In the Church, We All FAM

I love it when they Prime the clap for you. Someone clap back there to make y'all do it. Did you know? Like if I were to start doing this, come on somebody.

Come on, man, it's contagious, you can make it happen.

How many of y'all love Christmas? Just say amen, I love Christmas too. There's a lot of nostalgia attached to Christmas for me. I don't know how went for you guys, but for me I would just look forward to it every year.

I grew up in Aransas.

I grew up in Arkansas. I have to say it carefully, so I don't accidentally say Arkansas, you know, because I grew up in it. Anyways, I'm trying to. Are y'all awake today?

Because if I make self-deprecating jokes, I expect you to laugh at it, somebody.

This is Christmas. You laugh at your uncle's jokes. You can laugh at mine today, but I do. I.

I always look forward to Christmas, whether it's looking at lights or opening a Christmas Eve present or having my kids open them now, and then the next morning you wake up and when I was a kid there would be a bunch of Santa presents.

Now I've got to put together all the presents and so it's not as fun as it used to be. But all that to say, there's a lot of nostalgia for me attached to Christmas, and moving out here to Phoenix has has been unique, cuz you kind of have to fake it all. Right, like today, I'm wearing a jacket. I don't need this jacket, but I want to feel like I'm.

It's winter and Christmas.

This is coffee, but I'm pretending it's hot cocoa. Today, I know some of yall went over to the Fairmont. Anyone been to the Fairmont yet this year? Just me.

All right, that's good, I go there.

And they're ice skating, with whatever that combo of nitrogen infused water is, so that they can get ice in the middle of the desert. For ice skating and I don't know, they do everything they can to make it feel like Christmas because there's a lot of nostalgia attached to it. There might be family Nostalgia attached to it. You grew up in a certain way and so now you are reliving all of your o old treasures and Trauma every single Christmas, trying to do it the exact same way.

I've noticed some people do Christmas the same way that they did it growing up, no matter how miserable they were when they were doing it.

Have you seen that before? It's like we're all meeting together and we're sitting around this table. We used to fight all the time, so we're going to fight today and you're trying to relive that Christmas well over the next couple of weeks. What I want to do is I want to walk us through a miniseries, if you will, where we look at specific texts from the Scriptures, surrounding The Narrative of Jesus's birth, and we look at how God utilizes situations, he utilizes things and he utilizes our past, in people we interact with, to turn his will for our good in this world.

God is writing a story and there are good things and bad things that will occur in our lives, but it doesn't hinder God's story from being written, and so I want to communicate today, next Sunday, the 22nd, and on Christmas Eve during our candl light service, the hope of Christmas, which is that the reality of Christ's birth also presents to us a new reality: that nothing is impossible with God.

The Book of Luke says that in chapter 1, verse 37, Jesus's birth and then his life and subsequent death and Resurrection communicates that the impossible is now possible. He will take what the enemy meant for evil and turn it for somebody good. Christmas is a joyous occasion. Yes, it's filled with Nostalgia, but there is a point that is greater than the Nostalgia and it's the new life that we can all have in Christ Jesus.

And today I'm going to talk about how God can utilize our past, reorient our perspective and put us into a new type of mindset.

And I'm going to be in Matthew, chapter 1, and I'm going to read through verses 1 through 17. I think you'll enjoy it. It's probably one of the most interesting passages in Scripture. It's, the genealogy and, I don't know about you, I didn't really know where I came from growing up.

Here's what I do know: my brother did a- 23 and me recently, and I don't know that I trust it- like the whole board resigned a couple months ago, so I don't know, maybe there's something not legit about it, but my brother did it- 23 and me, and I am obviously part European.

You know my background. Look at me, but if you didn't know, I'm also 1, 18th or 16th Polynesian. Look at that. I didn't get any scholarships for it, but I'm, I'm, I'm part Asian guys and, that's about all I know about my genology.

But some of you- you, you know the whole story.

Like you've actually had a family reunion. My family reunion would consist of a Max of 10 to 12 people, but yours would have like a 100 people. There you know where you came from. You know that old ancient Narrative of Uncle Jimmy doing this back when he was 17 years old because your parents told you about it.

You have a family of origin that's quite large and you know where you came from.

This is how it was in the ancient world. This is one of the way you keep an understanding of the narrative that goes back from Adam and Eve all the way to Christ Jesus. Is you kept up with the Bloodlines, the generations, the genealogy, and what we're going to see in Matthew in a moment is that he structures this genealogy to help us understand that there's something greater than a bloodline here. There's something greater than the negatives and the positives that occur in the past.

In fact, God was writing a story that superseded all of these worldly situations to get you, to get me, to get the world to the place where we could see something radical, new and fresh in Christ Jesus.

So I'm going to read it without further Ado. Matthew, chapter 1. I'll read through it quickly, do not fall asleep. It's a genealogy, I get it, but let's stay attentive.

Verse one: this is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of David, the son of Abraham.

Abraham was a father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers. Judah, the father of Perez and zerra, whose mother was Tamar- tell you about that later. Perez, the father of hezron. Hezron the father of ram ram the father of aminadab.

Aminadab the father of nashan.

Nashan the father of salmon or salmon. However, you say that, do y'all say salmon or salmon? Samon, Salon, where you fromg Georgia? I'm from Arkansas.

We don't say that, but you know, to each their own.

You say potato, I say potato. Anyways. It's a funny joke, right? Okay s?

Sammon was the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab.

Okay, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth. Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David. You know slay Goliath with a, a sling and then cut off his head with a sword. David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been uriah's wife.

Solomon the father of reob.

Rabam the father of abijah. Abijah the father of Asa. ASA the father of Jehoshaphat. Jehoshaphat the father of jehoram.

Jehoram the father of Uzziah.

Uzziah the father of jotham. Jotham, the father of ahaz ahaz. The father of Hezekiah. Hezekiah, the father of Manassa, Manasseh.

The father of Ammon, Ammon.

The father of Josiah, Josiah, the father of jeanah and his brother S at the time of the exile to Babylon. After the exile to Babylon, I know it's so interesting- jeanah was a father of shaltiel. Shalel, okay, whatever. Shalo was the father of zerubabel.

Zerubabel, the father of abood, abood, the father of eliakim, elim, the father of Azor, Azor.

The father of zadok, zadok, the father of aimim, the father of eliud, eliad, the father of Eleazar, elazar, the father of methan, methan, the father of Jacob, and Jacob, the father of Joseph. Here we go. The husband of Mary, and Mary was the mother of Jesus, who was called the Messiah. Thus everybody say.

Thus, there were 14 Generations in all, from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the exile to Babylon and 14 from the exile to the Messiah.

That is, three generations of 14. I'm sure there were some removed in there. Matthew was structuring this genealogy on purpose. Now I want to highlight some interesting in facts that I found in this genealogy.

But again, the main point of this message is to help you understand that good or bad God's working for your good, good or bad, God's working for your good.

He's going to turn it. I don't know what your past looks like. I don't know what your current frustrations are, I don't know what generational curses you have and I don't know what situations you might be dealing with. God can take bad and good things and work it toward his greater purpose, which, in the end, is a blessing to us.

God can do it.

That's the point. And I had a title. I don't think I like the title. The title that's going to be on the screen is not the actual title of this message.

The title that I sent- Carz was in the church.

We all fam, but some of y'all get it, . But the actual message title is: I'm just go. It's super simple, stupid simple. Christmas family tree.

I want you to remember this: the Christmas family tree.

It's filled with good things, bad things, good people, bad people, people who got their stuff together, people who are struggling, but in the end it all worked out for our Salvation. That's what God does. That's how he works. God can make it happen.

But I want to communicate a couple cool things.

Everyone, especially if you know your genealogy- I don't even know my genealogy. We got some bad apples in my family tree. How many of you got someone? You don't have to say their name out loud, but you just raise your hand.

You got someone in your family.

That's kind of we don't talk about them. Yeah, you got, you all got a Bruno. Yeah, see, I'm just referring. Didn't that come out around Christmas?

We don't talk about Bruno, no, no, no, no, you've all got a Bruno in your family.

In fact, one of my favorite Disney Pixar films is, called Coco. Anyone like Coco, regardless of the mythology in the movie- I'm not talking about that- I like Coco. It is like one of the most. You could argue with me all you want and you'd still be wrong.

It is like the best Disney Pixar film.

Who agrees with me say Amen, hey, this is a good group. Maybe that's why you're here at church today. It's a good. If you don't know, I'm not going to tell you the story, but the movie is called Coco, which means it's about Coco, which is a woman who can't remember stuff.

And then the whole movie is about memory, and then there are songs about memory, and songs themselves are actually easy to memorize, so it's all thematically woven together cohesively.

It's so amazing. What a great film. You should go watch it. I love that film.

And in that film, there's a whole plot line where they're trying to forget somebody, who was, you know, the bad egg in the family.

I think we've all got someone in our family that we would prefer not to talk about. The same is true in Scripture. One of the greatest arcs of Scripture is that God can take people who are imperfect, who struggle, who keep screwing up all the time, and utilize whatever they were able to accomplish or screw up for his greater purposes. That can happen in your family and it happens here.

Let me.

Let me highlight this for you, because Matthew knows he's writing to an audience of people who would understand what he's doing. One of the first things that he highlights is the bad parts. Here's how he highlights it. So when you're writing a genealogy in the ancient world and you're talking about Bloodlines, you would typically talk about the male, but in this genealogy, Matthew refers to several females, and I'm not saying Matthew.

I mean others are sexist and Matthew's not.

I mean you can say what you want, but what I am saying is Matthew is highlighting this on purpose. He wants us to recognize. He wants the people reading to recognize that there's something different about this family tree, and so let's highlight what Matthew's trying to highlight here. He talks about five different women, the first of which is Tamar- Tamar.

Now, Tamar would typic.

She's not necessarily significant in the story, except for the fact that, there's a weird situation attached to her. I don't even know why he listen to, to be honest with you, like, why does he refer to her by name? Well, here's why. There's a guy named Judah.

Now, Judah has several kids.

One of his kids marries a woman named Tamar. That kid dies. Now, in the ancient world, when the husband dies, typically, one of the brothers would be provided for this woman to marry- we call this the kinsman redeemer, so that the woman could still be covered. Now, one of the brothers does cover for the brother that died, but he, he doesn't do what the Lord would require of him.

I'll just say that you can go read the story yourself.

It's pretty, it's pretty, you know it's zesty, you know it's crazy. And so God kills him, and then, after that, Judah promises that he'll provide another kinsman redeemer, but he fails to do so, and so what Tamar does is she waits on the side of the road. I'm just reading the Bible here. I'm communicating what the Bible says.

This isn't me, this is the Bible.

So don't get mad at me. Get mad at God, which you shouldn't do cuz he's God-, but she stands on the side of the road, dresses up like a prostitute, so that Judah, her father-in-law, will sleep with her. Yeah, why was that included in Jesus's genealogy? I think there's a point to it.

He's saying that even in this scenario, God could work something for good.

I don't know about y'all, but y'all's uncles weren't that bad. Y'all's aunties weren't that bad? I mean, if they were, I'd love to hear the story at Christmas dinner sometime. But that's.

Let's go to the next one: Rahab.

Y know Rahab? If you don't know Rahab, Rahab was a Canaanite woman. She lived in the city of Jericho and we know about her because she helped the spies and protected them? U so that they could go, tell their people and then they would come and Conquer Jericho.

But what was Rahab?

Also somebody, anyone know? Say it out loud: 3, 2, 1. Yeah, you said it. You said it confidently.

I appreciate it.

She- she didn't just dress up like a prostitute sleep with her father-in-law. She was a prostitute and we find out that she married somebody who became the father of Boaz, who's like a great, great grandfather of David. God took this situation. Not only did they do something that we would all consider wrong, no matter what country you're from or no matter what morals you have, but they were also not of the Jewish religion.

It's crazy craziness.

Let's go further. We've got Ruth. Ruth is known as the daughter-in-law of Naomi, who was Jewish, but her husband moved her out of Israel and into Moab, and her sons marry two women. One of them is Ruth.

She is a moabit woman.

Their husbands die and Ruth is so nice as to go with Naomi back into her Homeland. And then eventually Boaz, a super nice dude who owns a lot of land, sees her gleaning from the crops, gets with her as the kinsman redeemer. All that to say that whole situation is not optimal. But we could continue to a woman who's not even named in this genealogy.

She is named by probably her greatest sin, and it says that we have Solomon through David and not ba Sheba- that's her real name- but by David and the wife of Uriah.

So Matthew, when he's communicating about Jesus's lineage and genealogy. Yes, we know what's the line of David. That's super cool. But why you got to remind us of the bad stuff?

I think it's because Matthew understands something about Jesus.

Maybe having been a tax collector, maybe having been someone who had been redeemed from much struggle in sin, he wants to communicate, even in his genealogy, that God can take the bad parts of our past and redeem them for a greater good. That's what I want you to understand. When you look at the bad ones in this- or at least the bad situations- not saying they're bad people, but they struggled- you see the grace and Redemption that God provides you. I love this.

I don't know about you, but maybe you didn't see this when you were listening.

Maybe you did fall asleep when I was going through the genealogy. I'm one of those weird Bible Geeks who looks at this stuff, studies it and is like: what can I glean from this? But some of you, you just heard it and you're like: I like to skip through the genealogies- and I'm not going to judge you for that, because on my own, if I'm not in study mode, I tend to. I read quicker on the parts that seem boring, but what you find is that when you start analyzing the details of the text, when you start looking at your past and analyzing those details, you can see what God is trying to accomplish.

Let me give you another detail.

So he actually tells us- Matthew does- that there are 14 Generations from Abraham to David, 14 Generations from David to the Exile into Babylon and then 14 Generations from the exile to where we find Jesus. That's pretty interesting. Right now, if you don't look further into it, you're just like dude, likes 14. But there's this thing called gatria.

Y'all say it out loud: gatria, gria.

Now I'm not going to say this is exactly what Matthew was doing, but it makes sense that he would do this. Gatria is the practice that was practiced by many ancient cultures, but especially by Judaism, where they would take the Hebrew name, the consonants, and they would ascribe a number to it based on the sum of those consonant. And they did that with David. If you do that with David, you get 14.

It's almost like David's got himself a jersey.

That's what gatria is. If he's got a jersey, if I say the number 23, whose jersey is it that? Who? Someone will be confident.

LeBron James, is he 23?

Jordan, but what numb LeBron James? And 23, 6 and 23. See, you know, though, you know, you know what I'm saying. I can't think of anybody else.

That's the only one that I memorized, because I chose it and people like: why you trying to be like Michael, like Mike made fun of me my whole life.

It's very similar. David had a number. People understood that number and so it is interesting- I'm not saying there's crazy meaning to it, but the fact that Matthew is structuring it such that it's 144 and 14, and it's super cool because when you have scribes later in probably the 13th century, creating chapter numbers, they also made Matthew chapters, which is 14 * two. Again, I'm not saying this is the point of the text, I'm just saying it's interesting that when you start to analyze the details, you see how cool things actually turn out.

I would say: don't be stressed, stressed out by the genealogy, because God's always working, in between the areas that you presently see, but there are bad things that happen and God is always working those things for our good.

But everybody say: but, oh, confident, I appreciate you today. Everybody else, let's up our game. It's Christmas. You got to get excited.

You got to get ready to open up the trash bag and be excited for your kids, even though you know you have to put all those gifts together.

I've got to put something together, Hannah, or either of the kids in here right now- no, okay, shaking your head's hard to see when it's dark in there, no, so I've got to put together a drum set for my son and I got to put together-, what do they call it? Is it a swing set that you wanted to buy? Something like that, something I have to put together. I have to clean up around.

I have- I've got grass in there, so I'm about to weed, eat around it, and.

But you know what? I'm excited for my kids to be happy about it. So y'all start getting excited about that. But also be excited today because Jesus died for your sins, because this genealogy is super cool.

It shows us that God can turn bad things for good.

But it's not all bad. Look at your neighbor. Look at your neighbor. Tell them like you're from Arkansas or Georgia, my friend.

Look at them, it ain't all bad.

When you look back in this genealogy, it's easy to focus on the bad things. Right, because that's what stands out it genuinely is. The fact that he put the women in this genealogy makes me say: why did he put the women in this genealogy? Again?

He's not sexist, he's doing it on purpose, but it just so happens.

Each one of these women. And I forgot about one, Mary, and I, we all know it's good, you people with a Catholic background, I know Mary, the Mother of God. What's he about to say? No, this is the Mary Mother, Mary, Mother of Jesus.

She received the gift of this, this calling from the Lord.

Yet at the same time when she got that calling, it was between her and God. God said: you're going to give birth to the Savior, and I don't know that God disclosed that to every single other person. And so when she goes out and she says, yes, I, I, I'm a virgin and I'm to give birth, did nobody believe her. That's scandalous, right?

And?

And when Matthew highlights these things, he is communicating something unique or scandalous through every single one of these. It's easy to focus on that, but it ain't all bad. And so when you look at this generation, I want to highlight a couple things. Or this genealogy, I want to highlight a couple things.

It starts with Abraham, who's the progenitor of the entire Jewish faith and our faith and- let's be real, even other fa in the world.

Abraham was a big deal. He was the one of Promise who God promised him. He said: look at the stars in the sky. Your descendants will be that numerous.

But then you continue through his entire lineage there and you get all the way down to Jesse, the father of King David, now King David.

I already said, like you know, David and Goliath. If that's all you know, that's a cool story. But David did a lot of other cool things. David we also tend to call the man after God's Own Heart.

Why?

Because it's because of David and his creativity and his, his willingness to step into that type of poetry that we have the Psalms. He created a whole culture around worshiping Yahweh. That's good. He didn't end his life perfectly.

He got with Bas Sheba.

He killed Uriah the hittite after he got with Bas Sheba. That was bad, but there's some good that came from this, such to the point where God promises David that the Messiah would come from his lineage. And we go down. You got people like Uzziah, Hezekiah, Josiah.

It ain't all bad.

There are some great things that occurred and what I found in life is that many of us identify ourselves based on the worst things that have happened in our family or in our own lives. That's how we identify ourselves. We call them generational or family curses. Amen, you're with me.

I love that.

Family curses- how many? Be honest with me, I'm not saying it's a real curse, but how many of you have heard that phrase in your own family? You got a family or generational curse? That's how we identify it.

We say we're cursed.

And I get it, cuz there's a level where when someone in your family operates or processes a certain way, that passes down. I mean, look at Adam and Eve says it was passed down, sin was passed down and we, we get the repercussions of his actions. That happens in all of our families. It's tough sometimes.

Addictions: maybe someone was addicted to alcohol or drugs and for some reason that continues to pass down.

Maybe somebody processed through the world in a certain way, maybe introverted, extroverted, maybe like super hostile to people. Maybe you know they blame everybody else for things and so that passes down to you. I get it. That's in some way is natural.

But just because there's a curse in your family, just because someone has a bad personality type, just because bad things happen, doesn't mean you can't shift your perspective and start looking for what God wants to bring from your past.

It's not all bad, and I found listening to a video the other day. There's-, there's this lady- I don't know if you've ever heard it's. It's called like the CEO diary- Diary of a CEO podcast. Anyone ever heard of that?

So I was listening to that podcast the other day and there's this lady on there who's like a body language expert.

So naturally I'm looking at that because I don't want to do anything that makes you guys judge me. I'm trying to work on my social and emotional intelligence, and one thing that she said was that they did a, a study where they gave a large group of people a newspaper and they gave them a specific task. They said: count up the number of articles in this newspaper, and in that newspaper they hid an adver advertisement that actually showed them that by participating in that study, they would receive a large gift if they identified that and told the person conducting the study. Right, so, just to be clear, they were told to count up all of the Articles and then they were told- or they weren't told- this, but there was a hidden ad in there, and if they read the ad, what they would find is that they received a gift for participating in the study.

They also asked this question.

They said: how many of you view yourselves as lucky and how many of you view yourselves as unlucky? You can maybe identify with that. Some of you would say I'm just unlucky, some would say I'm pretty lucky. What they found was interesting.

They found the people, like this is like in Mass.

They found that the people who considered themselves lucky noticed the ad because they read it while counting and then they were the ones who got the gift. And they also found that the people who consider themselves unlucky counted up all the all the articles and missed the ad. What does that tell you? What that says is, even scientifically, or at least through the research, that they found that if you view your past, if you view your present, if you view yourself as overarchingly negative or unlucky, you're going to reap some of those results.

And in contrast, if you view yourself positively, if you look at your past and don't Define Yourself by what other people have done in the generational curses, the tendency for you is to look for the Silver Lining, to look for the positive things.

Why do I tell you that? I tell you that because when you look for the good things, it makes you that much more likely to celebrate what God has done. And we live in a culture, a day, an age where it is so easy to highlight the negative, Define ourselves by the bad things that have happened and forget about the fact that nothing is impossible with God. He is fully capable to take the Bad and the good and rework it in such a way that when you look at it later, he fixed it, he redeemed it, he reconstructed it, he took what the enemy meant for evil and he turned it, he flipped it around.

This is what God is capable of doing, but we are incapable sometimes of seeing it because we're so negative.

I'm stuck in the curse. We have this like whole thing we call sad seasonally affected disorder, because when it gets close to Christmas we start thinking about all the things that we lack, all the bad things that are occurring, that we miss the sliver, even if it's just a sliver of positive, that God is doing. And I am the biggest hypocrite to say all of that out loud. It's so easy for me to see all the pain in the genealogy, but what God wants us to see is what he's producing through the genealogy.

What has God produced?

Like if you were? If you chose right now to be positive about your upbringing and about your past, or about your present, you, you might find something interesting as you go. Look rather than saying, let me study how wrong it went. And you studied your life, your family of origin and said: I came to church today, I started serving recently, my whole family is starting to take steps forward in faith.

If you said, how did I get here?

But with a positive slant, you might simply Revel and celebrate in what God has done. That's what we can look in post at this, can't we? Jesus came from it. It must have been all right.

You came from it.

It must have been all right. You showed up today. God's doing something. You took that step.

In fact, last week, we just finished our series called, if you know, you know, which was on giving trusting God in the area of our finances, but also believing God for a word or a phrase in 20, 2025, and what we found is that 100, well over a 100 people wrote down a word that they're believing God for in the next year.

Most of them had never done that before - just under a 100 people decided that they were from never giving. They're going to begin giving and trusting God in the area of their finances. Many decided they were going to increased to the tithe, and about the same amount of people who increased to the tithe gave above and beyond the tithe because they trusting God and their finances. God is working something in you, in this church, in your family, in this Valley.

God's working something, so let's look for that rather than for what went wrong.

It's helpful to understand what went wrong, and we live in a day and age where we're trying to analyze our trauma rather than what's what we can treasure from our past. But let's let's try to treasure some things. That's what I found from this genealogy. My first point was: there are some bad parts in this genealogy.

My second point was: there are some good parts to this genealogy.

Try to focus on some of those good parts. But my final point is the same thing that I said at the beginning: God can use whatever to bring about his will, and what this should do is it should actually encourage you. I'm going. I wanted to encourage you.

God can use whatever.

This week we talked about people in our past. Next week we're going to talk about specific situations. The next week we're going to talk about the fact that God can use literally anything. God can use whatever to do what his will is in your life and in the lives of others, and I'm encouraged by that because I screw up a lot.

I'm encouraged by that because there are certain deficiencies that do come from my family of origin.

I remember I, I trusted in Jesus when I was 15 years old. That is 21 years ago. It's a long time, I'm getting old guys. 21 years ago and I remember when I trusted in Jesus, my mom had forced us to go to church.

But up to that point we were never consistently in church on my dad's side because they were divorced when I was three.

On my dad's side we never, ever went to church and I was living with my dad at the time. Well, at 15, I trust in Jesus and I'm trying to figure this out, and it was really easy for me to just lament my family of origin, my genealogy, if you will. But what God's taught me over 21 years? Now that after 21 years, I, I see my mom move out here with us to help start this church and is serving on the regular and, honestly, I don't know if, how I would do this without her.

And then I look at my dad, who, more than just Sundays, actually attends church and goes to meditation sessions where he can focus on reading the Bible.

Neither of them were doing that when I trusted in Jesus, but what I've seen over the years is I've seen God take what was maybe broken, maybe basic, maybe average, and he did what was impossible with it. He'll do the same thing for you and I want to. I want to be clear. I said 20.

How many years?

I said I said 20, 21 years. I didn't say 2025. I said took 21 years to see some of this stuff turn around, but what I know is that he turns it around. So my encouragement to you is to trust God for your future, knowing that he is capable of reworking and fixing any screw-ups of the past, whether they're yours or somebody else's.

He's capable, in fact, because of what Jesus did.

We all, regardless of where we come from-, we were, according to the Bible, hostile to God, but because of what Jesus did at the end of this genealogy, he's actually invited us in to that family and that we're a part of it- not by Blood- ours, at least- but we're a part of it. We've been grafted in because of what God has worked in the past, and so I want to encourage anyone in this room who is maybe struggling-, maybe you've trusted in Jesus, but you're going through a lot. I want to encourage you: open God's word, start talking to God, but recognize this truth as you go into this conversation: God is capable and willing and able to do abundantly Beyond, immeasurably more than you're currently processing through. He can work it, it for your good.

You know, it's funny because last week, when everybody chose their words, there were two words that were far, far more selected and chosen.

We didn't give you- I mean, we didn't give anyone a word and say, hey, choose, you can choose between 10 words here. We didn't do that. We just said: choose whatever word God has for you. One person put home and I'm like, okay, I don't know what that means, but she, this person does, and God knows what it means.

But the overwhelming choice of every single person who participated first was faith and second was trust.

And so here's what I'm believing God for in 2025: that God would inspire you to a greater level of faith and trust in him. Yes, through actions in 2025, but right now to your, your ability to process through things of your past and recognize with faith. It takes faith that God can do something with it. That's why so many people they'll show up at church and leave and think Church didn't do anything for them.

That's why so many people maybe have been attending church their entire life but they don't really have a vibrant or dynamic faith in God.

It's because they're misunderstanding, they're misreading, they're looking at everything without, without faith, without trust, without a positive slant. They're they're not dis seting it properly. They're looking at it and saying: it's all bad. But let's look at it the way we talked about today.

There's both good and bad, but regardless of good and bad, God is working a greater narrative together for you and for everyone else in this room.

I'm believing, but there are some in this room who, in order to have more faith and more trust you, you have to make a decision to put your faith and trust in Jesus, and the Bible says, says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved, and this is a great starting point for for everyone, . But for those of you who have never made that decision, this is a great starting point that I think will put you on a trajectory of not just greater faith and trust, but a life that looks radically different just a few weeks, months or years from now. And if you want to step into a life where you have peace that surpasses all understanding, where you're seeing the results that you actually want to see, make the decision to trust in Jesus. So if everybody would bow their heads and close their eyes, I want to pray this prayer.

It's just a template for you to talk to God.

I want to pray this prayer out loud, together, for the benefit of those who are praying it for the first time. So y'all repeat after me: God, I believe that Jesus 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, work all things for our good, and I will follow you, God.

Today is the day that I start following you.

It's in Jesus's name that we pray, and all God's people said: hey, can we celebrate those who just made that decision to trust in Jesus here. Here's what I want to ask you.