SPEAKER_00: 0:36

Hi, my name is Kalumahia. I go to American Canyon High School as a freshman, and today I'll be reading 1 John chapter 5, verses 1 through 5. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. And everyone who loves God, the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this, we know that we love the children of God. When we love God and obey his commandments. For this, the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. This is the word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21

Thanks be to God. Good job, brother. Appreciate it. Well, hey, it's good to be with you. My name's Lawrence. Um we teach uh through scripture verse by verse here, and we are being in the back of uh the Bible in the New Testament. If you're new with us, um, we're starting a new chapter today. There's um if if you're not familiar with uh the books of the Bible in the beginning of the New Testament, there's these four Gospels, which is the good news. And there's a big book called John. What we're doing is he wrote these three little letters in the back. We're going through those. We're um starting the last chapter in 1 John um today, chapter five. And then he wrote another larger book at the very end called Revelation. So that's kind of what we're gonna walk through. I'm not saying we're gonna do Revelation, I'm just telling you he also wrote that. Um, so we're in 1 John chapter five. If you want to grab your device or your actual Bible, if you brought one of those, you can follow along. We're gonna do five verses today. I'd say this: if your phone buzzed you every time that God tried to get your attention, you probably, some of you would have the most chaotic like lock screen in history, right? We live in an age of constant pings and push notifications where it's like, you know, group chats are stacking up. Like, how many of you guys are group chat people? Just want to see who you're out there. Yeah, you're not gonna talk me into it. Don't ever try to text me and put me in a group chat because I'm gonna be like, I can't handle all of your likes and your weird stuff. Anyways, DMs for some of you turning into like guilt and your screen time report every week on Sundays greets you like a passive aggressive life coach. It's already happened to me this morning. Here's the twist John, who's the last eyewitness, the last living apostle, writes us this short put push notification that literally cuts through the noise. Says this everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Now, right here, this isn't just like a religious label, that's a whole new life. That's new birth, that's new belonging, that's new power. And John's point in these five verses today is wild in its simplicity. It's basically this when you're reborn into God's family, what happens is love becomes normal, obedience becomes possible, and the world becomes beatable through faith in Jesus Christ. Now, you just heard this passage read aloud by one of our students, a freshman of American Canyon High School. And the thing is, is that this thing is short enough today to memorize, but it's also loaded enough to live on for the rest of your life. And John, when he's writing this, he's old. Uh, he's maybe in like his 80s or his 90s, but he's not rambling. He is laser focused. That belief in Jesus ultimately leads to new birth. And then new birth leads to family love. Family love then expresses itself in obedience. And obedience is not this crushing burden because new birth brings new power. And this power can actually win against the world and the whole anti-God system of desires, lies, and status addiction. And the means of victory, it's not hype, it's not hustle, it's not your personal brand, it's simply just faith in the Son of God. So let's go ahead and hop in, verse one. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Now, belief here isn't just like a checked box at youth camp one year and like a holy moment. Um, it's present tense. It's this thing that is ongoing trust, a daily yes to Jesus as king on the board game of life. And has been born right here is the perfect tense that God already did the deepest work for you. Imagine someone who asks you, so why is it you keep walking with this Jesus guy? I think the most honest answer is because God gave me new life and it just keeps on giving. You didn't talk yourself into Christianity like you talk yourself into leg day. You were born. Like, and when you're born into family, what happens is you get siblings. Says everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. And then right here it says, and everyone who loves the Father, then loves whoever is in the family who's been born of them. That's Christian family love. And it's messy, like every group chat, right? But it's real. I mean, let's be honest about family. Family for some of you sounds super comforting. For others, just talking about it is already raising your blood pressure, right? How whatever your drive is like today. So maybe your people are amazing. Maybe your family group chat is basically like therapy, therapy plus like fun animal memes, right? Or maybe for some of you, home was a place where you actually felt like you had to audition for love. And let me just tell you, the church family is not a perfect family, but it's a different kind of family because it's anchored in a different kind of love. I mean, John doesn't say to us, like, hey, when Christians into your life, you know, pass your vibe check, then you'll love them. Yeah, good luck. What he says is, no, no, no. If you love the father, then you're gonna love his kids. Full stop. That this is why withholding love from the church, which is people of the church, then the family, while then claiming to love God just doesn't compute for John. Like he struggles with this. It's like saying, like, I love your music, but I can't stand your voice. Like that sentence just collapses on itself, right? So, how is it that you know that you have um this love for people, the kind of love for people that John's actually talking about? Well, I think he actually anticipates this question in verse two. He says, By this is how we know that we love the children of God. It's when we love God and obey his commandments. The translation here is basically real love for people is shaped by real love for God, which is then revealed in obedience. And it's not cold, this statement, it's just clarifying. You know, our generation lives and is fluent with vibes, you know, like I felt seen, right? Or like, uh, I didn't feel safe, or this gave me life, or that drained me. And it's really important. I really do believe that vibes matter. Emotions are literally how God wired us and created us. But love is more than a sentiment. Love is a commitment, it's a commitment to God's good for one another, and a commitment that actually shows obedience to God's wisdom. Think of it like this uh feelings are like a Wi-Fi signal, and obedience is like the fiber opic cable, right? When Wi-Fi gets glitchy, the fiber still carries the connection. Now, verse three comes in and drops a line that I think offends a lot of like our internal software. He says, This is the love of God that we keep his commandments, and his commandments right here are not burdensome. Now, if you grew up thinking Christianity is just like a giant chore list and God's standing by with a sharpie, like to circle your fair, fair your like failures, right? It's not fun. But John isn't gaslighting us here. He's not saying obedience is always easy. What he's saying is that God's commands are not a crushing weight for a reborn heart. Why? Because new birth installs, think of it like installing a new engine in you. You still have the same car, you still have the same body, same attention span, you have the same phone distracting you. But what it's saying is there's actually a different power now underneath the hood, and that's the spirit. And then the spirit enables us to participate in God's commands. It's like switching from uh dragging a couch alone to then having three friends like show up with those strap thing image to help you carry it and some pizza afterwards. The couch didn't get lighter. What happened? You got help, and help changes everything. Let's press in with a story. You have a friend, let's call her Maya. Um, she kind of reinvented herself online. Her feed is immaculate, she spends all this time on it. Every photo looks like candid, but it took 30 minutes, right? Her bio says be kind, but her chat says be savage. In real life, Maya's exhaustive. She's constantly calculating do people like that? Am I falling behind? And the algorithm is her functional god. It rewards and it punishes. And she offers sacrifices of time, anxiety, mental health, selective honesty. Then she starts coming around church, quietly sitting in the back. I see you. The word lands, she hears everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. And eventually she says yes to Jesus timidly, and then within weeks, what she does is she texts her small groups, hey, I think I need to be honest about the way that I'm curating this fake me. And what do they do? They rally, she begins to obey Jesus in these small daily ways, telling truth, confessing envy, praying before posting, choosing contentment over comparisons. And the commands that used to sound like don't be fake, now sound like be free. That's what John means by not burdensome. It still costs her less dopamine, fewer applause hits, but they give her back her soul. Now, verse 4 turns the volume up and says, Everyone that has been born of God overcomes the world. So now, world here, John doesn't, he's not just talking about like trees and oceans and stuff, right? What he's talking about is the system opposed to God's love. And John talks about this earlier on in this letter about the lust of the flesh and the lust of eyes and the pride of life. Think the drive to have, to see, to be seen. Or uh you can think of it like the I am what I feel. Heard that one, or I am what I own. Or I am who notices me, that whole machine that we're constantly getting tumbled around in. And John, what he says is that new birth gives you power to overcome that machine. Not by moving, you know, to a cabin and throwing your phone into a lake, right? And just moving on and forgetting about real life, although that that literally is my favorite part of camping, like no phone. But by recalculating your deepest love from the world to Jesus, where the world literally runs on scarcity. There's not enough love, right? Uh, there's not enough room, there's not enough followers. So, what do you do? You claw your way up where Jesus runs on fullness. Fullness, the father's love is enough, the spirit's power is enough, the son's victory is enough, so you can live unanxiously and love freely. Let me just for a moment name some world pressures uh in real life, because if right now, just as we're hanging out, if we keep this abstract, honestly, nothing changes Monday morning for you. So um, here's just a couple of practices. Practice first one is desire. We all have desires. We all have desires. The world disciples us to obey urges and then what? Shames us for them, right? Like follow your heart turns into how could you, right? Jesus doesn't say like shut down your desires. What he does is literally he reshapes them, redirects them, and then puts them in order under love for God. Another pressure is lies. Have you ever noticed that the world tells like these glittering half the truths, right? That you're just kind of stuck in. You're like, hmm. Like you'll be you'll be free if you're autonomous. No one can tell you what to do, or you do you, all the while hiding the fine print about what that we experience? Loneliness, uh, addiction, the shrinkage of your soul. So remember that Jesus is the truth, and what happens is that faith attaches you to him, to the truth. There's another pressure that we experience pride. The world shouts, right? Be the main character, you're the main character. But Christ whispers come learn how to be fully alive by loving God and people. New birth doesn't erase these pressures, friends. What it does is it breaks their monopoly on your life. Then John asks in verse five, Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? Look, like this line right here, honestly, it humbles me and it liberates me. Uh, it humbles me because it says that victory is not by my own willpower. Thank God. And it liberates me because it says that my weakness is not final. Faith is how we hold on to him while we literally fight our real day-to-day enemies. And you don't overcome the world by curating your own brand of righteousness. You overcome by clinging to literally the righteous one. So let me get really practical. What does it look like for God's commands in our lives, in our day-to-day lives, to be not too burdensome? So to do that, just picture three everyday zones that we all experience. We all experience relationships, we have to deal with people. We all experience habits, we all have them, and we all experience calling. We're on our journey to something somewhere. So relationships first. This is what obedience looks like forgiveness, truth telling, boundaries, loyalty, like where someone in your circle ghosted you or gossiped about you. Your old self, what does it do? It drafts a paragraph that honestly your future self will regret. Been there? Done that? But the spirit, what it does is it prompts you to take a different path, like in Ephesians, speak truth in love, or in Colossians, forgive as the Lord forgave you. And does that feel heavy to like live a life like that? Yeah, sometimes. But new birth gives you a different internal weight distribution. You're not paying off a debt by obeying this thing. You're living out into your new DNA as part of a family member. And the best part is you're not doing it alone. That God's commands actually come with God's companionship. And frankly, I think that's why it makes it not burdensome. So, what about habits? We all got habits. Well, when it comes to habits, obedience looks like choosing inputs that actually shape you towards love. Uh, maybe it's time to move for some of you your Bible app out of that folder called utilities next to the calculator and put on your home screen. Maybe you just choose like 10 minutes of prayer, which by the way is 10 minutes of literally praying or listening before 10 minutes of scrolling. Or maybe it's like, and this is could be really difficult for you too. Maybe it's taking your phone and putting it in the other room at night like it's a raccoon you don't trust, right? And none of this, I want you, none of this earns like you God's smile. But I'm telling you, I'm telling you, just these little practices, what it does, these little habits, it'll begin to clear some fog so you can actually notice the smile you already have in Christ. And when John says his commands are not burdensome, it means that this reborn person, that these choices begin to increasingly feel like you, not just some costume that you're trying to keep on and a show that you're putting on for those around you. So uh last calling. Calling. You know, calling is like different for everyone. You're you're trying to figure out the thing you do. For some of you right now, you're figuring out school, trade, some startup, how to keep your business going, a nonprofit, art, healthcare, software. For some of you, some form of ministry. But here's the deal: God's command is to love Him and love people wherever you land. And that means integrity when no one's watching. It means generosity when money's tight, it means courage when truth is actually unpopular, and humility when you're winning. And those are commands. They they aren't just these commands, they're also just a way to live and to live fully alive. So, what for some of us when it comes to this stuff and being obedient is the fear behind it? Because I think there is actually a bit of fear behind like living this way. Um, I think fear is, you know, for some of us, it's missing out. Like we feel like we're missing out on something, like FOMO, but theological, right? Like we're wanting to live our best life and we're afraid that when suddenly we yield to God's will, like life's suddenly gonna be small, right? It's gonna be really boring, like you're gonna be a lamer, like what? I like to cuss, right? I don't know if that's you, but right? It's gonna be joyless or boring, whatever it is. We tell ourselves these lies over and over and over again. But John, what he does is he's gently dismantling that fear. And if God went so far as to give you his son, and I his son, do you think that his commands are literally designed just to crush you and to make you not have a full life and a life in abundance? Friends, just as a reminder, and may we continue to remind one another about this, the cross is literally a receipt that's been stamped, paid in full, for your deepest good. And that means that his instructions then actually aim at the same end, your deepest good. Think of it this way: that the way of Jesus is like a narrow runway. It's purposeful, it's not petty. But what happens when you're on a runway? You don't complain that the runway is too narrow when you're trying to take off. You're just grateful there is a runway. There's this um uh common internal protest that I think a lot of us have. Like, okay, but sometimes obeying God, it absolutely feels heavy. Like to participate in this way, to fully participate. And I say true. John's not denying like the felt weight of obedience and of this broken world. What he's doing is he's correcting this verdict that we pass on God's character because of it. There is a difference between weight and burden, right? Training feels heavy. Slavery is a burden. The spirit's weight, what it does in us is it builds capacity. Sin's burden actually steals the capacity. And when God's command feels heavy, just ask yourself this when it's feeling heavy. Is this weight actually doing some purpose to build in me, or is it to break me? And I'll tell you that the cross is proof. Jesus carried a burden that we couldn't, so we could carry the weight that could actually grow us into the person that we were meant to be and who we really want to be. So, just really quickly, I want to circle back to the family piece because it's not like this sentimental add-on that John's throwing in there. He literally is tying God's love to God's kids directly that have faith in God's Son, Jesus. And he's done this constantly over. It's so cyclical all throughout this letter. If you love the father, you love the family, right? And if you're born again, your vertical love then begins to show up horizontally as obedience and obeying the command to love one another. And I think he keeps saying this over and over again because he knows how dang hard it is for us. Because, like we know a lot about each other, and we're really hard to love sometimes. This means that the people of God are not just this supportive cast in your personal spiritual movie that literally this room is filled with people that are an integral part of you overcoming the world. Well, how and why? Well, the world, what it does is it isolates, the church gathers. Welcome to the church. The world says, curate your life to and to avoid inconvenience. The church says, you know what? Open your life and share burdens. The world says, win by outshining others, where the church says, win by outloving others. And if you try to follow Jesus solo, I'm telling you, you will mistake private preference for divine guidance. You need these people. You we need each other. You need people who will sit with you, who will literally tell you the truth and hand you tacos when you're spiraling. Joe, we're having Chinese food tonight. It's gonna be good. You need people who will sit with you. And on that note, let me just really quickly give you three practices this week you can literally put into your life from 1 John chapter 5. Just these five verses. This is the first practice. Declare your belonging. This is so simple, but it's so powerful. Every morning when you get up, allow, just start your day like this, before your phone gets the first words. Say, I believe in Jesus Christ and I have been born of God. That's verse one in first person. What does that do? That's not manifesting, it's literally just remembering, it's re-orienting. It's your identity is not a DIY project, it's literally a received gift. And saying that, just saying that literally reshapes your day. Another practice. Pick one command to obey gladly, not grimly. I said gladly, and for some of this, this is hard, especially like this one. Maybe it's forgiveness, and you're like, there is nothing glad about that, right? Try to do this gladly. Maybe it's forgiveness, maybe it's sexual integrity, maybe it's generosity, maybe some sort of sort of rest, like a Sabbath, something that feels restful and helpful, rejuvenating. Uh, maybe it's uh truth telling, maybe it's peacemaking. Pray like just a simple prayer. Holy Spirit, can you help make this practice a joy and not feel like a grind? And then tell somebody else so they can cheer you on, and then watch how not burdensome that starts to actually feel true in your body physically. Practice three name and narrate your world. Ask yourself, even right now, what's the strongest worldly pull on you right now? The desire, lie, or pride, and then name it, and then start to narrate it through the lens of the gospel. As an example, this desire is real, but it's not my master. The pride is tempting, but I am already seen by God. This lie feels real, but it is not the truth. And then finish with John's punchline. This is the victory that has overcome the world. It's our faith, not my feelings, not my flex, not my five-year plan when I figured it all out. It's faith in Jesus. Now, some of you are hearing this and you're thinking, cool ideas. This is great ideas, but my doubt is loud. And I just want to remind you that John is not allergic to honest questions and feelings. He's literally writing to this group of people that are experiencing the same kind of things we experience to steady them and not shame them. So, therefore, as we're reading it, it's to steady us and not to shame us. And if you're unsure about Jesus, here's an experiment that you can just try this week. Obey him in one clear area of your life and see with that if life begins to open or it closes. And just so you know, you can start before every problem is answered. Like a lot of us were like, no, I haven't figured the whole thing out yet. So I'm not gonna like walk into that at all. Think of it like stepping onto a bridge because the engineer is trustworthy that built the bridge, right? Even though I know a lot of you guys is you haven't taken the time to compute the load ratings yourself, right? And to look at the designs. No, you step onto it. Faith isn't fiction, it's confidence in a person who actually walked out of a grave. I mean, just think about it. The earliest Christians didn't give their lives for a metaphor. They literally followed the risen Son of God. And if he overcame the grave, he can help you help you overcome your feed or whatever nonsense is filling your brain. So then some of you might ask, well, then what do you do when you fail? And I get that. Hi, my name's Lawrence. I'm in recovery too. You're gonna fail this week. Remember the grammar of verse one. Ongoing believing flows from a completed understanding of belonging. Your failure when it happens, friends, isn't a cue for you to begin to destruct, deconstruct your birth certificate. It's a cue for you to look at your father and say, like, I need help. Think about it this way: children run toward their parents that they've offended. Why? Because they know their parents' heart. I don't know if you guys ever experienced this when I was growing up. My mom was really, I mean, I had this talk a bunch. My mom was always like trying to build trust in there, like, I'm a safe place, I'm a safe place. And the best example I can give you is she'd be like, you know what? If you're hanging with your friends and you're going out and you guys already had some party or something like that, and you've done something that you think is silly, or maybe you or your friends have had something to drink and you've had too much, you can call me. Please call me for a ride. I promise it's gonna be okay. And then she said, I'm gonna say a lot of things to you, you're not gonna remember, so it'll be okay, but I won't bring it up again. I'm a safe place. And that's what happened every time I had to no juggle. But I it made it a safe place to run because I knew her heart, right? I was talking to some people in the back as I talked about the first service. I was like, my kid in college, you know, we had gotten to have some of those conversations. What do you do here? And I'm like, I feel like I'm winning, right? When it's safe to call me, even about like what's going on with your friends or what are you doing in the situation? Because you build that up, you know the parents' heart. But what's the opposite to that, right? Well, slaves hide from masters. Why? Because they fear them, because what they know is only the rules. Think of it as like relationship versus ownership. The gospel of friends makes you a child. And when you stumble, don't then jump to like I gotta renegotiate the contract, because if friends, you get to arrest in the covenant. And so repent quickly and keep walking. And when it happens again, repent quickly and get up and keep walking. Let's um revisit only because I think it's so important, because I feel the weight of space in the room and even for myself, uh, this not burdensome promise. One more time with a metaphor. Um, this is the metaphor they can think of. Imagine trying to play a guitar, um, or even if you never have, but just imagine you're playing in the car and you're wearing like a thick winter gloves, and you can technically like hit some chords, you can make some noises clumsy and it can be frustrating because you can't like do it all the way. You know, your fingers aren't pushing it down right. Now take the gloves off. Same guitar, same song, different experience, right? Uh the gloves are the heart of stone. The bare hands now are the heart of flesh. What happens is new birth is literally God taking the gloves off of you. The commands didn't change. What happened is you did. And that's why it stops feeling like you're constantly faking it and starts feeling like you're finally becoming yourself, who you were uniquely created to be. And just a quick nerd note, real quick. John says overcomes. He uses this word here, overcomes. It's actually tied to the word Nike, which is the word to conquer. But it's in the present tense. So what it's doing is when he's saying it overcomes, it's like it keeps overcoming. Like it keeps overcoming. It isn't just one cinematic victory. It's literally a lifetime of small wins that just continue to add up. And there will be days where you feel like a conqueror. And honestly, there's going to be some days where you just feel like leftovers. And this is the nice part is faith attaches you to Jesus on both kinds of days. When you feel like a conqueror, you celebrate with humility. It was his strength. And when you feel like leftovers, you breathe. And you say, He still loves me. And then what do you do? You get up and you keep walking. And that getting up again is what victory for a lot of us often looks like. We should also, in this moment, just because John talks about it, name the role of the Holy Spirit explicitly. Because when John's writing this, he's already assuming that his friends already knew that by new birth, the spirit's now at work. And if the commands aren't burdensome, why is that? Well, it's because there's a helper present. That's the power of the spirit. And the helper's main native language is actually prayer. This is why prayer is actually so important. Listening and participating. It means then for us that prayer isn't like a side quest, like something that we're just trying to work on as a spiritual discipline every once in a while trying to figure out. No, no, no. It's like the main power line that we want to figure out and just like lean into and how to participate and be involved in. And if you try to obey without praying, what's going to happen is you're either going to be really proud when you succeed, or you're going to be crushed when you fail. But if you pray while you obey, you'll then be grateful and resilient. The best thing that maybe I could give you on this subject is make short breath prayers your reflex. A breath prayer is maybe the best gift that I've ever received. And you can do it all the time, anytime. And a lot of you maybe already do it and you don't realize it. But in this situation, you can be walking down the hallway, you can be in your car, you can be getting ready to have a conversation, you can be going from class to class, wherever it is. Just father help, father help. Just a breath prayer, father help, right? Jesus, be near. Jesus, I need you to be near, right? Or help me not kill that person, right? Yeah. Great. You're staring at you're staring at the face and the grace and peace. Grace and peace. Spirit, empower me to love. I need you to empower me to love, right? Whatever it is, right? Yours. This is your problem. Whatever it is, I surrender all, all of them and their problems, whatever it is. Breath pairs, though, friends, they outpace doom scrolling. So, okay, zooming out. Here's uh here's today's message. These five verses and three sentences that you can carry into your Tuesday. First one is this believe in Jesus, be born of God, and then what happens is you'll belong to a real family. That's great. The second is this love God. The love for God actually shows up, it shows up as obedience, something we're participating in that increasingly fits into who you are, and his commands won't crush you. I love that. And then faith and the sun gives you power to overcome the world's desires and lies and pride, not by hype or hustle, but by abiding and staying attached to him. So here's how we'll close. Let me first just name a first simple, joyful act of obedience that I really think fits this whole passage. It's something that we're actually going to do in a month from now, and that is baptism. Quick teaching on baptism. This this whole thing embodies it. John, first John 5 says, New birth creates new belonging and obedience that isn't a grind. So then baptism, what is it? It's like the first family portrait. And the moment that literally you step into the waters of baptism and publicly say, I belong to you, Jesus, and to his people. That's what's happening. So some of you might say, like, well, what is baptism? Well, here's just a quick explanation. It's an outward sign of an inward reality. This union with Jesus' death, burial. So I see people go down, and resurrection. It's not like a hot tub membership or a spiritual graduation ceremony, like you've arrived. Good job. Woo-hoo, right? It's literally the beginning. It's not the trophy, like you did it and you're winning the award. The water doesn't save you. Here's the key Jesus saves you. The water just says to people and yourself, Jesus saved me. So why get baptized? Like, do I really need to do that? Yeah, Jesus commanded it. And then the early church practiced it right away. They didn't wait for anything else. In John's language, love for God shows up as obedience and his commands aren't burdensome. So baptism really is a light, joyful yes that fits a reborn heart. Well, then who does it? Who's it for? Anyone who's believed in Jesus as the Son of God and had been born in God, even if it's somebody like today, brand new. If today you're like, you know what, I'm gonna be a child, I'm gonna surrender my life up. Jesus is gonna be the Lord and Savior of life. Yeah, it's for that brand new one or that mustard seed small faith person. You don't need this perfect past or this five-year plan to like figure it all out. You just need Jesus and a willingness to obey him. Well, some of you say, Well, but what if I was baptized as a baby? That's awesome. Honor that as your family's hope in prayer. And now, as some of you as an adult or a teenager, baptism becomes your public confession, your idea to Jesus. Think like your parents showed love then, and now you get to respond on your own faith and own obedience. Well, some of you would say, like, well, do I need like, do I need to feel ready? Like, do I need the gooseies or something? Like, I know it's time, right? I'll just say, like, I think feelings are great. But readiness in the New Testament is often matched up with faith plus willingness. And if you believe Jesus is the Christ and you're ready to follow him, then you're ready to be baptized. And obedience, what it does is it often creates the feelings that we're waiting for. Well, some of you might say, well, what if I've been baptized and then, you know, like I did my own thing and stuff, you know, I had to call my mom a lot for a ride. Right? Well, I'll just say this. If if you were baptized after trusting Jesus, the normal path is repentance and returning, not re-baptism. Remember that? Repent and get up, keep on walking. Let's go. And if your conscience is complicated, we got some pastors here, you can talk to them, and we'll walk with you. Or a small group leader walk with you, your friend will walk with you. But here's the picture, friends. Baptism is victory you can see. It's literally watching and seeing the victory that's taking place in someone else's life. It's you saying that the world's lies, status, self-curation, perform or perish. That's literally saying, no, no, no, I died with Christ. I'm raised with Christ. And I belong to his family now. And friends, that's first John 5 on full display of faith that overcomes the world. And if you're ready, we'd love to help you take that step. Like I said, we're we're doing this in a month from now. You can go to the, there's like a hot tub out there. You can go there, you can go over to the next steps area after service. We have people that help answer your questions, they'll help get you scheduled. Baptism is not burdensome for those of you who are just sitting there still fighting around. It's beautiful. It's how you show the family who we belong to and how we preach with our whole body that Jesus has literally made us new. So don't wait for perfect. Just come with faith. Let me just tell you, for my overthinkers out there, will your hair get wet? Yes. Will there be pictures? Yes. Will your ex see them? Probably. Make it a testimony, right? Will there be confetti? Yes. Will there be cowbells? I know it's crazy. Yes. And yes, it's worth it. Because the moment in the water literally is like a line in the sand. I am his with his people for his purposes. And that confession has a way of echoing through your Monday. So wrapping this all up. Before you open your phone again, set one reminder: family, not just following. That's verse one. Then put a sticky note on your mental dashboard, not burdensome. That's verse three. Then write a banner over your week. Victory has overcome our faith. That's verse four. You are not alone. You are not self-saving. And you are not destined to be a disciple of the algorithm, the crowd, or your cravings. You have a loving father. You belong to a family. And you've got a savior who overcame the world and invites you to share in his way. So let's do it. You with me?

SPEAKER_00: 40:50

Amen. Well, worship is a way that we can respond to our Heavenly Father.