Christmas at TPCC When God Makes an Entrance: Jesus

Transcription

1 Transcript December 21, 23, and 24, 2017 Christmas at TPCC When God Makes an Entrance: Jesus Aaron Brockett Luke 2:1-7 So good to see you if this is your first time to be with us or if you re visiting from out of town and somebody invited you to come, man we are so, so glad that you did. And I hope that this place feels very welcoming to you. We are one church meeting in multiple locations around our city as we speak right now. So I just want to take a moment and wish a Merry Christmas and say hello to our North campus, Downtown, West and anybody tuning in online Merry Christmas, so glad to have you. In fact, here at our Northwest campus let s just put our hands together and greet our other campuses. This past week I had something kind of unusual happen to me. I was doing some last minute Christmas shopping at Meijer, because that s how I roll. I had a few last minute items to pick up. I had a couple of stocking stuffers to get and I m walking down the aisle and there s this older lady standing in the aisle. She turns and she sees me and she just like stared at me. I couldn t quite place her. I didn t know if I knew her or not. And she didn t say anything so I just walked by and didn t think anything of it. Another aisle later we walked by each other again. And same thing she just kind of looked right at me. So I smiled politely. She smiled back but she didn t say anything. This happened a couple of other times. I get my things and head up to the front and there was only one checkout line open. She was standing in that line unloading all of her groceries she had a full cart of them onto the belt. And she was kind of wrestling with this case of water. So I just offered to help. When she turned around and saw that it was me she said, Oh. She said, I owe you an apology. And I was like, What do you mean? And she was like, I m sorry for staring at you. And I said, I hardly noticed. And she said, No, I really feel like I need to explain. In fact, I m a little bit embarrassed. You just you remind me of my grown son and he and his family moved out of the country this last year. He got a job transfer. I don t get to see them very often. It s Christmas. I really miss him. I was like, Oh, man. I would imagine that that would be really hard. I m sorry to hear that. And she said, Can I ask you a question? It s going to sound a little bit unusual. I don t want you to feel uncomfortable but would you mind giving me a hug and saying the words, I love you mom. So I lied and said, That s not weird at all. Come here you. I just thought that if this was my mom and she was asking some random man who looked kind of like me to hug her, I d want him to do it, right? So I was like, Love you mom. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.

2 At that moment the clerk was done bagging up all of her groceries and had them in her cart. She turns around very quickly. She takes the handle and walks away. So then he rang up my items and he says that the total is $ and I was like, What are you talking about? There are just a couple of items here. And he said, Well, your mom said that you were going to pick up her bill Come on. That didn t happen, right? I had you guys going. For the last couple of days I ve been telling that story and it s been fascinating to watch all of your responses, right? Because there are some of you who are so into it, like you re shedding a tear. You re like, The joy of the holiday spirit this is amazing. Others of you about half way through that story you are like, I don t buy this at all. He s lying. Some of you, your skepticism meter naturally runs pretty high anyway if that s you, you are my people because I m kind of that way as well. But just be honest. There were a few of you probably it was like when she asked for the hug you were like, Nah, this doesn t sound realistic. This doesn t sound very believable to me. I don t know your background or what you believe or if you normally find yourself in church, but maybe that s how you feel about some of the things that are said in the Bible. If we were just to be honest, and this is a safe place to be honest, you read something in the Bible and you go, I don t know. That doesn t really sound very realistic to me. It doesn t sound very believable beginning with the Christmas story itself. Now even if you aren t very familiar with the Bible or you don t find yourself in church all that often, you probably have heard the Christmas story quite a bit enough times that you stop critically thinking about it. It s just sort of there. But look at some of the unusual aspects of this story. There are just some things in there that just seem kind of unrealistic. Let s look at this: Luke, chapter 2. It says, At that time the Roman emperor, Augustus, decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. (This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.) All returned to their own ancestral towns to register for this census. And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David s ancient home. He traveled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee. He took with him Mary, to whom he was engaged, who was now expecting a child. And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. She gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them. Several hundred years before this the prophet Isaiah actually tells us that this is going to happen. He uses fewer words but there are some unrealistic things about what he said, the 2

3 Lord, himself, will give you a sign. Look! The virgin will conceive, that s unusual, she, will conceive a child and she will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means God is with us ). So this is the story of how Jesus came to be with us here on the earth 2,000 years ago. And everything about what it said just looks like a picture of poor planning because if God was going to send Jesus on a rescue mission to reconcile you and me back to him, don t you think that he would do it a little bit differently? Why choose Mary and Joseph as his parents? Mary is just a poor teen-aged girl. Joseph is just a poor carpenter from a no-name town. Why wouldn t he wait until they at least got married? Don t you think that would just provide Jesus a little more stable environment? It would actually keep the gossip from spreading around town if they could have actually been married. Why a road trip when she s nine months pregnant? It just seems like cruel and unusual punishment. Ladies, those of you who have given birth to a child, I mean would you want to go on a road trip at nine months pregnant? No. And Mary s not kicking it in an Escalade either, right? She s on a donkey. Something that has sort of bothered me for years about this whole story is why there was no lodging available for them? It just kind of seems like over the top. If you ve ever seen a Christmas story or a Christmas pageant where the kids are all reenacting this the visualization we get in our minds is that they go to Bethlehem and they ve been traveling all day. They get there after dark and they walk into the Motel 6 and it says no vacancy on the neon sign but they ring the bell anyway and the guy comes out and says there is no room for you in the inn. Okay, sorry. And they go to the next hotel and there s no room there.but I don t know if that s exactly how it went down. Remember this is Joseph s home town. And I don t know if you re going to be traveling to your home town later today or tomorrow. But if I were just to pick up and travel to my home town unannounced, I m pretty confident that I could find a place to crash relatively easily. I ve got enough friends and family. And you probably could too. This is Joseph s home town so why was there no lodging available? I can t prove it but I wonder if maybe they go walking up to Joseph s mom and dad s house and they knock at the door maybe grandma and grandpa, an aunt or an uncle and they see him standing there with his pregnant girlfriend and they are like, You re not staying here. Why a feed trough for a crib? I mean come on. I mean we cleaned it up. We call it a manger. It s a feed trough, alright? And the only gospel writer to even include this little tidbit in the narrative is Luke. The other gospel writers don t mention it. And I wonder if it s because the other gospels were written to a Greek audience. 3

4 The Greeks taught that under no circumstances were you to ever humble yourself. By humbling yourself you were admitting a weakness. And so if they would have read that the coming Messiah had laid his head in a place where the cows had just eaten their meal, they wouldn t have believed it. That would have discredited the story. They would have said, That sounds too unrealistic. And yet this is how God came. So here s the question that I want us to grapple with today: If God really is God and he can do anything that he wants, in any way that he chooses because that, by definition, would be God the question is why did God choose to do it this way? I mean if God was going to send Jesus to the earth on a rescue mission for you and for me don t you just think that there could be a number of other ways that he could have done it that would have been far more effective? If I was God, and I think that it is safe to assume that we are all glad that I am not, but if I was God I think that I would have changed a few things. I don t think that I would have Jesus being born in Bethlehem. You know, Bethlehem is just a Podunk town: one stop sign and you can blink and miss it. I would have Jesus born in Rome the political and military capitol of the world. Just imagine if Jesus had been born in a palace in Rome instead of a barn in Bethlehem all of the opportunities that could have been available to him. I mean if he had graduated from Rome High, and if he had had all of the resources available to him that would have been available to him in Rome, I think that he could have been really, really more effective as he really was Forget about Rome. What about Jerusalem? Jerusalem was the spiritual capitol of the world. And if Jesus had actually been born in the Temple he would have gotten everybody s attention and they would have said: this for sure is the Messiah. And yet he spent about three decades trying to convince people about who he was. His own family didn t even necessarily believe in him: first because of the obscurity of the story and then because of where he came from. Or, what about just being born into a different family how about a family with a big name and lots of resources and influence and a big military to back him up when he began his ministry? Why a silent night in Bethlehem. Why not a big spectacle in a much, much bigger city? Why wouldn t God have made a bigger deal about Jesus entrance into the world? See we live in a society that basically says that the way that you and I make an entrance is really important. It says something. We see this in the world of sports. Think about Muhammad Ali. The way that he would enter into a ring basically was saying: I am the baddest man in the room. Fighters ever since then have been sort of taking his cue and they do the same thing. 4

5 Or think about Serena Williams and the way that she would take a tennis court. She would just come out all fired up. Or take any football team. It doesn t matter if they are good or bad. The players are going to run out onto the field ready for battle as if they are going to win. You take Cousin Eddie, the way that he just kind of makes his entrance onto Clark s driveway Some of you have no idea what is going on but I made a goal earlier this month to work a Christmas Vacation reference into every single one of my Christmas messages and I just nailed that one, alright? Actually this has been fun all month long because you ve been listening. It reminds me of when Lindsay and I were dating. Her youngest sister, Abbey, was in the fifth grade when we were dating and she would often go with us on the weekends I preached in a little church about an hour away from the campus where I attended. And in order to insure that Lindsay s little sister would listen to the sermon I would say to her on the way up, Hey, Abbey. Give me a word. It can be any word and I will work it into the sermon. So she would give me the strangest, most obscure words every week. She was like, Say bowling ball, or septic tank. And I would be like, Okay, I ll work it into the sermon. And I would do it every time. And she d be sitting out there going, Ohhh. So I kind of feel that way with you, alright? You guys have been listening to me. Anyway, the way that you and I make an entrance says something. Now, you and I may not ever walk into a boxing ring or onto a football field or a tennis court but we re going to walk into a job interview or maybe it s a first date or maybe it s a room full of people you ve never met before so you re going to walk in and pay attention to your first impression. What I want you to see is that Christmas is how God chose to make his entrance into the world. But why did he do it this way? Is it because God just didn t know how to make an entrance? I don t think that s true because he knows how to make an exit. If you look at Acts, chapter 1 you see his exit from the world. Jesus has walked out of a tomb, he s gathered around his disciples and a whole bunch of eye witnesses and then he says to us: go and make disciples of all nations. Surely I am with you to the very end of the age. And then he ascends into heaven just floats right up there. That s pretty impressive. This shows us that he knows how to make an exit so it stands to reason that he would know how to make an entrance. So the question is: why didn t he? This just leads us back to the age old question: if God has the power to do something then why doesn t he? Maybe you ve asked that question of God in your own life. Maybe you ve even asked that of him this year. You look back on 2017 and maybe there were some things that you went through 5

6 that were really, really hard. And maybe there have been some moments when you said, You know God? If you had the power to do something about this, if you had the power to change things, God if you had the power to intervene and keep something horrible from happening but it actually happened, then why didn t you? God if you could have fixed my marriage, if you could have healed my child, if you could have saved my job, removed my anxiety, if you could have kept that person from leaving, if you could have protected my family then why didn t you? The tension for so many of us, if we are being honest, is that we really want a God who is powerful enough to intervene in our lives when we want him to but not so powerful that he would intervene when he wants to because we still want some power and control we still want a say in the direction that our lives are going. And so listen. God does not want to control you. God will not force his way into your life, but he s also not abandoned you either. That s what the prophet Isaiah is saying when he gives us this name of Jesus when he says that God is with us. So when you are in those really painful moments where you want to tap out, you understand that God isn t going to swoop in and take over and he hasn t abandoned you it s this subtle whisper that he is with you. And that s different and that s better. It s far better. The clue to unlocking and understanding why God came the way that he came 2,000 years ago; why he made this entrance into our world in a way that was very quiet and understated in Bethlehem rather than this grand entrance to get everybody s attention can be found in what the author of Hebrews says to us. He says that we have a high priest and this high priest is referring to Jesus A priest is just somebody who connects you to God, and we only need one and his name is Jesus. He says that we have this high priest who understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. I love this passage because he basically says that you have a heavenly Father who came down to our level, who came down into our world and he understands every single thing that you have gone through or will go through everything. He s been through all the emotions that you experience, he s felt all of the pain that you ve felt, and he s faced the ups and the downs. And he gets it. Therefore, because of that, we have confidence to actually approach him boldly and to know what his response will be. His response will be mercy, his response will be grace. I never really fully understood that passage until I became a father myself. I ve got four kids and it is not uncommon for them to wake up in the middle of the night and to be scared not so much the older ones now, but for the younger ones that still happens. 6

7 It would break my heart if they woke up in the middle of the night and if they were sort of like scared to actually come into my room for fear of bothering me. If they were to knock on my door and come into the room, Father, we hate to awaken you from your slumber, and they speak in British accents when they are scared, I don t know why. That would break my heart if I woke up why are you talking this way? Why are you acting all tentative to wake me up? You can just crawl up into bed. See, this passage says that you and I have a heavenly Father who cares enough about us to come into our world and experience everything that we would experience. Therefore, because of that, we can actually approach him as often as we like, boldly, knowing that we will receive mercy and grace. So the reason why he came is super clear. He came to tell you and to show you how loved you really are. The reason that he came was because you and I are broken because of our sin and pride and he s come to put us back together. He s come to reconcile us back to our heavenly Father. That s the reason why he came. But why did he come in the way in which he came? See that s oftentimes what we overlook. See God wants to step into our lives in a subtle way, through a side way, through an invitation rather than overwhelming us by force. God could have been born in Rome, he could have made a big fanfare out of everything and you would have been overwhelmed, you wouldn t know what to do with him and yet God comes on a silent night in Bethlehem. And he s still doing it today. God usually comes in the silence. He usually comes in the small moments of our lives because if he came any other way we d be overwhelmed. Last week my son and I, as well as a few other friends, went to the Colts/Broncos game down at Lucas Oil Stadium. It wasn t much of a game but the highlight was that a friend of ours gave us field passes so we got to go down on the field before the game. My son, he s 15, and I are big Victor Oladipo fans the emerging star of the Indiana Pacers. We see him on the sidelines just up in front of us. And so my son is kind of like hitting me like, Dad, dad there s Victor Oladipo. And I m like, I know. Why don t you go over and talk to him? So he walked over to him. We were able to snap a picture of Victor and my son, Connor. He was just speechless, alright? Like cat has got his tongue. He didn t say a word. He s just like standing there and he s like shaking his hand. It happened really, really fast just a few seconds. And Victor was very, very kind and then he had to take the field to do something and so we re walking away and it was maybe like 30 seconds later it just sort of hits my son what just happened and who he met. And he goes, Dad, I just met Victor Oladipo and I didn t say anything. And I was like, I know, man. That was kind of weird. And he s like, Man, there are all of these things that I wanted to 7

8 say to him. I wanted to ask him about that San Antonio game and I wanted to ask him what I can work on in my game and I wanted to get a really good picture with him. I was just like paralyzed. I couldn t say anything. And you know what? You ve probably been there too at some point in your life. Or maybe just imagine somebody who you would really like to meet. Maybe it s a celebrity. Maybe it s a professional athlete. Maybe it s an author. Maybe it s somebody who you really look up to in your line of work. And maybe you think to yourself, Here s what I would say and these are the questions I would ask. But then you meet them and you re just like speechless, you just can t say anything. You re just overwhelmed by their presence. Now imagine if another human being can have that kind of effect upon us just because they re good at doing something, imagine what it would be like to step into the unfiltered presence of God. What would that be like? We actually have a clue as to what that would be like in Exodus 33. There was this guy named Moses and he actually asked this of God. He says: God, show me your face. I want to see it. Look at God s response in chapter 33, verse 20. He says, you may not look directly at my face, for no one may see me and live. That s just baller right there, alright? Could you imagine being able to say that to somebody? I d really like to meet you. No, you couldn t meet me. You would die. That s just awesome. So what God does is he takes Moses and he kind of hides him in a rock and then he puts his hand over Moses face and then he walks by him and as he passes he lifts his hand so that Moses only sees him walking away. I just kind of get this image in my head that afterwards Moses has like this really sweet tan and this hand print right over his face. He s basically saying: If I were to step into your life I would overwhelm you. The heart wouldn t even need to be involved. I would leave you with no choice whatsoever. Now we re beginning to get a little bit of a clue as to why Jesus came to us the way that he did, because God has no interest in doing that to you and me. I don t know about you, but growing up I really didn t have that kind of a grand, glorious image of God. I would say that most of it probably had to do with my own sin and pride. See, here s what sin and pride do in our lives they make God smaller and us bigger. So I really don t care what God thinks. I really don t care what God says. Human beings messed up the Bible anyway. It was written a long time ago. And it s antiquated. It s irrelevant. It doesn t matter today. All the hoops that we jump through to dismiss God, to make him smaller and then we elevate our own logic, we elevate our own feelings, we elevate our own heart. 8

9 A lot of that is on me, but some of it has to do with the fact that my image of God got smaller because of messed up people. There are people who I grew up with, people I went to church with, people who I looked up to who let me down. People who claimed to know God but didn t act very godly, people who claimed to follow Jesus but weren t very Christ-like, people who claimed to be saved by grace but they were never very gracious. I don t know. Maybe some of you can relate to that. Maybe that s why some of you have sort of tapped out yourself. Maybe that s why you still believe in God but you very rarely find yourself in church maybe it s just one or two times a year, Christmas and Easter. And I just want you to know if that s you, man I get that, I genuinely do. So here are a few questions that I just want us to consider. Here s the first one: What is your picture of God? When you visualize him what do you see? What s your picture of God? Here s the next question. It s a layer deeper. I want you to consider this: What kind of God would you trust? What kind of God would you put your trust in? A God who takes control and gives people no choice? Would you trust a God who stays in heaven and shouts advice and commands from far away without ever getting his hands dirty in your life? Would you trust a God who is waiting to condemn you for not believing the right things or behaving in the right ways? Would you trust a God who doesn t understand you or even care because he can t relate to you? He s like: You know what? Man, that s really tough that you re going through that but you re on earth and I m in heaven, I just can t relate to you. Or, would you, as Isaiah puts it, trust a God who would come to be with us, who laid down his crown, took off his glorious robes, and entered into human flesh. What s that mean? Well, would you trust a God whose family was just as messed up as yours and mine? Would you trust a God who knows what it is like to be betrayed by a friend? Would you trust a God who knows what it s like to suffer for doing the right thing? He knows what it s like to suffer because someone else did the wrong thing. He knows what it s like to be hungry, poor, misunderstood, misrepresented, exhausted, defeated, discouraged, and lonely even when sitting in a room full of people like the one that you are sitting in now. Or how about this? Would you trust a God who came into our world the way each and every one of us came into it? A human birth I ll go out on a limb here and say that 100 percent of us came in that way a messy, painful birth. And God says: that s how I will send Jesus, because I don t want it to be lost on you that I want to experience everything that you experience a God who can confidently say: I get it. I know your pain. I know your struggle. I ve been through it before me too. See, listen. That s a God who I can trust, not just believe in. See if God were to come in all of his glory it would be absolutely overwhelming. But he didn t come that way. When God entered the world he didn t go big. When God entered the world he went small so that he could relate 9

10 to you and to me in every possible way. That is what the name Immanuel means. It means God with us. And if he s willing to go that far, if he s willing to go that far could this be a God you might consider putting your trust in today? See if your picture of God is any smaller than that, if your picture of God is anything less than unconditional love for you, then it is not an accurate picture. The value of something is what somebody is willing to pay for it. And God makes that statement through Jesus at Christmas. A friend of mine was telling me that a couple of years ago his wife was cleaning out one of their closets and she found a picture gallery bank from quite a few years ago, as you can tell by looking at this picture. She thought it was junk and she was ready to pitch it throw it out. And he was like, Oh no, no, no. That s my picture gallery bank from when I was a kid. And he said, Don t throw it away. He was like, This has sentimental value plus I think that it might be worth something, which by the way every guy feels that way about his junk, alright? It s just kind of the way we are. So she s like, Are you kidding? We wouldn t get five or ten dollars out of this at a rummage sale. And he s like, No, I think we would. So just out of curiosity she took it down to an antique dealer and the guy looked at it and just glancing at it he looked up at her and offered her 200 dollars for it on the spot. She was smart. She knew that if he was willing to offer that much that quick that it was probably worth more. So she said, Thank you but no thank you. And she went around to some other dealers. Long story short they ended up selling it to a dealer in Pennsylvania for 2,000 dollars. And he was like, That s right. And we re reminded that the value of something is determined by what somebody is willing to pay for it. John 3:16 says: For God so loved you that he would send his one and only Son. And Christmas says that you are worth so much that he would send his Son so that you might be reconciled to him. See without meeting each and every one of you personally, I can confidently say that I know three things about you. And it doesn t matter your age, your gender, your life experiences, or what you believe. I can confidently say that I know that every single person listening to this right now you want your life to count for something. It doesn t matter if you re hurting right now, it doesn t matter if you re at the end of your rope you really want that. You really want your life to count. The second thing that I know is that we all want to give love and we want to receive love. We all want that in our live. 10

11 The third thing that I know is that we are all holding on to hope because there are about a thousand different things that are threatening our hope right now. There was a survey that was taken among Americans a little while back and it basically asked people what are the top three things that you want to hear? And as Americans these are the top three things that we want to hear on a regular basis from the people in our lives. The first one is: I love you. The second one is: I forgive you. And the third one is: Dinner is ready. I read that and I laughed at first too and then I thought to myself, You know what? That actually makes a ton of sense. If every day I could have somebody tell me that they love me, somebody tell me that they forgive me, and that dinner is ready that s a good day! I don t want you to complicate the message of the Bible. I know that it can be complicated in some places. There are 66 books from Genesis to Revelation and you re like, Man, I m trying to make heads and tails of all of this. I want to simplify the message of the Bible and let you know that really what the Bible is trying to communicate is that God loves you, God forgives you, and yes dinner is ready. See he has this banquet table where he is preparing a meal for you and he s got a seat with your name on it and Jesus is your invitation. Listen. I can t pretend to stand up in front of you and say that I know all of the reasons why God does some of the things that he does and why he doesn t do some things that I wish he would do. I d love to be able to explain that to you. I can t. I can t even confidently tell you why Jesus was born in all of the ways that he was born. But I do know that God oftentimes makes himself small enough so that he can get into our lives and then do very, very big things. And Christmas shows that. So I m just wondering on this Christmas if there might be some who might be willing to put their trust in that kind of a God? Now listen. I m not asking you if you believe in God. Statistically, over the years for as far back as we ve got records, a high percentage of people in our world say that they believe in God. So you may say, I believe in God. And I think that it s great that you do. But that s not what I m asking. I m asking if you trust the God you believe in. That s different. And that s really what salvation is. Salvation is you saying, You know what? I choose to trust this God and I still have questions and my life isn t perfect and I m still going to stumble and fall, but you know what? At the end of the day I m going to trust this God. I want to invite you to formally place your trust in that kind of a God today. So I m going to ask that if we just lower the lights and if you would bow your heads and close your eyes the 11

12 reason that we re doing that isn t because God only listen to prayers when you bow your head and close your eyes. God will listen to you if your head is up and your eyes are open, but we do that just for focus and just for privacy. I just simply want to lead us in a prayer and if you re ready to put your trust in that kind of God Now listen. There might be a bunch of different objections that you may have. You may say, I still don t know enough. I ve got a bunch of loose ends in my life. Listen. You can still put your trust in God before you deal with all of that stuff. I just want to lead you through this prayer and if you re ready just make this prayer your own: Dear God. If you are real and if you re there I really do want to know. I m struggling to know what to believe and how to live. So thank you for being willing to get small for me, so small that I would be able to have an encounter with you. I believe that I have today. I believe that I am today, but I am not sure where to go from here. There are so many things in my life that are just messed up and undone. So let me start small myself. Although I still have a lot of questions, this Christmas I choose to say I trust you. If you were willing to go through all of that for me, I trust you. So I ask for your love, your forgiveness, and a seat at your dinner table not because of anything that I have done or could ever do but because of what Jesus has done for me. I confess that I have allowed my pride to get the best of me and it s damaged my relationship with others and, most importantly, with you. Please forgive me. Extend your grace to me. Please come and be with me because I need you, I trust you, and I love you. In Jesus name: Amen. I just want to ask that you keep your heads bowed and your eyes closed, If you prayed that prayer, if your made that prayer yours and put your trust in that kind of a God just, at all of our campuses, would have the courage to lift up your hand real quick? Just slip it up and say, You know what? I prayed that prayer. I see hands across the room. We ve had hands go up in every single service over the last few days. And it takes courage to pray that. So I want to thank you for being willing to do that. And if you prayed that prayer, I want to encourage you to come and maybe follow-up with a prayer counselor after the service, maybe tell your campus pastor, or hit me up on social media or me to let me know. I d love to hear your story. In fact, at all of our campuses, let s celebrate those who raised their hands and prayed that prayer right now. It s worth celebrating. I want you to know that we want to be on this journey with you into the New Year as you get to know this Jesus who gave everything to get to know you. Right now we re going to take communion together. I hope you were able to grab it on your way in. For those of you who are followers of Jesus this is a meal that symbolizes something. It s 12

13 a little piece of bread, which by the way does not taste very good. It s not supposed to because of what it represents. And some juice that represents the blood of Jesus shed for you. I just want you to take a moment and I want you to reflect upon who Jesus is and what he says to us today. And after a moment of reflection I ll come back out and lead us in our candle lighting. 13