Hey, man. Well, hey, guys. Welcome across all of our campuses.
You're at Clifton, High Point, Northeast right now. Certainly, the Espanol campus is not seeing me because they're preaching live in Espanol, but we're praying for them as well. So, but man, welcome to our church. Welcome to the week before Easter. This is sort of a big push today to get us sort of in the mindset of what God is going to do this week. And we're praying big things for his mission. If you have a copy of scripture, you can turn with me to John chapter four, where we're going to go into one of the greatest stories I can think of about how our Savior was willing to cross over into that risk and danger zone of cultural bias and different things, and just cross all the way through that and make an invitation and show someone what living water is all about.
As you guys are finding John chapter four, let me just say this. The week is already rolling. All right, I'm wearing my Mercy Hill student shirt for their launch tonight.
Can I hear my students or my volunteers out there? Man, we're excited for tonight. It's going to be launching here. That's their first time. Our college students launch Tuesday night here for the first time that they're going to be at the Ridge as well. A lot of exciting things happening. You guys remember what we're asking you to do, right?
Okay, pray, invite, give, serve. So I want to introduce you to our old pig Buster. Okay, so this is Buster. Buster was large and in charge, all right? And he was the man until he was bacon.
He ended up being sold to a man in Arkansas, which is a totally another story not going into that today. But my point is, I want you guys to remember pigs pray, invite, give, serve. So 21 days of prayer, you can still sign up for that.
Actually, throw it throw it up there. You can sign up for everything I'm talking about at mercyhillchurch.com slash Easter 21 days of prayer. Many of us will start fasting Tuesday night.
And fasting is just an idea of us hungering for God more than we hunger for food, saying God, we want you to move in a huge way save hundreds of people see hundreds of baptisms. That's what we're going to do. Invite don't come alone, give. All right, we're praying to see 200 families jump into giving for the first time. By the end of the month of April, we've seen over 80. So that's really exciting. So we'll pray that we see more and then serve right we need 1200 people across our church to serve for that weekend if we're going to be at our best.
So I really hope that you guys will jump in to all that you can check all of it out at mercyhillchurch.com slash Easter 21 days of prayer. We're going to have a pool party. It's only fun if you're willing to get all the way in.
Okay, if you want to just kind of keep your toes in around the edges and all that and be that person. It's going to be just kind of fun. But if you jump all the way in get all the way in pray invite, give, serve, man, you'll start to see the abundance that is here for for God's people and how it becomes a joy. And so I hope that you guys will do that. All right, john chapter four is where we're going to be today really excited for this message. And man, the whole message is going to be geared toward we got one week, the lowest hanging fruit of the year. Is this week and Easter and Christmas week, where we have a chance to invite people in research tells us most people will accept an invitation to come to a church and hear the gospel. The problem is most people have never been invited. And so we have an opportunity this week to get out and invite and have names and people that we want to see come in.
And that's what it's going to be all about. Now, sharing with other people things that are great about our that are working in our life. This is natural for us.
Okay, humans are natural evangelists in a lot of ways. And I'm gonna tell you how I know that because not how many times have you ever been in a situation where somebody is like, man, I had the best steak ever at this place. You got to go. All right, we all do that, right?
Well, you I just saw this awesome movie, you got to go see this movie. Why do we do that? We do it because that's what it means to be human. We want to invite other people into things that are working for us. It's kind of funny. It's like, why do you care if I eat that steak that you love? But we do.
We all do that, right? How many of us in here have ever been to a Bucky's just raise your hand. Okay, I know there's there's only two types of people in the world you've been or you haven't been okay, I know. All right, so you remember when Bucky's became a thing three or four years ago now it's now it's coming to Meb and everybody's talking about it. If you don't know what Bucky's is a Bucky's is if you if a Walmart and a tractor supply had a baby and that baby grew up and married to get a sheets gas station and they had a baby. Bucky's you have not you have not eaten you have not eaten chopped brisket until you've seen them chop it outside the bathroom. Okay, so you have to you gotta go to Bucky's all right.
But when I don't know if you guys remember I had never heard of Bucky's and all of a sudden it became all the rage and people would be like you gotta go you gotta go. Why do we do that? That's what it means to be human. Man, we want to tell others about stuff. Here's the thing we got across today. We're going to get into the word.
All right. We all know this talking about Jesus ain't the same as a steak and movie or Bucky's is it? You know why? Because if you didn't know Jesus is kind of a hot topic in our culture and not everybody's down with his exclusive message of I am the way the truth and the life. A lot of people don't want to be confronted with their sin to put Jesus on the cross.
We have to be willing to enter into the danger zone into the risk if we're going to invite others in and it's risky in a way that steak movies and Bucky's ain't right. And so what do we need? We're going to have to remember and have a heart swollen with wait a minute. What did God do for me? He freed me from idolatry. He saved me. He gave me living water. You know, that's what we need to be. We're going to talk about being living water news spreaders today. And if we're going to be that it's because we have a big view of what Jesus has done for us.
Here's the big idea. When Jesus saves us, we want him to save others. And that listen, that's true for all of us.
If I would say I would say this universally. If you are a Christian, you got some people in your life that you really want to see Jesus move in their life. I just I know that doesn't mean that we share with them and maybe we haven't had the courage to cross in to the danger zone yet. But you want it for them.
You know what he's done in your life. You want it for them. Right? What we need is the courage to step out and make that invitation. I'm going to share the gospel as clearly as I can. Blood cross resurrection, the whole deal next week. And we have an opportunity to invite people into that we need to remember what God has done for us if we're going to have the courage to do that.
All right. So we he has saved us. And now we get a chance to go out and and and really share that news with others. Even if you're not a believer. Listen, we have non Christians at Mercy Hill all the time that come for a long time.
Some of you guys are probably that way or in our campuses that way. And this is the craziest thing in the world when you got non Christians, people that are not a believer yet. They're inviting others to the church with them. They're not even a Christian yet. Why? Because even if you're not a believer, you're like, man, I got people in my life where this message would be really good for them.
I want I want them to write. So let's let's step into that. Let's step into the danger zone, the risk. Let's be risky.
Let's, let's invite some others then I think this story is gonna help us get there. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. This is john four, verse seven. Jesus said to her, give me a drink. Another way to say that is I thirst, you know, give me a drink.
The Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. Now, I don't know if you realize this, but she's kind of she's kind of stereotyping Jesus a little bit here, right? How is it that you would talk to me? Why? Well, because I'm a woman and I'm a Samaritan.
I mean, that's kind of the two biggest things you can throw at somebody, right? You're a sexist, you're a racist. You wouldn't want to talk to me.
And yet Jesus is not offended. He has a mission that he is on. And that's what I want to talk about for just a moment.
Now, this is interesting here. What I want to try to convince you of today is let's be living water news spreaders. And one of the ways we can do that is we can invite people to Mercy Hill over Easter may low hanging fruit.
Okay, but who are we going to invite I want to call you for just a moment to think about crossing some ideological, some cultural, some racial boundaries. And let's think about what Jesus does here. The Bible says that Jesus had he was on a sheep finding mission. There were people that he had to go find the Bible actually said earlier in this didn't say here that he had to go to Samaria. Now what's funny about Samaria is a lot of Jews would never go there ever. They would spend days walking around Samaria rather than walk through Samaria because of all the cultural tension and bias between Jews and Samaritans. See, the Samaritans were what was left over when the Assyrians conquered in the 700 BC. And the Assyrians would do this nation thing where they'd move nations all around. And so the Samaritans, they ended up being intermingled with a bunch of other races, they were seen as being mixed race, mixed religion, they were kind of half Jews, half not Jews, and the Jews didn't like them. And they didn't like the Jews.
And many times violence would break out between the two. But Jesus had to go through Samaria. He didn't really have to but he had to why because he's on a mission, man. He's got sheep that he wants to go find. And those sheep are not all just like him. And so he goes to where this woman is sits by the well.
All right, and begins to talk to her, even though she can't believe that he would be willing to do this. Here's my point. Cultural bias didn't stop Jesus from pursuing the lost. Jesus was the type of Savior that wanted to invite people in, maybe the same people that we would want to leave out. But Jesus wanted to invite them in. His ministry was among the down and out. You think about the tax collectors and the prostitutes. In fact, one story he told, it's like, hey, go and fill my kingdom with the blind and the maimed and the lame and the highways and byways.
And bring them in. I have come to cross boundaries that we all want to set up. And I really mean that we all do.
I mean, all of us have kind of people that we associate with people that we don't have people that we're naturally hanging out with people that we don't. Some of that's bad. Some of that's good. Some of that honestly, just is. But what Jesus is saying is, can we live with eyes up?
What he's modeling for us is can we live with eyes up and cross some of those boundaries? You know, think about your life today. Are there people that Jesus might have you invite in to hear the gospel? Man, they're a different race than you. They're a different background than you. They're a different socioeconomic status than you. Maybe they have a different political ideology than you. I think about that person at your office that you know right now is just dying to vandalize a Tesla.
Would you invite them? Okay. Six months ago, they were driving one. Now they want to rip one apart. All right. And it's like, hey, would you bring them in?
What Samaritans need to be shocked by your invitation to them to come to your church and to sit beside you? Right? So can we cross some of these boundaries? And I'm going to tell you, we will never be able to do that if we buy into the culture that we see right now. We live in an age of outrage. Everybody wants to be offended.
Offended all the time. I can't believe you would say that. I can't believe you would have that assumption about me. And when we buy into that, man, we're suckers sometimes in the church. We buy into that. We take debate. And suddenly, now because we're all offended, the conversation has shifted to become about us rather than about people that need to hear the gospel and the loss of being saved.
I want you to think about that in Jesus's life. She says, what does she say to him? How is it that you are talking to me?
I'm a woman of Samaria. I mean, that's the two biggest things you can charge somebody with in our culture. You're a sexist and you're a racist, and he don't take the bait. You know what? Jesus never makes it about him in situations like this. It's never going to be about him defending, hey, what do you mean sexist, racist? Do you know that I'm?
No, no, no. It's about, man, it's about you. I can overlook that offense.
Man, I can have you say that to me and I can take that. And I think about us in the church. How many stereotypes are there about people who read Bibles?
About Christians? How many stereotypes are there about people who believe differently? You know, the way we think about pro-life or the way we think about marriage or whatever. It's like all of these assumptions can be made about us. How do we handle that? Are we more interested in winning arguments about that or winning people's arguments? Are we more comfortable to Christ? Because sometimes we get so offended that we can't even see straight in terms of what the mission actually is.
I was thinking about this in my life. Guys, I must be, in our culture, I am like the archetype for someone who stereotypically is going to get accused of being racist and sexist. I am a 41-year-old white Southern man who lives on a farm and drives a truck and a van. Okay? I mean, it's just like, hey, you're the guy. I mean, you're the poster boy for that.
Now I can get real offended by that. And I can try to win arguments and I can try to buck up and all that. And I'm not saying there's not a place for that. I'm not, you know, I'm not going to lay down and be accused of things and all that. But I'm just saying in a situation like this, let me give you an example. Man, I had a chance one time to share the gospel with this kid.
I mean, when I tell you super mixed up, I mean super mixed up. And he was coming out of a cult on UNCG's campus. And I sat down with him. He was a young African-American dude. The first thing out of his mouth when he looked at me. He said, I want you to know, I hate white people. And it's like, man, in that moment, okay, what can I do? I mean, do we want to get into some huge discussion here about racism and all that kind of stuff? And I could just see the pain in this dude's eyes.
And I'm like, bro, me and you probably disagree on just about everything you can think of culturally about economics, about culture, about, we probably are miles apart. But the reality is I have an opportunity right now to share Jesus with you. Take the bait. Praise God. And I got a chance to share with him.
He didn't come to Christ that day. But I had a chance to walk through that. And I wonder how many times do we take the bait on those things? Okay. And so let's think about this together. All right.
Who is a Samaritan? You got the age of outrage, the offense factor has to come down. Okay. I'm not going to be offended by the ways that they think about things that are different than me. I'm not trying to get into this massive conversation about their rainbow flag on their porch. Okay. That's not what this is about. I want to let them in.
And I want to I want to try to cross that line. Who is that in your life that might be shocked by an invitation? Verse 10. Jesus answered her. If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.
Now this is where she's not going to get it yet. But Jesus is beginning to turn this. Okay, Jesus has come to this well for this reason to talk to her about soul thirst. We try to quench soul thirst with temporal things, divine thirst, temporal things. That's what he's going to get into here.
Okay, he's going to set up this analogy. The woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, he gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.
And that's true. You go back to Genesis 33, you're going to see this is Jacob's well, you can go to Jacob's well today, this walk, there's water in this fat flask right here, this is not a flask. Okay, what is this? All right, there's water in this right now.
Okay. Um, that is actually leaking. Seriously, we need to put this right here, Jenna. That's actually water from Jacob's well, it's 106 feet deep, seven feet across.
It's still there today. Okay, in the Holy Land. Now, what Jesus is saying here is that that that water is setting up our need for water, it's setting up something about living water, but she doesn't understand that yet. She's she's like, well, where this is a well that Jacob gave us that water right there from that same well, okay, here's what Jesus says, everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, that water, the water from Jacob's well, you're gonna be thirsty again. But whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. It's not just that we won't be thirsty.
It's that the wellspring of life will so bubble up in us that it will begin to water others. The woman said to him, sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water again. She doesn't want to come there. I mean, listen, this woman's living in shame. She's alone. It's the sixth hour noon. Who goes to draw water at noon alone?
Somebody who's living in shame and isolation. She doesn't want to go there anymore. Man, she she would love to have water that was living water for her, although she still doesn't get it. Okay. Now she's gonna get it in a minute, but she doesn't get it yet.
I want us to try to get it here. What is living water? What is Jesus talking about?
I think this is the best way to get right to the chase. Living water is the salvation that our souls are thirsty for. You're on a desert island and you get three. You can choose one of three things. You can either choose shelter. You can choose food or you can choose water. What are we all gonna choose?
We're all gonna choose water, right? Except for somebody in the first service who yelled out shelter. That was wrong.
That was the wrong answer. You can live for a while without shelter. You can't live for that long without water. Water is so essential. That's why he's saying it.
Apply water to your soul. That's what he's trying to get at. I don't know if you guys ever read the book Unbroken or saw that movie or maybe read the book Flyboys about these just incredible American heroes in World War Two. But you know what come into that story? Those guys that were bomber pilots and all this. Man, a lot of them, their planes went down and they have a lot of stories about being out on rafts in the ocean, dying of thirst.
Many of these guys lived through concentration camp, Japanese torture, years of all that kind of stuff. You know the thing that terrifies them the most when they look back? Being thirsty in the middle of an ocean with no hope for water. That's how essential water is in our life. You know how we know how essential water is in our life? Because there is not a child under 15 years old that goes anywhere without a water bottle now.
Have you noticed this? Okay, and you gotta have the right one too. If you got a Stanley, that is so 2024. Okay, that's in the past. There are all these new, my point is this, we all get it. Man, water, temporal, I need it for the body. Jesus is trying to apply that logic and say to this woman, you need water of the soul, living water. Our souls thirst for God. This is the point. Like our bodies thirst for water.
Now this gets really deep really fast, but this is true. This is what God has created for God's glory. How do we glorify God? By being creatures who are ultimately satisfied by him. Hey, that's what happened in the Garden of Eden, man.
Adam and Eve placed in the garden. Man, we're gonna live. We're gonna be humans. We're gonna interact with each other, interact with creation. We're gonna walk with God in the cool of the day. Our entire life is going to be surrounded by this satisfaction and love that we have for God and he's gonna live.
That's what he has for us. It was signified by their nakedness. What happened when they sinned? The second they sinned, they realized, man, we need a covering.
Why? Because they lost their covering. Their covering was they were clothed in the love of God. I mean, it was so satisfying to them to be in God's presence and to be a human in God's world and in the way that he has created them.
That's what it was. And in sin, we lost that. God was broken. Now, this is the search of every human heart, y'all. The search of every human heart is, man, we're trying to get that covering back. We're trying to fill what theologians have called the God-sized hole in our heart and in our soul.
Here's the problem. If you try to fill that God-sized shape with something that ain't God, it'll satisfy for a while and then it will turn to ash in your mouth and it will bring destruction. Man, you try to fill it with money. You try to fill it with status. You try to fill it with men, sexual relationships, husbands, dating, shacking up, living with people over and over and over and over. You try to fill it with things like that.
And it will not only not satisfy, but it will end up destroying your life and create more and more and more loneliness. That's what we see in her life. Jesus said to her, go call your husband, man. He gets right to it. He was on a mission for her.
Go call your husband. It's a little bit like when he says to the rich young ruler, if you guys, I don't know if everybody remembers this story, but in the rich young ruler and he says, hey, go call your possessions. He gets right to the heart of the idol that is controlling her life. She's a slave to this idol. She's a slave to dating, sex, relationships, the comfort of a man, shacking up.
It's her life. So Jesus says to her, go call your husband and come here. The woman said, I have no husband. And Jesus said to her, you are right in saying I have no husband, for you have had five and the one you have now is not your husband.
What you have said is true. Jesus says to her, you have to have one. There's a whole other sermon we could preach on this. They start getting into another discussion. Now here's the deal.
She doesn't understand living water. He begins to unmask the idol and the light bulb is starting to come on. Okay, she's like, wait a minute.
How do you know all this stuff about me? And how have you gone to this place where my soul is trying to find satisfaction in these relationships and you put your finger right on that. So she switches the discussion. She starts talking to him about worship. Well, because that's what we're talking about. I mean, you don't think about it like this. What is idolatry even in her life?
Go into these guys over and over and over and over. It's really worship. It's chasing something that we think is going to fill us and satisfy us. So they start having this conversation about worship. You worship on this mountain, that mountain. Jesus tells her we worship in spirit and truth.
She started the light bulb is starting to come on. This guy might be the one, the Messiah, the Christ, the one that will come to save us from the slavery of all of these idols that we seek. Skip to verse 25. Jesus says to him, I know the Messiah is coming. He who is called Christ.
And when he comes, he will tell us all things. And Jesus said to her, I who speak to you, am he. This is the moment in her life at the arc of this story where she is beginning to experience salvation. I mean, she is beginning to experience. Wait a minute. There is a Christ on whom I can believe my sins will be taken care of. They are going to be taken care of because of what Jesus is going to do later on the I can be freed from these idols, specifically this idol of going from this man to that man to that man, an idol that will never satisfy. And that's what she's starting to see.
Listen, I said this already. Sixth hour, noon time, hot and vicious. She's probably dirty, isolated. We think about in our culture today, the stigma that comes from going from relationship, relationship, relationship, marriage to marriage to marriage, shacking up with people and all that.
Okay, now you think about the cultural pressures 2000 years ago on a woman like that. Now you got all of this isolation, all of this loneliness, all this brokenness, and Jesus is coming to free her from that and he tells her so I am the Christ. I am the Messiah.
I am the one you go all the way back to Genesis three, I am the one that will crush the serpent's head, even though he will bruise my heel. We are built to chase and find satisfaction. We are built to do that by finding God. And when we don't, we will chase and try to be satisfied. In the things of this world, man will chase idols, relationships, having money, physical health, man, your kids success, being greatly admired. None of these things are bad, by the way, but they're not God. And listen, when we think that they're God, and we chase them like they're God, and we try to build our identity and our ultimate satisfaction upon them. We will constantly be desperate, because we feel like what if they leave me, God, you know, humans were never meant to have their God.
leave them. So if I get some of these things, I will hold them turn, tear everybody around me apart to hold on to it. Or if it ever leaves me, then my physical health leaves me my, my child's success is not happening. And all of a sudden, I'll become crushed, desperate, then my life will begin to spin out of control.
Why? Because the thing that I have banked my life on as if it was God is leaving. And I'm desperate to keep it. And I'm desperate to find it. I don't know how to deal with it, that it's gone.
Let me give you an example of this. We had an elder in our church years ago. He moved to Charlotte now, but got in Keith, and Keith got passed over for a promotion with Duke Energy, and he was crushed. And I mean, crushed. You know, the Bible tells us that we are pressed, but not crushed, but he was crushed. Because he was expecting this promotion, he worked for it for a long time. He thought he got, you know, kind of cheated out of it, or whatever. And it just it just made he was very, very upset. So I talked to him about it.
And we had some good conversations around it and stuff. And he was just feeling so out of control, and so just hurt by this. And it was just hard on him, you know. And it'll be hard on any of us, right? I mean, you get passed over, that's a tough thing. But you shouldn't be crushed. Like a Christian has this thing in their backbone. It's like, well, God's doing something with this.
And this is hard. I don't like it. I wish I got the promotion, but I'm not gonna be crushed and despondent over it. I preached the sermon on the woman at the well, this is years ago. And after the sermon, Keith came up to me and he said, Brother, I know what my problem is. And I said, What? And he said, I have to stop looking at Duke Energy as if it's my well for living water.
That's exactly right. And I've been there. And you've been there. I mean, we've had times in our life that was like that.
You know, I say this with I say this with zero. There's no glory in this for me bragging this room, just tell you the absolute honest truth. Okay, I've been at Mercy Hill for 13 years. I was at the summit church for five years before that.
My vocational ministry life has been nothing but hair on fire, fast speed, growing, baptizing people, you know, planting churches. I mean, it's felt like a revival, even when I when I was at the summit church. It was that way. We get here and it's that way for six or seven years. It's just buckle up as fast as you can go and then COVID.
Church gets cut in half in two weeks. Everything is slow. For the next year of my life, it feels like we're running with I mean, running in knee deep mud.
Nothing I nothing I can do can make it move any faster. And you know what's so funny about that? You know, when you're living in growth, and you're living in fast, and maybe this is where you are, you're living in success. And jobs good and kids are healthy and all that stuff. It is so easy in that moment to say, man, I don't go to success as my well for living water. How easy is that to say, but you never really know until those things are taken away. You never really know until you get passed over for the promotion. You never really know until maybe things aren't going as fast as you want them to go. And then we have the opportunity to sit back and evaluate for a moment and say, God, wait a minute. Is there eternal satisfaction?
Is my status as a son or daughter of the king? Is that enough for me? You know, it's I don't know where you are right now. But wherever you are, this is the thing. A temporal thing will never satisfy a divine desire. Sex and dating relationships, money, wealth, church growth.
You know, if you're living in my lane, whatever it is in your life, your kids, ball teams and getting straight A's and all that stuff. Those things are not meant to be God and satisfy like God. And here's the thing with the woman at the well, we got to move y'all in a moment. Jesus frees her from the idolatry that she is being a slave to I need these relationships that are destructive. And she's free from that. And so what does she do? You know what she does? She enters the risk. Talk about her that don't let her come to the watering hole like they do every morning. She has to go at noon because she's isolated and alone. And yet she runs right back to that group and says this and this is what the whole sermon is verse 29. Come see a man.
Come see a man who told me everything that I ever did. Can this be the Christ? They went out of the town and they were coming to him.
This is the point. That final push, final text messages, final cards that were given out to see what God is going to do across all of our campuses. How are we going to be the ones that step into the risk and say come see a man we know it ain't like talking about a steak, a movie or a Bucky's isn't it? Well, it's gonna it's gonna be harder than that. There's going to be more courage needed to know how do we do that? We've got to remember just like this woman. He has freed us from idolatry that wanted to enslave us and was enslaving us. He has given us like Maddox said, a purpose and a future. He is all to us. Man, he has he has brought life out of out of death. He has given I mean, what are we saying about there should be a casket and instead, there's a resurrection. I mean, this is this is what we this is our story. This is our song.
Okay. And when we have that in our mind, it gives us the opportunity to say I want to step out and share with others. What Jesus did for us is meant to be shared with others. The gospel came to you on its way to somebody else.
Who are the Samaritans in our life that we need to say, come see a man right? I think about this story. You saw Maddox's story.
We have another story that's connected to that. Haley was a college student that got to Mercy Hill. Well, she got to UNCG and she ended up getting saved her first year at UNCG. It was crazy. She had kind of grown up in church a little bit but got here.
COVID happened. She ended up watching videos online of people sharing the gospel and she ended up giving her life to Christ in her dorm room one day. And within two days or three days, somebody invited her to a Mercy Hill Bible study, a college Bible study for athletes.
She was a soccer player. So she got into that Bible study and started growing. And this is what I'm trying to get us to see that her growth was paralleled by a hunger to see others saved as well. She as she grew, she had more and more opportunities to leave the jar and to run back to people that were in her dorm and on her team and to share what with them what God had done in her life. And praise God, over her next three or four years playing soccer at UNCG, four of the girls on her team got saved and baptized through the Mercy Hill College Ministry. Isn't that awesome? Hey, if you really want to celebrate, Haley now is a resident with us in terms of our college ministry.
We have college live ministries that we do on Tuesday night throughout the course of the year. And guys, this semester that happened. I mean, praise God for that. Amen. Guess what about Maddox?
He's in that lineage of all that. I mean, it's a movement now, you know, and what did Maddox say? How terrible is it for college students to get to a campus? They don't know who they are. They don't have an identity that's grounded.
I mean, that's the devil's playground messes people's lives up, right? And what we have now is there are going to be a lot of kids coming to UNCG every single fall and High Point and others. But now there are students on that campus who are looking for the Samaritan. They're looking for people to share with the gospel with them so that they can have an identity that is rooted in Christ. They don't end up in the crazy of this of the college world. Instead, they get on fire for him.
It's just awesome. But that is part of our identity. Just like Haley, as we grow, we're looking for others. Okay, so here's the here's the deal, invite others into a saving and counter with Jesus Christ. Invite others into a saving encounter with Jesus Christ and do it this Easter. Now, there are two groups of people. Okay, the first group of people, I'm going to tell you to invite others in by inviting everybody you know to come watch you get baptized next week, even though you don't quite realize it yet. Okay. And that's that's the first group I want to talk to you.
Hey, if you have never been baptized, I want to I want to talk to you for a moment. In fact, I want to ask everybody in the room to get this card out. We're all going to write on it today. Okay, every single person in here. We're not all going to turn them in. But we're all going to write on it is going to be very important. So grab one of these across all the campuses.
Man, grab it, get your pen out all that. Let me talk to let me talk to the person here who needs to get baptized. Number one, some of you have gotten saved over the last couple of months at Mercy Hill. Guys, our church is swelling in attendance. I bet you this week, there'll be 1000 people here that weren't here this time last year.
Okay, so that's what we're talking about. We're talking about being a lot of people are coming right now. That means a lot of you are hearing the gospel for the first time. And a lot of you maybe have given your life to Christ over the last couple of months, then you need to get baptized at Easter, and you need to fill this card out with your name and your email and your phone number, we're going to contact you tomorrow. There's others of you that need to get baptized next week, because, man, you've been saved for a long time, but you never been baptized. You got baptized before you were saved, or maybe you got sprinkled when you were a kid or whatever. And we would say, man, the proper ordering of that as you get saved, you ask Christ to be your Savior, and then you get baptized after that. And so that hasn't happened to you. I don't care if it was 50 years ago, you know that you were baptized. You got baptized in the wrong order.
And what about now? Can you can you try to set that right and give God the glory for what he has done in your life. So if that's you, then I'm praying you fill this card out guys.
We had 24 people just at the ridge campus fill this card out in the first service. All right, so there's a lot of people and I would say the same thing right here right now. Hey, but listen, this is very important. There are others of you who have not accepted Christ yet. And today needs to be the day of salvation for you.
Today's the day God has appointed this day before the foundation of the world for you if you would walk in and I pray that you will. You know, Jesus Christ tells the woman at the well, I can give you this living water. But it's not because of what he's going to do then. It's because of what he's going to do later. And the interesting thing about this story is that it pre figures what Jesus was going to do to bring her that living water.
You know why? Because the Bible tells us that he sits down at this well at the sixth hour, and he says, Give me a drink. Jesus Christ was hanging on a cross at the sixth hour when he cried out, I thirst. And what you're going to see is, hey, for the woman at the well, I will give you the living water, but it's going to come because of what I'm willing to do.
And you can say it like this. Jesus thirsted on the cross to give us the living water. And Psalm 34 eight tells us taste and see that the Lord is good. I want to invite you into a relationship with Christ that was bought and paid for by his blood on the cross and in his resurrection, your identity in him can be sealed forever as a son or a daughter of the king. It'll give you purpose in life and a future that is certain. I pray that you'll step into that today.
How do you do that? Admit your sin. It's ABC's admit, believe, confess, admit to your center, believe in what he has done on the cross, and confess him as the Lord of your life and you will be saved. If that's you, and you get saved today. Hey, you put your name on this paper. Okay. And you turn it in actually on the way out today, people gonna have the buckets and says these are baptism card buckets, and you drop the that in right.
And I pray there'll be another 24 or more in here and other campuses as well today. Okay. Hey, but last thing, and I'm done. This car, we're also gonna do something else with I told everybody to get it right every single one of you.
I want everybody to have it. I'm gonna give you some time we give you 30 seconds here. Who is the person that you need God to give you the courage to invite to come with you to sit next to you?
I pray that you have some people in your life maybe God's put in your heart. And who are you going to invite? Let's write their name. Now you're not turning this in this is gonna be a prayer prompt for you this week. You're gonna put in your Bible. You write their name down. Let me paint a picture for you.
What would it be like? Next week? I share the Gospels plan as I can blood cross resurrection, your sin, the whole deal.
Okay. The person you write down comes with you. They get saved and baptized next week. They come back to sit in the service and you open your Bible and you say, man, I've been praying for you.
This was last week. Alright, write it man. Who is that person that God's gonna put on your heart to invite this week? You guys take a minute write that down. I pray that you have the courage across our church to invite the person that we wrote their name down and God we pray that in our feeble attempts to invite someone in God you would you would supernaturally move on that person's heart so we could see this room filled in the rooms of our campuses filled with the lost with people who need this gospel message more than anything else in their life. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.
