God, we love you and we trust you. It's in Jesus's name that we pray and all God's people shouted: amen, you may be seated. Yeah, man, I'm excited. We've been in the series called inter connected. We did a few sermons.

One was called it's all connected. We talked about all the stuff and how it's connected. There you go. That's. That's a good summary for you.

You can go back and watch it on YouTube. If you didn't know, we have a YouTube. You might see these camera people. It's okay. They might step on your toe once in a while, but it's okay.

Just recognize every time they step on your toes. Somebody else maybe is trusting in Jesus online. Just remember that. I don't know if it's like like directly related, but you know indirectly. The next week we talked about connecting with God.

Last week we talked about connecting to your yourself, and this week I want to talk about connecting with others. If you have your Bibles, we're going to be in the Book of Revelation, The Apocalypse of John, chapter 7. Now you end time. People don't get too excited. It's a good book.

I love it. I love talking about end times and stuff like that, but today I'm talking about how to connect with others based on a reality that will happen cosmically in the future, and I'm not going to digress, I'm going to jump right into it. I'm in the NIV version if you have your phone or if you have your Bible. Open up to Revelation, chapter 7. We're starting in verse 9 after this.

This is a new vision from John the Apostle. After this, I looked and there before me was a great, great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing Before the Throne and before the lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands, and they cried out in a loud voice: salvation Belongs To Our God, who sits on the throne, and to the lamb. God, speak through me today. Help me articulate your word effectively.

Help me not to depart from what you want for these people in this room. It's in Jesus name I pray, amen. There are two things I want you to keep in mind as I preach this message on connecting with others. There is a personal application.

That personal application has to do with how you interact with those closest to you. Maybe it's your spouse, maybe it's your kids, extended family, co-workers, people you run into on the street, people you cut off in traffic. Interpersonal. That's the first component. The second component relates to your interpers, personal interactions, but it has to do with the church and the kind of church we're going to have.

So we're talking about connecting with others as individuals, but also connecting with others in the body of Christ, the church, the eklesia, the called out ones of God, those called to represent him on this Earth. So those are the two components and I want to talk to you about what it looks like to connect with others. When I was growing up, I trying to decide how honest I want to be with each of you. I guess I'll be honest. I, from 15 to 19- that was my first four years in Christ Jesus.

I trusted in him at the end of my eighth grade year, beginning of my nth grade year, and he started changing things about me. But the truth is my personality was not the most effective. It wasn't a good personality. You wouldn't have liked me. You would have thought I was cocky, stubborn, all the above.

Maybe some of you guys in here can connect with that and start working on it in Christ, like I did, . But 15 and 19, I was not the best person to be around. I struggled to connect with others because my posture was: if, if you don't think the way I do, there's a problem with you. And I was learning. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to just look like the worst person you can picture in your mind, but if it helps, sure go ahead and picture me that way.

 Many of us operate with this posture toward other people: that if you don't understand why or what they're doing, there's a problem with them. And I'm not saying there's not a problem with them. There's a lot of people in this world that do things I just why I don't get it. But if my posture toward them is one of stubbornness, that says they are just a problem and that causes me to not approach them. The same way that Jesus approached me, he humbled himself to the point of coming to become a human.

He humbled himself to the point of death, specifically death on a cross. For me, right, he, he, he came from on high, came low to connect with me. I'm the other that he connected with and my posture tends to be: figure me out, figure your stuff out or leave me alone. But God has been teaching me something different. He's been teaching me to connect with others, both in my personal life and in this church.

So I'm going to be both casting vision for your life and vision for this church. And he says here in verse 9: after this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing Before the Throne and before the lamb. And when I read this I'm a pessimist who, you know, covers up for the pessimism by calling himself a realist. But when I read this passage I was optimistic because what this gives me an image of in the future, that there will be people under all Nation, every tribe, every tongue, confessing for all of eternity that Jesus Christ is Lord. They will be accomplishing the same Mission, they will be standing in the same vicinity.

There will be a diverse group of people who think differently than you or me, who were worshiping God for all of eternity. And I got excited because I think sometimes, because of our personality, default or defect, we tend to think of others as less important than ourselves and, like I said, tell them to figure their stuff out rather than me humble myself. So I want to talk to you about how to connect with others with three points. The first point is: you've got to expect diversity, expect diversity. Look at your neighbor and calmly say: you're different than me.

Look at your under neighbor and say: just say you, you're different than me. There is not a single human being in this room who is the same as another human being in this room, and I can say that with validity, because I have a twin brother and that dude is so different than me, so different. Anyone here know my brother? Raise your hand. My wife knows my brother, Hannah.

Is he different than me? You're shaking your head. When there's a room of 150 people, like you got to tell them: yes, okay, I, I was hoping you'd be like: yeah, he's different than you, I hope he's different than me. Otherwise, you know what's the difference? We're twins would see, yeah, she knows, she know, she know.

No, we're different, radically different, and we were raised in the same exact household. We were taught the exact same things, but we're radically different. Everyone in this room is different than the other person. So if you want to connect with another person, you have to start off with an expectation of diversity. You've got to expect diversity because if we go out into the world and we only group up with people that are similar to us, even then we're going to find that we get frustrated because even if they're similar in a lot of ways, they're still radically different than each of us.

How many of you, even in your closest friend group, sometimes still feel like no one understands you? Right, because we're all radically different and so if we want to connect with others, we have to have this understanding or this expectation of diversity. If you don't, you're going to be walking around frustrated regularly because people don't assimilate to your mindset, because they don't understand you, and you're frustrated at them because you don't understand where they're coming from. People have radical differences. Me and my wife.

We're radically different. I am learning to not just expect diversity but Embrace diversity in my marriage. She's really good at things that I'm not good at. I'm really good at things that she's less than good at. See what I did there.

I didn't talk mess about I. Talk mess about me, not her. Okay, cool, cool. Some people get like offended when I say re real things up here. For example, my mom, lives in our house too.

She's in the nextg suite and really, really helps out a lot. Neither of them are as gifted at me or as me at dishes, and so I do the dishes. I don't know why, but I like I know how to take bowls and put them lined up next to other bowls, not just throw. It's like. Sometimes I look at it I'm like joh, just throw this in here, it's okay, I'm not mad about it.

They're different. You know, she's better at folding laundry than me. For me, doing laundry is putting it in there, not questioning what color it is, putting it in the dryer, not questioning what cycle it's in, pulling it out, putting it in a basket and then pouring it onto the bed and hoping somebody else does it. See, that's a problem. She's way better than me at that.

She'll like discipline herself to do it. There is diversity and that diversity is actually really good in our marriage marage. Your kids are going to be different than you would expect cuz they're in a different generation than you. One of my biggest pet peeves about the church in general- and there are people who have figured this out a little bit better than other churches- but one of my biggest pet peeves is when, people are complaining about the generation before or the generation after them expect diversity. So when J Alpha comes up and you don't immediately understand why they do certain things.

That's okay, you're going to be all right. The generation before us had never seen before me, and maybe before my gener had never seen a cell phone until they turned 25 or 30. And you know what? It was easy to say: oh my gosh, the world's going to hell in a hand basket because of the cell phones. Why 2K all this other stuff?

And you're doing the same thing with the Next Generation, these people on their Tik tocks. I know you're only 35, but you're walking like this, people on their Tik tock. They don't do anything special. No, they figured out how to make tons of money through sponsorships by using a Tik Tok and you still sitting there with the 50 hour week job trying to figure out retirement. I'm not talking best.

I'm in the same boat, right? I'm not talking best, I'm just. They figured out how to make tons of money really, really quickly and we're judging them. Why don't we celebrate the diversity and learn from that diversity? If you can live your life looking at things that are different than you would expect and getting excited before you get anxiety about it, that would be helpful.

But that's not just interpersonal. It's also at the church. When we planted this church, we came to this area in the valley on purpose because, I'm going to be honest with you, I looked at demographics. When I was decid, I knew God was calling us to the valley. I looked at where churches were and where they weren't, and then I looked at, the demographics.

I wanted to be in a place where there was, differences between, like, socioeconomically, where there were people at the high end of it and the low end of it. I wanted to be in a place where there was more than just one race or ethnicity. I wanted to be in a place where people had different theological backgrounds. I wanted to be in a place that was quite diverse. I feel like God has called us to build a church that at least has a sentiment or kind of a look like this, where a great multitude came together from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing Before the Throne.

I think the church should look at least a little bit. We're not there yet. We're figuring stuff out. We still cut people off in traffic, tick people off all the time. We're figuring it out, but eventually we should look a little bit more like Heaven's going to look.

We're expect diversity here, and one of the biggest frustrations that I've had, even in the past two weeks, is that the diversity that I prayed for. I don't know why. I mean there's not, there's not enough churches with diversity. I mean I don't know if you've experienced that there's not enough churches with diversity in the world. There are some who do it really really well.

 I don't know why, but when I prayed for diversity, I didn't think about the difficult of diversity or communicating to people what it looks like and how to accommodate for diversity. And so the past couple of weeks, I've been running into different issues with different people who are frustrated at another person or another group of people for various reasons. And after, like the third or fourth conversation in the past week, I think the Lord revealed something to me. He said, Matt, what did you expect about diversity? Did you expect it to be easy?

Did you expect Unity to be a task that wasn't hard? What did you expect? And in that moment I praised God with gratitude for the fact that we're having issues with people coming from different backgrounds and thought processes figuring out how to come together, and I got pumped. I was like this is what I prayed for. I prayed for diversity.

I'll give you some clarity on it. There are some people who come from what they call a more charismatic background. If you're not familiar with that term, charismatic is more, maybe the- they call it the gifts of the Spirit. Let's just make it simple for you: super engaged when it comes to worship, maybe even when it comes to the, the, the preaching, they're like amen, pastor, and they start clapping or something like that. Right, there's a little more like emotional, physical engagement.

That's Charisma, right. And then you've got another group of people who come from maybe a more traditional background that you kind of stand and sit and that's the activity level in the church and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Or maybe you're more focused on, the, the word- rather than engaging in another way. There's charismatic, there's there's more traditional in history, and there are people from both of those backgrounds and I've got one who's like there's no energy in the room. And then I got another group who's like there's two much energy in the room and I look at them and I'm trying to figure out how to have this conversation with the different people.

But I'm like, if you want energy, bring it. If you feel like there's, if you feel like there's too much energy, maybe question your own assumptions about whether that's good or bad. Be, because you need to come, and here you got to expect diversity, so there's some theological backgrounds. There's even more than just that. But then you've got another one.

 There is, you ever heard of like people oriented people and task oriented people? You know what I'm talking about? Raise your hand if you would consider yourself a people oriented person. Does does mean you're not. It just if you don't raise your hand, okay, raise your hand if you consider yourself a task oriented person, see, so let me let me describe what that is.

So a task oriented person is someone who, if you're going to choose between having this conversation and finishing a task that you need to have done, you're going to finish that task. Like, I tend to Veer on the task oriented side. So like, if, if I'm trying to connect with every firsttime guest, I'm going to connect with every firsttime guest, whereas a people person, they're going to connect really, really well with one or two or three guests. Right, those people are going to be best friends get their phone number by the end of it, but then there might be some other people who they didn't get to chat with, right. It's just a little different.

 I have neutral conversations with 10 people. They have super thriving conversations with three people. Neither is bad, neither is better than the other, but they're different. And so what can often happen is a task oriented person looks at the people person who they gave a task to, and then they stop that task in order to talk to another person and you're like: why aren't you doing what I asked you to do? And then the people person looks at you and they're like: people are the important part.

And then there's disagreement. I've had people complain to me because one person is Task oriented and isn't necessarily front-facing toward all the new people. And then you have another person who's super front-facing to the new people, such to the point where someone writes on their connection card that they talk to that person and that's how they're returning. It was an average sermon, average worship, but that person was awesome. So they're coming back to church- right, that's how cool it was.

And they're frustrated like, hey, why don't you talk to people like me? You are different and that's okay, okay, that is okay. We're going to have people oriented people and task oriented people. Without the people oriented people, you might have a bunch of stoicism in the room and people are like, do people like me here? And without the task oriented person, you wouldn't have any data on the people that came into the room.

They're both helpful. There's also racial and ethnic diversity. Several years ago- 2015 it was- there was a lady, she came from laaz, Bolivia, and she was at my church in New Orleans for a few months and, she invited us over to have a Spanish speaking night and, we were chatting with her drinking coffee C Cafe Con Le- anyway, we're drink coffee cafe anyways, whatever I, we were drinking coffee together and she looked at me and like it almost felt like she like put her hand on me and prophesied or said something. She said: you're going to be doing Ministry with a lot of Hispanic people. I was in New Orleans and I didn't think about it until I moved out here and then I remembered what she said and, and I don't know if you knew this already-, and we don't like count this as people walk in, but the primary demographic at our church is Hispanic.

I don't know if y'all noticed I'm white, but I like we're not, I'm not the primary demographic. And then we have, we have African-American people here too, and we are all from different backgrounds and there is a way that you feel when you walk into a church of people who look different than you. And I just want, first, I just want to thank you guys who came in here, saw me and you're like I don't know if I'm going to connect with this dude, and then you kept coming, and then you realize that God can do something far beyond what you asked, thought or imagine, and he can bring people together from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. So thank you for the strength to stick around seriously, yeah, yeah, but it's hard because we're all different, we think about things different, we have different cultures and family upbringings. Everything is different.

And I just want you, when you come in here, to expect diversity, cuz that's what heaven's going to look like. And with expecting diversity, there is something that also comes with it. You've got to expect sacrifice, I mean because, let's be real, like if I didn't grow up the same way you grew up, I can't stand here and assume that I know what you're coming, where you're coming from. I just can't do it. I've been with, married to my wife.

It's 12 years, Hannah, is it 13 or 12? 12- you can be louder- 12, cool, cool, 12 years, been married 12 years. She grew up in a different family than me. She grew up in a Baptist, Christian, household. She'd been a Christian since she was born-, not really, but, you know, might as well have been, and so she's been in that.

I didn't grow up in that, and so we're radically different. In the shows that we watch and the things that we think, I, I kept trying to get her to watch the office and like it, and she's like: I don't like that. That's weird, I don't like that show. And so we're so different. I don't understand her, and we've been married for 12 years.

You're not going to understand the other person. So in order to understand her and my kids, I, I have to. I have to, and I don't want you to think of it like you're just this martyr, but you do. You have to intentionally sacrifice an aspect of yourself in order to connect with another person. There's no way you connect with another person without self-sacrifice.

You have to go about expecting sacrifice. In fact, you can tell: when someone never sacrifices for an interaction with another person, you can tell. I'm not going go any further with that, just in case it offends you, but, like you, you can tell. You can tell when someone does not self-sacrifice it. And here's what that looks like, kind of In the Flesh right, like I stand up here, I, I preach to you all.

 I try to be lightly vulnerable or heavily vulnerable some weeks. I communicate God's word and hopefully you leave- leave here, With A New, reinvigorated Perspective, right? That that's what I do, and what you do in this room specifically is you sit here, and you listen or you worship, and I can't necessarily tell what level of Engagement you're having, and I don't even know what it feels like to sit under my preaching. In fact, it's impossible for me to know what it's like to sit under my preaching. I can watch it on YouTube, but it's different, you know.

So what I have to figure out how to do is I have to come off of this place and put myself in a new place, right? So I'm going to sit down here. Hey, what's your name? Oliv, Olivia, that's such such a pretty name. I almost named my daughter.

 Her middle name was almost Olivia. That was super cool. How old are you? Six, six. Does it feel good to sit up front?

Would you rather sit in the back? You glad I'm talking to you right now or you sad I'm talking to you right now? Yeah, so Olivia, what a cool name. Do you know what it's like to be up there? It's hard for me to know what it's like to be down here, and so what I do is I.

I sit down here and I know what it looks like now, and I'm actually in spitting of whoever's preaching and I'm realizing maybe we should scoot this back a little bit. Do you ever get spit on? No, okay, good, but I wouldn't have known had I not asked. You know, like I had to get on her level to even think about it, and it's sacrificial cuz. Now you're seeing the back of my head too, and now I'm thinking about the fact that I've got a scar in the back of my head and someone in the row behind me is probably looking at my head.

They're probably not focused on the. Goodness gracious, let me come back here, like, let me see how it feels back here. C, the next bro, do love the hair. You look like Brandon Brandon Lake, my friend. He's my man crush every day.

Can you see me from here? Yeah, I mean, Chris is right in front of you. So love you, bro. Okay, this is what it feels like. Okay, I, I can see that.

 Probably weird when that dude, when I lean on that thing, probably looks really like unprofessional, something like that. Hey, I'm trying to find someone who's not going to get scared when I ask him to do the next thing. Hey, hey, can you? You come empathize with me for a second? Yeah, cool, come on, bro, was trying to hold my hand, all right, so I connected with these guys.

Yes, now I want to invite you to connect with me a little bit, absolutely, so here's, here's how you can connect with me. You can talk in front of everybody about personal stuff, that is vulnerable to you, and hope that they connect with whatever you say and that you're articulate enough to say it. Can you do that? Gi? Give us your testimony real quick in front of- I'm just kidding, see, he was about to do it.

Good job, bro, he about to do it. So if I were to come to some of you. Let's be real for a second. If I were to come to some of you, I was looking at some statistics and I think 97 percent of Statistics are made up. I don't know if they even made that one up, but, like I, I looking at statistics and I've heard this several times- that the number one- fear for the vast majority of people, you know what it is, no right, you know what it is- is public speaking.

Number two is death. Tell me, tell me about that. One, right, like public speak, and it's. It's a weird thing to stand up here and unless you sacrifice and maybe rise up to a challenge that you're about to do, bro dude, that's what I'm talking about. We, you're going to be in the next video, though y'all give him a hand real quick, give me.

Yeah, good job, bud. But like, unless you, unless you like, take a step down and put yourself in someone else's position, or rise to a new chall Challenge and put yourself in like a position that's stepping up here. Right, everybody wants to judge leaders until they step into the leadership position. Right, you've got to sacrifice. You might sacrifice downward, you might sacrifice upward, you might sacrifice to the side, you might put yourself in a new position, but unless you sacrifice, you don't actually understand and connect with another person.

You've got to expect sacrifice. You don't know what it's like to be in somebody else's skin. You don't know what it's like to come into a room and look different than people- or maybe you do, but you don't know what it felt like for the other person. So the only way that we can Embrace that diversity in our room and in our lives is by asking, by sacrificing, by interacting, by asking questions. We weren't necessarily like asking beforehand.

You might think people view you one way, but unless you humble yourself and ask them and be teachable, you're not, you're not gonna, you're not going to get to know them. So if you want to connect with other people, not only do you have to embrace or expect diversity, you have to, expect sacrifice. And here's what it says here, and I think it's interesting: , when they're worshiping God before the lamb, it says they were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And what I see in that is: it's not about the, the white robes or the palm branches, it's about really the purpose. All of them were different: different tribe, Nation, tongue, right tribe.

A different place, right. Different people group. They came from a different geographical position in the world, radically different than another person. You've got nation, which means they have a different subset of culture, and then you've got a different language. Fundament: at the most fundamental level, you've got a radical difference between the people who are all worshiping God simultaneously in the great multitude, and it says they're all wearing white robes and holding up palm branches.

What does that mean? It means means that, in Christ Jesus, he calls us to a greater purpose that enables us to sacrifice our preferences, our presuppositions, our geographical positioning and even our language in order to fulfill his mission, which, by nature, is more important than ours. And you might be asking: well, how do I sacrifice my preferences? It's a couple examples. You might come into the church and be uncomfortable.

Well, let me. You might have a different theological background. We talked about Charisma versus more traditional. You might have a different preaching style than I'm putting out there. You might have a different worship style than we're currently doing.

You might have done things differently there. There are a lot of ways that we're different than maybe you're familiar with. Well what I'm asking you to do, at whatever Church you land at. I'm asking you to think about the greater purpose that God has called you to, which is to Proclaim salvation Belongs To Our God, who sits on the throne, and to the lamb, as more important than your current preferences. Personality differences seriously subordinate your preference to your purpose.

That's sacrificial though it's like, but I don't like the music, Matt. It's not about the music, but I, people look different than me, Matt, I know it's hard, but it's not. But, but there diversity in heaven, so get used to it now, right, they're people, people and I like to be behind the scenes. Okay, let them be them. And you do you and you contribute at the level that you can figure that out.

Well, but I'm really uncomfortable because I'm not. I don't like this and I grew up doing this. And when did we get to the place in the church where, where we value or evaluated churches based on those things? I? It's so interesting to me because I, I get it like I have this particular brand of ministry that I tend to align with.

I mean, obviously we do stuff, you know, like it's similar to maybe some other churches you've been to. But like that's not what it's about. Like our whole job as a church is to embody the, or be an ambassador for Christ Jesus says he made him, who knew no sin, to become sin on our behalf, that we might exist as or embody the righteousness of God in him. We are called to be The Fragrant Aroma of Christ Jesus. We're called to be preaching the Gospel, the good news of Jesus, regularly.

We're called to be proclaiming not our faithfulness but his faithfulness for all of eternity. And we can start right now by going to the people in the valley who don't know their less hand from their right and helping them understand that, even at the most fundamental level, Jesus can change their heart, their mind, their soul, give them strength and. So it's like, yeah, I mean if, if that's the purpose, then why am I stressed out about whether, whether the worship style is perfect for me? Here's why options. Options are the reason people keep getting divorced.

Options are the reason we can't decide on a place to eat. I mean, it's a little easier out here than maybe in the center of Phoenix- is Costco fries has got good $6 Sushi, though I'm going to tell you that one on Wednesdays: on Wednesdays, come eat with me, but options. And in Phoenix, if there's something I've learned, I grew up in the South, so we had options. But in Phoenix you got options like, if there's not a church in Buckeye, you like we go all the way over to Scottsdale and find one and there's. I'm not telling you're wrong.

I'm saying that there's probably a greater Mission. And if all the churches out here, at least the ones that we would kind of affiliate with, are preaching the Good News of Jesus, preaching salvation, we're becoming, an Essence right now of what heaven will be the. Why am I driving all the way across the valley? Just cu the worships a little bit better. Why am I driving all the way across the valley?

Because the people look a little bit more like me. Why am I driving all the way across the valley? Because I found a group of people, who automatically get me. Why would I do that when Heaven's not going to look like that? Anyways, when I get to heaven, it's going to be the same Throne, the same lamb, and we're all going to be surrounding it.

It's going to be the center of everything. It's what's going to give us shade. It's what's going to cast light, it's what's going to illuminate all things around us. We get to look at the lamb for all of eternity. It's not going to be a different lamb down the street.

And I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be mean, it's just we've got a shopping and consumption culture out here and I feel like God's called us to be contributors and ambassadors, not consumers, of the same Gospel every single week, when God has called us to not only consume the Gospel, understand it and embody it, but to present it to other people. And how do you present it to other people when you just keep shopping for yourself? I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I got to quit. I quit being me. I didn't mean to.

I hope it's the spirit of God and not indigestion or upset stomach. It's one of the two. There's a sickness going around. It's either sickness or the spirit. Whichever it is, take it for what it is, don't judge me.

If it's sickness, take it to heart. If it's Spirit, you've got to expect and embrace diversity. You've got to expect and embrace that sacrifice. He says, offer your bodies is Living Sacrifice, just, holy and acceptable to God. That's your reasonable act of worship.

I think only when we can embrace the differences, only when we can Embrace this sacrificial life of taking up our own cross and following Jesus, only then- and got to work before that, but only then- are we going to see the move of God that we want to see out here in the valley, and I'm believing there can be a Revival, goodness gracious. But I think it's going to take us figuring our stuff out a little bit, recognizing that the differences shouldn't divide us. They should unify us, because that's what heaven's going to look like. In fact, if we were all the same, I'd be questioning whether we're looking like heaven. You know what I'm saying?

The only thing that should bind us together more than anything else, like our glue, should be the, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That's the glue. Salvation Belongs To Our God, who sits on the throne, and to the lamb. That is the good news. We didn't have to do anything, and so I want to give you my final point: I, I, I want us to start expecting a move of God.

I think when we Embrace these, differences of culture, when we Embrace these differences of mindset, of presupposition, of background, of language, of Theology, and submit everything or subordinate everything to the B under the banner of Jesus. I think we're going to see a move of God occur. That is crazy. I think that's what the message needs to be like. The focal point of this message is that, like there, there's been a couple weeks where I felt- I told the leadership team last week I felt kind of oppressed and if you know me, you know I'm not just overusing spiritual language for the fun of it, I'm not.

But last week I just felt like there was just kind of this overhanging Cloud that that was really bothering me and even if it didn't bother anybody else, it was affecting me and I saw what God did and it was amazing. But I still felt this kind of overhanging, just tension. And it went right into these conversations I was having about the diversity in our church, like some people have an affinity for praying a certain way and we don't do that and other people aren't used to that and we're trying to blend these two different backgrounds together. Same with the Charisma versus the traditional, same with people's mindsets toward how leadership should go. What's the goal in this church?

Some people are like, hey, we need to be out in the community all the time. I'm like I totally agree. We're also in the community all the time, like literally, we are a church in the community and so when we do marketing dollars that go out on Instagram, how many of you showed up because of Instagram? Raise your hand, it's less than I thought. How many you showed up because of the billboard?

How many showed up because of Facebook? How many showed up because someone invited you? That's where we're putting. I love that, that's where we're putting all our energy right, but we also need to be in the community. So come next week for the community event, but just be.

It's different there, going to be different seasons where we do different things. And I was having these conversations and this overhang of like- I think it was spiritual or Cosmic- oppression just kept getting at me and I texted the leadership team and I said, hey, I saw God do an amazing work, but I feel interesting. And this week God drew me to this text that reminded me about what heaven is going to look like, pulled me back to the main thing and help me recognize that this church WIll embody Christ Jesus. When we Embrace diversity, Embrace sacrifice and expect a move of God, as we Proclaim this same thing: salvation Belongs To Our God, and there are some people in here who maybe you're like: what is he talking about? I want to invite you into a relationship with God, because when God comes into your life, he's going to start shifting you.

He's going to he's going to make it easy for you to embrace differences of other people. He's going to make it easier for you to begin sacrificing to those people he's placed around you or for those people he's placed around you, and you're going to start seeing him work in Mighty ways. But to step into that relationship with God, the Bible says we have to confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, and so I want to invite people in this room to trust in Jesus so that they can actually experience, in fact, the. The biblical text there talks about the great multitude. The great multitude was a group of people who the Bible actually says those who had been through the Great Tribulation.

Again, all you end times, people don't get too excited. I'm not going to give you any specific views from Orbit Church about tribulation and stuff like that, but here's what I do know. I know throughout our entire Earthly life, we encounter various Temptations, trials and tribulations and as we are faithful to God, as he calls us through that, the day that we die he's going to look at us and say: Well done, my good and faithful servant, and we will become a part of that great multitude. I, I want you to be a part of that great multitude. If you've never trusted in Jesus before, so I want you to have that opportunity right now to trust in him.

So if everybody would bow their heads and close their eyes, we're going to pray a prayer together out loud. Maybe the spirit- I believe it's the spirit of God- maybe you're feeling right now something tugging you toward the Lord. I believe that's the Holy Spirit trying to regenerate you into the person God's called you to be. You can accept God right now with this prayer. You might repeat after me.

You might say this: God, I believe, I, that Jesus Christ is the son of Godus. I believe he died on the cross, believe he di on the and Rose from the grave, from the. Forgive me of my sin, forgive me of my S, make me a new creation. Make me a new creation. Help me embrace diversity.

Help me embrace diversity. Walk in sacrifice, walk in sacrifice and I will follow you, and I will follow you for the rest of my life. For the rest of my life, God do a work. It's in Jesus's name that we pray, and God's people said, hey, let's celebrate those who just prayed that prayer to trust in Jesus.