Don't Miss the Real Miracle

And say hey to somebody on your way to your seat, which I actually get to say on your way today, because most of the time you're already standing at your seat, but some of you people, you're on your way to your seat, I love it, this is good. We're all about worshiping Jesus in any way he's called us to in that moment. I am, I'm pumped to bring the word to you guys today. We've been in a series, I'm not confused, I'm not gonna make a mistake, it is behind me.

Y'all tell me what our series title is, Miracle Worker.

How many of you just show hands, you can just talk? How many of you, Jesus has worked a miracle in your life? Yeah, amen, amen, amen, he's worked numerous miracles in my life. But also recognize there's some of you in this room you've yet to experience or see the miracle that Jesus wants to perform in your life.

Even if he's performing it, you may not have seen it, and so you find yourself wondering when he's gonna do something.

But can I tell you, I've learned in my walk with God over time, I haven't figured much out, but I figured this out a little bit. I've learned, the more I follow Jesus, that the miracles I had initially expected and hoped for and asked for when I was younger in my faith, I don't even pray for those anymore. In fact, I pray for much different things. You might've experienced that in any of your relationships.

If you're married in this room, the longer you're married, the more the desire shifts.

And the miracle that Jesus may perform early on in your ministry is, it's cool. But as you mature, you're looking deeper. And when you look deeper, you actually find that there's a greater miracle to every physical thing you might ask for. Now, I wanna be clearing up front.

I don't have a problem with asking for physical miracles.

I think we should. I wanna be a church. Man, I wanna be a dude that God uses to help with that. Now, I've had some impressions before, and I looked at somebody and I said, this will not end in death.

I really did that.

My sister-in-law, it was so cool because she didn't die, so it was good. And I really felt from the spirit that that was, and if I had just like done that and then told her two weeks later when she went in for her, well, to test her first treatment or her first chemo treatment, and they had found what they found, which was that there's no more cancer left in her body, I would've maybe called myself a healer. I don't know. But I just looked at her and she looked discouraged.

And I said, I wanna see that kind of stuff happening in our church.

And I'll fight against anyone who says that's not possible. But I wanna fight for something better, too. And we've been in Matthew as we've been going through a few of the miracle stories. And Matthew eight and nine is like, you're chocked full of miracle stories about Jesus.

And so I picked it, and you may not care about this, but I'm gonna tell you anyways, because there might be some Bible scholar in the room and they need to understand that there's a way that I approach the text that they'll appreciate.

Maybe they'll come back. The rest of you are like, this dude was bored and he geeked out on the text. So hope I don't lose you. But here's the way I approach the text.

If I'm in Matthew, I wanna start with Matthew.

Because Mark and Luke and John, they tell some of the same situations, but they utilize different details. And so I asked the question, what's Matthew trying to get across to his audience? And when I'm reading Matthew's miracle stories, there's a different color on them than you would see in Mark or Luke. And I've been really trying to ask the Lord, help reveal to me what you're trying to communicate through the inspired word in Matthew's perspective.

And first week we talked about the man that Jesus healed from his leprosy.

Because Jesus does perform physical miracles. After that, Adrian talked about in the book of John, Lazarus, like the coolest story ever. I love that one. And we hear more about the character that we've got through that miracle story.

Last week, we talked about the centurion and his great faith that his servant was healed by a word from Jesus.

Now Matthew is obviously, I mean, you might not be obvious, but he's obviously, as you read it, trying to showcase different components of Jesus's miracle working power. If you didn't know it up to this point, you're gonna see it today. But when I was reading and preparing for this week, I found myself frustrated. Because we're gonna go over a couple miracle stories today and a few of them are in Mark or Luke.

And I found myself like, pausing for a moment and saying, man, should I just go to Luke or Mark for this one?

Because the way they tell it is just more interesting. I know someone's gonna leave the church because they hear me say one Bible part feels better than the other Bible part. But in Mark, you're gonna hear a story, you would hear a story and there's detail. And to me, that's like the most fun part to communicate about it.

But Matthew kind of leaves some of these little parts out.

And I found myself increasingly furious with Matthew. It's like, bro, I know you're a tax collector, but you don't have to be a pump. You can incorporate something. You gave three chapters to Jesus's sermon on the Mount, five, six, seven.

You gave two chapters to the majority of miracles here.

But I think what Matthew's actually trying to do is he's got a limited amount of papyrus. He already went 28 chapters, you know? He's like, I gotta limit myself. So what do I need to talk about?

And the miracles are kind of a given.

He did a lot of those. But what did he intend to do through these key miracles in Matthew eight and nine? What was he trying to show the people who never met Jesus but are reading about him? Because he doesn't want his audience to miss what the real miracle is.

That's my sermon title for you today.

Don't miss the real miracle. I've met people. They come to church or they go to different churches. And I don't mind that, dude.

We're all one body.

I'm for the Big C church, the real K kingdom. I don't know. I'm all about it. But sometimes we go and we chase a feeling or we chase a miracle.

And I think miracles are amazing.

I'd love to see them here. But there's a deeper one that we gotta be focused on. So don't miss the deeper miracle. So we're gonna start in Matthew chapter eight.

Begin in verse 14.

I'm gonna read verses 14 and 15. And I'm gonna tell you the miracle. And I'm gonna follow up with the real miracle. Verse 14, when Jesus came into Peter's house, he saw Peter's mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever.

He touched her hand and the fever left her.

And she got up and began to wait on him. Two verses. Peter, his mother-in-law. You got two verses.

I'm sitting here like, I don't know anything about, like that's the only, that's pretty cool though.

That's the only way that we know Peter was married is that Peter's mother-in-law, he had a mother-in-law. So he was married. So we get to know a little bit more about Peter. But I found myself wondering, why does she only get two verses?

But some random leper gets several more.

I'm just being honest. Why such little information here? Why didn't I know what kind of fever it was? Because if it was just a normal 101 fever, big whoop.

You touched her hand, big whoop.

She got up and started serving you, that's cool. Half the people I know got a fever, they stay home and they're fine to go to the store after church, you know? It's like, I'm just kidding, guys. Just kidding, I'm joking, yeah.

But Jesus could touch your hand here and get rid of your fever at home.

And whatever, I'm gonna leave that alone. But he gave us two verses and I found myself frustrated. Give me more detail. Everyone I talk to wants more detail.

If I went to Mark, now he didn't talk about this one too much but if I'd have gone to Mark, I might have gotten more detail.

If I'd have gone to Luke, I might have gotten a different type of detail. What are you trying to tell me here? Why did you limit Peter's mother-in-law? Now she might've been hard to Peter and so they didn't wanna talk about it.

They'd have a good relationship.

Peter's probably standing there like, why are you doing that? Let us lay in bed a little longer. But I just, I found myself pondering, why with all the papyrus would you even include it if you're just gonna give it two verses? And it's really subtle but I think the real miracle isn't that he healed her of her fever because that could be relegated to empirical evidence if you tried hard enough.

I think the real miracle is what she did when she got up.

I found that in my spiritual walk and I don't wanna over-spiritualize everything but there's a level where when Jesus does something in our life, it's always meant to turn us toward God so that we would serve him. And in this hugely hospitable society, Jesus goes to Peter's mother-in-law's house, or Peter's house, where his mother-in-law is and she's sick and she's kind of the matriarch of the home and in that society, her laying in bed when the son of God shows up, he's gotta be like hugely painful for Peter's mother-in-law. And so Jesus comes in, I don't know anything about the conversation, but he touches her hand, the fever leaves her and she immediately gets up and she starts waiting on Jesus. I think the real miracle isn't just the fever leaving, I think the real miracle is the follow-up.

I say the follow-up, what you'll see on the screen is the real miracle is the faithfulness that follows.

I was talking to my wife last night because I practiced sometimes and I was talking to her and I couldn't think of a better word and then follow-up came to my mind but I'd already sent the slides and so I just said faithfulness but the follow-up. When God works a work in your life, what's the follow-up look like? Have you met people who you, maybe they haven't seen it but you have seen God work miraculous things in their life or situation and you're just bewildered because what God did in their life is so obvious but there's no follow-up. They don't get up and serve, they're like well God's still frustrated at me or they're still stuck in their dysfunction.

It happens to us too, I'm not just judging the other person but I've seen God work physical miracles in people's lives.

I'll never forget, we were on a trip with some of, I used to be youth minister, we were on a trip with some of my students to Houston and we went to this event they were just inviting people in, it was a worship event and it was downtown so there were a lot of homeless people and we were standing in line, some of the homeless people were getting food and I said you know what, I was just feeling convicted. I said I'm gonna really pray boldly over somebody today. I'm gonna believe God for the miraculous and I'm having a conversation with this man and I say what's one thing I could pray for that if God did, there's no lie, I don't do this all the time but I did it in this moment. What's one thing that if God did it, you would give your life over to him.

He said man if he'd get me housing.

I looked at him and I said oh okay and I prayed, I said God, this isn't on me, it's on you. I'm praying that you would get him housing today. I said today, I was just bold and so we go, we go through kind of the worship set and afterwards a person comes up and they offer housing. I asked somebody, they said this isn't something that happens every single time we do this, this is something that's really rare but this person felt led to come up here and offer this so they gave an opportunity to offer it.

Now the caveat was they had to be willing to try to get clean.

And so I'm so excited, I said God provided this miracle for this person. I prayed, put it on God and he performed and so I walk up so excited and I said, because God performed a miracle to me, I look at him and I say man, God did what you asked. He said yeah, I'm not ready to get clean. And in our own lives we find the same thing I think.

We want God to work a miracle in our life, we even might see it.

But maybe we go back to our real life or we still have some mentalities we've yet to hand over to the Lord. And you might even hear an inspiring message, can fix you. And then at some point, five minutes, five days later, you're like, yeah, that was cool. I don't know if I'm ready to do that yet though.

The real miracle isn't that God will do something, he's always doing something.

Whether you see it or not, it's your choice. But the miracle is that somehow God can raise us from death to life and construct our scenario in such a way that if we receive in faith what he has done, he will radically shift every aspect of our life and the follow up is beautiful. I get to spend my entire life just like Peter's mother-in-law serving him. I don't know if I'm ready for that is what a lot of people might be thinking.

For her it was a beautiful thing.

It wasn't beautiful just that she got healed, it was beautiful that she got to get up and be faithful to God. And I found in my own life that God performs miracles not so that I could feel it and think it's cool, but he performs miracles so that it might move me in the direction of greater faithfulness toward God because faithfulness is a real miracle. Hosea tells us, I quote this all the time, Hosea tells us that he walls up our paths. What does that even mean?

It means that our tendency, our default positioning is unfaithfulness.

Yeah, because of what his son Jesus did on the cross, there was a pathway open for all of you in this room to move from hostility to holiness. You can be faithful. We were all dead in our sins and transgressions, but God made us alive in Christ Jesus and he made us alive for a reason. Faithfulness is a miracle.

I know that doesn't sound so pretty.

No, I would rather see something healed or somebody healed. I would rather see this or this or this. If I see this supernatural occurrence, God's gonna do something. Let me just give you the example of Israel right after the Red Sea.

No, you won't.

It's a physical miracle and it's so cool because it gives you a sign of who's doing it. But if you're looking for signs, I could just jump you ahead three chapters to Matthew chapter 12 where he looks at the Pharisees and the people who are asking for a sign and he's like, those looking for a sign is missing the point. Because the sign isn't the real miracle, the real miracle. He said, I'm coming to introduce something that gives you the capacity to be faithful.

Spent too much time on those two verses.

I'm gonna jump further. But that's the real miracle is faithfulness. Verse 16 changes the situation for a second. It says, when evening came, so same day, many who were demon possessed were brought to him and he drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick.

This was to fulfill what was broken through the prophet Isaiah.

He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases. Again, I was frustrated. I'm not just doing this performatively, I really was. I was planning on preaching Matthew chapter nine and I go into it and I'm like, I'd rather preach Mark's version of this but I'm in Matthew so I'm gonna figure this out.

It was a real internal struggle because I'm looking for a cool thing.

I had to dig a little bit to get to the real cool thing. But I was frustrated because it's like, okay, he casts out demons that evening. You told me about the fever left his mother-in-law, cool. He cast out demons, I wanna hear that story.

He healed more sick people.

Tell me more about that. Three chapters on him talking. Two verses on all the demons he cast out one evening. What are you doing, Matthew?

There's a real miracle.

What did he spend more time on? He said, sorry, it says verse 17, this was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah. He took up our infirmities, that sicknesses. He bore our diseases.

Sicknesses in often considered demonic.

So what was the point? He didn't wanna tell us about all the details of the cool miracle that he performed physically on somebody else. He wanted to tell us about the fulfillment because the fulfillment is the real miracle. It's the fulfillment.

It's that what God's word said actually came to pass.

Some of y'all know when you read the Bible and it says something, and then you go out into the world to test it, God's word rings true. It not only pierces through to my soul and helps me feel better in times of difficulty, it actually proves true in the world. I'll bet you on that. What his word says will come to pass.

And so what Matthew's pumped about is this guy, he heals his sick, he casts out demons.

This fulfills what Isaiah said. He's pumped not because Jesus did a thing. He's pumped because Jesus fulfilled a long held belief about who the Messiah would be. That's a beautiful thing.

I've learned over time, I get more excited about God proving what this says true in my own life and in the lives of others than I do about all the stories of cool.

It's like, I wasn't there. I'm one of those who tends to doubt like Thomas, you know? I'm like, I wasn't there. So unless I trust you, it's gonna be hard for you to convince me that that thing happened.

But every day I get to see the proof of God's word, never returning void.

Every single day I get to see it. And I've already told you, right? That's why he spent three chapters on the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew's more concerned about the word because the miracle, while beneficial, has a deeper purpose.

But let me continue, I'm gonna jump to chapter nine.

Chapter nine, verse one, it says, Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over and came to his own town. Some men brought to him a paralyzed man and at this point I'm already got frustrated with Matthew. Why'd you skip the cool part of that story? You know the cool part of that story?

I'll give you 20, no, I'm not gonna make you do that.

I offered Rita 20 bucks. I gotta give her 20 bucks now because I offered, I don't got 40 bucks today. So here's what I'll say. The cool part of that story is in another Gospel.

And what happens is there are four men and they take their friend, I don't know if they're friends, but they're four men, they take the man that's paralytic because Jesus is doing something in a house and they're like, well, we can't get in.

There's a crowd outside the house. We can't get into the house. And then they go to the house and they're like, oh, there's a roof though. And they go to the roof and then they dig into the roof and then they lower the man down the roof.

And he looks at them and says, wow, cool faith.

That's awesome. And then he heals the man. And then there's a conversation that we see in Matthew. I'm like, Matthew, why'd you skip the context, bro?

See, before you judge me for talking about Matthew, I think I can identify with Matthew.

My name's Matt, by the way, because now y'all laughed at that one. It's like, I know a lot about Matthews. In Hebrew, gift of God, amen, hallelujah. Gift of God to the world is what it is.

Tax collector, I was an accountant.

I can vibe with this guy. Except for the detail he missed. How's the accountant miss the details? The roof thing probably just bugged him.

Maybe he's OCD like me as well.

But he missed the detail. And when he misses a detail, yes, Mark tells the full extent of the detail. So go there and learn what the full extent of the story happened. But stay in Matthew for a second.

Read long enough, think long enough to understand why would he have moved the detail around?

It's probably because his purpose was different. And so I was like, I kept thinking on it. It's like, why? Why did he miss this detail?

Jesus said to the boat, crossed over some men, brought a paralyzed man lying on a mat.

When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, take heart, your sins are forgiven. Verse three, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, this fellow was blaspheming. Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, speak enough. It's a miracle too.

You don't miss the miracles in the text either.

Knowing their thoughts. So it's a cool thing. I can't even get my wife right, but he can know the Pharisees thoughts. You know what I'm saying?

Like that's, yeah, sometimes Jesus is slipping through crowds and stuff.

You ever think you'd like just put on Harry Potter and visibility cloak and just walk through? So anyways, there are miracles all up in the text. You just got to read it. I digress too much.

Because knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?

Which is easier to say. Your sins are forgiven or to say, get up and walk. But I want you to know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins. So he said to the paralyzed man, get up, take up your mat and go home.

Then the man got up and went home.

When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe and they praised God who had given such authority to man. The real miracle in this story is not that the man came from a roof and Jesus healed him and he walked away. The real miracle is the forgiveness. Forgiveness is the real one.

This is what Jesus came to do.

To forgive sins. So when he healed this man, Matthew understood the focus needs to be on forgiveness. Now you may not have known this, but forgiveness is a consistent theme in the book of Matthew. All the way through.

From the Sermon on the Mount, all the way through Matthew 19, I believe.

Forgiveness, this is where you hear about how many times should I forgive my name? 70 times, 70 times. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. The Lord's Prayer, Matthew chapter five, right?

Matthew was extremely concerned that his audience understands what forgiveness is and how serious Jesus was about it.

So when he tells this story, he doesn't want to get, he don't want it muddied down. He's like, Mark's already told the details. I don't need to repeat the details, but I need them to understand the real miracle in this story and it's that he has authority to forgive sins and you need to understand this because I've preached the text every which way. And Mark, so I like Mark.

Mark's got cool details and he's a good old boy like me up in Galilee, you can tell by his Greek, Caiuthus, Caiuthus, but Matthew's smart, super intellectual and intelligent and he's writing his Gospel and he's focused on the important details in this story and it's about forgiveness.

I don't want you to miss that because when I preach it, I'm like, sometimes you got to dig through a roof to get to Jesus. Sometimes you got to go grab your friend and help them get to Jesus. Those are great sermons to preach, but Matthew's point is that there's something that only Jesus can do. I'd always thought that the way that was phrased was funny and Jesus says, which is easier to say?

He said, which is easier to do.

He said, which is easier to say? Your sins are forgiven or get up, take up your pallet and walk and I'm such a dunce, guys. Like I don't understand this stuff at first reading. I've got to keep reading and when I used to read this, I thought, well, you got to kind of the opposite direct.

I mean, it kind of makes sense what Jesus is saying.

Just your sins are forgiven. That's six syllables. Get up, take up your pallet and walk. That's nine, which is harder.

Yeah, obviously get up, take up your pallet and walk is harder to say.

Y'all probably thinking, I'm just a weirdo over here. But I used to think that. It finally clicked to me a while back that what Jesus was saying was actually kind of a reversal on how you would typically ask the question. He says, which is easier to say?

Get up, take up your pallet and walk or your sins are forgiven.

And what he's really saying is it's easier to perform a miracle on somebody and say, get up, take up your pallet and walk. But there's only one, only one who has the authority and power to forgive sins. Jesus is the only one. Nobody can forgive sins, but God alone.

Jesus is God is what Matthew's trying to emphasize.

This dude can forgive sins. He has authority to do so. And in your life, if you're looking for a physical miracle, I'm here to tell you this, that if you look for a miracle, you're looking for the easy thing for God to do. But what God came to do was to offer you forgiveness and life abundantly and life in eternity.

He wants you to be faithful to him.

He wants you to see that his word never returns void. He wants you to understand the deeper layers of what he came to do. Yes, he'll heal you if he decides so. But he came to make you alive spiritually.

And if you miss the real miracle, you're gonna be like most of us grew up.

Well, God really didn't do what I asked him to do. Hold up. Yeah, he did. If you asked him to heal you physically, that's between you and him.

And he's gonna figure that out.

Maybe he'll send someone to help you with that. And maybe he'll heal you. And maybe he decided in his own sovereignty that it wasn't the right thing to do at that time. But he already did the thing you needed.

He already sent his son to die on the cross for your sin and for my sin.

That's the real miracle. The miracle that can follow is if you receive that and then you're faithful. The miracle that can follow that is that you will see day by day by day that he fulfills his every word. And then at some point, you'll understand what forgiveness truly creates in your life.

Paul says in Galatians, he says it is for freedom that Christ set us free.

And I never understood that for years. I still probably don't fully understand that. But I thought, yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't want me to spend eternity in hell. He sent his son down the cross so I'd spend eternity with him.

That's good.

But what I didn't understand was that there was a weight on me that was cosmic in nature. My sin is not just my bad behavior. My sin is a weight that brings on me the wrath of God and eternity separated from him. That weight is not just eternal.

It's also personal.

So my guilt of my past activity, my shame that comes as I think on it, the things that I have done, the things that were done to me. What forgiveness says is that it is completely cast as far as the east is from the west in Christ Jesus. And I get it. But as I've grown up, I've learned to actually forget it like he did on the cross.

And now I get to live in freedom.

Because I understand what forgiveness means. Forgiveness is something I keep coming back to. So which is easier to say? Be healed.

The hard one is you're no longer separated from God.

Man, that's so much of a better miracle. And I know that there's a layer where there's still something you may be praying to God for that's more surface level. And that's not bad. Like I've said several times already, I just wanna be abundantly clear.

God performs miracles every day.

I'll argue with anybody who says he won't. But that there are better miracles to seek out. And they're already available. I see a miracle every single day when I read God's word and he proves it.

I see a miracle every single day when I have joy in the midst of a situation that is difficult.

I see his miracle every day when somebody who was far off from God, nothing changed in their life other than some random regenerative type of thought in their mind that caused them to come to church one day. And I'm like, how'd you show up? I don't even know. I mean, they didn't just appear.

If you did, come tell me about it.

Share it. In fact, throw up the QR code. Do it, do it, throw up the QR code. Don't you share that story if that just happened for you.

But those are the miracles to look at.

Those are the miracles that I would say are like God's bread and butter. The rest are just frills and fun. And as I was thinking on it, I know I skipped a few passages there because I kept getting frustrated at Matthew. And I'll go back to him, but I got excited as I realized what Matthew was trying to do and then put it within the context of Matthew five through seven and then Matthew 12 later.

Because the signs are never what it was meant to be about.

It was always about the sun. And as I thought more on it, I went back to Matthew chapter eight and looked at the ones I skipped. Because you gotta hear, there's two miracle stories that I kind of skipped over a second ago. There's the Gatorine demoniac.

I got books at home about Mark's version of this.

And I've read them and they're beautiful. And Matthew kept it pretty short. Didn't give all the details. He gave some good ones, better than the mother-in-law situation.

And then I went further and I looked at the calming of the storm.

Now it's funny because none of the gospels really articulate that at the level that I wish they would. Now I do like, I like how they articulate it. But you would think, I would give that a little more time. I talk about how I felt on the ocean.

It says they were afraid.

What does that even mean? Were they screaming, crying, sitting there huddled up in fetal position? What were they doing? Tell me what they were doing because I want to feel like Peter identifies with my personal struggle because I'm sitting here depressed, sad at home.

I want to hear all the details of what Peter did.

He said, nah, it says there were waves crashing against the boat. The disciples got scared. They woke Jesus up. He was clearly annoyed about it.

Said, oh, you have little faith.

He rebuked the wind and the waves and then it calmed down. And my assumption is, I don't know, but Matthew didn't tell me. He went back to sleep, you know. Wake me up for the big stuff next time, you know.

And then the guy who ran into money, he cast demons into pigs.

I don't get anything about Legion. I don't get anything about all this stuff like I get in Mark. But he cast demons into pigs. What is Matthew trying to tell me about leaving out all the cool details?

This will be my closing point.

Right before that, he talked about the infirmities and the sicknesses. He talked about casting out demons. And then he gives us two moments where Jesus has authority over nature and can calm the wind and waves. And another story about how he even has authority over cosmic beings.

Could it be that, this is what Matthew is trying to say, that the real miracle is faithfulness.

The real miracle is fulfillment. The real miracle is forgiveness because we're serving a God. And this is another real miracle who has the final word and authority over all things and anything in your life that you are struggling with. He's got the final word.

Not your spouse, not your kids, not your counselor, not your parents.

He's got the final word. And if I could encourage you anything, it would be I think the ethos that Matthew is trying to get across to you is this don't look to God as a genie that you rub a lamp and you get something physical. Look to God as the creator of all things. He is authoritative and he is powerful.

He could speak to the most significant thing in your life and the most small detail-oriented thing in your life.

He can speak to it. I don't care what it is. It's his word that's final. So let's just try to be faithful because if we start stepping toward him, I can promise you, you'll see his word fulfilled, forgiveness ensue and his authority will show up everywhere.

And I just, I found myself so into this because I'm in this phase where I'm like, I'm trying to be careful with how I say these things.

I'm kind of done with the frilly. And what I deeply want for the people in this room is I want you to know Jesus the way he can be known. And you will be introduced to Jesus by a physical miraculous work. So we're gonna pray for that.

But I'm gonna pray much more diligently and deeply that you would know him in the greatest way possible that you would receive forgiveness and step into obedience.

Cause that's what he came to do. He came to reconnect you to him. And there's some in this room, you believe Jesus, you want from Jesus and you may even follow Jesus to a certain extent. But there's a percentage of your life that you've yet to surrender to him because you're looking for something that even if it's slight, it's slightly off from what he came to actually do.

Our vision is to help people revolve everything around Jesus.

And I don't know how this paradigm works. I don't know the formula. It's not like it's A plus B equals C. I don't know how it works.

But what I do know is this, that there is an iota of your life that is not handed over to Jesus.

Then there is something lesser about your life that God wants to radically shift. So here's what I want you to think about. If there is a percentage of your life that you have not surrendered at the altar of Jesus, that's keeping you from faithfulness, that's keeping you from understanding the depth of his forgiveness, then I want you to surrender it to him today. Maybe his word hasn't returned to you yet and fulfilled every aspect that you want him to fulfill.

I still encourage you to try faithfulness and be forgiven because here's what I know.

I know that it won't return void. And so when you receive his forgiveness, step into a life that follows him, then in the follow up, you'll see the fulfillment. I'm scared to say this because I don't want you to think I'm saying you're going to hell if there's a percentage of your life you've yet to surrender to him. But I just feel like your abundance is gonna be completely, I don't know.

It's just give it all to him.

Like even if you keep a percentage, you're not good at it. He is. Hand it all to him. And I have learned in my life that if I hand all of it, it's my time, it's my treasure, it's my talents, it's every aspect of my life.

When I hand it to him, he returns it back way better than I gave it to him.

He's a good investment plan. He's worthy of it. It never returns void and I always end up filled with more joy, more peace and more abundance. So I'm gonna stop lying to myself and thinking that keeping a percentage from God is gonna do what I want it to do.

It just won't.

I'm gonna be stuck with that 1% demon in my life that he could have cast it out had I just handed it to him. I don't want you to keep it. Toss it out. I just wanna invite you kind of like this man who goes up in synagogue or worship for temple.

And he doesn't know how to talk to God, he just like kind of beats his chest a little bit.

He kind of picture him like a dude who's never been to church. I don't know what to say, but I know I wanna give him my life. And as you're assessing whether you've surrendered at all to the Lord, I want you to pray something like this. God, I give you everything.

You've offered me forgiveness.

You dropped it at my doorstep. I commit right now to receive it and try to understand what to do with it. And I commit right now to be faithful to you even when I haven't seen everything in your word fulfilled. And God, I'm gonna put this on you.

I'm trusting you to fulfill what your word says in my life.

I'm gonna hold you to that. But God, I believe that you will. So I pray that boldly. God, help me follow you.

I believe that Jesus died on the cross.

I believe he rose from the grave. And I wanna see you do immeasurably more through me. So I'm gonna follow you.