Hey guys, what a story at all locations.
Can we praise God for the story? Rob and Gant. Man, we're going to be getting into this idea today. Y'all, Rob was, I love what he said. Man, just a normal guy.
Like he, I mean, he made the point. I'm not, you know, I'm not on a staff somewhere. I'm not a missionary per se. Just a normal guy who's living for a mission that is bigger than the mission that many of us have found ourselves on. I know at different times in my life, it can be different missions, right? Maybe you're on a mission to make money today.
It's not a bad thing, but is it the ultimate thing? Maybe you're on a mission to get married or maybe you're on a mission to make your name great or, or something like that. There is a greater mission. And that's what we're going to get into today from Colossians chapter four.
Hey, as we're doing that though, we're going to do this this week and next weekend. Okay. So, uh, Clifton Road, High Point campus, you guys are there, many college students, the entire church. Let's welcome our college students back.
All right. We love you guys. We're excited that you're here. Hey, if you're at one of our campuses right now, and you're one of these awesome college students, or if you're here at the regional road campus, uh, we just want to tell you, man, this is a church that is about your highest impact. We honestly believe that your years in college are not just about a future income.
They are about a right now impact. All right. Your life is not about parties and paychecks. One day, man, it is about something that God has for you.
And he has just an immense amount of impact for you to make in these four years. And so if that's you were really excited, we want to invite you to our launch service on August 27th. Okay. That is our college ministry launch service church. Be praying for this.
You guys know this y'all we meet 30% of our missionaries on the college campus. So this is a big week when freshmen are coming back on and are coming around and people are coming back. So we'll do that.
Obviously, obviously I want to say this too. Um, August, uh, 22nd, 25th, next weekend, y'all back to school weekend. I know some of us might be like, why are we throw a party every year when it's back to school weekend, I'm going to tell you why, because this is a time when everybody gets to reset their kind of schedules and life and, uh, and all of that. I don't know about you, summer in our house, everything gets out of whack. It's just, man, we're, we're out of rhythm. We're going everybody's like people out of town, there's camps, there's all this stuff, you know, and all of a sudden school comes back around and you have a chance to reset the big rocks, the spiritual rocks first.
That's what back to school is all about, man. Let's make a point of it. Let's get everything kind of aligned and go in.
And so I hope you guys will invite somebody next week. All right, let's dive in. Colossians chapter four is where we're going to be today, man. Like this, this video could not mess up better.
Rob said, I'm a regular guy. I'm not some great evangelizer, but listen, he was living with his eyes up. That's what happens when the book of the truth from the book of Colossians gets into us. What's, what's Colossians about at its core? It's about Jesus being better than anything else. It's about the glory of God kind of invading our life. We see his love for us in the face of Christ and it changes everything about our life.
When we go from grave clothes to grace clothes, things in our life begin to change. The smaller things get displaced by what is big, the glory of God. I mentioned this last week, my daughter and I had a chance to go to this father daughter camp and I mentioned the blob. You guys remember this? So blabber, blobby, they hit the thing, you go flying.
I got some pictures for this week. Okay. So here's the blob.
This is the combined 600 pounds of man. That's about to come down on the blob for me. They jump off.
Okay. They hit the blob. You can see that's a lot of weight going down.
Big old boys here. And then what is lighter goes flying. So that's me up in the air. I don't know if you guys can see that. And then you don't see it, but I did stick the landing.
So you guys can see that. But the idea of that illustration, if you remember from last week, and this is a way that some people think about it, think about the word glory as the word weight. What is the heaviest thing in your life?
Because what the heaviest thing does, it displaces the things that are not as heavy. And that's the idea here. When God's glory, when we see his, you know, the fame of his renown and his awesomeness through the lens of Christ, it begins to move other things out of our life and repositions other things in our life. Y'all, every one of us lives for a mission and the big mission ought to be the one that God's glory displaces all the other little missions. The big mission is man that we would have our eyes up, that our lives would rub off on other people, and that we would share the word. And God opens doors for that. Here's the big idea. God opens doors for us to share his word.
Some of us go through life without our eyes being up. And what happens is we think the different, uh, you know, circumstances in our life are generic. They're not generic. The job you just got and the home you're going to be in now, not generic. College students, you just sat down, you're about to sit down for the first, you know, class of the semester, which we all know, once you sat in a seat, now we're creatures of habit.
You're going to sit there the whole semester, okay? Who sits around you? Not generic. It's specific. God has something for you in that place.
On the dorm, a hall that you're on. Man, the people that sit next to you in the office, your neighbors, your family, these are not generic things. They're very specific things that God has for his people to keep their eyes up, open doors, and what Bible is going to tell us today is, man, we have a chance to reach out to some people in our community. We're going to commit to that today, all right?
So let's dive in. Colossians chapter 4. Here's what it says. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, or the gospel.
That's what he's saying. Declare the gospel. On account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak. Walk in wisdom towards outsiders, making the best use of time.
Let your speech always be gracious. Season with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. Let me do 30,000 feet real quick, then we're going to go verse by verse, okay?
30,000 feet. Continue in prayer that God would open doors, that we would have a chance to share the gospel, and that we would live in a way that makes people want to ask questions. She already said how you would answer each one. The wise life creates questions. Okay, pray, open doors, evangelize, wise life.
Let me be honest with you guys, okay? This is basic, basic, basic stuff about the church and his mission. This is bread and butter, man. This is fundamentals. This is back to the basics, all right? I mean, and I know some of you are brand new, some of you've been around church for years and years and years. This is the basics, okay?
If you want to win a football game, you block, you tackle, you know the plays. There's a lot of other stuff, but that pretty much covers about 90% of it, all right? You want to grow a church?
You want to see a movement go for 2,000 years? It's not about the pastors. It's about the guys in that video like Rob, the regular guys.
That's what he said. I'm just a regular guy. This mission has been going for 2,000 years. Can't stop, won't stop.
It's only gaining speed, and what's it going on the back of? Regular people who do what? The basics. Man, I pray for opportunities. I share when I get an opportunity, you know? That's it. I pray. I share.
I'm going to live a wise life so that people can see my life. It's just the fundamentals. Fundamentals will take you guys a long way.
It'll take us a long way. Did you guys see? I don't know if y'all are real into the Olympics, okay? One of my favorite things this year in the Olympics was this Turkish sharpshooter. Did you guys see this guy? Yusef Dikits, okay?
And he, listen, he was awesome, okay? Everybody, the sharpshooting thing, 10 meters. So that ain't no easy shot with a handgun, okay? Air rifle, 10 meters, and you gotta, everybody goes out there with all this crazy gear.
They got these weird glasses that are like, some of them are, you know, larger and magnified, and they got these big earphones, and they got these crazy visors and all this stuff. Not my man, Yusef. Nope. I mean, in my mind, I think they called his number and he's like smoking a cigarette, throws it out, and just walks out there and just goes like this and just shoot. I mean, a modern day Wyatt Earp, okay? If you saw it, shot his way all the way to the silver medal, okay? And it's funny, he had the best quote of the whole Olympics.
They asked him after, he's the only one who doesn't have any of this stuff, just hand in his pocket, just like this, boom. And here's what he says, I don't need special equipment. I am a natural.
That's what he said. Very humble too, right? Now, this was, now this was funny to me. You know what he didn't say was, I've been doing this competitively for 35 years. He's been shooting for 30 years. Everybody thought they just found this guy. No, no, no. He's been a pro for 30 years at this. Here's the point.
The visors, the magnifying glass, the thing, you know, the ear thing, whatever, all trappings. Ultimately, if you commit yourselves to the basics, the fundamentals for 30 years, you might just shoot your way to silver medal. I want us to go back to the fundamentals, the basics, okay? We're going to pray for open doors. We want to talk about how we can walk through those open doors, how we can share about our life, our testimony. And then we want to say, hey, the way to do it for most people, for most people, the way to do this is we live a Christian life that intrigues the world.
And they just, and they, they lean in, they start asking this question, boom, that's our open door. And we got to commit to walk through it. All right, let's just walk through this verse by verse. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.
He begins to end the book of Colossians in a very similar way that he began the book of Colossians and he's calling people to prayer. Steadfast prayer. What is steadfast prayer? Steadfast is stable.
Steadfast is not filled with highs and lows, droughts and monsoons. This is a steadfast day in, day out prayer that is, what did he say? Watchful.
What does that mean? Watchful means alert. Man, our prayers, let me ask you a question. Are your prayers characterized by an alert, awake watchfulness? Sometimes our prayers can be groggy. Sometimes they can be rote repetition or we're not even, that's what he said.
We can't do that. Guys, we're in a spiritual war. There's a battle that is out there and prayer is our wartime walkie-talkie. We don't have the luxury of groggy, not awake, not alert prayers, rote repetitive prayers. No, thank, watchful. Okay, steadfast, watchful and thankful.
Man, what does thanksgiving do in our life when we pray? I've taught this to the church for 10 years, y'all. If you want to look forward, you look back first.
You go through the rear view, then you go through the windshield. We look back at what God has done. Why do you think over and over and over in the Old Testament, God is calling his people, remember this, remember what I did, build an altar, take note of this. You got to remember who God is. What does that do when we remember what he's done in our life, in our family's life, certainly in the church's life, in the Bible when we learn what he has done?
What does it do for us? It creates a grateful heart. Gratitude is a pervasive component of good prayer. You can say it like this, good prayer grows in thankful soil.
You might be new to Mercy Hill, you might be in one of our campuses today and you're new, I'm telling you. You walked into a big petition church. Man, we ask for big things in this church because we believe it honors God to ask him for big things. We honor God by asking for big things and we feel like God honors big prayers.
So we ask him, we can't control what he does and we're going to give him thanks either way, no matter what it is. But you're walking into a big petition church. Man, we want to see hundreds of these college students over the next couple of weeks coming to our church.
Why? Because we want to send out 500 missionaries by 2032. Many of them are going to come from the campus. We want to baptize 5,000 people by 2032. We committed two years ago a 25-month initiative called Deeper to see the church give over 30 million dollars for the sake of the mission. I mean, these are things that we're praying for.
These are big things, right? The way you get there in a church, the way you get there in your life is you look back on a big God who has done big things in the past and these prayers grow out of thankful soil. Now, here's the big prayer that he has for the people to pray for him, okay? Paul is asking the Colossian church, ask this of God on my behalf.
What is it? Open doors. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison.
That I might make it clear which is how I ought to speak. This was the big idea of our sermon today. God opens doors for us to share his word, right? He opens doors.
We're going to pray that we will see open doors. With a grateful heart, Paul is saying I want to see open doors that I can share and this is a phrase that he used. If you've been with us, you know the phrase. The mystery of Christ.
What does that mean? Colossians chapter 127 tells you exactly what it means. The mystery of Christ is Christ in you. Not Christ affecting you, not Christ making you a little better, but Christ in you. That he becomes the source of your life. That you went from dead to alive.
This is this is what I want to try to get across. The door that Paul wants to see open is not a door where he goes and shares with the community. Hey, Jesus can help you just like these other self-help books. He can make your life a little bit better. Jesus can make your kids a little more obedient. Jesus can make you a more upstanding person in the community.
That is not what is going on here. What he's asking is I need a door open in the community to share the mystery of Christ which is Christ can be in you. The mystery of the gospel. That you are entered by God almighty. The spirit of Christ in you.
You know what I'm saying here? When you become a Christian, you are literally possessed by Jesus. He possesses you. You are his from that moment forward and that's what he's saying here. I want a door to open so that we can get to that. And then he says this in verse four. That I may make it clear.
I love this. Which is how I ought to speak. Now you don't say that's how I ought to speak if every time you naturally speak that way, right? You want to give you a little bit of encouragement here? Paul writes half the New Testament, shipwrecked, snake bit, beaten, almost stoned to death, goes up to the third heaven, plants a million churches.
I mean we're here in a lot of ways because of the fire that God started through him 2,000 years ago and you know what? Evangelism for him wasn't always easy. He's praying I need the doors to open and then I need to speak with clarity because that's how I ought to do it and sometimes maybe it's not the way that I do it.
Why? Because it's hard man. It's hard in this culture too. You tell me what's easier to say Jesus is the only way or Jesus is one of the ways. Which one's easier in our culture, right? You tell me what's easier to say.
God has a design for every single part of your life or you go pick whatever design you want and God will bless it. Which one's easier to say? The easy things to say is to say create a muddied spring Proverbs would say in the church. Man it's not easy to tell the truth but we've got to be able to do that. We got to pray that God would give us clarity.
Man Jesus is the only way. God has a design for every part of your life and every other bit of truth from the scriptures. Are we saying these things with clarity? Man Paul wanted to be clear the answer for confusion is clarity. I know that's offensive in our culture but we have answers that the culture needs even if it's not something they want to hear.
You know none of us would think a doctor is doing their job if they find that you have some incur you know some kind of crazy disease and when it comes time for your consultation they decide not to tell you about it because they don't want to be offensive. We would say well that doesn't make any sense like it hurts but that's if you have what I need in terms of a cure and so this is where we are would we be clear in the way that Paul is saying here's what a question I have for you today let's just do a little bit of application here. Guys are we praying for open doors in our life to be able to share the gospel or are we praying that collectively in our community groups? I know that we're out for summer these things are about to kick back off. Man are we praying that God would give us open doors that we can walk through that we can send somebody a sermon clip that we heard on social media or we can invite somebody to you know the thing you know the back to school weekend or we can tell somebody our testimony are we willing to pray for that door to open. You are the aroma of Christ wherever you are if you're a Christian you are not there generically there is somebody who needs to hear something from you and I pray that you'll walk through that door corporately there's not generic it's specific yo why do you think we do uh you know why do we do vacation bible school or kids week we call it here why do we do that why do we do mission trips why do we want to move uh you know do this massive project to move everybody over to the ridge campus why do we do these things we're praying they're they're jars that we're putting out saying God fill them we are praying God that you will open doors for the gospel to be shared I think about this for our church guys this fall is a huge um you know moment for us as we hopefully get into the ridge campus here pretty soon we need a 800 person launch team over there now you say what's a launch team everything you see on the weekends every single thing and production bands uh you know people to work in mercy hill kids people in the parking lots outside yeah I mean every single thing I mean the whole the church is a total volunteer organization okay I mean everybody you see 99 percent of them are they've stepped forward and they're serving and man we need 800 people guys we build launch teams for every everything we do I mean there's always another launch team this one's twice as big as anything we've ever done why would we want to do that and I know church I know people can get weird like oh building and all that kind of stuff you know the thing is when you came to mercy hill you know what we all had in common right here there was a seat for us and what we want to do is when we move we're going to triple the seating capacity and make sure there's a lot more seats for more people to come in we need a team to be able to do that it's an open door maybe the best open door we have right now in the next two months is open seats man to let people come in we're praying for open doors and I hope that you are now I gotta bring a couple things together here okay so I need everybody to really zone in because this gets very personal and applicable for every single one of us all right look at verse five and six walk in wisdom towards outsiders making the best use of the time let your speech always be gracious seasoned with salt so that you may know how you ought to answer each person now I want you to zone I want you to really you know clue in here for a second because I think that there is a danger for us in this passage in verse five to think that he is switching topics and he's not I think what we could think is oh the first couple of verses are about evangelism these last couple of verses are about wisdom they're not different okay he he's he's making a point about them kind of being this being them having a lot of relationship with one another I would say it like this the wise life is key for evangelism if you and I are praying for open doors then what we need to be saying is okay how am I going to walk through those doors how is God going to create those doors in my life and I think that's where we get into this idea of verse five walk in wisdom you know the first thing he said was pray for me that we would see open doors let me ask you a question what do you do when you are what do you do to a door what do you do you walk through the door right he prays for open doors and then he says in verse five walk in wisdom this idea of God opening doors in our lives and us walking through those doors in our lives I'm telling you it has everything to do with living a life that is wise and a life that is filled with the word and when that happens in our life when our life is wise when our speeches seasoned when we are gracious when we are making best use of the time when our life looks different because it's affected by the word of God it creates questions for those who are on the outside you can say it like this godly lives create questions among ungodly people we become an intrigue to them some of you may are here today maybe because of that man you were like again in that video and you're like man I don't know why anybody would live their life this way their family with their with their rope holding and you know that's a that's part of our foster care and adoption ministry he's like man it was just I'm intrigued by that now to be fair when the world is in darkness and we are a great light that shines they also squint and it's painful so there are times right when the church is persecuted all the way around the world so not everybody leans in not everybody is intrigued by us I get that but man when God is working in somebody's life one of the ways you can see it is that they are curious about the Christian life and they don't understand why we do the things that we do let me give you two examples of this okay I want you to imagine that you're at your office and let's just say there's kind of a one-up culture at your office okay let's say everybody's you know posturing up and it's all about who's got the newest whatever and and you know it's just it's just a competitive thing or whatever and you're getting back from summer and everybody's starting to talk about the great vacation they did with their kids and they're trying to one-up one another okay and so the guy the guy says oh yeah you know vacation this year awesome white sand beach uh clear you know clear uh water you know somewhere in the Caribbean um jet skiing we even took a nanny for the little ones so we didn't have to be bothered by them you know and I mean it was just it was just epic it was just awesome just jet skis and open bar and 10 days and it was incredible and then they say man what was your vacation like I want you to imagine somebody from mercy hill getting this look in their eye and saying I'll tell you what it was like man I rode through the wilds of India on a train that had no air condition and then I slept in block houses that had no plumbing and when we got all the way to the farthest place you can imagine in the world we met some people and look here they are look at this guy man this guy is a believer and he's a Christian and he's a pastor in this little village we had a chance to go and bring him some materials and help train him and look he lives in proximity to these other people and I missed this part of the trip because I was so sick from eating all this crazy food okay but but listen I gotta meet I got to meet them and we got to baptize some people from this people group that has never seen Christians uh really kind of Christianity take root and and it was the most incredible life-changing trip I've ever had it was great the guy in your office looking at you like man you are the weirdest person I have ever met you understand now for some of us in here and at our campuses you're not a believer um you know this that's foreign to you for us that have been around mercy hill there's something very deep about that I mean we're drawn into that story because we're like man that now look I'm not nothing against the white sand beach or any of that go do whatever okay I'm not I'm not saying that the point is we all understand that's fine that's good go rest have fun with your kids one of those experiences will last a lifetime one of those experiences is deep and we would say man it was you know might be one of the most transformative things we've ever done it's weird to the world it's intriguing to the world look what he said in verse six so that you may know how you want to answer each person don't you understand you only answer if someone's asking a question if you're talking and they didn't ask a question that's called telling this is about answering and answering comes when our life becomes this open door because people are intrigued by the way that we live by the way that we give by the way that we spend our time by the things that we're focused on by the way that we treat our family I think about um another one you know that comes to my mind because he said it um gant said it in that video uh with rob that rob is a rope holder rope holders in this church are people who have committed to stand beside a family who is either fostering or going through the adoption process and they just say man we're here we can babysit your other kids we can uh you know we can bring you guys dinner we're on the phone if you need rides for your other kids or something I mean that's just that's just what it is it's just like hey we're going to be an extra set of hands for you specifically because of what you are are doing you know on behalf of the kingdom in our church and so that's what a rope holder is that's what rob was so intrigued by I know that world very well guys I have seen the look I know the look on an unbeliever's face when they find out about the adoption in our family and it's the same truth for many of our families here at Mercy Hill I mean people find out that faith and is adopted special needs faith is adopted then they find out the other three kids aren't and you can just see for somebody who doesn't have the length we all talk about adoption foster care all the time in this church so we all are like insiders with this but for somebody who's never experienced that and is not a believer they don't have the work they're trying to figure it out you can see the look on their face and here's the thing they're smart enough to know that it's probably rude to ask what they really want to ask but what they really want to say is why why would you do that why would you and Anna just sign up for a life that means you're never going to empty nest probably why would you do that the funny thing is inside the church for many of us that are part of the church here there's not that look because everybody's like yeah we get it I mean we get it we're all in on that kind of stuff right like we're in whether it's that or something else we're all in it's a life that builds intrigue and that's the question I think we have to ask today are we going to pray that God will send open doors and are we going to walk through them and are we going to live in a way that creates questions from the outside here is the application for this weekend pray for open doors and then walk through them y'all this is for every single Christian this is every Christian Paul is telling them pray for me in this but you know Paul also tells us to imitate him and the imitation of him looks like walking in this that's what I'm going to call you to do today I'm going to call myself to do it today as well you know every single one of the Christians every single Christian can have a massive influence when they realize that their sphere is not generic and that God put you on that team I think about kids okay it's like many of many of us this is the time of year where you're if you got little kids which I just said I got one seven years old when they when they end up getting their classroom assignments at school some parents like yes and some parents like oh that's not the teacher we wanted or that's not the person in there and what do we do as parents we start trying to finagle things from the back end or whatever and it might be that God has your kid in that class for a specific reason you understand now we got the teacher we wanted so I don't have to worry I didn't have to worry about it okay but I'm just saying like we scramble and move things around and it's like well what you know God is putting us in specific places and here's the thing it's for Christians like Rob on that video like many of us it's not about pastors Ephesians 4 tells us this shepherds and teachers like me are equippers we have become equippers of the saints you to go and do the work of the ministry this is what's so interesting about churches uh many times in the United States sometimes they resemble like a college football game okay you go to a college football game you got 22 people on the field that are in desperate need of rest and they are followed or surrounded rather like 22,000 people in the stands cheering them on who if we're honest are probably in desperate need of exercise okay and so you have this dynamic of the 20,000 that are at too much rest and the 22 that are exhausted and I think what the bible is trying to get us to see many times is that that needs to flip where we understand yeah okay fine you want me to call me to quarterback you want to call me to general or whatever that's kind of what happened when I went from uh when I when I entered into vocational ministry I left the ministry the ministry is out there the ministry is where you are the ministry is going out and inviting people in the ministry is in your neighborhood the ministry is on campus that's where the ministry is at I'm an equipper of those things my point is this it is for every single one of us to have a sphere of influence that we see specifically and that we minister to y'all praying for open doors and a commitment to walk through them we see this all over the church guys we had a family come in our church last year um that since they've been here they've invited 10 other families to come and experience what God is doing in our church I'm not not you know I don't know what's happening with all those families but just the idea eyes up right we had a guy in our church business owner in Winston-Salem he had two or three guys he was praying for one of the guys he's been praying for for over five years recently the guy calls them on a Friday night and the guy says hey man I'm really sorry to bother you I know it's Friday night so you're watching Smackdown okay and I don't want to interrupt that okay um but he said man I'm ready I'm ready I'm ready five years of prayer God gives his life to Christ ends up getting baptized here at Mercy Hills walking in the newness of life we we have listen I've got some of you guys you know we build families through adoption we restore families through foster care and I know it doesn't always work out like that and there are kids in the foster care system that actually man their family's not going to be restored and so people adopt through the foster care system I understand all that okay but foster care in general man we're wanting to see these families restored we have families right here in our church that are in it not just for the child not just for the parents of the child they're in it for the social workers man they're praying for the whole system they're wanting to see them come to Christ their eyes are up we've got college students in this church and have for 10 years or 12 years since we began that never come without filling up their car slap full of other college students to come eyes up we can all have an impact and that's what I want to call you to today you know how you have an impact in a way that outsides impact you know why you have an impact like that here's why this is this is why that model of like well pastor does the ministry and we all sort of support I mean sometimes we have like a church dynamic especially in the south where we feel like an audience gathered around a few talented leaders rather than the army that God has called us to be okay and and here's here's why the audience method will never work look at verse six one more time so that you may know how you ought to answer each person I want you to think about this how many people do you know how many people do we collectively know you go across five campuses how many people do we collectively know versus how many people I know okay I mean it's it's exponential right how many we know y'all know versus how many I know I am a low relational capacity person also it's weird to be a pastor in that uh vocation I know that um but it's really true I'm introverted I mean my lego holes for relationship get filled up real fast I can't know everybody nor was I ever supposed to think about the exponential nature of how many people we all know now look what it said so that you may know how to answer each person this is the point do you know how to answer each person the reason that you know how to answer them is because you know them it's the people in your sphere you're the one who knows that that person is broken-hearted they don't need a generic gospel presentation what they need to hear is a turning of the diamond if they're broken-hearted somebody needs to tell them that jesus is a healer if they feel abandoned somebody needs to tell them that jesus will never leave them or forsake them if somebody feels like they always got to strive for the approval of man and they're crashing against that time and time again and it's ruining their life somebody needs to tell them that they can have the approval of god almighty I don't know who they are I don't know if they need healer if they need approval if they need stick with you like a brother I have no idea you do because you know them they're in your life so here's the deal today the application is super simple all right we are going to commit together many of us I bet not all of us will commit to this that's fine we're a high honesty church okay I want you to be real about this not raising your hand when I do this in a few minutes no problem means you're honest but for many of us we're going to commit to something here and the commitment is I want my life to be an open door this week I want people to see something in my life I'm going to walk through it okay I'm going to walk through it in one of three ways and they're going to go from easiest to hardest okay and I've made this little acronym so we can remember it sit s i t okay s I'm going to send someone a message and we actually have one right here it's going to be on all of our social media tomorrow also we've got one of the messages from the book of colossians that we think would be good to send somebody that maybe has never heard or whatever okay so we got one okay that's easy that's just like bombing somebody from the air okay I'm gonna text them a sermon but that's fine that's what you're committing to second thing is I'm gonna invite somebody you guys have these inviter cards right here they're all over the seats then we don't hand these out for no reason man let's specifically invite somebody we're not generically inviting hey I'll be there if you ever want to show up oh no hey this weekend really important for your kids it's important for them to be there we'd love for you to be there I'll be there at 10 40 uh you know in the in the parking lot man come be there okay invite and then the last thing is tell all right this is the big boy step right tell someone your story tell them what God has done in your life all right so send invite tell man my prayer I want you to think about this would we commit today's very action-oriented we don't do this a lot uh very action-oriented let's commit to this together this week all right let's pray and then we'll have a moment together father we come before you right now we ask that you will move uh in this church lord I pray that today we'll send a shockwave through the triad when you got thousands of people who commit together to send to invite or to tell and lord that is my prayer god that many people will be receptive to these invitations uh to the gospel message they hear online uh more than to the telling of our story in christ name we pray amen y'all I would imagine today that god has got somebody on your heart we call this who's your one at mercy hill every single time we do a sermon series we'll do a who's your one weekend and what that what that means is very simple it just means we all have somebody our one more who has god put in our life um man if you're that one person that you feel like maybe I'm somebody else's uh one more it means they love you like crazy man they want to see god do some radical things in your life but every one of us have one we have people in our sphere of influence okay here's the moment will we commit to do something in this category sit you know send them something invite them or tell them our story not everybody's going to commit to this it's fine I bet our first service 75% of people did 25% didn't that's fine man we're an honesty church but I'm gonna push you maybe you've never done something like this before sometimes making a commitment raising a hand it kind of cement something for us so we're gonna do this together across all of our locations right if you will commit to be an open door if you will commit to have that influence and to send or invite or to tell someone today would you raise your hand with me right now we're gonna do this this week sometime this week okay keep them up for just a second all over the room not everybody but all over the room all right we can put them down hey we made this commitment man let's follow up with each other on it let's be accountable with each other on it and let's see what God's gonna do with it
