Come To Jesus

May be seated. Just, just humor me one more time, just give God a hand clap, a shout of praise if you believe He's good. I don't know about you, but I tried for a long time to find peace in various ways, but I never did. And in Christ Jesus—and I know you might be thinking, "Bro said he was in eighth grade when he trusted in Jesus.

" Yep, but middle school is a real good place to trust in Jesus. I don't know about you, was anyone like middle school in this place?

Nobody. I didn't either, that's why I trusted in Jesus. I needed something better than what middle school had to offer. It's one of those things where even on a weekend when I'm kind of relaxing, my brain just goes in different directions, and I just need to like, just speak the name of Jesus over my thought process.

Like, there's something miraculous that occurs at the name of Jesus that forces the enemy that surrounds me to bow, that forces my negative thought process to bow, it forces all of the things that would prevent me from Him to subordinate themselves under the mighty hand of our Creator.

And we've been in the book of John—I say we've been in for the past couple of months, but we took a break for our interconnected series—and today we are back in John. We will be at the end of John chapter 2 and the beginning of John chapter 3. If you got the text message, you know that, so you've got your bookmark there and everything. I'm going to begin, I'm going to read the whole thing, and then I'm going to dive through and hopefully communicate something to you that would be helpful as you go throughout your week.

And I'm going to ask you for a favor: if the Lord speaks to you during this, continue to lean in.

If you're feeling bored at any point—I don't think you will—but if you feel bored at any point, or if you look bored at any point, I might look at you and tell you to talk to your neighbor. So let's just be engaged with this today, as it's going to be a fun time. Verse 23, chapter 2, I'm going to read through it now: "While He, that is Jesus, was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs He was performing and they believed in His name. But Jesus would not entrust Himself to them, for He knew all people.

He did not need any testimony about mankind, for He knew what was in each person. "

Now chapter 3 begins with verse one, but it's a very similar scene.

"Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus, who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, 'Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform the signs you were doing if God were not with him. ' Jesus replied, 'Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. ' 'How can someone be born when they're old?

' Nicodemus asked. 'Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother's womb and be born! ' Jesus answered, 'Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.

You should not be surprised at my saying, "You must be born again. " The wind blows wherever it pleases.

You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. ' 'How can this be? ' Nicodemus asked.

'You are Israel's teacher, ' said Jesus, 'and you do not understand these things? Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people, you people do not accept our testimony. '"

one thing that it says in the beginning of this, in verse one—that I, verse one and two—I really wanted to just title my message with this. In verse one he says, "Now there's a Pharisee, man named Nicodemus, who was a member of the Jewish ruling council, " and in verse two it says this: "He came to Jesus at night." I want to talk to you about what it looks like to come to Jesus.

Come to Jesus. He came to Jesus, and I think this is one of the most crucial components of this passage. Sometimes when we read a passage, we get bogged down in the theology or the difficulty of what Jesus is saying here, and we miss the simple reality that Nicodemus came at night to meet with Jesus. Many of us, we will walk into church, out of church, we'll maybe even open the Bible, we'll talk about Jesus, we'll say that we're spiritual, but we fail to ever truly start putting Jesus at the center of our life and come to Him.

So I want to give you a few points about what it looks like when you come to Jesus, how to approach that, and I'll take you through this passage again.

The sermon title is "Come to Jesus. " That would be my hope for each of you in this room, that by the end of this sermon you would be inspired and encouraged to come to Jesus on a regular basis. But let me break it down for you. First off, it says this: "He came to Jesus at night and said, 'Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with them.

'" My first point is: when you come to Jesus, come to Jesus with openness. Look at your neighbor and say it to where that I can hear you say, "Be open. " Be open. Turn to your other neighbor, 'cause that wasn't good enough, say, "Be open.

" Open.

You don't have to be good enough to come to Jesus, but to say "be open, " you got to be good enough, you got to be loud enough. Come, come to Jesus with a posture of openness. Now I want to give Nicodemus some credit here. Nicodemus is a teacher of the law, he's of the ruling class, Pharisees, Sadducees, the ruling council of Israel.

He is a big deal.

He has been studying the scrolls and what the scribes have written over the years. He knows what he's talking about. But he still comes to Jesus with this posture of openness. I want to give him some credit, because there were a lot of Pharisees and Sadducees who came to Jesus with objections, but he came to Jesus with an openness.

Now there's some negatives about how he came to Jesus, but he came to Jesus with openness.

I want to encourage you, so often when we come to Jesus, we come without any openness. What we do come with is our history. We come with this posture toward God that remembers what someone at church said, did, or they looked at us the wrong way that one time. We come with an understanding of what church is, and then our own feeling about what it's supposed to be.

And so when we approach Jesus, we do so with resistance, with barriers built up.

And I want to encourage you, when you come to Jesus, come to Him with openness. I'm not saying that you have to forget everything that's ever happened in your life, but I am saying there's an openness necessary when you come to Jesus. I'll tell you this way, and I think the rest of this message will validate this point at least—what God says through His word here—that if you come to Jesus with all the barriers built up, He can beat through those barriers. He can, like, God, God can reach you in the midst of a hard heart, He really can.

However, when you build up these barriers, sometimes it makes it difficult for you to ever hear what God wants you to hear.

It is difficult. And I'll give you an earthly example. Many of us, we go through our lives with this posture of, of, you know, just barriers built up. "I'm closed off to other people's opinions, other thought processes.

I'm in my own echo chamber.

I've got what I think, and this is what I think, and so if you say something different than what I think, then you're wrong."

When we come to Jesus, if we can start tearing down these barriers a little bit—again, I'm not saying come with this blank slate mindset, stuff happened to you and it wasn't all good, some of it extremely bad, and it never should have happened to you. There's some people who don't come to church anymore, or they never decided to go to church, because something bad happened to them—has nothing to do with church, it just happened to them—and they're wondering why they would even try to go meet a God who would allow something like that to happen. I want to encourage you, even in that kind of scenario, like, open up a little bit. Be open.

Nicodemus came to Jesus with a posture of openness.

When you come with a posture of openness, you're putting yourself in the position of open-handedness and readiness to receive. And a lot of us are wondering why, why we didn't receive any Revelation from God. Some of us are wondering why there's still problems in our lives. Some of us are living a life that is maybe fine or mediocre at best, and we often wonder why our purpose isn't being fulfilled.

I'm not saying this is definitely the case, but sometimes the case is we have never come to Jesus with an openness to receive from Him.

We come to Him with expectations about what He should do or shouldn't do, and we never stop, open ourselves up, and listen to what He would want for me. In fact, many of us come to Jesus with the expectation that He's going to bless us beyond measure, which is not a bad expectation to have. If you want to be blessed beyond measure, you need to come to Jesus, that's a good expectation to have. The problem is, if we want to be blessed beyond measure, there's a posture that Jesus tells us to be in before that blessing comes.

But when we come to Jesus, He tells us the truth up front.

He doesn't sugarcoat it, He doesn't hide. He does say, "Come, all to Me, all who are weary, and I will give you rest, " but then He's pretty clear that if you want to come to Jesus, it means taking up your cross and following Jesus. He tells the rich young ruler, He says, "Go, sell all that you have, give it all to the poor, and come follow, follow Me. " It takes nothing of you to trust in Jesus, I want to be very clear.

But when we follow Jesus, He asks for everything, because He knows when we give Him everything, He returns it back with some good interest. He returns it back much better than He received it from us.

But it takes everything. And we come in with a, with a lack of openness, and we're like, "Jesus, I want You to bless me financially. Jesus, I want You to help me with my self-awareness because I'm struggling to make friends. Jesus, I want, I want You to, get me out of that I'm currently in.

Jesus, I want You to give me peace, that peace that Your Bible says would surpass all understanding and guard my heart. " I want You to do all of that, and we forget about the fact that He says right after—Paul says this in Philippians 4—if you want the peace, you got to think on the things—if you want the peace, you got to think on the things that are true, right, honorable, pure, lovely, and of good repute.

Nicodemus, when he comes to Jesus, he comes with a posture of openness, which is different than many of the teachers of the law would come to Jesus. I like that about Nicodemus, that's why we get to hear about it in John chapter 3. How many, how many Pharisees you hear about Jesus talking to where there's actually a solid conversation? One.

It's Nicodemus, because he came with openness.

In fact, if you come to Jesus with openness, you might pave way for Him to open up the floodgates of heaven in your life. Come to Him with openness. You might say, "Well, Pastor Matt, it's hard for me to come with openness because so many bad things have happened in my life. " I get it, I get it.

Bad things have happened in your life, and I don't want to diminish that in any sense of that, but bad things happen. I'm trying to be sensitive, I want to be sensitive because bad things have happened to you, but bad things have happened to me, bad things have happened to the person down the row, and in fact, you might be surprised to know—or maybe not, probably not surprised to know—that bad things have happened to every single human being on earth, for the all entire history of humanity.

There is, there is actually a truth to the fact that every single person that has ever existed in this world has suffered to some extent. They might have it a little bit better than you, but guess what, you have it better than somebody else. I know bad things have happened, but that doesn't negate the existence of God and the love that He has for you. So I want to encourage you, sidestep the pain for a moment and step into a relationship with Jesus with openness.

Come to Jesus.

I find it interesting about the timing, the timing of when Nicodemus came to visit Jesus. Has anyone in here ever seen The Chosen series? Isn't it good, just say amen. It's super good, I love that series, except for when I'm trying to preach something.

And then they did it better on I will say is there is a scene, I think it's, episode three of the first season, where Jesus talks to Nicodemus.

It's a very well-done episode. I'd encourage you to go watch it. It'll give you some of the things that you would not think about by simply listening to me talk. But I do find it interesting that Nicodemus came to Jesus at night.

He came with openness, which is great, but he came to him at night, which indicates something for me.

He came to him during the time when people would not necessarily see him. He came to Jesus, probably scheduled this ahead of time, during a time when his homeboys in the ruling council wouldn't ask any questions about him. He did it in such a way that it was almost secret. He did it at night.

And I don't know if, if, if, this is something you've ever thought about before, but it's something I believe the Lord spoke to me.

Often we come to Jesus, maybe we're open, but we only come to him at night. For me, the worst time of day usually is night. It's when the day is done, and I start thinking. It's when the day is done, and I look back and see whether I was productive or not.

It's when I look back and think about the conversations that I should probably not think about at night, because it's nighttime, and then I get in a negative head space, and then I struggle to go to sleep because I keep thinking about the thing that happened during that day.

And that's the moment for me, often, when I come to Jesus. Many of you, you come to Jesus at night, metaphorically. You wait to come to Jesus, maybe with openness, but you wait to come to him until you're at your, what's, end, your last rope. You wait to come to him until everything is going poorly.

And I guess my encouragement to you would be, that's fine.

Just like it's fine for Nicodemus to come with openness in the middle of the night, in secret, so that it doesn't negatively impact the rest of his life, and he can leave that conversation without any questions from his boys in the ruling council of the Pharisees and Sadducees. But I would encourage you, come to him at all times, not just at night, not just when things get bad. Come to him at all times, like when you wake up in the morning. That's probably a better time, because you hadn't started your day.

You can start your day with Jesus.

You can start your day with a perspective that is better than TikTok or Twitter, especially during this political season. Like, many people are ruining their head space because they're filling it with things that don't help them, but you can come to Jesus before you go to social media. You can come to Jesus before you go to your Netflix or HBO Max — they call HBO Max, it's just Max now. You can go to Jesus before Hulu.

You can go to Jesus before Freevee.

You can go to, I don't know, there's so many streaming services these days. You can go to Him first, and He would give you a new perspective. You can go to Him at any time. I think there's a reason we don't hear too much about Nicodemus other than in this scene, because we don't really know what happened with Nicodemus afterwards.

We don't know.

But he came at night because there was something negative that would have potentially happened had he gone at a more public time. It's difficult, and that might be one of the barriers that you've been setting up. You'll come to Jesus when you're at your last rope. You'll come to Jesus when all your friends, like, left you on read.

You'll come to Jesus when you didn't get invited to that party.

You'll come to Jesus when you didn't get that promotion. You'll come to Jesus when it's tough in your marriage. You'll come to Jesus when your kids are struggling in school. You'll come to Jesus when all that stuff is going haywire.

It's almost like — and I hope this is from the Spirit of God and not my own indigestion — but it's almost like, trying to fix your car when it's broken rather than keeping up with it on a regular basis.

That's how we treat God, like, "Thanks, God, for being my emergency God, my nighttime God, my time-of-need God. Thanks so much for helping me when I'm struggling, God. " But God wants to be there for you at all times. He wants to walk with you in the cool of your day, not just when it gets hot and difficult.

God wants to be there for you at all times, so you can come to Jesus with openness. I digress.

I'm going to jump back into the text for a moment. And Jesus replies to him in verse three: "Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. " Nicodemus asked, "How can someone be born when they are old? Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother's womb to be born?

"

I'll give you my second point: when you come to Jesus, be ready for some pushback. Yes, come with openness — openness will help you get to the place where He gives you some pushback. I don't know about you, but when I came to Jesus, I felt an acceptance that was overwhelming.

That's great. I felt this acceptance from God that said, no matter what you've done, you can still have a relationship with me. "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit has set us free from the law of sin and death. " I've got the parable of the prodigal son memorized because I want to know what it feels like to be doing my own thing but recognize that the father still runs out to me when I return to him.

I am excited about the acceptance that I have in Christ Jesus. It's amazing, and I want you to know that that is real — that no matter what you have done, Christ Jesus is there for you when you're ready.

It says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock, " and when you finally open the door, you have acceptance and salvation and eternity with Christ. You are sealed by the power of God's Holy Spirit. However, it comes with pushback. It comes with pushback, and we love the acceptance, don't we?

We love the tolerance.

We love Him perfectly loving us the way that no one else can love us. We love it. But then He's like, "Hey, you should live your life a little different. " We're like, "Hold up, Jesus, I love the acceptance.

I don't necessarily like the alignment. I like your tolerance.

I don't necessarily like this new trajectory. I love you, but I don't love the church you called me to step into. " Sorry, I didn't mean to be so bold there. I heard you giggle over there.

I was like, okay, yeah, it comes with pushback. And I, as a pastor, I struggle, like, you can look at the past three weeks — I'm really scared to tell you this, but can I just be honest with you for a second?

I struggle with the dichotomy that exists. Dichotomy means there's two opposing things at the same time. I struggle with this dichotomy that, on one side, we serve a God who accepts us in the midst of all of our weaknesses and still saves us regardless of all the wrong we've done, and we also serve a God who has called us to align to His will, to give Him honor and glory with our entire lives, to be His ambassadors — 2 Corinthians would tell us, in chapter 5, His ambassadors — to be a part of the reconciliation process. He says, "You, my people, be a part of reconciling the world to God.

" He says He wants me to embody this idea of a new creation. He wants me to be radically different than what the world has to offer.

He wants me to forgive people when the world will be like, "Hey, no, no, write them off, they're done, they've done too much wrong to you. " He wants me to change. He accepts me, but He wants me to change. And much struggle the past three weeks as I go back and forth — it's like, I want to accept everyone, but I also want to hold them to the standard that God has for each one of us.

I want to be nice, but I also want to call them higher into their calling. I want them to press upward and onward so that they would truly know what it looks like to taste and see that the Lord is good.

I want both, and I struggle. And you'll see it on Facebook, you'll see it when I'm preaching — it's like I'll leave a day sometimes and I'm like, "Man, I feel like I wasn't acceptance enough and people aren't going to come back, " and then I leave and I'm like, "Man, I feel like I didn't challenge them to align to God enough. I feel like I'm just caving and watering down the Gospel. " And that's the difficulty of what I'm facing.

And so, when Nicodemus comes to Jesus, Jesus responds to him with a pushback. And when Jesus gives us pushback, some of us will accept it at first, even, and then we're like, "Oh, I didn't realize it was going to take my life.

I didn't realize my friends and family wouldn't be into it. I didn't realize that people might not invite me to the parties like they used to because I changed my habits a little bit. I didn't realize what this would entail. " Jesus — just like the person I mentioned, the rich young ruler — he says, "What must I do to inherit the kingdom?

What must I do in this new thing that you're doing, Jesus? " He says, "Go, sell all that you have, come follow me, " and it says the man went away sad because he was a man of many possessions. "I didn't realize that you required that much to follow you. " Be ready for that kind of pushback.

And if you can come with openness and be ready for pushback, you might almost say it this way: be teachable. Teachability will get you really far. I was telling someone this morning, we started small groups, and, some people will come into small groups — I'm really scared because some of y'all might be in this room, I don't know — some people will come into small groups and they're like, ", I'm pretty mature in my faith. " I know, right?

I love her. This is great.

"I'm pretty mature in my faith, " and they tell me this, and again, I'm not saying I'm super mature in my faith or whatever — I've only been in it for 20, 20 years. I've read the Bible a little bit, and so I'm still figuring this stuff out a lot. And we'll do some content that is geared toward people who are brand new to faith, but people will say, "Well, I'm beyond that, " and I'm like, what, what, what does that tell me? It doesn't tell me that they don't know anything.

I mean, maybe they do, maybe they are knowledgeable when it comes to this stuff, but the fact that that was spoken means that there's a lack of teachability.

Like, if you're sitting anywhere and you're like, "I'm beyond this, " I need you to know you're not coming to Jesus with openness, and you're not ready for when He's going to give you some pushback. In fact, when you come to Jesus with this posture of pride — let's just call it what it is —, you're very unlikely going to hear what He actually has to tell you. And if you come with teachability and you receive pushback from Jesus, you're much more likely to receive that feedback or pushback. I see in this passage — I mean, Nicodemus, we don't know too much about what happens — but he stays in the conversation.

Like, he comes to Jesus, and I'll just jump back to verse two, you don't have to show it, but he says, "Rabbi, we know" — he says, "we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform the signs you were doing if God were not with them. " Now, we read that on the surface as a compliment, but when you look deeper, you see a man coming to Jesus and telling him what he already knows.

Y'all didn't see that in the text, did you? He said, he said, "Rabbi, we know that you're a teacher, and because of the signs you're performing, there's no way it's anything other than God, because we know Yahweh, we know what the scribes say. " And he's right — don't get me wrong, he is obviously right — but there's this posture, and when Jesus sees this posture — Jesus, he's been pretty savage sometimes, he's like, "Okay, " and I like to think that this comes from Jesus rather than my flesh when I respond that way, but Jesus can do it, I don't have permission, to do it — but he says, he says to him in verse three, he says, "I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they're born again. " That's some pushback, if you've ever seen it.

The teacher of the law comes to Jesus, says what he knows, and Jesus's response to him is almost like, "I know you just didn't do that. " Mm-hm. "I'm the God of the universe over here, talking to me like you know something, bro. Nobody can know anything unless they've been born again.

"

And then Nicodemus actually betrays his ignorance in his response.

He says, "How can someone be born when they're old? Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother's womb to be born? " And this is something that you see all throughout, at least, the first half of the Book of John — that the people Jesus encounters see everything on the literal meaning. They see what is said, and they see what is Done at the surface level, but what we'll see in the Book of John is that everything that Jesus does has a deeper meaning.

But he asks — he says, "How can one? " Huh, I like it, he's being teachable. But part of me thinks he's being sarcastic when he responds to Jesus.

He's like, "How can someone go back into their mother's womb? That doesn't make any sense, Jesus. I'm not stupid. Science doesn't work that way.

" And so then, like, but that was a push back, and Jesus is going to give you some things that are difficult. And I guess I'll give you — I give — I guess I'll give you, verse 5 through 7, and I'll give you my third point.

Jesus answered, "Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. " He goes into something crazy here: "Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to the Spirit. You should not be surprised at me saying, 'You must be born again. '"

I'll give you my third point. The first one is to be open. The second one is to be ready for push back. The third one is to be okay with confusion.

What Jesus says here is not, on its surface, easily understandable. I know we come from our background of understanding what it means to be born again, because we've heard about it before — born again, yeah, of the Holy Spirit, not physically born, but of the Holy Spirit. But you got to keep in mind, this had not been spoken of in this way at that point in history. This is a confusing statement.

I was looking up on ChatGPT — that's how I do scholarly research sometimes.

I looked up a history of interpretation, and all the way from the early church fathers until now, people have interpreted this in radically different ways. It is not an easy thing to understand. And there is something that I have learned in my faith: that sometimes Jesus gives me a word, or he gives me a promise, or he gives me some push back, and I don't immediately understand why he's doing what he's doing. When you don't understand what God is doing, be okay with the confusion.

Be okay with the confusion.

In fact, if you're never confused, I wonder if you're ever growing. If you're never confused, I wonder if you're ever establishing your faith at a deeper level. If you're never confused, that means probably you're never thinking deeply about anything. I get confused all the time — I can take it, basic ways.

I get confused when my kid does something.

I have to think about it because I'm his parent, and I want him to be better, and I'm like, "Why did he just do that? " And I'm confused. But I'm thinking — the same confounding that you have when your kid does something crazy is the same discipline I want you to implement when Jesus or God's word tells you something that is confusing. We don't ever move past this, right?

It's like that lady who said, "Well, I just believe. I don't ever question anything. " And I'm like, hold on.

If you're never confused about what Jesus is telling you to do, then I think you're missing an opportunity to develop in that very thing. Let me try to break it down a little bit more for you. There is a step, when you're confused, that you have to take to bring clarity. That step is like mental exertion.

And some of you are probably good at this, but I've seen the church long enough to know most people don't care about this when it comes to the church specifically.

I've learned this — you'll figure it out with your job — but when you come to church, you just want to be fed, and that's okay. It's okay to be fed. But sometimes Jesus says something confusing, and me standing here from stage can help out a little bit, or you reading something on Google can help you out a little bit. But sometimes you just got to sit there and process with the information.

You've got to allow the confusion to move yourself out of complacency.

You've got to allow that confusion. In fact, if the people in this room never come up to — I don't know — when I was reading this, I was struggling: "Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to the Spirit. You should not be surprised at me saying, 'You must be born again. '" Okay, flesh, flesh, spirit, spirit — why would — I'm definitely surprised by the statement.

It doesn't make much sense to me. Born again — but what does that even look like?

When Nicodemus is hearing this, he's got to be confused, and he has an option — we don't really know what he does with this option — but he has the same option all of us have, which is to look at the words of Jesus and say, "I don't get it, see you later, " or "I don't get it, but I want to try to figure it out. " The beauty is, when God decides, he can reveal to you very complicated things. But I wonder if you ever get the Revelation if you never spend the time in confusion. It's okay to sit in confusion.

If you're not okay with confusion, you're going to have a struggle reading the Bible. If you're not okay with confusion, you're going to struggle to build relationships in the church.

If you're not okay with confusion, you're going to struggle with most of the things that I say. If you struggle with confusion, you're probably not going to do as well as you could in the real world at your job. It's okay to be confused. Confusion is actually a gateway to your calling, and if you don't sit there and process with confusion what God's called you to, you might never get there.

But Jesus gives Nicodemus a little help in verse eight, and he says this — and I know you've heard this before — "The wind blows wherever it pleases.

You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it's going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. " Nicodemus asked, "How can this be? " "You are Israel's teacher, " said Jesus, "and do you not understand these things?

Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. "

Now with this verse or Scripture passage, I want to give you a few things. First off, I called it a side point — it'll be on your screen. The Spirit of God is something that is felt before it's seen.

This is what he says. He says it's like the wind — you don't know where it's coming from, you don't know where it's going. And I know we live in a scientific age where we kind of get how trade winds work — that when there's hot air in one place, it rises, and then the cold air comes in to rush and fill that spot. Half y'all didn't know that — I just gave y'all some scientific information there.

We kind of know, but you get the metaphor here.

He's saying you don't actually understand what is happening. Jesus is still responding to Nicodemus's comment about "we know, " and Jesus is like, "No, you don't, unless you were born again, " which is something that happens by the power of God's Holy Spirit. You cannot know this — this is something that God has to give you. It is like the wind — you don't know where it's coming from, you don't know where it's going, but when it falls on you, you feel it.

And when you feel it, you have an option.

You have an option to be open. You have an option to deal with the push back that it's going to give you, because it convicts us — this huge process of regeneration is convicting us of our sin so that we would repent and turn toward God. The Spirit is something that impresses upon us in the form of a feeling, and you can respond to it with rejection or acceptance. And when you accept it, that's when you start to see the work of God manifest in your life.

It's felt before it's seen.

And I struggle with this passage because I just want to look at you and say, "It's going to happen for you, " and I'm trying to be very careful with this. And I'll just close it well with this: like it says, the Spirit of God goes where it wants, and you can't control exactly what's happening with the Holy Spirit. Have you noticed that in your own life? Maybe you've trusted in Jesus, and just at some point you felt something different, and then you started seeing the work of the Spirit manifest in your life and around you, and you made a decision.

You felt it — something was happening in you.

That's the beauty of God, that when he finds us, we see it, we feel it, and it changes us. But then — I don't know what to do — there are people all over the world who aren't going to receive Revelation from God before they die, and they will spend eternity separate from God. That's hard for me to take in. He's saying — he's saying to Nicodemus — "Hey, bro, you can read the Bible, or the scribes, or the scrolls, all you want.

You can lead — Jewish law — all you want, but the Spirit of God is the one that's in control of your capacity to change for good. " That's the Spirit of God.

It's not something you just conjure up one day because you felt like it. He said, "Spirit" — I don't fully understand how the Spirit works. I know it regenerates — you feel it, then you see it, then you decide to follow Jesus. That's how regeneration works, and it doesn't fall on every single person.

But I think the Lord gave me some conviction, because I knew I was going to be talking to a group of people and give you this weird existential crisis that says, "Well, I guess I don't know if I can follow Jesus.

I guess I don't know if the Spirit of God's working in me."

He says it's like the wind, and I don't know about you, but if we were to walk outside — hopefully it's going to be windy when you walk out, I don't know, it's getting hotter, it felt good earlier this week and now I'm like depressed because it's hot again, trying to figure this whole Buckeye weather thing out — but if we were to walk outside and there was a breeze blowing, if we were to all walk outside, who would feel it? All of us. Here's what I want to tell you. I want to tell you that when the Spirit of God is moving in our midst, every one of you has the capacity to feel it, see it, and decide to follow Jesus.

In fact, I kind of feel like every time we come together in worship, where two or more are gathered, that's where the Spirit of God resides.

It inhabits the praises of his people. So when someone down the row is singing worship to God, when someone's standing up here jumping around awkwardly while they're praising God — it's not awkward, I swear, y'all look great — when someone is reading God's word out loud, his Spirit indwells it, it inhabits it. It's almost as if any one of those things happening enables the Spirit of God to move. And when the Spirit of God moves, just like the wind, anyone in that vicinity has the capacity to feel it.

Like, I was really discouraged, and I prayed on it, I thought about it, and God revealed to me — it's like, "Noah, bro, this shouldn't be a stress matter, 'cause the people in that room can feel the wind blowing, the people in this room can feel my spirit moving. " And so I want to encourage you: if you come to Jesus with openness, be ready for push back, be okay with confusion, start looking around and trying to navigate how the Spirit of God is making you feel different, then start looking for the evidence of that.

And then, listen to my encouragement to trust in Jesus — something radical can happen in your life today. You can be born again — not like when you were little, that kind of birth — but a new birth, where you become a new creation, where the Spirit of God resides within you. Like I said last week, you are now one who can house God's Spirit, because your body is a temple. But we have to — we have to come to Jesus in this fashion and allow him to change us.

In fact, I'll give you my fourth point, because when the Spirit of God begins to regenerate us, the process is not done.

I think when we trust in Jesus, we are justified — this is biblical, I'm just telling you the truth — when we trust in Jesus, we are justified. But there's this process called sanctification that happens, where the Spirit continues to convict us, continues to inspire and encourage us, continues to influence us in the direction of Jesus. And that sanctification process is something I'm constantly going through, where I still have to come to God with openness and allow him to lead me. There are regular times where I have a thought process, and I come to the Bible, and I'm like, "Ah, crap" — pardon my French — "I've been doing it wrong.

" And then I pray about it, and I'm still feeling the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and I'm like, "All right, I got to change this — can't say crap anymore, " you know. And then, as I shift that, I recognize that that was the trajectory Jesus wanted me to be on.

And so I keep asking questions: "God, how can I grow? God, reveal yourself to me so that I can know you better. God, how can I live my life in such a way that I help others come. " To you, God.

How can I do me better? You can ask the question, how can you do you better?

You got to keep asking those questions. The whole impetus of this passage to me, yes, there are theological principles that you can go home and learn from and grow from, but I think the conversation in itself reveals to us something really helpful about our faith. Because you have someone who should know faith, who comes to Jesus, and I believe personally remains teachable enough to at least entertain this conversation. We don't know what the life change was for Nicodemus, but I know what it can be for you.

But I want to give anyone in here an opportunity, not just to grow in their sanctification and listening to the Holy Spirit, but anyone of you in here who you felt this spirit of God moving, and you said, "I need to turn away from the things that I was doing, and I need to start following Jesus.

No matter what the push back, I'm going to be open to what he says. No matter how confusing it is sometimes, I'm going to try to sift through and find clarity in the midst of that confusion. Regardless of what happens in my life, I still feel like right now the spirit is calling me to revolve it around, to revolve my life, rather, around Jesus. "

So if everybody would bow their heads, close their eyes, I want to give you an opportunity, to trust in Jesus. Then I'll give you a couple quick pointers on your way out, and then they'll lead us in an amazing worship song. If that's you, and you're feeling the wind blowing, if you will, you feel the spirit of God moving on your heart, I want to encourage you today, make a decision to accept the influence of God's spirit and follow Jesus.

You might pray this prayer. We're going to pray it together out loud for the benefit of those praying it for the first time, so repeat after me:

"God, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I believe he died on the cross and rose from the grave. Forgive me of my sin. Make me a new creation, and I will follow you for the rest of my life.

Today is my new beginning. I'll follow you. It's in Jesus' name that I pray. "

And if that was you, I want to celebrate that, but I also want to encourage you to take a step, fill out that connection card, check the box that says "I'm interested in following Jesus" or "I've decided to follow Jesus, " and we'll reach out to you. I'll reach out to you this week to help you take your next step. I said I would give you one more action step for those of you who are ready for it.

Maggie mentioned that at the end of this service we're going to have a lot of tables out there. We call them one pagers. There's a bunch of details about all the different serving teams. I said, I said, when you encounter Jesus, you got to come with openness, and you got to be ready for push back.

And one of the things that I guess I'll push back on is many of us are spending all of our time doing things that don't energize us.

Actually, many of us are filling our schedules with things that are draining. My thought process on this is that we should take our following Jesus mentality and start filling our calendar, or our schedule, with things that are energizing. And I believe anytime someone comes in here to serve, there is the potential, because the spirit of God is in our midst, there's a potential for someone to get new Revelation. There's a potential for a miracle to occur.

There's a potential for a new friendship to be built every time we meet together in the name of Jesus.

And when you're serving or participating, like your capacity or your ability to hear from Jesus only increases. Again, the only reason I'm standing up here today is because someone invited me to go serve with two-year-olds at a vacation Bible school, and I didn't know what was going on, but I showed up with these two-year-olds, and I was like, this is terrible, this is not something I want to do. But by the end of that week, I was like, I could vibe with this, this is actually more fun than I thought. I said, if this was fun, then everything else is going to be more fun.

And I continued to serve and serve and serve, and eventually God revealed to me more about himself.

And then I started to read and read and read, and then I built relationships with people who, by the power of God's spirit, were like, "Matt, you got to change, you got to change this, this, this, this, this. " They weren't judging, they were helping. And then eventually God gave me a very clear calling. It was confusing at first, but he developed that calling over time.

I guess this is an easy opportunity for you guys to come with openness, receive push back, step into the confusion, so that eventually you'd find the clarity of your calling. And so I want to encourage anyone in here who is not currently serving, stop by a table and just ask some questions, grab a couple one pagers, see if you might be interested in serving on a team.

Because trust me, serving is more fun than simply sitting. Sitting is amazing, I love it, I'm glad you're here, but serving is the next step for many of you. I think it'll be really, really helpful for each of you. And can I just give a specific thing?

This is for me, I'm sorry, I'm disrupting the amazing music in the back, it's super great.

There are two things I want to mention when it comes to serving that are actually needs for our specific organization. I think all serving positions are helpful for you and growing closer to God, but there are two that will enable us to much more effectively serve guests when they come in for the first time. The first one, we call it our Logistics team. I'm talking to anybody who's got a truck.

If you got a truck, you bought that truck for a reason, not just so you could have plenty of seating room, which that's nice, that's, I need to get me a truck.

But I think God can utilize that truck to help us set up church. And so I want to encourage you, if you've got a truck, pray about whether God's leading you to be a part of our Logistics team, to help with the trailers. We have two trailers right now, the potential of three in the future, that we pick up at a storage facility in the morning and then we take back in the evening. God can use you even if you just have a truck and you're not sure about anything else.

And then the second thing I'll mention, we always have needs because we'll go from 60 kids one week to 90 kids the next week.

We always need more people who are ready to step in to help when it comes to our Orbit kids area. And so I want to encourage you, pray about what God's calling you to. Stop by one of the tables, there's people there to ask you, answer some questions for you. I don't know, I don't want to deflate this moment.

I want us to actually step into worship.

If y'all could stand with me, let's close this off today, let's seal it with a focus on Christ. Jesus, God, I love you.