MK040 Sermons
Follow Jesus (Audio)
I want you to think about what are the next steps that God might have for you personally? And over the next five weeks, we're gonna walk through a series entitled Next Steps and we're gonna explore what I believe are the foundational next steps for anyone that chooses to follow Jesus. And that's really what our first one is gonna be all about. It's gonna be all about Jesus. And that's no surprise because Jesus is really at the center of all that we are about here at CCC. It's because of him and what he's done, he's coming to earth and his death on the cross. It gives us hope that we sang about just a few minutes ago that gives us life. It's because of him that, I mean, a spirit, God's spirit within us that we have the capacity to function throughout the day and he gives us what we need. And so this morning, we wanna begin by talking about the first next step and that's following Jesus. Before we begin talking about that step, I wanna talk about the people that Jesus invited to follow him. Before we even talk about following Jesus, I wanna think about who did Jesus invite to follow him because it's a little bit different than sometimes who we think that Jesus invited to follow him. If you have your Bibles, if you would turn to Matthew 4, Matthew 4, if you have a tablet or a wireless device, you can connect to the network and hopefully you have YouTube on your phone or tablet and you can go there. Our ushers have some Bibles and they'll pass them out and make those available to you. Matthew 4, and as you're turning there in Matthew 4, this is very early in what's known as Jesus' public ministry. He had lived on this earth for a number of years, potentially about 30 years, and as he came to this point in time, it was time for him to go public with who he was and why he was here, who he was and why he was here. And so Matthew 4 is when this process actually begins. And in Matthew 4, beginning in verse 18, Jesus says this, he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers Simon, Peter and his brother Andrew, and they were casting a net for they were fishermen, and Jesus said, come and follow me. And Jesus said to these guys, he says, come on guys, why don't you go with me, go where I'm going, and he invited them to come along with him. And that's where they began their journey. And then just a few verses later, he found a few more guys who were fishers, fishermen, James and John, and he invited them to come and they left their nets, and they followed Jesus as well. And then in John chapter one, he speaks to a man by the name of Philip, and he says to Philip, come and follow me, and Philip came and followed him, and Philip went and found Nathaniel, and said, Nathaniel, why don't you come and follow me? And then a little bit later in Matthew, if you turn just a few pages over to Matthew chapter nine, Jesus invites someone else to follow him. Someone is a little bit different. These first individuals that Jesus invited to follow, they were probably guys that were teenagers. They were learning a trade, a craft from their father that they would eventually become their own. And so these men were probably 15, 16, 17, as how old these were. But Jesus goes and invites someone else to follow him. And in Matthew chapter nine, in verse nine, it says, he went out from there and he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. Follow me, he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. And Jesus invited Matthew to follow him. He invited someone who was very different, very different. You see, tax collectors were not favored people in the Roman, in the Jewish community. The Romans didn't send Romans to collect the taxes. They actually hired Jews to collect the taxes. Jews from in their own hometown. So it'd be like someone who lived in Denver or Reim's town or Adam's town or Shenak. You know, that would be someone in your own community, someone that you knew, someone you might have been friends with in high school or you might have known their kids or you might have gone to school together. This is someone you knew. And what this person did is this person worked for the government of Rome. And Rome said, this is how much tax we want and so you gotta get that from the people. And then Rome said, you can take as much more on top of that as you want to take on top of that. And sometimes it was up to four times the amount that the Romans required that the tax collectors would take on top of that. And so these tax collectors, as you can imagine, were not very well liked individuals. As a matter of fact, the only people that like tax collectors were, you guessed it, other what? Tax collectors, they had their own exclusive club. And so Jesus goes up to this guy who is very different than anybody else, who likely did not behave the way the other religious people behaved. And he probably didn't believe the things that the other religious people believed. But Jesus went to someone like this and he said, would you come? And he said, yeah, I'll come and I'll follow you. And so, strikingly, Jesus goes to someone who didn't behave the way that others did or believed in. And he said, I want you to come. I want you to come. And Jesus goes on this passage to talk about the tension. Matthew goes on in this passage to talk out the tension it created, because in verse 10, Jesus went and had dinner. It says he was having dinner at Matthew's house. Many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. I mean, the sinners were all there. All the thieves, the common criminals, the prostitutes, anybody that got in trouble with the law, they were there. They were in the sinners category. The tax collectors got their own category. They weren't even in the sinners category. They were worse than the sinners, but they got their own category. They were there. So Matthew and all of his buddies were there. And these are the people that Jesus was hanging out with. Not the people that behaved and believed the way everybody else behaved and believed. It stirred up controversy in the religious community, because in the next verse, the religious leaders start to ask themselves the question, why is Jesus hanging out with these people? And look what Jesus says, verse 12, on hearing this, he said, it's not the healthy who need the doctor. It's the sick. It's the sick. Jesus said the people that need a doctor are not the ones that either don't think they're sick or are not sick. They don't need a doctor. It's the ones that are starting to catch the analogy that Jesus is creating. Because in the very next verse, look what he says. He says this, but go and learn what this means. Obviously, the religious leaders didn't get this. They did not understand this. I want mercy, not sacrifice. Say, why mercy and not sacrifice? Well, sacrifice really pointed to the religious rules, the church thing, the religious thing, the temple thing, all the laws, all the rules. He said, I'm not concerned and interested in someone who has all the rules figured out, who has all their problems fixed, so is everything taken care of. I'm not interested in those people. He said, I want people that know they don't have it all figured out. I want people that are begging for mercy, for something that they don't deserve. He said, that's the people that I want. He said, I didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners. And as you think about this phrase and think about what Jesus is saying, Jesus is saying, the people that I'm going to call to follow me, the people that I'm going to move towards, the people that I'm going to spend time with and invest my time with are the people that likely are not going to behave and believe the way everyone else does. These are likely not the people that think they've got it all figured out. These are the people that we're willing to admit. I don't have it all figured out. They're willing to admit, I'm sick, I'm broken, I need help. Those are the people that Jesus went to. It begs us to ask the question, who do we go to? Who do we go to? Who do we move towards? Who do we spend time with? If you're like me, if you're like most of us, we often move towards people that are just like us. And if we don't recognize that we are broken and we are in need of Jesus, we'll go to people just like that, just like that. And Jesus hasn't called the church to be a place full of healthy people. Jesus has called the church to be a place full of sick, broken people who need a savior. That's what he's called the church to be about. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to be a part of a church that's full of people that Jesus wouldn't even want to hang around with. I think I'd want to be a part of a church that's full of people that Jesus would want to hang around with. And unfortunately in the 21st century, the church has sold people a bill of goods and said, you just need to find people and try to get them to come to church. And you just need to bring people to come to church and we've kind of lost sight of what this is all about. And it's really all about Jesus. And it's all about Jesus. And so what we've done is we've gone to people that are going to other churches and dissatisfied in their churches and tried to bring them to our church and think, this is what I should be doing. And that's not at all what Jesus says you should be doing. He said, if you're going to live like me, if you're going to imitate me, if you're going to follow me, you need to go to the people that I went to, which are the people that didn't behave or believe anything like they did. The people that are broken. The people that don't have it all figured out. The people that say, I need a savior. So that's who Jesus went to. And he said to those individuals, will you come and follow me? But as you read this story in Matthew about Jesus inviting them to come and follow him, it's a little confusing because you kind of have this picture of these guys who are working for their dad, they're out fishing, they're learning the trade, they're doing the honorable thing. And Jesus says, walk away from all of that, leave it all and come and follow me. And that seems a little bit irresponsible to just abandon mom and dad, see ya, dad, I'm done. I'm leaving all of this. So I'm going with the Jesus guy here. It seems kind of irresponsible to do all of that. But that's what the story says. Matthew is one of four gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each one of these writers wrote to a different audience with a different purpose in mind, with a different background. Four different perspectives about the same story. And so what I want us to do today is I want us to take a look at this story from a different perspective. You say, what do you mean four different perspectives? Well, Matthew was a tax doctor. He was also a Jew. And his primary target audience was Jewish individuals, people who were Jewish in their faith and heritage. He was a lot of Old Testament illustrations. He talked to all kinds of stuff about money because that was his background and perspective. Mark may not have been with Jesus when he was here on the earth. We don't really know. But he was with a guy named Peter who spent a lot of time with Jesus. And he learned from Peter all these stories about Jesus. And he wrote down kind of the cliff notes, the quick version of it about Jesus's life. Luke, we know, is a medical doctor. And Luke recorded as a medical doctor what in great detail. And he went and interviewed people and said, tell me about your experience with Jesus. Tell me about your experience. What was it like for you to experience Jesus? He recorded this in great detail. And then he presented his argument likely to people who were Greeks. People who did not have a faith orientation like the Jewish people did. John was Jesus most beloved disciple. And John is the one who spent time with Jesus in these very intimate settings. John records verbatim, long extended conversations that Jesus had with his followers. Very different communication than anyone else. And John's message is to the whole world that they would believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And so each one of them presents their story in a slightly different way. And so while Matthew says, leave it all and follow me. Luke presents a very different perspective on this story. And I want us to spend time looking at Luke's perspective on this story. If you turn to Luke chapter five, Luke chapter five. And as you turn into Luke chapter five, as I said, Luke adds a lot more details. Luke's gospel is the most thorough about Jesus' life. He's likely writing to people who are Greeks who probably don't have a background in Old Testament like the Jews would. And so he's helping them to understand who Jesus is and what following him is all about. So in Luke chapter five, beginning in verse one, it says this, "One day as Jesus was standing "by the lake of Ganeserit, "the people were crowning around him "and listening to the word of God." Jesus is standing by the shores of a well-known, we would call it a lake. They called it a sea, the Sea of Galilee. The Sea of Galilee. And you can see it on the map there. It's in the northern part of the land of Israel above the Jordan River that feeds down in the Dead Sea. And so that's where Jesus was. He was at the edge of this lake. And he's at the edge of this lake. He's talking to a group of people. And likely he was talking to them about what Matthew records for us. This concept called the kingdom of God. He was telling them about this kingdom that God was about to bring about on this earth where a new king would reign. And they were transfixed by this. They knew about this kingdom of God that was gonna come. They had heard about that. They likely heard about it from their parents and heard about it in temple, but they really didn't understand how and when and what way and what's it gonna be like and how's it different than what we know now? And Jesus was explaining all of this. And so they sat with great, great attentiveness. Look at the end of verse one. It says this, they were listening to the word of God. They were listening to the word of God. And the first step in following Jesus is listening to the word of God. It's listening. You see, sometimes we think that to follow Jesus means I need to abandon everything. Like Peter and Andrew did and just, no, Luke says the first thing they did is they listened to the word of God. Paul says this way. He says faith comes by hearing. And what is listening to? What happens when you hear something you've never heard before and you're curious about it? What do you do? You ask what, questions, right? You wanna know more. You wanna, where did that come from? How did you come to that conclusion? Why is that the case? And so what do you do? You ask questions. Listening produces questions. And questions often lead us to faith. If someone says to you, no, you just need to believe this and take my word for it and don't ask me any questions. You need to turn and run the other direction because that's not what the kind of faith is that the Bible talks about. The Bible doesn't talk about a blind faith. It doesn't talk about a blind faith. It talks about a faith that understands truth and makes an informed, intelligent decision to choose a different way of life. And so following Jesus begins with listening. And maybe that's where some of you are at right now. Maybe if some of you decided you should begin the new year and do something different. And so church is one of those things. Or maybe for you, you kinda had church forced on you for a long period of time and you walked away from that. And now you're like, you know, I got some questions. Maybe I just need to give it one more shot and see if someone would be able to answer these questions because they just don't go away. They just don't disappear. And so you're here listening this morning and you're here asking questions and you're here exploring. Somewhere you are moving out of this place where you're under mom and dad's roof and you're on your own and your faith has to transition from something you heard from mom and dad to something that you embrace and is your own and you need to ask questions. And that's how faith will become something that is your own, that you embrace, that you choose, that you live. But following Jesus begins with listening. And that's what the people there were doing. It goes on to saying verse two that as he sat by the water's edge, there were two boats left there by fishermen who were washing their nets. What the fishermen did is they would come in from a night of fishing and after they finished fishing, they would take all their nets and they would stretch their nets out on the seashore. And as they stretched their nets, they would take out all the stuff that got caught up in the nets. They would also clean out all their boats, from all the soggy sandwiches that they took that they didn't need overnight and all the beverage of choice cans, all that stuff, they would clean all that junk out and they would stretch their nets out so they would dry if any of the nets were broken and they would see where they were broken, they would repair the nets, then they would roll these nets up and they would have them set aside ready for the next time they would go out fishing. And so that's what these men were doing. While they were doing that, Jesus climbed into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, it says in verse three, and asked him to put it out from the shore and he sat down there and continued to teach the people. And as Jesus continued to do that, he talks about the next step, which is a step of following Jesus that we often don't think about, but it's a step of inconvenience. Because Peter, as it says in the story, had been out fishing all night. That's usually when they fished, it was overnight, because the fish at night would come up to the surface when the water temperature would cool down. But when the sun would come up, the fish would go down to the bottom, to the depths of the sea and there was no point in fishing because everybody knows you go fishing when, first thing in the morning and after the sun goes down, right? And so they had just finished all of this. They had just done all of this, they had brought their nets and they were ready to go get something to eat and crash. And what does Jesus say in verse four? He asked Peter to do something inconvenient. He says, would you put your boat out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch? That's kind of inconvenient, isn't it? Peter had just been doing this all night. Peter knew when to do this, he knew how to do this. But Jesus asked him to do something that's a little bit inconvenient. He also asked him to do something that he had done hundreds of times over and over and over and over again. He had gone out and let down his nets. And Jesus says, why don't you go out and let your nets out again? Peter's like, why now? That's not convenient. Why now? Why now? And then Jesus asked him to take a step of faith and he says, would you go out and would you let the nets down? And look at Peter's questions in verse five. He said, Master, we worked hard all night and we didn't catch anything. He said, we've been out all night and our take is zilch, nothing, nothing. I don't know the frustration of hunting all day or fishing all night 'cause I don't do those things. I go to the store and pay my money and take my food home, that's how I do it. But others of you, many others of you, know that frustration of being out there the whole evening or the whole day or early in the morning and you come home empty handed. Now, I don't know why that doesn't discourage you from going out again 'cause you go back out again, you do it again, over and over again. I don't understand that, it's just not me. But that's what Peter had come out and so he'd come home with nothing. And Jesus says, why don't you go out again? Why don't you go out again? I mean, imagine what Peter could have said to Jesus. He could have said to Jesus, you know what Jesus, I'd love to take you out, but why don't you show back up here in about 10 or 11 hours and the sun will be setting, will be ready to go out and it'll be time and let's go. He could have said, you know what, nobody asks to go fishing during the day, but if you're crazy enough to wanna go out, how about I go get a bite to eat and I catch a few Z's and then I'll take you out? He could have said all of those things, all of those things. But Peter responded to something that was very inconvenient and he said, we've been out all night, all night. It's kinda like if you have a jeep and you've been out four wheeling with your buddies and the jeeps covered with mud and you bring it home and you hose it all down and get it all cleaned up so it's nice and shining and your girlfriend shows up and says, oh, I just missed going out with you and would you take me out again? And you're like, ah, sure, I'll do it. Um, but notice what else Peter says in this verse. He begins by saying this, he says, master, master. He doesn't say Jesus or he doesn't say Son of God or Lord or Savior or Messiah, he just says master. It's just a term of reverence to someone who's a little bit older, that's all it is. He doesn't see Jesus as anybody different than another rabbi who's out teaching, trying to get people to follow him, of which there were many. But Peter does something different, he does something different. Not only does he get asked to do something inconvenient and he gets asked to do something that's the step of faith, but look what he does in the next, in the middle of that verse, I'm sorry, if we can go back to verse five, look what he does in the middle of that verse. He says, because you say so, I will let down the nets. Now, Peter didn't pray about this decision. Peter didn't believe that God was going to do a miracle. He simply said, because you say so, I'm gonna do this. That's the only reason Peter did it, the only reason. He said, 'cause you say so, I'm going to this. He had no confidence, he had no faith that anything was gonna happen, but he said, because you say so, I am going to do this. He said, what could it hurt? What could it hurt? You know, and some of you know what this is like in your relationship with God, and some of you know what this is like to be in a situation where there's something that God has given you a nudge to do. It's something you've done 100 times over and over again, and he says, I want you to do something just a little bit differently. And you're like, huh, I wonder if it's gonna work. I wonder if it's gonna work. You've borrowed four things that you wanna buy all of your life, and you decide this time, I think I'm gonna save a little bit, and then buy. What could it hurt? You've just taken your paycheck, and you've spent it, paid your bills, lived off of it, and you decide this time, you know what? I'm gonna give a little bit back to God. God says to do this, and he says, trust me, and I'm gonna give a little bit, hmm, I wonder what could it hurt if I tried this one time? You know, when you have a conflict in relationship, you just back away, you just avoid it. You don't wanna go there, you don't wanna cause cause, you don't wanna create waves, and you kind of have this, just this little sense inside that, you know, maybe I should just speak into that, and you're like, hmm, I've never done that before. What could it hurt? What could it hurt? And so following Jesus is not only about listening, but it's taking a step of inconvenience that is going to require you to do something different than the way you've done it before. And that's what Jesus says to Peter. He says, Peter, will you put out your boat in the middle of the daytime, and let your nets down? And so following Jesus is a step in which Jesus invites you to do something you've never done. He said, will you take a chance that something just might happen if you do that? And Peter says, you know what? I'm gonna put my stock on you that, and that's the only reason I'm doing it. Not because I believe in you, not because I believe you're the Messiah, not because I've got all this understood, and I've got it all figured out, but I'm gonna take a chance on what you're saying. And so what happens in verse six? Well, if you know the story, you know what happens. Verse six, when they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish, their nets began to break, so they signaled their partners and the other boats had come and helped them. They came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink. What happened? What happened? Peter took a little step of faith. He didn't take a big step of faith. He took a little step of faith. Jesus wasn't asking him to walk on the water. That didn't happen yet. This is the very beginning. He says, I want you to take a little step of faith, and will you take a little step of faith, and just trust me that I just might do something if you're willing to take a small step of faith. And when Peter made that one step, everything changed, everything changed. Now, what didn't happen with Peter is it wasn't like, let's make a deal, and God pulled back the curtain and said, if you choose curtain number one, this is what's going to happen. You will become one of the top three disciples, and you will become the pillar of the church, and you'll have a basilica built for you that takes 118 years in the city of Rome. He didn't pull back the curtain and say, all these, Peter had to take a step of faith. He didn't know anything was gonna happen. Anything was gonna happen. And following Jesus is like that. Following Jesus at times requires us to take a step of faith in which I have no confidence other than the fact that God seems to point me to this. There's something inside of me that is giving me a nudge toward it. Someone has challenged me and invited me to do it, and I'm gonna take a step of faith and see what happens. Maybe you've never reconciled a broken relationship in your life. Problem happens, you just throw it aside, you just walk away. You never, anyway, maybe I should do that. Do that. You've never had a close friend to walk through life with you. I'm gonna talk about this a little bit more next week, and you think, man, maybe there's something to that that I need to figure out why. I don't have anybody in my life. Why do I just do life all by myself? And when you take that step of faith, there's a potential that God might do something. And then that's exactly what happened in Peter's life. But look at his response in verse eight. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and says, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man." For he and his companions were all astonished in what had happened. Their response in this passage is really staggering. It's really staggering. Because what the disciples didn't do is they didn't go, "Woo-hoo, we hit the jackpot, the mother load!" We're not gonna have to go out in the middle of the night fishing all night on those smelly boats for the next three months. Look at all this fish we caught. There was no celebration, there was no excitement. There was fear, and I just kind of envisioned Peter down like this and, "Oh, my Lord." You just kind of envisioned that, don't you? What in the world have I done? I was trying to think through what is going on inside of Peter as this happens, and the best analogy I could come up with is it's kind of like you being invited to drive a race car, down at a place, let's say you got over to Dover and you get a chance to drive a race car on the track over at Dover. They put someone in, you always have to have someone with you and you're with someone. They put someone else in the back, and this guy's name is Jeff, and he's in the back with you, and as you're starting the race car up, Jeff says, "Well, you kind of might want to do this, "and as you're banking in this car, "you kind of might want to do this." Jeff, I'm good with it. I got it, Jeff, I'm good, I'm good, you know? And as cars starting to peel out and you're starting to lose control and the other driver takes control, you know, and Jeff's like, "Why don't you try?" I'm good, Jeff, I'm good, I got this all covered, you know? And you come to find out when you get back in the pit area that's Jeff Gordon, who's in the back seat with you, you know? And you're like, "What an idiot I was." You know, you're like, "Where's there?" Somebody dig me a really big hole so I can crawl in it right now, you know? What is it like to dismiss someone who is the best at what they do when they try to speak into your life about it? Every parent knows what this is like, right? We live this all day long, right? Well, why don't you try, no, I'm good, mom and dad, I got it, I'm good, I got it, I got it, I'm good, I got it, you know, and they come back later, can you please, sure, you know? It's a little bit like that, I think, with Peter. But Peter saw something really, really deep inside of him because he wasn't just afraid, like the other disciples, like, who is this magic man, you know? How does he know that we know where the fish are? Good grief, if he knows where the fish are, Peter just realized that if Jesus knows where the fish are, Jesus knows everything that's going on inside of here as well. It's like, oh my goodness, I am in big dudu here, you know? He knew that Jesus knew everything about him. He was completely exposed. He saw himself for who? He was. He saw himself as a sinner, as someone who needed Jesus. And at that moment in time, look what Jesus then goes on to say in verse 10 and 11, Jesus said, don't be afraid because now you're going to fish for people. And so they pulled their boats on shore, left everything. Even that huge ketchup fish and followed him. You know what they did then? They said, here you go, God. It's all yours. I surrender it all. I give it all to you. I give it all to you. And see, sometimes we have this perception that following Jesus means that the first thing that Jesus is going to ask us to do is to give it all up and Jesus says, no, no, no, no, no, no. The first thing I'm going to ask you to do is just listen, just listen and ask questions and be curious. And then I'm going to ask you to do something that's inconvenient and something you've done over and over again. I'm going to ask you to take a flyer on me and try something just a little bit different. It's going to be a step of faith. It's going to be a risk. But when you do that, you're going to discover something about me. You're going to something true about me that you maybe have never discovered. You're also going to discover some things about you that you've never seen before. And after you discover those things, then you will be ready when I say to you, will you turn it all over to say, here it is, God. Here it is. It's all yours. That relationship that I've been trying to fix, that I can't fix, God. I want them so badly to come to you and I trial these things and it just puts them further away. And that spouse that's in strange and that kid that's distant and that job situation that is not coming together, my finances that I can't get my head above water, those struggles in my past that I just want to be free from. And Jesus says, are you willing to surrender at all? Are you willing to surrender at all? Your hopes and dreams, what you want for your kids and for your grandkids, and they say, God, I'm willing to turn it all over to you, to you. So where are you at this morning as it relates to following Jesus? Maybe you're at a place of listening. That's where you are this morning. And the next step for you to keep listening is just for you to come back and say, you know what, I'm going to come back or if you're going back to college, maybe say, I'm going to go back to college and I'm going to find a place where I can go and I can listen because I need some place that's going to help me get these questions answered and questions sorted out and that starts by me listening. Maybe the step for you, the next step for you and following Jesus to say, God, I'm going to be willing to be inconvenienced and I'm going to be willing to try something a little bit different than what I've ever tried before. What I've been doing hasn't been working and I'm ready to try something new and I know that's going to be hard and that's going to be risky, but I'm willing to give it a try because you're inviting me into it. And maybe for some of you, that next step is for you to say, you know, God, I'm ready just to turn my hands upside down and say, God, it's, it's all yours. It's all yours. I surrender. So what's he calling you to do this morning? What's he calling you to do? You know, as I think about my own life and my own journey in these places along the way, where God said, I want you to listen, I want you to ask questions. I want you to take a step and try something that you've never tried before that nobody you know has ever tried before, but this is a step I want you to take. And I realize where God led me to as a result of that. And then to bring to a place to say, can I turn everything in my life? Can I turn my hopes and dreams for my kids to follow God over to him? Can I turn the future of this church over to him? Can I turn what I long for in my relationship with my wife and with my extended family over to him? Can I turn everything in my life over to him and say, I'm willing to turn palms up and say, I surrender. Is that where God has you today? Is there something in your life that you've been holding on to that you've listened and you've taken some steps and you've done some inconvenient things and you've seen God show up and you've seen God come through and do things and he's now saying, now it's time for you to turn this one over and give this one back to me. I want to invite you to bow your head. And I want to give you a couple minutes just to talk to God and some of you, you know exactly what step it is that God's inviting you to take. It's crystal clear. You just have to decide if you're willing to do it. For others, you're wrestling with just knowing what it is that God wants you to do. You're not quite sure. I want to invite you just to take the next moment and