Hey, we're in a series of studying Philippians and we're going kind of right through chapter by chapter, verse by verse, And where Pastor Matt left off last week was the end of chapter 2. And we're not going to break stride. We're going to pick right up in Philippians, chapter three. Are you cool if I hit the ground running and we just go right at it? Is that cool?

. Great. Thank you for your permission. That's what we're doing. And you know, every title of this series has been a song title, And so I'm going to read these verses, cuz I'm going to start with verse 7, and then I need your help, cuz I need you to announce my sermon title, which is a song title, to your neighbor.

You good with that, . Y'all lost trust in me real quick, didn't you? You did All right. You good with that, . Okay, Good, good, good, good, Okay.

Let me summarize. I'm skipping verses 1 through six. Let me sum. Can I summarize them for you? Let me summarize it this way: My mother-in-law- It's a weird way to start a sermon, isn't it?

My mother-in-law, This gonna go good, not bad. It's a good story, not a bad story. You, mother-in-laws, just take a deep breath, It's okay, Inhale, Exhale, Well done. My mother-in-law is a master resume builder, That she is good at it. She has taught it in a college setting and she, she just I'm going to tell you what.

She can get anybody a job doing anything, whether they're qualified for it or not. She's good at it. Her brother-in-law is not a spring chicken, It's a nice way of saying. He's lived on the earth many days and his career was, was pretty much over and done, and he was looking at retirement and things didn't really pan out that way, and so he needed to get a resume together. Anybody ever built a resume?

Have you put your resume out there, Some of y'all? The first service- nobody raised their hand And I'm like: "What do y'all do like that you didn't need a resume for". He got this resume, built by my mother-in-law and, and he got like within like within no time, He had this like crazy, outrageously highpaying job that he secured at an age where you typically don't secure jobs like that. And, and, between you and I- I don't really, I guess it's between you and me, that's the correct grammar there, But I don't think. I don't think he was qualified for it, Jeff, I don't think he was, but he got it.

He got it And, because he had this awesome resume that my mother-in-law built him and it looked really good on paper. Right now that's half the battle. But you got to interview. Well, You know what I mean. Paul is writing this book in Philippians and for the first six verses he just puts out this resume like he is flexing hard to the Philippians and he's like: "Y'all think you're good, Like you think you got it going good.

Well, let me tell you I'm better. You remember the Mia a ham, Michael Jordan commercials. Anything You y'all don't know. All these young people are looking at me like you're old bro, Who's Mia Ham? I know you ain't saying who's Michael Jordan.

That's the goat right there. Leave it right there, Pick it back up later. Y'all want to hear a story? I didn't tell this to the first service. You want to hear it?

Can I sit down and tell you a story? Follow me, camera. You ready. I was. I was five years old.

Y'all, Y'all good, You with me, I was five years old. I can't believe I'm telling you this. I was 5 years old, I was. I was praying in the kitchen. I can take you there in my parents house And my dad was, at work, and my mom was there and she.

So I was praying for my food, which was the only time I prayed when I was that age- Some of y'all still there. You know what I'm saying. We'll leave that right there too, And we'll pick that up later. And so I was. I was praying for this meal and I was like, "God bless my cottage cheese", Cuz that's what I was eating.

I remember, And I said: "And, dear God, make me black like Michael Jordan. I know you can do it. You parted the Red Sea And if you can turn the Nile River red, you can turn my white skin black. And Jesus, you rose from the dead. I know you can do it.

You raised Lazarus. You could make me black, Jesus, Like Michael Jordan. In Jesus name, I pray, Amen. You're almost there.

Y'all looking at me like he didn't answer it, but you should see the inside of me. Y'all don't know th. This is the story. That's not the story. You want to know the end of the story.

It's not the end. I'm still. He's still working on me. They're still hoping this. You want to know the midway Couple weeks later, same story, Saturday.

Saturday. It was a Saturday morning. I was eating my cereal and this time I was praying for my Cheerios. And I looked down. I was on this arm- Probably can't see it anymore- Somewhere in there- And I saw my first freckle.

I got so excited. I said: "Mom, mom, he's doing it, He's doing it". I really thought the Lord was answering my prayer. To become black like Michael Jordan, That was my goal when I was a kid. There's a- It's a weird story, but I'm telling you what it's inside- The Lord did it.

There was this commercial with Mia Ham and Michael Jordan. Mia Ham was a American soccer player, female soccer player- And Michael Jordan was a male basketball player. And this commercial said: "Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you. No, you can't, Yes, I can.

No, you can't, Yes, I can". And it went on and on and it was this really cool commercial and I think it was a Gatorade commercial, right, If I'm not mistaken, it was a Gatorade commercial. And this is Paul- You think you're good, I'm better than you, And he lays out this legit resume. That is killer. He was like: I was born in the right family of all the tribes of Israel.

I was a Benjam, I, I was from the tribe of Benjamin. Now, if you go back to Exodus and you read the story of Joseph and his brothers, he and his brothers became the 12 tribes of Israel and their father, Jacob, the father of Israel, whose real name he. It was Jacob, but it was changed to Israel. There's a sermon in there. I could tell you right now.

You ever notice that we use, we say the God of Abraham, Isaac, and why did he say Abraham, which was Abram's changed name, but he didn't use Israel, which was Jacob's changed name. He says Abraham- that's a new name- Isaac and Jacob. He uses the old name, which means deceiver. There's a sermon in there somewhere. You want to know what it is.

Or should I leave that for Pastor Matt to cover a different time? You want to know what it is Because God's not just the God of you when you get it right. He's the God of your past as much as he is the present and your future. That the same God that's walking with you right now is the same one that walked with you when you woke up on the street on a Friday morning because you don't know where you were on Thursday night And he brought you through then so that he could get you to where you are now. It's not that he was nowhere to be found, It's that you were already chosen, You just hadn't yet walked in fellowship with him.

Yeah, Anyway, that guy Jacob. I wish I could preach that to you, but I can't. That guy Jacob, he had. He had 11 sons, and, and one of them they became, or 12, and they became the 12 tribes of Israel, and, and one of them, the youngest, his name, was Benjamin. He was the favorite.

He was the favorite one because Joseph, who was his favorite, had left and went to Egypt because his brother sold him into slavery, And so he had this one, Benjamin, and now he was the baby of the family, the favorite. And Paul said: "I'm from that family, I'm from the favorite family". It's like today being like "My last name's Rockefeller". You know what I'm saying? Vanderbilt, I don't know Whatever- Like famous, I'm a Kennedy, right, Like whatever the last name is.

That seems prestigious, That's, that's what it is right there. And that's what Paul says: I got the right family, all these things that I'm awesome. And then, all of a sudden, verse 7 picks up and he gives this huge resume. That's perfection. And then he says: but everything that was a gain to me, I have considered also now to be a loss, because of Christ.

More than that, I also consider everything a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. Because of him, I have suffered the loss of all things and I consider them as dung The word. There is a Greek word that you can sound really smart to your friends, called scuba. It is the strongest form of the word feces that we have. Does that?

It is a four-letter word. I'll put it that the literal translation is a curse word. He- I'll- I'll get to that in just a second, but I'll tell you why. And he says: "All of that is scuba, so that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is, through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith". I'm going to stop right there.

Here's what he's saying, All the stuff that makes me awesome. And he's trying to get so passionate. He wants to get the point across. So he says it is scuba compared to what it is to know Jesus. And so he says something that might offend them, that might make a big point, just so that they can see it's not just trash.

It's complete trash compared to what it is to know Jesus. And so he goes on, and this is the verse I want to us to focus on today. He says: "My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection". We all want the power. Jesus said: "There will be some that come greater that, that come after me to do greater things than I did".

Right, And then other New Testament writers said that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead now lives in us. So he said: "I want to know him and I want to know the power of his resurrection". Now we're talking, Now we're getting somewhere in the fellowship of his sufferings. Hold up there, Paul, You doing pretty good there for a minute. But I don't know about this one.

You know what I'm saying. Like it's good, I want the power, but I want it without the suffering. Like I thought this was all fun and games. Come to Jesus, read my Bible, pray every day, go to church, give, serve, do all the things. And now I'm getting the.

That's the power. And he said: "But I don't want to just know all the good. I want to. I want to fellowship in his suffering". And then he says "Watch" And the fellowship of her sufferings being conformed to his death.

I'm out. I'm out Like, oh yeah, I went to power, but not that. And then, if we're talking dying, like to show you how significant this is, watch this Matthew. Come here Right here, Stand right here, All right. You ready?

 All right, Turn around so everybody can see your pretty face. That's right, This is Matthew. Everybody say "Hey, Matthew". All right, You ready?

. Y, . All right. If I offered you $10 million-, Yeah, . Would you take it?

. Yep, . Okay, That's smart boy. If not, we going to have to like, figure it out over here.

Okay, Yeah, No trick question. You would take it, Okay, Would you take it? If I told you have you, I'll give you 10 million, but you're not going to wake up tomorrow, Would you still take the 10 million? You wouldn't take it. So what you're saying is your life is more valuable than $10 million.

. Yes, it is. Okay, That's all I need. You can go sit back down, Okay, Thank you.

Y'all can clap for your boy standing up here did good, because that's how we value life. And you want me to die. It's not worth 10 million. Is there a number you would take Matthew to? Not, There's not, We're talking.

There are billionaires in the world, And if all of them, all the accumulative money in the world, became yours, but you couldn't wake up tomorrow, you still wouldn't take it, . No, He said he wouldn't take it because life is that valuable. And you want me to die. You want me to conform to his death. That's what you want, Paul is for me to conform to his death.

I'm out. You couldn't pay me all the money in the world to say yes to that. And what's interesting is he understands a concept that Jesus taught, which was he who wants to find his life must lose it for my sake. And when you lose your life for my sake, you'll find it. And he's not saying that you physically have to die.

He's saying that you, spiritually, or that you must live for something greater than yourself, That you become not the center of your life, but you revolve everything around Jesus. And when you die, life, real life, abundant life, comes from that death. And you'll never know what it means to truly live until you truly die, And that's why you're miserable, because your life is all about you. The next time you feel that anxiety, that pressure, that depression, that thing that you doesn't makes you not want to get up in the morning, try not thinking about yourself and revolving your life around something bigger than you, And then watch what happens with it. It's not about you and it's not about me.

It's about knowing him and the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings, Yeah, Being conformed to his death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead. I work in the fitness industry: faith and fitness. We literally lead workouts while preaching. How cool is that? It's so fun.

I got a friend named Isaiah And you have a friend named Isaiah and he's gonna come up here and help me out with this for just a second. And, but we're going to switch sides this time. Isaiah, We got, we got switch, switch sides this time. Because, because that other side of my body hurts. So we got to even it out.

Now, Isaiah, you were sitting right there and you ran up. There you are, Wow, man Scaring me, like the Holy Ghost behind me or something. You're good, bro. This is Isaiah.

Isaiah is a police officer in Phoenix. Yeah, we, Hey, we appreciate your service. Thank you for serving our city. Man, Yeah, we appreciate you. Isaiah obviously exercises, And so I'm scared a little bit.

And so, here's the thing. We're now this thing. When the Bible talks about here, when Paul's writing and he says, "I want to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings", What he's saying is that, no, and fellowship, th, those are two things. Where it, it provides action, It's in. Those are both active terms in Paul's day.

So it, it means you do something, right. That means we're going to stand here and that means this is we're going to do this, We're benefiting our body, right, We got to do at the same time for it to do it. There we go, Yeah, that's good, Okay. And what it means: we both go in at the same time. There we go, Okay.

So this is us working. Okay, I'm going to stand right here. So it works, cuz it doesn't actually work too well right here, Like man, you getting strong, bro, Look at them guns, They just popping right out there. It doesn't work, But we're working, We're doing the movement right. This is all of us in our Christian life.

Man, It's so exciting We come to know Jesus. It's so good I'm going to sing a little worship song. It's so good, I love it. It makes me feel good. I feel good cuz I'm here.

I made it to the spiritual gym called the church and I'm here and I'm doing it and I'm reading my Bible, I'm praying every day, I'm giving, I'm serving, I'm doing all the things and I'm So I'm getting the power of God right. But then I've been doing all this exercise into this arm and I go to actually do stay right there, something big, and I'm like, "Okay, God wants me to serve somebody and he wants me to take this to them, and I'm like it's not working. I need more power, So let me do my thing". And here we are. I'mma get stronger right here, bro, We're doing it All right.

Now I got I got power. Now I built up the muscle and I'm just like I can't do that. But Jesus said people will come after him. That will do greater. I want to know the power of his resurrection, which is the greatest miracle he ever did.

You with me. I want that power. So I should be able to lift this up, but I can't, Okay. So we're going through life and we're like, "Okay, well, this is Christianity, It's a wonderful thing". And then, all of a sudden, Isaiah gets married and now there's a relationship.

Whoa, that's weird. Now there's some tension. He didn't know which side the toilet paper went on. Now, just in case anyone is confused about this, it comes from the top. And the reason it comes from the top is if you want to go to any hotel in the country or the world and you want a little fancy design, it's got to come from the top.

Or you ain't going to see the fancy design And you don't know what spiders be lurking behind the bottom. And then, all of a sudden, they have a kid. What's your baby girl's name?: Allora, She's gorgeous little girl. I've got three of them And they all start with a.

It's really confusing. And then that's that. That's tension. Cuz, mama waking up, feeding, and why ain't you up? You know what I'm saying Like.

And you're like why? And then you sleep and it doesn't work. And why didn't you do this and why didn't you do that? And you're like: this is complicated. I thought this is going to be good God.

And then, all of a sudden, something happens where you were supposed to like lead something on the team and it didn't work out. Now there's this tension between you and your team leader. And then it worked. Things got hard and your sergeant was like, "You've been missing and now you getting, and it's tension". All of a sudden, there there bad things in life and all of a sudden your kid gets sick.

You lost a parent and now divorce is on the table and things are getting really, really difficult. Is it hurt? Really bad? I'm not letting go, Don't you let go? Does that hurt?

That hurts bad. That hurts really bad. And now you can announce my sermon title to your neighbor. Look at your neighbor and say, "Hurt so good". Look at your other neighbor, Say, "Hey, second choice, Hurt so good".

Are you hurting? I'm killing over here. It's not good. Thank you, Let me. Let me show y'all something about this.

You ready, Give him a hand? Is that? Isaiah got it got really hard, but he got stronger. He now could walk over here and lift this thing if he wanted to, because now the suffering has given him the strength and the power that he needed in order to do what God had called him to do. And you've been praying for purpose in your life and for God to do something through your life, now that you're walking with him.

But the first moment that you feel a little bit of tension, a little bit of suffering, what do you do? God take it away. Yet it's the very vehicle he's trying to use to deliver the power he needs to give you in order to do that which he's called you to do. See, there's this thing where if I, if I had a hundred- Come here, Matthew, you and I are going to talk about money- If I had a $100 bill and I took that $100 bill and I said to you about this $100 bill, "It's yours if you want it".

Yeah, . Yeah, . It's yours, It's good, Thank you. Okay, Yeah, it's yours.

And I took that $100 bill and I crumbled it up. You still want it. You took my $100 bill.

I took my $100 bill and I crumbled it up. You still want it. Yeah, . Okay, What's it worth?

 - $100. - $100. Good, Good answer. You're really smart. If I took that $100 bill and let's say, let's say that I, I colored it brown, you still want it?

. Yeah, . It's still worth. $100.

 It's still worth $100. What if? What if I made it red?. I still want it.

. You still want it. What if I made it blue?. Still want.

. You still want it? What if I smashed it?. You still want it?

What if I stepped on it? I still want it. You still want it. Yeah, 100 bucks.

 It's a hundred bucks. No matter what I do to it, it's still. And you still want it. Cuz it's still worth.

All right, sit back down, You good. No matter what it went through, it maintained its worth because its worth wasn't in its situation. And it doesn't matter what color it is, whether you prayed yourself to be black or white, It doesn't matter. See, you thought you were the wrong color to be used in that way. You thought you were from the wrong family to be used in that way.

You thought, because English wasn't your primary language, that you couldn't be used in that way. You thought that because you went through some stuff and some stuff happened to you that should have never happened to you, that you couldn't be used in that way because you weren't worth what you thought you were worth. But your worth never changed. And let me tell you why it never changed is because on the front of that $100 bill is whose picture? Don't get this wrong.

. Yes you, Matthew. Benjamin Franklin. Good job, Wow, Matthew's a young adult, He's never seen anything.

But, Andrew Jackson on- just kidding I almost said Allan Jackson, That would have been weird. And on the front, Jesus took. Jesus took a coin one time and he said: whose inscription is on this? What did they say? Caesar?

And we said this: Benjamin Franklin first. Right, Okay, Caesar. He said: "Give to Caesar what is Caesar, but give to God what is God's". Now, contrary to popular belief, he's not saying: "Give your money to Caesar and give your money to God". That's not what he's saying.

He said: "Who's pictures on? We're going to say a $100 bill"? Whose pictures on the $100 bill, Benjamin Franklin? But you were crafted in the very image of God. His image is stamped on you.

So give to Caesar what is Caesar's, but give to God what is God's, Because your worth is determined by whose image you were crafted in. So, no matter what happened to you, no matter what you walked through, no matter what they said about you, no matter how they treated you, no matter what you had to go through to get where you are right now. Your worth was predetermined in eternity so that you could be used how God has crafted you for in this moment, in this time, regardless of the color of your skin, the voting registration on your card or any crap you had to go through in order to get to this moment where God wants to use you. Come on.

 Because Paul writes: "I want to know him and the power of his resurrection, which comes by the fellowship of his sufferings". See, on the other side of the $100 bill, if I took off the 100s, if I took off any reference to 100, you probably wouldn't know the difference between a 100 and a 20, would you? You see the faces, ? You see, not on the back, . On the back of it.

You don't see the faces, You just see some type of building, and some weird designs, . Y'all agree with that?. Yeah, One of them is like I don't know, But you see that face on the other side. You know what it's worth, right?

See, suffering. Think of it as the backside and power. Think of it as the front side, because you know what that means. You know whose image is on it. You know what it's worth, But on the back you don't know.

They're the same, different sides of the same piece of paper. In order to have Benjamin, you got to have the backside. You can't have one without the other, or it is not valid. You got to. In order to have power, you got to have suffering, or it's not valid That you might have your power but you don't have his power.

You don't have the power of the resurrection. And don't you know that if you are going to do some things in your life that you can't do it in and of your own power? Let me ask you a question: How's that been going for you? How's it been going walking alongside a kid with leukemia in your own power? There are days when you can't get up, but you have to for that kid.

And let me just tell you: it's not supposed to be that way. It's not supposed to be that way. Why? Why do good people die? It's not supposed to be that way.

Why are you facing the struggles in your life? It's not supposed to be that way. It was never designed to be that way. You weren't designed to hurt so bad. You were designed for that work.

That's good It. It's supposed to hurt. So good, Good hurt, not bad hurt. You know the difference between bad hurt and good hurt. You don't want to suffer in the wrong direction.

We do that. Sometimes we get pain in the wrong direction, Like you wake up on a Sunday morning with a headache because you made bad decisions on Saturday night. That's pain in the wrong direction. You can fix that. But sometimes you walk through the pain of a diagnosis with your spouse and it hurts and you don't know There's no way to fix that.

But you're in it and you're walking through it and you don't know why. But there is a strength that comes when you walk with him through it, knowing that greater is the one who is in you than he that is in the world, . That there is a strength that allows you to face anything you're walking through, that you can take one more step, that you can keep doing the things that you're doing it. But now you're doing it with some pressure because he's got something for you. And some of you just been wondering: why did I grow up that way?

Why am I walking through that? What's the purpose of this job loss? It's like, come on, Every relationship seems to end in failure. What is going on? I couldn't get into this school.

I couldn't get into that school, I can't. My financing fell through on this purchase, that purchase. I'm in over my head, I'm upside down. What is happening? And sometimes it feels like the world is crashing around you And it seems like it's too much weight to bear.

You were never designed to carry the weight of the world. John 16:33 says: "Take heart. I have overcome the world". Says: "In this world, you will have trouble. In this journey, you will walk through suffering, But take heart.

I've already overcome the world. I've already won. Stay in it, Stay faithful. And you say: "Why, though? Why am I walking through these things?

It's not fair. This person over there, they got it easy, They just living life, Everything's great, They're doing their thing". Because they were built to hold something that's like this, And you were built to hold something that's like this, and you had to get the strength it took in order to be able to accomplish the purpose that God crafted you for. There is purpose in every pain, There's something special in every suffering, Something that is not wasted from every moment in order to create the masterpiece of your calling in Christ Jesus. He's got something for you.

And when you're walking through it and when you're in it, realize that you can reach out to him. And when you reach out to him, you know what you're going to find out: That he's been reaching out to you, that you thought you were reaching out to him, but really he's scooping you up, carrying you through it. Through your weakness, his strength is made perfect. Keep walking, Keep trusting. Suffering is not bad, Because one day you're going to take that suffering and he's going to flip that piece of paper around And it's only because of the suffering that you will walk in the purpose and the power of his resurrection.

It's for you and it's for you right now. But there's something about this that's just a little a little, a little messy for me, because I'm reading it and immediately knowing myself. I don't know about you, but I know about me. I'm reading this and I'm like, "Yeah, man, There's purpose, Purpose in my story, purpose in my pain, And I know what I walk through and I know, I believe God's got a purpose. So I'm going to keep walking toward, But, but.

But you notice the story that I've told you, the story that you are telling yourself. It's very youentric. Have you noticed that, That you've been thinking about yourself for the past 30 minutes? You've been thinking about yourself because God uses you. It is about you.

Your life is your life. But notice how Paul frames this whole thing- And this is what I don't want you to miss as you're walking through these things- is that Paul says: "Remember all of these things good, maybe all of these things bad, No matter what suffering I'm going through, no matter what accolades I have and have earned, no matter what the mountain peaks look like, no matter what the valleys look like, all of them amount to absolutely nothing compared to the pricelessness of knowing Jesus. He's saying that everything revolves around Jesus, That this pain revolves around Jesus, That this suffering revolves around Jesus, That my purpose isn't about my purpose, It's not about my calling, It's not about my rising up, It's not about my fulfillment or my promotion. It's about Jesus, To know him and to make him known. What would it be like if you actually conformed to his death and you actually allowed him to live through you just one day?

What if, right now, you got a clean slate for today and you got to live from this moment forward through a filter from everything? You say everything you do, everything you think. What if Jesus was that filter? What if he was so centered around everything that every word that came out of your mouth, every text that you sent, every joke that you laughed at, everything that you engaged with with other people had nothing to do with you? You didn't see yourself.

You simply were trying to present him to the world, starting and ending small and close with the people who are in your proximity. How different would your day look, How different would those people be? That's how you change the world. That's literally. It is that we die daily so that he may live through us.

The world has never seen a life 100% sold out to Jesus. May it start with you, May it start with me, And may it start right now. Will you stand and pray with me today With your head bowed and your eyes closed? I want to ask you a question. How many of you today are just walking through some heaviness?

You're walking through some stuff. Just shoot up your hand real quick. I just want to see. I want to see who I'm going to pray for in just a second. All over the room, Man, there are hands everywhere in this room.

You can go ahead and put them down. This is an interesting way to look at this, but I don't know. Maybe it's crazy, but how many of you today? You might think I don't know why I would sign up for this, but I know it sounds like I'm going to sign up for some suffering and stuff and this doesn't make any sense to me, but today I just I don't know. I want to follow Jesus, even though the calling is to walk in suffering.

Like I'm down with that. I want to make that decision today. Can I see your hand And you're like that's me today. Yeah, I see you, I see you. Wow, Okay, So here's what we're going to do: I'm going to pray, I want to pray for you, and then I'm going to pray with you, And so I'm going to pray for you, and then I'm going to transition and I'm going to lead us in a prayer that we're all going to pray together for the sake of those praying it for the first time, where we help those around us and celebrate in community with them as they choose to walk and put, give their lives to Jesus for the first time today or coming back to him today.

And so right now, God, I pray for the folks in this room who are walking through some heavy stuff. I pray that right now, in this moment, you'll verify, solidify that you are with them. You're in it with them, working for them, fighting every battle in front of them. Give them the courage to cast that, that care to you, because you care for us. And yeah, it hurts, but it hurts for a purpose, A purpose that maybe we can't see, but we trust that you're doing something good through it, Because we know if it's not good, it's not over.

God, I pray that you build strength and build courage and build confidence in our lives today, God, to where we have a faith that moves mountains and a peace in the midst of darkness that surpasses all understanding that it doesn't make sense, but we've got peace in it, knowing who is in us and for us. And now, God, for the sake of those who are doing it for the first time, we're all going to pray this together, And so we pray. Lord Jesus, today I give you my life, I give you the good, I give you the bad And I give you all the ugly. I believe you came, I believe you died And I believe you arose again to give me life and to give me freedom and purpose in you, And so today I choose to revolve my life around you. In Jesus name, we pray Amen.

Come on, let's celebrate for those who prayed it for the first time today.