, he saw him and he broke." I hope you see in these verses a broken Jesus. Don't read these verses just like some dry story that you've heard a hundred times. I want you to see Jesus in his humanity overwhelmed with the lostness and the hurt around him. And he looks at his disciples and he says, "The harvest is plentiful." But there's so few people who care. "Bag God to send out labors." The phrase "send out" there, it's an interesting phrase in the New Testament most of the time when you see that little phrase "send out," it's the Greek word "apastello," which means to send out on a mission. That's not this word. This word is "ech ballo." We do ultimately get our word "ball" from it, "ballo," it means to throw out. Here Jesus is really talking about those who are in the field that need a fire lit under them, to be thrown out into the harvest. He says, "I'm begging you, beg God, beseech the Lord of the harvest, cry out to the sovereign God that he would light a fire under my people, that they would wake up, that they would open their eyes, and that they would see what is all around them." Now that leads me to the big question of the morning and here's the last one. How do we respond? How do we respond to the reality of lostness in Las Vegas? How do we respond to the reality of lostness in Las Vegas? That question's been on my heart. It's been on the heart of our pastoral team. Matter of fact, a few months ago, six, eight months ago, Pastor Travis and I was traveling to a speaking engagement and we decided to fly in a day early so that we could take a day and just in a hotel room, just sit before God would really this question. Because one of the dangers for us as a church, our eleventh year, we've moved into place now, we got our own home. It's been a little bit tossed and turned in the last week, but we got a place and we could take a deep breath and think we made it. And that is just so not the heart of our church, our pastoral team, so we just run a hotel room for a day. God, how do we continue to be passionate about the lostness of our city? Let me really drive this point home for you. 89052, closest zip code to the south, 89123, closest zip code to the north of us. Our old pebble campus was in 89123. The church started in my home in 89052. We've been in both those zip codes we got. But did you know that if you look at the city of Las Vegas, those two zip codes are two of the most densely populated unchurched zip codes in our city? Now wrap your head around that. Here we are, a church plant 11 years ago didn't exist. Now we're close to 2,000 people a week in. And everybody could go, man, that's great. And we hadn't penetrated the losses of the zip codes around us hardly at all. Rest them with this question in a hotel room. And in that day of prayer and reading the word, and God, I believe, really spoke to Travis and I was something that we're going to kick off this weekend that we're calling the 50, 50, 30 initiative. You say, what in the world is that? 50-50-30. 50. 50. 50,000 people. 50,000 households. 30 days. 50,000 people. 50,000 households. 30 days. So what do you mean? We've taken the month of September. And it's not like it's just a one month deal. This is just a month for us to emphasize it. And we've prepared packets that every one of you, and not one per family, every one of you, we're asking you to take one this morning, every one of you. And the people in your small group that aren't here this weekend, you need to tell them they need to get one of these. Inside of this packet are one thing, 25 personal invite cards. We've prepared 2,000 of these packets, 25 personal invite cards. We have about 2,000 people, really more than that, that come at least once a month here at Hope. If every person takes one of these packets and over the next 30 days, you'll personally invite 25 people to one of our weekend services in 30 days, we can invite 50,000 people. That's not 134,000, but it's a step in the right direction. Now, understand me, inviting somebody simply to a church service is not the same thing as sharing the gospel with them, but it is a start. We're trying this morning to help us take a first step. So what we've done is over the next 30 days, we're going to be preaching through a series here, similar to what we did with Sizzle a few years ago if you were here. The series is entitled, "God, I've got a question." So we're making it really easy for you to invite your friends, your coworkers, your neighbors, 25 of them in 30 days, we want you to invite. Next weekend, we're going to answer the question, "God, can I really trust the Bible?" The second weekend, we're going to ask the question, "God, do all religions really ultimately lead to heaven?" And the third weekend, we're going to answer the question, "God, why do bad things happen to good people?" So for the next three weekends, we're going to deal with those questions that are very easy for you to invite somebody that's unchurched to come in here. And then the last weekend of the month, we've got a friend of mine named Tony Nolan who speaks all over the country every year, and every year he sees over 100,000 people trust Christ as personal Lord and Savior. The last Sunday of this month, Tony's going to be here in our services all day long, sharing his story about what's to deal with God, and we're going to just invite people to come, 25 people in 30 days. If we all do it, in the next 30 days, we'll invite 50,000 people to attend our services, 50,000. And we're praying that it opens the door for you to share the gospel, to share Christ with your friends and your relatives over the next 30 days, your co-workers. Now, God's done something else to make this real easy. We had this planned for months. Let me give you your opening line. Did you see the church on the news? I'm serious. We've had this planned for months. All you got to say is, did you see the church underwater? Oh, yeah. Our little girl started school over at Glen Taylor Elementary this week, and we went over to the meet and greet there, and we're walking down the halls, and people said, "Oh, there's that celebrity on TV." You see that church on the news? Yeah? Man, we're doing this series this month. I'd love to personally invite you to come. God's made it real easy for us. There's very few people you're going to invite in the next 30 days that hadn't heard about us in the last week. Why does God allow stuff to happen? You see, he always has a plan. His plan's better than our plan. 50,000 households, the other thing we're doing is in these zip codes right around us, we're sending a personal mailed invitation, a personal invite, a mailer to every one of the 50,000 households closest to our campus with the same information. So here's, if you invite somebody that lives around here, not only have they heard it on the news, they're going to get your personal invitation, but they're going to get an invite in the mail from our church, inviting them to come and be with us over these 30 days. Now, also in this packet, we've given you some information on how to invite people and how to intentionally demonstrate kindness. There's a lot of examples in here. Travis will unpack that a little bit more here in a moment, but that's what's in this packet. We're asking everybody to pick it up, and we're going to pray and trust God over the next 30 days. You say, "Pastor, what if they all show up?" Well, we serve a miracle working God. We'll just trust Him. I don't know who will come. I don't know how many will come, but here's what I know. If you don't ask them, they won't come. Let me show you a couple of statistics and I'm going to be finished. This is out of Tom Rainer's book. He did a survey for a year of the unchurched next door. Here's what he found out. 82% of the unchurched are at least somewhat likely to attend the church if invited. You know what that means? 95% of our city's laws, 82% of our city would come if you'd just invite them. But look at the next statistic. Seven out of the 10 unchurched people have never been invited to a church in their whole life. Now think about that. 80% of unchurched people said, "If you invite me, I'll probably come." But 70% of them have never been invited. We're not talking about a bold proclamation of the gospel. We're talking about just inviting them to sit by you for an hour and a half at church. Only 2% of church-going people invite someone to church in a given year. 50. 50. 30. 50,000 people. 50,000 households. 30 days. In the book of Acts, the early church was challenged by Jesus to take the gospel to their city. And let me tell you how they responded. They got in the upper room and they prayed. I'm going to ask Teddy and the team. You guys come on. Let me tell you what we're about to do. We're going to close our service a little bit differently today. We're about to get on our knees. We're about to pray. We're going to pray for a move of God. Listen, we can't create the movement of God. You can't. But let me tell you what we can do. We can put up our sails so that if the wind blows, we're ready. In just a moment, I'm going to pray and I'm going to invite as many of you as can to come and to just join me all over this front here. We're just going to get on our knees before God. And we're going to spend a few minutes closing our service praying for our city. All right, that's how we're going to close. We're just going to pray for our city. After we finish praying, we'll invite you to dismiss back to your seat. And then we'll close with a few announcements in our offering. Let's pray together. Lord, hear us as we pray. Now right now you come. You just come. Just come and feel this altar. Kneel all over the front. If you can't get to the front, you kneel in the aisle. We're just going to pray. We're going to begin to pray for our city and I want you to start even as you come. I want you to start praying for the neighbors, the coworkers, the people in your circles of influence that need Christ. Just start crying out their names to God. You just pray on their family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers, the people that you cross paths with all the time. Pray right now that God would open their hearts, pray that they would come, pray that they would hear the gospel, pray that they would be saved. I want you to pray right now for us as a church, that God would speak to our hearts, that we would be changed. That God would allow us to see people as he sees them. That God would give us compassion for people. That God would break our hearts for the lossness of our city. Ask him for divine appointments for the 25 people that you're going to invite over these 30 days. Ask God to open your eyes to the opportunities around you. Ask God to begin a movement in our city. Ask God for a revival to come in our city that churches all across our city would be impacted. Churches all across our city would be burdened for the lossness of our city. Ask God for an awakening. Lord, we are desperate for you today. God is your people. We come before you and we cry out to you and we ask you, Lord, would you do what you said in your word? Would you send out laborers into the harvest? God, today, as we kneel before you and Lord those that are still sitting, that can kneel. God, we pray this morning. We kneel in our hearts before you and God, we ask you to send us out into this city with a passion for people, with compassion for people, to engage them and share Christ. Lord, don't let us be caught up in the affairs of everyday life. Don't let us get caught up in our own lives. What I pray for the 50,000 homes that are going to receive these Maylers, God, that you'd prepare their hearts and they'd come. Lord, we ask you to have your way. We bless you, O God. Now would you take a moment and would you start thanking him for what he's going to do? Would you thank him for the people that will be saved? Would you thank him for the families that are going to be put back together? Would you thank him for the homes that are going to be restored? Would you thank him for the teenagers that are going to be changed? Would you thank him for the relationships that we're going to build that ultimately we'll get to let those relationships be bridges for the gospel? God, we bless you. We thank you. We worship you. It's in Jesus' name we pray.