God’s Grace Forever - Ephesians 2:1-7 - The Heart of Jesus

All right, thank you for being here.

We're glad you're here. Whatever campus that you are at, we got a really exciting weekend. In fact, you actually missed a really exciting part of our services last week that I know you didn't want to miss. It was church survey weekend. I know everybody marks their calendars for that. But seriously, it's so helpful to us to be able to hear what's going on, what you're thinking about, and just where you're at in life as well. So these are actually in your seat backs at all of our campuses. So if you didn't get a chance to fill that out, that is like the one time that a pastor will ever tell you that you can be working on something other than the sermon during the sermon, okay?

So that's the only, and I would actually maybe afterwards. But you think about that, we'd love for you to fill that out, get that information to us before you leave the service this weekend so that we can be better informed as we make decisions for where we're headed as a church, where we're headed as a ministry, and what God has for us moving forward. We're going to be in the book of Ephesians this weekend, book of Ephesians.

And so if you'll go ahead and turn there. And if you are new, you just happen to have jumped into a really awesome week that we have every single year at Mercy Hill. And this is Kids Week. Kids Week, we are so excited about what God is getting ready to do in the lives of hundreds and hundreds of kids across all of our campuses. We're excited to even have our fourth and fifth grade at our student center in the evenings this week.

So a lot for us to be praying for as a church. And hey, if you're here, there's still time for you to register. There's still time for maybe you have kids that haven't signed up yet. Maybe you haven't signed up yet to serve. There's plenty of opportunities for you to still jump in. So sign up to serve.

Before you leave today, you can jump in with that. Let's, as we think about this series, this is the last week of our series, The Heart of Jesus. So we'll be jumping into Ephesians 2. We've been talking about throughout this series, I hope it's been a blessing to you, but as we've been talking about, what is God's heart for us?

How does He actually feel about us? You know, we talk a lot about maybe what God has done. We talk a lot about different things about God. But I think what I've loved about this series is it's driven us to really think about God's heart for us. You know, and Pastor Andrew used this the other day of when God is bumped, what comes out?

What naturally pours out? And that's what we're going to talk about a little bit today, because as we shut down this series in Ephesians 2, we look ahead towards the future, we're going to actually see how God's heart shapes how we view eternity. So as we think about eternity, God's heart actually shapes how we actually think about that. Now, we don't like to talk about death, right?

It's not something we want to bring up. I think about this the other day. I filled out all this information, had to do all these health checks and everything to get life insurance. And I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand of who has life insurance or not, because I felt like, hey, at this point, I have a price tag on my head at this point, right? As soon as you sign that last line, it's like, well, there's a price tag on my head.

I'm not sure if I want very expensive life insurance, because I'm not sure I want my death to be worth more than my life. I don't know if y'all have actually felt that, right? But it's something that we don't want to talk about. We don't want to talk about death. We put it off. We don't want to deal with it. But as we think about this, I think it's something that we really need to ponder.

We really need to lean into. But what happens is we get confused about it. We wonder like, well, what does it really like? What is eternity really like? You know, what does it mean? What does it look like for me to even get there?

How do I get there? And so what happens is we kind of treat it like a stack of bills. I don't know if any of y'all had like some expenses come in or maybe just over time, you've had all these bills that have come into your house. And what happens is, is what they inevitably, they find themselves, whether it's on a desk or a cabinet or something, and they begin to stack up, right? And it's like, man, you may be feeling like I don't have the money to pay for these bills. You know, I'm not really sure what they're all even for. I'm not even sure if they're all accurate, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to sit them in this corner and I don't have to think about it today.

Right? And so we end up distracting ourselves from those bills and they just sit in the corner and they collect dust. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand on who's done that either, because I know it's probably most all of us at different points in our life, but that's kind of how we treat eternity sometimes. And we turn to start distracting ourselves from what we really need to actually be focusing on.

We really need to actually be considering it. And this is true of whether you go to church or not, as we think about eternity, we all can fall into this distraction trap from our culture. And our culture actually feeds this. As we think about it, it's been 15 years since the iPhone came out. You think about the distraction of technology, the distraction of our phones, the distraction of social media, where it literally feeds you more and more things for you to focus on, for you to look at these distractions of advertisements that are all constantly saying, hey, buy this, this will fulfill fulfill your desires only to leave you broken and wanting more again and looking for more and more and more. We see news outlets that they play onto this distraction.

So that's, that's one group of people. We, we ended up putting this, this thing in the corner. We think about, man, I'm going to distract myself. I'm not going to think about eternity.

We're not going to deal with eternity one day, maybe, right. There's another group of us. I think that are in here and we think that, well, you know what we're going to do? We're going to really attack that pile of bills. So we're going to go after it. We're going to go through every single one and we're going to start paying them off, right? We're going to start writing the checks. We're going to start using them. We're going to use, you know, everything we can to get these bills paid off.

We're going to go Dave Ramsey style with it. But at the end of the day, what happens about two weeks later, what happens? Another bill comes in the mail, right? Another bill comes in the mail and you're like, man, I'm right where I started. I'm right where I started. And you've been working and working and working to pay this thing off only to get to realize I couldn't, I couldn't pay it off.

They keep coming. And I think you, you look at every religion in the world. Every religion says, Hey, you work, you work, you work, you try, you try, you try, you pay off this bill, you pay off that bill. And maybe, just maybe when you get to the end, that stack will be clear. Maybe, but you can't be sure. So you live your life in uncertainty, wondering and anxiety, wondering, did I do enough?

Did I ever do enough? Well, I want to encourage you that the Bible actually offers us a different path. The Bible says that, Hey, we can stare into eternity. And instead of having to distract ourselves from the fear, we can actually have hope. Instead of having confusion, we can actually have certainty.

I think it's actually possible. And it changes everything for us. I think it changes everything for us. It changes how we live. And it's actually made possible by viewing God's grace. We're going to see this weekend. Our big idea for the weekend is that God's grace is greater than we think and lasts longer than we can imagine.

It's greater than we think and lasts longer than we can imagine. And we need to see this because I think it changes everything and how we live changes everything. We don't have to fall into distraction.

We don't have to fall into uncertainty. God's grace to us changes everything in terms of how we live. So as we look into the Bible, we're going to turn to Ephesians chapter two, the words are going to be in the screen. I encourage you to also pull out your scripture, your copy of scripture and read through that with me as well. We'll be in verse one. We'll start there. Let's read it together. And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the world, following the Prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.

And we're by nature, children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. Now you're probably thinking, you know, Hey, you were just talking about God's great grace. I thought this was going to be this uplifting, this positive sermon. Where, where do we land right here?

This is a pretty poor start, but you think about this. If you go to the doctor's office, you for a checkup and the doctor finds a disease and he says like, Hey, I want to let you know about this disease. You can't really be upset for the doctor for telling you for about the disease. It's like, we got to figure out where things are at. It's a really poor doctor to be able to say, Hey, you're fine. You know, there is this disease over here, but you're, you're okay. Like just keep moving.

Like that would be a terrible doctor. So we got to start with where we're at to see where God will take us. All right.

So let's look at what's gone wrong with us. Paul says, what you were, what's that word? You were what? Dead. You were dead.

You were dead. That's strong language. Right. And so I want to clarify what I believe that Paul is talking about here. It's like, maybe that hits you. And you thought, man, Paul saying I'm dead, but like, man, I'm breathing, I'm walking, I'm talking. This really does make a whole lot of sense.

You know? And so as we think about that, it's not just what Paul is talking about in terms of our physical life here. So let's zoom out. Let's think about what it means. What does it mean to actually have life? What does it mean to have life? Well, let me kind of walk you through, zoom out to the big picture of scripture. The big picture of scripture is that God made us to enjoy this world as the pinnacle of his creation. He made us, he said, this is very good. He breathed life into us for the purpose of us enjoying him and him enjoying us, that we would trust him, that we would praise him in all that we do. In fact, in John 17, Jesus defines life as this, knowing God and Jesus whom he has sent. He says, this is life, knowing God, being in relationship with God and Jesus whom he has sent. That's what life is.

So when we're talking about you were dead, we're talking about you don't have that life, right? This is what we were designed for. This is how we were created to live.

But a problem called sin entered the world when we chose our way over God's design. We said, hey God, we don't trust you. We're going to do it our way. We're going to make our decisions. We're going to be in charge.

We're not going to listen to what you say because we think that we know better. And since then, as Paul writes, if you look right there in verse three, he says, we were by nature, children of wrath, by nature. This is like our very nature that is broken, who we are at our core that is dead. You think about this, we're naturally rebellious to the creator's design. This is easy to see. I mean, you see it all over the world in really catastrophic ways, but you can also see it really clearly when you look at a child and they pitch a tantrum, right? It's like no one had to teach them how to do that.

It came really naturally and it comes really naturally in our house pretty, pretty often, but it comes naturally to us, right? We don't have to teach that. That's why Paul says we're dead because of our sin. We have no relationship with God. We're fully separated from him and we deserve it. We deserve to be separated from him forever because he is a holy God and we are far from it.

You see, this is a very big difference between what the Bible says and what the world says. The world tells you to be better, right? The world tells you to get the self-help book. You know, you got to maybe a bookcase full of self-help books, right? And it's like, well, if I can just get the self-help book, there's some good in all of us and, and we just got to will it out of us.

If I just work hard enough, if I just read enough, if I just do all of these things, I check all that checklist, then I'll be good enough and I'll have it all fixed. I think what Paul's saying is like, there's actually no good in us at all. And that may sound strong, but we've got to think about what we're comparing to when we say we're good. It's like, are we comparing to our neighbor here? Like, hey, am I good if I mow my yard three times a week and they mow their yard once a month? Like, is that, is that what it means to be good? If, if I give a little bit more than somebody else, is that what it means to be good? You see, the problem is there's not a sliding scale of good when we're comparing it to perfection. Like when we're comparing it to the law of God, like you think about it, like, has anyone lied? Okay.

Has anyone stole? I mean, it's like, well, it goes quick, right? We, we get really knocked out of good real fast.

You think about this, even the best of us fall short of perfection. I don't know what your favorite drink is. I really love Coke Zero. We have a lot of Coke Zero in our house. We have a lot of Coke Zero around the office here.

A lot of caffeine, but no calories. It's great. You know, have as much as you want, right?

So think about this. If you had a, if you had a Coke Zero, if I offered you a Coke Zero and I said, Hey, Coke Zero is incredible, awesome drink. You're going to love it. Now, Hey, there's, there's like one or two drops of rat poison in there, but it's only one or two drops.

So like, you should be fine. Like the, like the Coke Zero is great. You're going to want to drink that. It's awesome. It's like no one in their right mind would be like, yeah, man, I think you make a really good point.

I think it is awesome. I think I will drink this Coke Zero with two drops of rat poison in it. It's like, no, you're not going to do that. Why? Because the drop ruined the whole thing. And that's how sin works.

The drop ruined the whole thing. And we've got to realize that we got to realize that we are not, you know, self-help people that are just like one book away from being good. The Bible says that we're not just hurt people in need of healing, that we are dead people in need of resurrection. It's a very different category, right? Unless you're on the walking dead, corpses can't walk around, right?

It doesn't happen. You can't crawl out of the grave. You're dead and I'm dead. So I think as we see this, I know it's tough to consider, but we've got to be able to see this because our deadness is actually the backdrop to God's great grace to us. God's great grace is seen in the backdrop of our fallenness, of our brokenness. And we're going to read in Ephesians chapter two, verse four through seven. We're going to see what happens here in this next section of scripture. If y'all read with me verse four, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

I don't know if you say amen often, but if you ever say amen in church, that's a place to say amen in church right there. But God, but God, these are a couple of my favorite words in all of scripture, but signifies that there's a change in the situation. Something's happening, right? And it's shifting the entire narrative of the story. Everything's changing. You think about this, I'm going to ruin a few movies for y'all.

Okay. But they're old movies. So it's y'all's fault.

It's not my fault. But you think about this with movies and like there's these plot twists and movies that just, they just change the whole movie when you think about it. So Top Gun, there's the newest one.

I'm not going to tell you about that one because that would, that would not be very good. And I haven't seen it, but the old Top Gun, nobody saw the fact that that Goose was going to pass away, right? That he was going to die in this accident. No one saw it coming.

If you miss that, sorry. In Star Wars, this is now, if you really miss this one, this is bad. In Star Wars, you get the twist, plot twist, right? That Darth Vader is in fact Luke Skywalker's father, right? Crazy.

I don't know who saw it coming, right? Get this though. The Wizard of Oz. There's not a wizard. It's crazy.

It's crazy. He's not, he's not a wizard at the end of the movie. You're like, well, okay. Another one of you think about this, any Hallmark movie that didn't end with a couple living happily ever after. It would be an amazing plot twist. No one would ever see it coming, right? You think about that, this is a major plot twist.

This is a, a like life-changing, world-changing, forever changing plot twist. Right here, Paul writes, but God. All of the dead, no ability to live, but God. It should have been this way. It should have been destruction.

It should have been damnation. Should have been headed to eternity in hell, but God. You know, there's been so many but God moments in lives all over this church. You know, maybe you've been walking through a but God moment and maybe you don't even realize it, but you're sitting in one right now.

You didn't even realize it that because your life has fallen apart. You showed up to a church on this weekend. You sat in that seat and you're here and you have a but God moment and God's telling you, Hey, you're here and I can rewrite your story. You didn't realize it, but he wants to change your life. But God, we're gonna have a moment at the end of the service for you to respond because those but God moments, you've got an opportunity for God to change everything. But why does God change the situation? Why does he change the situation? Why does he step in like this?

You know, and we look at that, we look at this next section right here. After he says, but God, he says what? God being what? Rich in what? Mercy. Being rich in mercy. God being rich in mercy.

It's interesting. If you take notes on these things, the Latin word is translated is actually the same word that's used in Exodus 34, where God talks about his steadfast love for us. Pastor Andrew preached on that a few weeks ago. It's the same word as he thinks about his steadfast love, his loving kindness, his mercy, his rich, he's rich in mercy. One pastor said, God has to be stirred up to wrath, but his default is love.

And this has been the thrust of the whole series. What is God like? What is his heart like?

How does he feel about us? Listen, God is not surprised by your sin. He is rich in mercy.

He's not scared off by your problems. He is rich in mercy. And you may say, I'm not seeing his mercy in my life right now. That may be where you're at.

You may say, hey, I don't feel that. I'm fighting sin and I feel like I'm losing. I'm in a season of suffering.

I'm in a season of loss. I don't feel his mercy. I've been praying for something to happen and it hasn't happened yet. And I don't feel his mercy.

Well, Pastor Dane Orland in the book, Gentle and Lowly, he wrote this, and I found it such an encouragement. The evidence of Christ's mercy towards you is not your life. The evidence of his mercy towards you is his life. It's not the circumstance you're in right now.

It's not how you feel about something. It's the fact that God being rich in mercy did something to change everything. And Jesus in his life and his perfection, he laid that on the cross that we may have life in him.

Mercy. We deserve to be there. But we weren't. And he did it for us. He did it for us. So how did he do it?

How did he do it? Look back to that scripture. He says, even when we were dead, even when we were dead, okay, he's clarifying. We bring nothing to the table. We didn't start living.

We weren't start getting a little bit better. Even when we were dead, what he made us alive together with Christ. He made us alive together with Christ. We see these shirts. I'm wearing it today.

Death to Life. This is the shirts that everybody wears as they're baptized at Mercy Hill. We've actually got baptism next weekend. As they're baptized at Mercy Hill, they wear this shirt. It's from this passage. They were dead and now they're alive.

Why? With Christ. With Christ.

That's how it happens. Christ's resurrection is our resurrection, too. It's our hope, too. And then he clarifies this.

And it's really helpful for those of us that maybe struggle with this, hey, we got to pay off the bills thing, okay? He says this, by grace, you have been saved. By grace, you have been saved. He says, grace not works. And this is the truth of the gospel is that in God's great love for us, Jesus came and he did everything necessary to save us. He lived the perfect life that we could not live. He died the death that we deserve. And through his death and through his resurrection, by trusting in him, we receive the gift of grace, this gift of the gospel, which is Jesus himself into our lives.

It's grace. And this is key to understand because every religion in the world says opposite. Every religion in the world says, hey, you know, man, you got to keep working hard.

You got to really just make sure you're doing what you need to do. You got to start paying off those bills, start paying them down. And Jesus is saying, no, no, I've paid it.

Understand it was never about you paying off the bill. It's always about you receiving his grace. There's the old hymn. It says, nothing in my hands I bring simply to thy cross I cling.

We bring nothing to the table. We can't pay one bill off. Jesus paid it all. Look at this. Look at what he says. And as he continues, he says, he's raised us up with him. He's seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

Look at this. Jesus has secured our salvation. God here, he's writing and Paul is talking in the past tense.

He's like saying, hey, it's already happened. You're already seated with him. You're already raised with him. When you're in Christ, your salvation is settled. God has secured our eternal life by uniting us with Christ.

That's how, that's how he did it. There is no other way. There's no other way around to an eternity with the Lord.

There's no other way to forgiveness except through Christ. It is in being united to him that we have life. And last week, and just kind of want to kind of, as we think about this, my son loved the sermon last week.

He came home talking about the tomatoes. And I don't know if y'all, those of you that were here, y'all, y'all saw the tomatoes being stapled to the vine, the concept of abiding in him. And as we think about abiding, we're thinking about an active, ongoing abiding in Christ through his word, through prayer with his spirit and in community. We're talking about this active abiding in him this week. We're kind of turning the diamond a little bit differently. We're actually talking about our declared status in Christ.

Okay. We're talking about the fact that you have been brought into him. Like you are with him, you are in him. So thinking about this, like a marriage, you know, if somebody gets married, one person has $10,000 in debt, and the other person has $100,000 in cash. Well, you don't step into that marriage. And after you get married, it's like, well, you still have your $10,000 in debt. I still have my $100,000 in cash.

It's like, no, that's not how it works. You know, I remember, you know, I remember when, you know, you always make bad, sometimes make bad decisions about money things, you know, especially as you're younger. Hopefully we get better at that when we're older. But I remember my wife was pregnant with our son at the time. And, you know, we were just starting out. We didn't have like, you know, a ton of money and things like that. We still don't, but as we think about that, you know, in that moment, you know, you think that the reaction is you're going to like save up, right?

You're going to, you're going to save up and got a baby coming. Well, we made a mistake. I don't know. Maybe it's my mistake. We went, we went to the beach and if some friends of mine are, they were very kind and they were really, we went to this archery shop down there and they were like, Hey man, that's a nice bow right there. And it's really nice. And like, you're probably not going to be able to afford that after you have kids. So like, you probably need to go ahead and get that. And, um, I, I may or probably didn't have a meeting with my wife about that and just ended up showing up with this, uh, with this bow that costs $1,500 that we really didn't have at the time.

And, and, and I was like, man, you know, not the best decision. So what could she do in that moment? She can't just say, well, Hey, like, you know, that's $1,500. That's yours. That's yours. No, it's like, well, what's mine is yours and what I'm, I'm really stupid about. That's yours too. You know, it's like, it's, it's all yours, right? You know, it's all ours.

And so we, you know, paid for it and we moved on. But if you think about that, it's when we're in Christ, right? When we're in Christ, what's ours is his, what's his is ours.

Okay. So that means, well, we bring nothing to the table except our sin, right? He brings everything to the table, his holiness, his righteousness, his payment for our sins. He covers every bit of it. And he says, no, you're in me, you're in me.

And that's what we've got to get. There's a pastor years ago ago that, um, he would ask this question when he would do counseling with people. Um, and he would get to a certain point and he would ask them the question. He would say, you know, are you a Christian? Are you a Christian? Um, and they would say, you know, sometimes I hope that I am. And he's like the person they, they, in fact, they forgot what their status was in Christ.

They may have in fact been a Christian, but in that moment they had been so overwhelmed by what was going on in their life that they forgot what their status was in Jesus. Our status is settled. Our status is settled. And believing that actually changes how we look at eternity. And this is what we get to think about as we get closer to the end of the sermon is God's grace forever. God's grace forever. This is where we can move towards, towards hope and actually excitement instead of uncertainty, instead of, of just wondering and confusion about eternity, we can actually have excitement. We can have hope.

We can look forward to what's coming. If I told you this, if I told you that the stock market prices and if I told you what they would be for specific stocks in January of 2024, what would you do? You would go buy the stocks, right?

Right. You would go buy the stocks or if they're going down, you would go sell the stocks, right? You would change what you do based on what you know. You think about that. If you knew the job that you would get after college, it may change where you go to college.

If you went to college. So you think about the future dictating how we live today. Ephesians two seven says this, so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. So for all of eternity, it will be like this. Immeasurable riches, immeasurable grains of sand, stars in the sky, things that you can't get to the depths to. You can't understand the fullness of, because there's always more there.

Immeasurable riches of what? Grace and kindness. Grace and kindness. You know, this is actually the same word that Jesus uses in Matthew chapter 11 verse 30 where he says, my yoke is easy.

My yoke is easy. He invites you in. He invites you in to be able to love you, to care for you, to be in relationship with you for all of eternity in Christ Jesus.

Grace and kindness. We think about this is what God is bringing us to. Our purpose is to receive God's kindness through being united to Jesus and praise him for it forever. As we think about eternity, our purpose is to receive God's kindness through being united to Jesus and experience his kind and his kindness or and praise him for it forever. Praise him for it forever. We'll continually be growing and understanding and growing in our experiences of him for all of eternity and what he has done for us and praising him over and over and over again. It's actually interesting because I think as we think about Ephesians 2, 1 through 3, our fallenness actually sets the stage for us to be able to understand the depths of God's grace to us for all of eternity. You know, it highlights his grace. You think about this, in eternity, if you're in Christ, no one will be able to come to you and say you can't be there.

No one can level any accusation against you. Whatever your past on earth was, it's covered by the blood of Christ. You are in Christ. You'll be face to face with the one who gave his life to bring you in that you may know him, right? He's gonna wipe away every tear from every eye.

He'll make all things new. Whatever breaks your heart here is gone. Whatever worries keep you up at night will worry you no more. Poverty, racism, oppression, lies, hate, only a distant memory there. As our nation, we think about Juneteenth this weekend. Remember the last slaves in America to hear about their freedom. We celebrate that there are no slaves here in America. But we also look forward to a day where every tribe and tongue and nation will gather around the throne praising him forever. Those are days that we long for. Why? Because of God's grace to us forever.

Because of what he's done. This verse can be hard to fathom because we often don't think about forever. We get caught up in the days and the weeks and they go by so quick and we get distracted and we get worried and we we get caught up in everything that's going on and Paul's like if I can just give you a glimpse it'll change everything. Most of us are gonna live to about 50 or 90 years old. 50 to 90 years old.

The average age is 72 and a half. Life expectancy. As we look ahead and we see that we got 50 to 90 years and we have literally eternity ahead of us. Eternity ahead of us. Of his grace and kindness. Will we allow it to change how we live today? Live today in light of God's grace forever.

That's our application today. Live today in light of God's grace forever. Christian I'll tell you this. Believer I'll tell you this. What looks crazy to the world is the most logical way that we can possibly live in light of God's grace for all eternity.

Okay? You think about a missionary who goes overseas and leaves their family here maybe to never see them again because they realize hey I've got 50 to 90 years but I've got all eternity. So I'm gonna leverage it. That more people might know him. That more people may hear what he has done for me.

That they may receive Christ in faith and they may experience his grace for eternity. You think about our church plan or one of our church planners right now Jeremy Daeger is headed to Canada moving his family up this weekend to a place where he's never lived before. Why?

Because the 50 to 90 don't matter in light of eternity. Right? We can do hard things. We can step out of our comfort zone. You think about families that are moving to refugee housing who have the means to live in and maybe more expensive places. Why? Because we got all eternity ahead but we got 50 to 90 here and they make an impact for all of eternity and in light of God's grace forever Christian God may be calling you to do something that seems radical to the world but should feel very normal if we just think about it but maybe God's not calling you to take maybe a big step like that right now but there's a step that I think all of us can take simple action step for us to all take there's a card that you got a sticker that you got in your seat when you came in at all of our campuses I would encourage you put this somewhere that you're going to look at every single day that you're going to think about that you're maybe pray through because what I love about this gospel prayer is it reminds us of the grace that God has given to us that is not earned it's a gift and it reminds us that God is giving us everlasting joy in Christ that we have eternity ahead and I know for us that that we get distracted or us that fall into hey we think we got to work a little bit harder we need that reminder every day maybe God's calling you simply to commit to say every day I'm going to remember the gospel I'm going to remember his grace I'm going to thank him for it I'm going to live in light of it but maybe you're here maybe you're here and you're not a believer never trusted in Christ when I want to encourage you as I said earlier today this weekend could be your but God moment could be the moment that changes everything for all of eternity again 50 to 90 years eternity ahead and God wants you to experience the grace of his kindness towards you in Christ Jesus forever the question is is will you receive it will you receive it I believe this weekend could be your but God moment at the end of sermon when I finish praying our worship band's going to come up they're going to play a couple songs we're going to have a prayer team up front at all of our campuses and I want to encourage you if you're here and you say hey I want that I don't have it I've got an uncertainty I'm confused my life's falling apart I know I don't have that peace I know I don't have that joy but God he wants to rewrite your story so I want to encourage you if that's you tonight and you want to have a relationship with Christ we've got prayer counselors prayer team that's going to be down front they want to talk with you about that about what it looks like to follow after Jesus so I want to encourage you when I finish praying if God's working on your heart don't leave this moment without doing business with him don't leave this moment don't walk out because God has that but God moment for you and it can be changed your life could be changed for all of eternity church let's stand up together we're going to pray together and our worship band's going to come up and lead us in song prayer counselors will be down front they would love to talk with you maybe you just need to pray pray through something maybe you need to trust in Christ today and they would love to talk with you at all of our campuses about what that looks like for you let's pray father God we love you we thank you for your loving kindness to us we thank you to for your grace to us in Christ Jesus God not just for today but for all of eternity God we thank you that you are enough that you are all that we need God I pray that you remind us that we have life in you and God I pray for those that are out there that this is their but God moment God I pray that they would step out that they would talk with somebody today that they would leave here knowing what eternity will be like full of joy full of love and grace and kindness towards them because they have received you in faith today pray it all in Christ in Jesus name amen