The Call to Carry the Cross

Good morning.

Let's try that again. Good morning. It is great to be with you here on this Palm Sunday weekend, which historically marks the beginning of the Passion Week, which will culminate next weekend as we gather together to celebrate Easter, to celebrate our resurrected Lord. Yeah, we can clap for that because that's pretty awesome. If you're our guest with us this morning, we're really glad that you're here and I hope that you will come and join us next week. If you regularly attend the Summit Church, then I want to make sure you are ready and prepared to come next week with someone with you.

Invite someone to come with you. I know Pastor JD is really excited about the message that God has laid on his heart to share with us next weekend as we celebrate the resurrected Lord, as we worship through baptism and see the ordinances displayed there. And so we're very, very excited about that.

So I hope that you'll come back. Well, my name is Will Teburen. I'm one of the pastors here.

I work with the Discipleship Ministries and it's a great privilege just to share with you and open up God's word with you this morning. But let me begin by asking you or acknowledging if I were to mention the names, Lonnie Baltimore, Justice Cunningham, Chandler Harnish, Cheetah Zugwu, and Tim Toon, I doubt many of you would have any idea of who I was talking about. In fact, I hadn't heard of these guys either until doing a little research this week and recognized that these guys have the illustrious honor of being Mr. Irrelevant, which is a title given to the last player picked every year in the NFL draft. There are 254 picks every year and this guy is number 254. And they make a pretty big deal out of this. Now they have a jersey with 254 on the back of it that says Mr.

Irrelevant. They give him and if he's married, his family, you know, a trip to California and they even give him a trophy. Now you know that the best player in college football every year is given what? The Heisman Trophy, right?

Well, Mr. Irrelevant is given the Lozman Trophy and it looks a little bit something like this. Up here you'll see the Heisman Trophy, which looks all cool, this guy stiff-arming somebody, getting ready to score a touchdown.

The Lozman Trophy is a guy who is fumbling, you know, the football, not exactly the picture of a trophy you want to put up on your mantle. Now, for those of you who just aren't into sports and following the NFL draft, Mr. Irrelevant might be like Amanda, Bo, Brittany, Michelle, Kara, Nicole, and Regan, who failed to get a rose from Chris on the first episode of the most recent season of The Bachelor.

And so I recognize I might have to turn in my man card for even mentioning The Bachelor up here, but if I'm pressed on it, I'm just going to say JD told me that. In all seriousness, sometimes when reading the Bible, we come across the names of people who are briefly mentioned and we just move on without giving it a lot of thought. We think of them a bit like how we might think of Mr.

Irrelevant. Well, this weekend we're going to look at two men, Simon of Cyrene and Joseph of Arimathea, who both play a part in the crucifixion narrative and perhaps you've not spent a great deal of time thinking about them. Yet through their lives, we see a picture painted for us of what it means and what it looks like to be a disciple of Christ. So I want to invite you to turn with me in your Bibles this morning to Mark chapter 15 and we're going to start reading in verse 16. But as you're turning there, let me remind you of one of the most penetrating statements that Jesus ever made regarding what it means to be a disciple of Christ. Just a few chapters before Mark 15 and Mark chapter 8, Jesus is sitting down with his disciples and he's telling them everything that is getting ready to happen. He's telling them that he's getting ready to suffer many things.

He's telling them that he's getting ready to die and be buried and that on the third day he would rise again. And as he's doing this, Peter, who we all know has a propensity for sticking his foot in his mouth, literally gets up, pulls Jesus aside and begins rebuking Jesus of all things. And Jesus looks at him and he says, get behind me, Satan, not one of Peter's better moments. But then we see Jesus saying something that just penetrates us when we think about what it means to be a disciple of Christ. Because Jesus says this to all of his disciples, if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospels will save it. In Mark 15, we find two men, we don't know a lot about them, but both help paint a picture of what Jesus is talking about here.

Who both help us understand a little bit more fully what it means for us to deny ourselves, to take up our crosses and to follow him. So let's look starting in verse 16 of Mark chapter 15, where the scripture says, And the soldiers led him astray or away inside the palace, that is the governor's headquarters. And they called together the whole battalion and they clothed him in a purple cloak and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. And they began to salute him, Hail, King of the Jews. And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him, and they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. And they brought him to the place called Golgotha, which means place of the skull. Now let me stop there and say that Mark tells us more about Simon of Cyrene than any of the other gospel writers do.

And all Mark really tells us for certain is two things. First, that Simon is from Cyrene. Cyrene was a Greek colony in North Africa, Libya, and so Simon, who is a Jew, had likely made his way to Jerusalem during the Passover feast to celebrate the Passover.

He's made his way there and he wants to come and celebrate that which God had done in delivering the people out of the bondage of Egypt and began taking them into the promised land. So Simon is of Cyrene or from Cyrene. But the second thing we learn about Simon is that he has two sons, sons by the name of Alexander and Rufus.

And so we have to ask ourselves the question because when we look at them, again, in the grand scheme of things, this might seem pretty irrelevant. So why does Mark put Alexander and Rufus' name in the scripture? Well, you need to know that the gospel of Mark was written several years after the accounts that are taking place. And so by this time, Rufus and Alexander, who are now Christians and we know that because we see their names other places in scripture, like in Romans chapter 16 where Paul acknowledges Rufus and sends his greetings to Rufus and he acknowledges even Rufus' mother who was like a mother to Paul. He's acknowledging these guys are now believers and so Mark is putting their names in there to say, listen, if you want confidence in what I am telling you, if you want confidence in this story, then go ask for yourself, Alexander and Rufus, and they're going to give the same account. They're going to tell you that it was their father who carried the cross of Christ. So Mark's putting their names in there to give us confidence that these events that we're reading here in Mark 15 actually happened.

And there were eyewitnesses to it. Let's keep reading in verse 33. And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice, Loi, loi, lama sabachthani, which means my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it said, Behold, he is calling Elijah. And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down. And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last.

Verse 42. And when evening had come, since it was the day of preparation, that is the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died in summoning the centurion.

He asked him whether he was already dead. And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. And Joseph bought a linen shroud and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock.

And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Joseph, saw where he was laid. Now, here's what we learn about Joseph of Arimathea. We don't learn a whole lot more, but we know that he was a prominent member of the ruling party. He was a prominent member of the Sanhedrin and thus was extremely influential in society.

He had power and clout and would have been a respected man in the community. We also know that he was wealthy because he had a tomb that nobody had ever been laid in that was hewn out of the rock, which we know fulfills the prophecy in the Old Testament that says the Messiah would be buried amongst the rich. But beyond this, all we really know is that we find a humble man identifying with Christ, but who up until this point, according to John in his gospel, tells us that up until this point, he had been pretty secret about his faith.

So here we have it. Two men don't know a lot about him, but both play a role in the events surrounding the crucifixion of our Lord. One carries the cross. One takes the body of our Lord down from the cross and places him in the tomb that he owns. And what we're going to find this morning is that both men help us fully understand Jesus' command to us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and to follow him.

So here's what I'd like to do. For the next few minutes, I want to share with you three valuable lessons that we learned about taking up our cross from the lives of these two men. The first is this. If you've got a pen and paper, I want you to write these down.

The first is this. Before you can carry the cross, you have to first embrace the cross. Before you can carry the cross, you first have to embrace the cross.

Listen, you can't carry something that you haven't first picked up. Now, Mark clearly tells us when Simon is standing there that Simon is a passerby, and Simon is literally, the Scripture says, compelled to pick up the cross of Christ. In other words, the Roman authorities forced Simon to pick up the cross of Christ. If the Roman authorities told you to do something, then you followed through with it.

You didn't really have a choice in the matter. So let me be abundantly clear at this point. When we look at Simon, the only things we know are that he is from Cyrene and that he has two sons. That's the only things we know for certain, right? We don't know candidly whether or not Simon ever gave his life to Christ. We'd like to think that upon picking up the cross of Christ and carrying it for him and seeing the events that were going to unfold, that Simon definitively gave his life to Christ. And it's likely that he did because we know that his wife responded. We know that his children were believers. And so it's likely that Simon did, but the Scripture candidly just doesn't tell us that.

So we can't be confident in that other than just pure conjecture at this point. And so I say that to say this. Listen, we are never forced to embrace the cross of Christ and become a follower of Jesus.

No person is ever forced to do that. But let me be abundantly clear. We are all pressed into making a decision as to whether or not we are going to embrace the cross.

Every one of us here has that decision to make. Because we've just heard the lengths to which God has gone to demonstrate his love for us, right? God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ what, church, died for us. And we read this.

We see this in the account that I just read. We read of the physical torment that Jesus went through. We read of the fact that he had the crown of thorns placed on his head. We see that his body was scourged. We know that he was flogged, which meant he had 39 lashes across his back and his legs, upon which flesh was ripped off of him. We know that he was forced to carry a cross to the point of physical exhaustion, to the point he couldn't carry it anymore.

And someone had to be compelled to carry it for him. We know that he had nails driven into his hands and feet. We know that he physically endured on that cross for six hours, pressing his broken body up and down on that cross just so he could get breath into his lungs. We know that he suffered physically. We know that he suffered emotionally.

We know that those who had walked most closely with him and now abandoned him, they were fearing for their own lives. We watched and see how the Roman authorities who mocked him and were now crying out and saying to him, Hail, King of the Jews, we see how they took his own clothes off and put a purple robe on him just to mock him, and how they took that robe off and again put his clothes back on and made him carry the cross. We watched as they get into his face and do one of the most disrespectful things I think any human being can do to another, and that is to literally get into the face of Christ and spit on him.

To spit on him. We see the physical and emotional torment that he went through, but I want to say to you and I want to remind us all that the physical and the emotional had was nothing in comparison to the cosmic pain that Jesus felt when in that moment God poured holy hell upon him. When God unleashed his wrath, when God unleashed his judgment, when God unleashed his condemnation, not on you and me, but upon Christ. And in that moment, our Lord and Savior, who is dying on our behalf, cries out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So you see, we are all brought face to face with the cross.

We're all brought face to face with what Christ has done. And now we have to decide whether or not we're going to embrace it. We have to ask ourselves, am I going to embrace the one who has done everything necessary to save me?

And I know, I know that there are people here who are gathered and you're saying to me, Will, I just don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can embrace the cross because I have so many other questions. And you're wrestling with these questions. You have questions about some of the hard teachings of Jesus. You can't perhaps quite get your mind around what the Bible has to say about creation or miracles or the Holy Spirit. You have questions about what the Bible teaches about sexual ethics and marriage, not to mention the doctrine of hell or how a benevolent, good, and loving God could even allow for such a place. You've got really good questions, and I mean good questions.

But here's my encouragement to you. As good as those questions are, don't let that be the starting point for you. Let the starting point be, did Jesus do these things? Is He who He says He was? Did He die on the cross? Was He placed in the ground? And did He rise from the grave, forever defeating sin and death?

Because here's the thing. If He has done that, which is meeting your most fundamental need of being reconciled to a holy God, if He has done that, then He can be trusted in every single one of these other things. So we wrestle with that first. We let that be the first question that we're wrestling with.

So, did He do these things? And if so, are you willing to embrace it? And that leads me to the second lesson that I think we derived this morning, and that is this. Embracing the cross demands that we lay everything else down. Embracing the cross demands that we lay everything else down. Both men paint a picture of this and help us see this.

One physically, and the other spiritually. When we look at Simon, we recognize he was kind of shoved into service by the Roman guards, and the implication would have been that he literally had to lay anything that he had with them down. Now, we don't know if he was carrying anything, but he traveled a long distance, and he was a passerby.

So he's shoved into service, and it would have meant to embrace this crossbar, meant that he would have had to lay everything down. But what about Joseph of Arimathea? In verse 43, Mark tells us that Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate and asked for the body of Christ.

Now, that might seem pretty innocuous, but when you really stop and think about it, it's actually very significant. For Joseph of Arimathea to identify with Christ in this way meant a willingness to lay down everything in his life. Remember, he had power. He had prestige. He had wealth.

He had tremendous influence. And so now, by coming forward to ask for the body of Christ, Joseph of Arimathea was saying, I'm willing to lay all of this down. I'm willing to lay all of that down in order to follow Christ. In other words, he's saying it's not about me. It's not about my influence. It's not about my money.

It's not about making a name for myself. I want my life to be about making famous the name of Jesus, and he laid it all down. You know, I was thinking this week, just in preparation for our time together this weekend, and I was asking myself, God, what are the things in my life that I am holding onto that are keeping me from experiencing a depth and intimacy with you?

What am I clinging to? What is most important to me that I need to lay down in order to experience something far greater, which is you? And it was as if God just opened my eyes to a pretty painful process of showing me, really, all throughout my life, how easy it is to let my pride well up and to seek the approval of people and to make a name for myself.

And how easy that is for me. And it was as if God was kind of pulling back the curtain and showing me some things in my life and some ways that this happened. And one of the things God reminded me of was of a time when I was in college, and I was a swimmer at NC State, and some of you right now are saying to yourself, you don't look like any swimmer I have ever known.

Well, that was a lot of years ago, so cut me a little slack, all right? But I remember very vividly one evening, my freshman year, we were training over Christmas break, and we didn't get a long Christmas break. We got like two or three days, and then we would have to be back on campus on the 26th, and we would train while everybody else was home for two weeks, two and three practices a day, and we'd work pretty hard. And I remember one evening, it was our third practice of the day, and we were doing this really difficult set, and we were about two-thirds of the way through it, and if I'm honest with you, man, I was working pretty hard. And so I was just kind of grinding this set out, and I come into the wall, and I turn over to look at the clock, you know, because you're always constantly looking at intervals, and you're preparing to go on the next interval. And when I touch the wall, my coach, one of my coaches is kneeling down, and he's kneeling down, and I hit the wall, and it kind of startles me because he's right there, and he's kind of in my face, and he points his finger at me, and he says, you are going to be great one day. I thought to myself, yes!

Yes, I am. I want to be great one day. I want to be remembered for the work that I am putting in here.

Now, I think it was the famous golfer, Lee Trevino, who says, the older I get, the better I was. And so I recognized, and I want full disclosure amongst my friends here at the Summit Church, full disclosure, I was never going to be an Olympian. I was never going to be a national champion. But the one thing that I thought I could accomplish while at NC State was I'd hoped that we could become ACC champions, and I hoped for me personally that I could get the school record in what was my best event. And so, man, I worked towards that, and I worked hard towards that. But when I'm honest, what the Lord began to reveal to me, and what I'm embarrassed to admit to you, is some of what my motivation was for that.

Because my motivation for that was really this. I thought to myself how great it would be to walk into the Natatorium at NC State, where when you walk in, what do you see? You see the record board, right? You see the record board with all the events and all the times and all the people's names who own those records. And I thought to myself, how great would it be to walk into this place and see my name lifted up? How great would it be to walk in and see there's my name, people to acknowledge my name as having done something good? Now, the rest of the story is I got that school record. I kept it for a few years, then it got broken, so now it's all for nothing.

But my point is simply this. It doesn't matter who you are. Every single one of us have things that we must be willing to lay down.

For Joseph of Arimathea, it was his wealth, it was his influence, it was his reputation and the like. What is it for you? What is God saying? If you want to lay this, laying this down is going to bring you something far greater than you've ever experienced before. Laying this down means that you pick me up, you gain me.

At my right hand are pleasures forevermore. You see the beautiful thing and what motivates us, the motivation behind us laying down everything is the fact that Jesus first laid everything down for us. When we read in Philippians chapter 2 where Paul would say, this is what Jesus did, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. It amazes me, church, to think that there was a moment in history where Jesus Christ our Lord looked at the beautiful expanse of heaven and all that heaven is comprised of and said, I am going to lay that down to come and be born in a manger and ultimately go to the cross. Where the scripture says he did it all for the joy set before him of bringing a people to himself that would ultimately bring glory and honor to our Heavenly Father.

We can lay it all down because he's first laid it all down for us. Joseph of Arimathea had seen Christ lifted up and now he was willing to lay it all down. Now he could say with Paul, I count everything as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

He just wants to know him and the power of his resurrection and then may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death that by any means possible he may attain the resurrection of the dead. Listen, when we truly embrace the cross, when we embrace Christ through faith and repentance, we are no longer slaves to this world and we are set free. Now we can say as the hymn writer would say, turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face and the things of this world will grow strangely dim.

What? In the light of his glory and grace. You see, Jesus said for whoever would save his life will lose it.

But whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it. Even in laying everything down, we are actually gaining. You are always gaining with God even when you're laying it down. Because you're laying this down and you're saying God I'm believing you and I know at the right hand our pleasures forevermore. At your right hand there is the fullness of joy.

These things are good gifts but they're only intended to point me to something better and that is you, the giver of the gift. So if we're going to embrace the cross then we have to lay everything down which leads to my third point and that is this. Fully embracing the cross leads to boldly engaging in his mission. To fully embrace the cross means that we will fully and boldly, courageously engage in his mission.

I want you to note something. When we read Mark's account here in chapter 15, again we might have the tendency if we only read this account to think of Joseph of Arimathea as strong, as courageous, as bold. Like he's going to Pilate right? He was just hours before sentenced Jesus to death. I mean this was a pretty risky endeavor on Joseph of Arimathea's part. In fact, Mark says that he took courage and went before Pilate. But remember that John's gospel paints a very different picture of Joseph of Arimathea. John helps us to see that Joseph of Arimathea was in fact a disciple but only one in secret.

He didn't want people to know that he was a follower of Christ because the scripture says he was fearful. Why was Joseph of Arimathea fearful? Listen, fear is the natural response when what you value the most is threatened. Fear is the natural response when what you value the most is threatened. Think about what everything Joseph of Arimathea stood to lose. He stood to lose his wealth, his power, his prominence, his influence, his name, his reputation, all those things he stood to lose.

So it shouldn't surprise us to see that Joseph of Arimathea was fearful because what defined him was being threatened. So I want to ask us really before I go any further and just make this statement. One of the best ways for you to understand and know where your affections lie or what's most important to you is to ask yourself this question. What are you most afraid to lose? What are you most afraid to lose?

Another way of asking that is this. What one thing, what one thing if you lost it would lead you to despair? What one thing if you lost it would lead you to think that life might just not be worth living? And the answer to that question, that's where your idols are. That's what's most important to you. That's what you worship.

That's where you're setting your affections. You see, and for Joseph of Arimathea, he was fearful because he stood to lose these things. But yet we find him here in Mark 15, something is different. Something has transpired. Yes, he was a believer, but now all of a sudden his courage was greater than his fear.

So what happened? Well, the crucifixion is what happened. He saw with his own eyes Jesus on the cross. He saw what Jesus had been saying now coming to fruition. And now he had seen the length through which God had gone to love him and to reconcile him to his heavenly father. So at some point during those course of events, Joseph of Arimathea said, I'm going to step aside, I'm going to lay all this down, and I'm going to go public with my faith.

You see, don't miss this, Summit Church. Being convinced of what Jesus has done gives us confidence in what he will do. Seeing what Jesus has done gives us confidence in what he will do.

That's why Mark says he is looking for the kingdom and he took courage. He's looking for that. He knows that this is going to come. He knows that God is going to establish his church and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. He knows that nothing can frustrate the plans of God. He knows that God is going to return and establish a new heaven and a new earth and God is going to reign and we are going to be his people and he is going to be our God and things will be as they should be. And that gave him the confidence in knowing, I can boldly go now to Pilate because I'm confident in what Christ has done and what he said he ultimately will do. Listen, being totally convinced of this, the fear that kept Joseph in private was overcome with the courage that led him to go public. I love how Pastor JD said it, listen, God doesn't call the brave, he makes brave the called.

And as we saw in previous weeks, it was true of Gideon and it's also true of Joseph of Arimathea. You see, when we fully embrace all that Christ has done for us, he promises us that he's going to give us everything necessary to fulfill his mission. Everything necessary to go and boldly proclaim the excellency of him who's called you and me out of darkness and into his marvelous light. Peter says it this way, his divine power has granted to us, what church?

All things that pertain to life and godliness. The very spirit of God that resurrected Christ from the dead is the same spirit that resides in you and so wherever you go, you can say with confidence, he is with me and I have nothing to fear. I have nothing to fear, let me go and be bold and courageous and engage in his mission.

I received an email this week from a friend who's serving in Central Asia. He was sharing with us an encounter that one of the men that he had been discipling had with his father. And as is the custom of this country, it's normal for a son and his wife and children to live with his father and mother. And so this believer was having others over to his house and they were studying God's word behind closed doors. And his father happened to walk in on him and see him studying the Bible. He confronted his son and he said, what are you doing? And he told him, his son, who we'll call John, John says to his dad, Dad, I must confess that now I am a follower of Jesus. And his father looked at him and said, I demand right now that you denounce who you believe in and you re-devote yourself to Islam. And he said, I can't do it. He said, I believe now that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life and I will not denounce him. At which point, his father reached back and slapped him across the face and said, get out.

Take your wife, take your child and get out of the house. And John looked at his father and he said, you will always be my father and my mom will always be my mother and I will always love you. And his father looked at him and said, you're no longer my son. And John said to his dad, he said, Dad, the one thing I would ask of you is not to share this with others, not because of what it means to me personally, but because what it might mean to the lives of those who had gathered in that room with me.

And John's father looked at him and he said, don't worry, I won't tell anyone because I would be ashamed for anyone to know that a son of mine has done such a terrible thing. You see, fully embracing the cross means boldly engaging in his mission and boldly engaging in his mission. We are confident that God is going to give us everything that we need to fulfill all that he is calling us to do, whether it be in a situation like John was experiencing or whether it be in a situation that you are experiencing.

Don't miss this. Listen, while Jesus's work is finished, it is not yet complete. Each of us must constantly pick up the cross and follow him.

And for each person, this is going to look different. For Joseph, it meant taking the bold step and asking for the body of Christ. What is that bold step for you? What is that bold step for you?

I want to close our time this morning by just asking that one fundamental question. What step is God leading you to take today? What one step is he leading you to take? For some of you, that step is the realization that you are holding on to things that you need to let go of. For you, that one step is asking God, what is that one thing that I am so afraid to lose? And that one step for you is to say, God, this is where my affections have been, and I am going to lay this down so that I may embrace you and the fullness of joy that you are. I'm going to no longer let these things define me, but I'm going to let the fact that I am a son and daughter of the most high God who bears the image of Christ now be my identity.

What is God leading you to lay down? For others of you, that one step today means taking a bold step. It means doing something that is bold and courageous because you're confident that God is with you and that he will never leave you. You know, carrying the cross sometimes begins with small and seemingly insignificant acts of faithfulness. For some of you, it might just mean asking someone to come to Easter services with you next weekend, recognizing that your invitation may change their eternal destiny. For others of you, it might mean saying, you know what, I'm a follower of Christ, but I need to go public, and I'm going to go public by being baptized, and I'm going to identify with the body of Christ.

I'm going to proclaim to this church that I have trusted Christ. For others of you, it might mean breaking up with your boyfriend or your girlfriend who you know isn't walking with God. For others of you, it might mean saying no to a job because that job is going to lead you to not be able to spend time with your family and fulfill the mission God has called you to in your home. For others of you, it might mean joining a small group or joining the church or engaging on a mission trip. What small and maybe seemingly insignificant act of faith is God leading you to take today?

And still for others of you, that one step, that one step for you today is going to be for the very first time. Acknowledge that you are a sinner and that Jesus has done everything necessary to save your soul. And that first step for you is just to confess with your mouth and believe that Jesus is Lord and know full well that when you do, you will be saved.

So will you join me in prayer? God, I would simply ask in these moments, just these few moments of quiet reflection, God, that you would make it abundantly clear to us, what are the things, God, that we must lay down? What are the things that we are so afraid to lose, God, that are keeping us from experiencing the fullness of joy that you have promised us? Help us to see, God, that if we try to save our lives, if we try to find our identity here, we're going to lose it. But if we will lay down our lives, we gain Christ.

He is our reward. God, would you help us to see those one small, seemingly insignificant acts of faith that you're leading us to? Help us to commit ourselves afresh and anew to that today. And God, for those who need to trust you for the very first time this morning, I pray, God, I pray that they would just pray a simple prayer like this. God, I recognize that I am a sinner and that my sin is against you, a holy God.

But I believe that Jesus has come and was crucified, buried and resurrected and done everything necessary to save me. And so I trust you with my life and I lay it all down to follow Christ. God, would you do these things in your people? Do it in me. God, that we might leave here changed. That we might leave here, God, passionately, intimately walking with you and advancing your kingdom. God, would you do it?