Welcome back to Truth Network. I'm your host, Mike Kelly. We are so excited to have you here today. It is good to see you. How is the 11 o'clock crowd doing?
You guys doing well today? Wow, you guys are with us and you are here. We are so, so grateful for that. I know we have a lot of guests. Each and every week we have guests to visit. Today is a special day just because we are celebrating baptisms brought some of our guests here today or possibly you just saw us online and just slipped in here today. It is so good to have you.
If we have not met before, my name is Josh. I'm the pastor here at Union Grove and it is my privilege to welcome you to our midst here today. I do want to say one thing that if you've been attending our church for any length of time and you're kind of interested in becoming a member here or taking that step of membership here with us, we would love for you to take that step. We have a thing called Starting Point that we do every two months as an opportunity that we get to bring people that are newer to our church and some who have been here for months and a few who have been here for years will come in there and they just want to learn more about going deeper in their connection with our church. If you've been attending for any length of time and you want to take that step, we would love for you to be a part of that.
You can sign up for Starting Point online through our website. It is happening on Sunday evening, May the 18th and we would love for you to be a part of that. If you have your Bible with you today, you can turn with me or join me in Mark chapter number two.
As you are turning or scrolling, however you got the Bible, it will be up on the screens as well to help you out here today. We are continuing a series that we started last week. We started this last week, a brand new series entitled God in the Details.
In fact, can we say that together? God in the Details. This series is a series that we started last week, the week right after Easter. We are looking at really how our relationship with God should impact every area of your life. I've been around, as many of you have been a part of our church, you know my story.
I've been around church my entire life. Sometimes we tend to compartmentalize our relationship with the Lord. Sometimes we think that our relationship with God is just something that we do on Sunday morning, or if you go to a Bible study during the week, or perhaps maybe a few minutes of a devotion in the morning before you leave. Sometimes we think our relationship with God are just those things. Now let me be clear, it is those things, but it is so much more than just those things.
Does that make sense? Sometimes what we do is we have our priorities, like our family, and our career, and our kids' ball teams, and our schools, and we have this whole priority list, and we put our relationship with God on our priority list. What God wants is this. He doesn't just want to be a priority on your list. He wants to be the center of all of the priorities on your list.
He wants to be the center of all of your priorities on your list. So in our series, we are looking, last week we looked at God in our career, our work. God wants to be at the center of that. Today we are going to look at God in our community. God wants to be the center of that. Next week we will look at God in our family. God wants to be the center of your family. And then on May the 18th, we'll conclude the series with this idea that God wants to be the center of the choices and decisions that we make each and every day. And so today we are going to look at God and my community.
God and our community here in Mark chapter number two. And so just to kind of open up, I want to ask you this question. How many of you have, you don't say it out loud, but how many of you have without a doubt a favorite movie? How many of you have a favorite movie?
Okay. How many of you have a favorite TV show? Just all time? It's your favorite? It's your go-to? Well, everybody has those. And so I have a favorite movie. I'm not going to say what it is, but if you want to know what it is, you can come to me and ask me afterwards.
Okay. But I have a favorite movie and I love this one movie. It's comedy and it's just funny and this kind of thing. So I watched it a thousand times as a kid. And as I've gotten older, several years ago, there was somebody who had never seen my favorite movie, never seen my favorite movie. And when you love something like a movie or a show, or perhaps it could be a restaurant, whatever, what you love, you tend to want everybody else to experience the same thing, right? So you sit down with this person and you're like, you've never seen this movie. And so we have to get together and watch this movie. And then when you finally get that time and you're watching it or whatever, you're kind of watching how they react to everything.
You know what I'm saying? And you're kind of like, Hey, don't miss this. Don't miss this. Pay attention.
This is the best part. And you begin to do that. Or, or if you take somebody to your favorite restaurant, right? And you love that restaurant and you, so you take somebody for the very first time and, and they're sitting there and you told them what to order because you know, what's good at your favorite restaurant. And right when they're taking their first bite, you're like, look, and you're like, how's it?
How is it? How is it right? You make it a little awkward, but here's the point is that what we love, we want other people to experience.
Isn't that true? Or what we are passionate about. We want other people to experience that it's natural for us to, when we have experienced something that we love for us to want somebody else to experience the same thing that we love that is normal behavior. Well, it works that way in our community. When we think about our community, it's this is that if you have experienced what Jesus has done in your life, and you have a relationship with him, the only natural result of that is you should want everybody around you in your community to experience the same thing.
You should desire that everybody around you experience what you have experienced in Jesus. So that's what we're going to talk about today, God in our community. And I want to define as well, just before we get into the text, I want to define what I mean by community. Community is your circle. Community is your sphere of influence. Community is where you do life, where you do life.
So for example, it could look like this. Your community is the people you work with, right? You spend a lot of time with them. That can be considered your community. Your community can be your neighborhood, right?
Your neighbors, the people that you do life with in your community. That can also be your circle. It could be if your kids, if you're like us, my kids play community sports all the time. We're always at a different gym for basketball, or a gym for volleyball, or a field for baseball, and my kids are always in our community with that. That could be a part of your community, your circle at places like that. Your school, your school where you go to school, that can be part of your community, the gym that you work out in every day.
That can be the guys you work out with there. That can be a part of your community, right? The point is that our community is the circle in which we live in and the people around us that we do life with. And what I want you to understand today, and we're going to see this from the text is this idea, is that what we have experienced in Jesus, we should want the people in our community to experience the very same thing. What we have experienced in our relationship with Jesus, we should want others to experience the same thing. Well here in Mark chapter number 2, we see Mark writing about a few friends who had experienced what Jesus could do so much that they determined to bring somebody else to experience the very same thing. Now I want to say up front, this is a very familiar passage, so if you've been in church for any length of time, you probably are going to know this passage very well.
But I want to encourage you, we can always learn something new even through familiar passages, so make sure that you kind of look and maybe you'll learn something new, and then perhaps if you're newer to church, this could be a brand new story for you. But Mark chapter number 2 says this, verse 1, and again, he, that's Jesus, entered into Capernaum after some days and it was noise that he was in in the house. So just before we go on, just to kind of set this up so that you can kind of feel the story and understand what's going on, Jesus in his earthly ministry, he would most of the time do ministry going from house to house. They didn't have massive buildings like we have and things like that, and so many times he would do his ministry and his teaching a lot of times from a house, and he'd be standing there teaching and what would happen is that the multitudes would come and they would follow him. Now his multitudes were, some were the religious crowd and they were looking for ways to get him, some were just critical about what he was doing, some were there just because they've seen and heard that he did some really cool miracles and they just wanted another trick and different things, and then some were actually there because they followed Jesus. But here he is in Capernaum, which is where Jesus spent most of his adult ministry, and he is in Capernaum and he has come to a house.
Many believe that this was Peter's house. And he is there in the house and he is teaching, and while he is there, the place was absolutely packed. So you get the sense that there was no room. I mean, it was like there were people probably crammed in there like sardines. I can imagine that there was a lot of people that couldn't get in, so if you picture a house, they're probably waiting outside what we would call around the porch and around the house, kind of by windows, trying to listen, trying to lean in to what Jesus was actually trying to say. But the place was completely packed. Verse number two, in a straight way, many were gathered together, insomuch that there was no room to receive them.
No, not so much as about the door. And he preached the word unto them, and they came unto him, bringing one that was sick of the palsy. So these guys, they bring this man that was paralyzed, which was born of four, and when they could not come near unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was, and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, note that phrase, because we're going to come back to it, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee. But there were certain of the scribes sitting there and reasoning in their hearts, saying, Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God only?
So you kind of get the setting here. So Jesus is teaching in a house, the place is packed, there's no room, standing room only, outside, they're gathered around, nobody can get in. It is completely packed with people, and Jesus is teaching. Well these men, they bring this paralyzed man to Jesus, and they were determined to get him to see Jesus.
Why? Because what they experienced in Jesus, clearly, they wanted this man to experience. They knew that this man could not only forgive, but he could heal this man of being paralyzed since birth. And so they are determined to get him there, so when they get there, and I can imagine on their way to the house, they're probably thinking, Well, this is going to be a great day, this is going to be awesome, wait till you see Jesus, wait till you meet Jesus, and all this kind of stuff.
And when they get there, they can't get to him. Now, for us, we would probably think, Well, we tried, I guess it's, hey, let's call it a day, let's head back. There's nothing that we can do.
We tried our best, we brought him this far, but there's nothing more that we can do. But the guys, they were like, they were innovative, and they decided, Hey, let's figure out what to do. So their first idea, and this always amazes me, I wish that I had more details to this story.
And there's probably a reason why Mark didn't give us more details, because we'd focus on the details and not the point of the story. But I do wonder how this was like, out of all the ideas that they could ever muster up, somebody in the group said, Hey, guys, I got it. I got the perfect idea. Why don't we crawl to the top of this house? And why don't we tear open the roof, and we drop him in?
Could you imagine somebody coming up with an idea so crazy, and so silly? Just picture it like this, say this place was completely packed. There was no room to get in. And you've invited somebody, maybe a friend, maybe somebody that you knew, and you wanted them to come in here because what Jesus could do in their life, you believed it could change their life.
And so you come and there's no room to get in. And you're thinking how in the world I brought this guy this far. Could you imagine thinking, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to get on the roof. I'm going to tear open a hole in the roof, and I'm going to lower him down. What a great idea. Nobody would say that's a good idea, right? But these guys were like, let's do it.
So they get them on top of the roof, and they lower him down. And in the midst of that, as you can imagine, there's critics. By the way, anytime somebody tries to do something for the Lord, there's always critics.
Always. And here there's critics. And here's what's interesting to me. I've been around church my entire life. The critics usually come from the religious crowd, don't they? They're the ones who are the deep church people, right? People that have been in church their whole life. They're usually the ones that criticize the works of God that are trying to take place in front of them.
And that's exactly what happened. As these guys were gathered together, and you can imagine the religious crowd probably had the front seats there in this house, and they're listening to Jesus. And about that time, they begin to, you know, some dust is coming from the ceiling, and they begin to look up like what is happening here. And all of a sudden, these guys open up the roof, and they lower a man down, and it says that these men begin to reason in their heart and in their mind, being critical about Jesus, looking at them and saying to this man, your sins be forgiven. Now here's what I want you to understand.
They didn't say these things out loud. It says that they reasoned in their heart. I think this is a good thing just to remember. God sees not just what you say and how you behave on the outside. He knows what you're thinking right now. He knows the thoughts that we have, and He sees those things. You can't hide anything from God. You can't hide anything from Him. He sees it all.
He knows it all. And right here, the religious crowd, they're critical, and they're thinking, why in the world is this guy blaspheming, and how in the world, who does he think he is that he says your sins be forgiven? He can't forgive sins. Our story continues in verse number eight. And immediately, when Jesus perceived in His Spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, He said unto them, why reason ye these things in your hearts?
Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say arise and take up thy bed and walk? Now, that's a really good question, by the way. Think about it. So Jesus, He responds back to them. He says, hey, what's easier?
You tell me. He points it back to the religious crowd. He says, what's easier, for me to say thy sins be forgiven, or for me to say rise up and walk? Now, if you think about those two things is this, is that, in my opinion, this is what I think.
I think it's easier to say your sins are forgiven. You want to know why? It's because that's kind of a personal thing.
It's internal. You really don't know. He could have told this man, your sins be forgiven, and everybody would just wonder and assume that worked and everything. You know what would have been really hard for him to say is, hey, rise up and walk, and if the guy didn't rise up and walk, then everybody would know that Jesus was a fraud.
So he asked this question, he says, hey, what do y'all think would be easier for me to do? Your sins are forgiven or rise up and walk. He goes on to say this, verse number 10, but that ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins. You see, the question that was raised here in this moment with the religious crowd was this, who does Jesus think he is? And what Jesus was telling him is this, he's saying this, what you're going to learn today is not only do I have the power to raise a guy and let him who has never walked and now he walks, I actually have a power in me. I actually have an authority in me that is much and far greater than that. I have the authority to forgive someone's sins.
He has the power, the authority on earth to forgive sins. He saith to the sixth of Paul, verse 11, I say unto thee, arise and take up thy bed and go thy way into thine house. And immediately he arose, took up the bed and he went forth before them all in so much that they were all amazed and glorified God saying, we never saw it on this fashion.
I mean, you could translate that. We've never seen anything like this before. When I think of this community in which we live and the community in which you do life, this is the kind of thing that I think we as believers need to be doing. This is what I desire to see. I want a work of God. I want to move of God in our midst so great that our community just looks at what God is doing and they have no explanation except for saying, wow, we've never seen anything like this before. But in order for us to see a move of God like that, a move of God so great like that, here's what it's going to have is a bunch of Christians, Christ's followers.
Here's what we have to remember. God wants to use us to help others experience what we have experienced in Jesus. You see, think that our relationship with God is just a place we go on Sunday. Our relationship with God is just what we, you know, our Bible studies and different things. And then when we leave here and we go into the community, we think like we almost take off our relationship with God hat and we put on our work hat, we put on our dad hat, we put on our wives hat, we put on all these different things, you know, your baseball coach hat, you put on your school hat, you put on whatever.
And what we do is we go into the community and we forget that the reason why God has changed our life and the reason why he's placed us in the different circle and the community in which he's placed us in is so that he could use us to help others experience what we have experienced in Jesus Christ. I don't know about you, but that's what I want for my life. I want God to use me in this community. I want God to use me at a ball field. I want God to use me at the gym. I want God to use me in my family.
I want God to use me. But here we have a story about some guys that showed up believing that what they had experienced in Jesus, it was worth the cost and it was worth all the embarrassment. It was worth everything for them to get this other man to Jesus. If you're in here and you say, that's what I want for my life, I want what I have experienced in Jesus for the people around me to experience that, there's two things from this passage that I think are helpful for us. The first thing you need is you've got to possess persistent faith. You've got to possess persistent faith when it comes to your community. This story is amazing to me because if you think about persistency, verse four, we'll read it again just because this is a wild story. They would not come nigh unto them for the press. They couldn't get them so they uncovered the roof, literally where he was when they had broken it up, literally tore the roof apart.
They let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay. This story really shows us the persistency of people to get somebody to Jesus, right? But here's what I'll tell you about persistency. We're persistent about what matters to us, are we not?
You're persistent about what you really care about. Think about it, we're persistent with sports. We'll do anything right to get the ticket to the game, won't we? We'll do anything to get the ticket to the concert.
We'll do anything, because why? Because we're persistent about what we care about. Think about persistency. I can remember when I was studying this, there was something that popped into my head about persistency with my children. I have two kids, so I have an 11-year-old and I have a 13-year-old. If you're like us, sometimes when you get an evening at home, which is very rare I feel like, but for us, we have this evening at home and my kids, I feel like the only thing that goes through their mind all day is, what are we having for the next meal? They expect mom and dad to always know what we're having. I don't know if you're like us, but sometimes we haven't planned out everything well and when they ask us, we're like, we haven't even decided yet. Here was my response that day, me and my wife. We said to our kids, we said, we don't know, but we never get an evening at home. We're going to hang out at home and we're going to find something in the house to eat.
How many parents do that from time to time? Are we the only ones sometimes without a real plan? We didn't have a plan. They said, we don't want something in the house.
We can't find anything in the house we like. It's always that way. I'm like, you liked this yesterday. What's the difference? They said, can we go to McDonald's? Just a fine establishment. I said, no, we're staying here.
We're going to find something here. They kept begging me and so I said something I probably shouldn't have said, but I said to them, I said, all right, I'll run you up to McDonald's. We'll get takeout, but you have to pay for it.
And so they didn't have the money that they needed at the time. And so my daughter, she said, 13 years old, she said, well, dad, since we have to pay for it, would you care if we used your McDonald's app rewards for our meals? So, because I think you have enough reward points that it will cost us nothing. And so I said, I was like, okay, I was like, whatever, I don't eat at McDonald's just when I'm with you guys. And so I said, that's fine, you can use the rewards. So she said, let me see your phone. So I handed her my phone and she pulled up the McDonald's app and she began to put in their order and she put the rewards for the first meal, her meal, and then she said, dad, there's a problem. She said, we can only use rewards for one item. And they said, so mine is free, but Cameron's is not.
Okay. And she said, but I have a workaround. She said, all we have to do is place two orders, two separate orders. So she said, what we can do is we can go around the drive-through with one order and then we will place the second order and just drive right back around the drive-through and we'll go through the McDonald's drive. Like I have nothing else better to do to spend the one night that I get at my house driving through the McDonald's drive-through two different times. And so I'm like, so like most dads are probably thinking that's crazy, but I'm kind of like, that would be funny.
We should do this. And so I said, whatever, that's fine. And I said, but Lindley, I said, you know, what's weird is that you guys are the passengers in this situation. I'm the driver and the person at the window, they only look at the driver. You guys can go in incognito and nobody knows you went through here two times, but you know, who can't get away from that is me.
They're going to know, man, this guy really loves McDonald's that he's here twice, you know, back to back. And so Lindley said, well, I have a way around that. I said, what do you mean? She said, you have to change in between the visits around.
And I don't know why, but sometimes dads do weird things. I said, okay, we'll do that. True story. And so a few months ago we go through there. I wish I had a picture of this because I took a picture.
This is kind of funny. Um, I, I was like, I am not changing for real. Um, but we went through the first time everything was good. And then we pulled off into a parking space here at McDonald's and um, and uh, we ordered the second meal and so we go around and she said to Cameron who was in the front seat the first time, she said, we have to switch places.
So now Lindley's in the front seat for the second time. And she said, dad, that's serious. At the time I had a t-shirt on and, and she said, dad, I know you wear one of those like white Peter things is what they're calling dead serious. True story. And she said, you need to wear that and you need to wear Cameron's hat when you go through the second time and she will never know that it was, it was you.
I'm thinking there are not two people alike with this voice on the face of the planet. And I was like, she will know that it's me. And so I said, why not? We do stupid things for our kids sometimes. And they were persistent. She said, dad, do it, do it, do it.
We will do it. And so that's how I went. I literally looked like a full, uh, this was the one time I did not invite this lady to church cause she wasn't going to come at all.
And so, but I pull up there and I had a hat on and that's what I did. And guess what? We got free McDonald's that day for these two kids or whatever. Here's all I'm going to say. I don't know why I told you the story, but they were persistent.
Why? Cause they were persistent and what matters to them at the time they wanted that they wanted. So they were willing to do anything it took. They were willing to go through the embarrassment, the weirdness, the everything about it. They were willing to do anything to get what they wanted. They were persistent in doing that. Listen, if you think about these guys, they, they come to this house and, and there's no way in, there's no way in.
They could have any time a door shuts in front of you. What do you do? You typically just run and you kind of say, that's it. I quit. This must be the end. Why do I need to do anything more? Or we get discouraged or we give up and think this is it.
There's no nothing else that we can do. But these guys looked at opposition as an opportunity. They looked at the opposition in front of them and they, they counted the cost and they begin to look and say, okay, and you can imagine, and this is the stories I want to, I want to know about is like, was this like a meeting that they had? Was this a quick decision?
Like how did they come about? Was there seven wrong decisions before they came up with this one? I want to know what went on in this conversation about deciding this, but what they looked at was the opposition in front of them could lead us to an opportunity that is greater than any of the opposition that we face. In other words, what you learn here is that the men had to count the cost, didn't they?
Think about the cost of this. Like it was embarrassing, was it not? Like you go tearing through somebody's roof, people you don't know, that's embarrassing. That's weird. In Florida, we hosted a Bible study in our house. We had about 13 couples in our house every week and we had all these couples come and we would, we would study the Bible together in our downstairs and we had babysitters that would go upstairs with the kids and they do a little lesson and then they would let them play and stuff like that. And I kid you not, there were sometimes we were in there, we're studying the Bible, revival's breaking out, the Spirit's moving and our like, because the kids were right above us, like your little like fan would start to shake. And I'm thinking these kids are about to come through my ceiling right now. And I was just thinking the whole time I was like, man, I cannot focus on the Bible study because I'm thinking they're destroying my house up there. Could you imagine being the homeowner in this situation? Could you imagine like, oh man, they're tearing open the roof. I wonder if they kind of said, whoa, whoa, whoa, who do you think you are?
Like there's so many details to the story that I'm just curious about. But here it was embarrassing. It was expensive. It was dangerous. It was bold.
But here's the point. These guys, they counted all of those costs. They knew it was embarrassing. They knew it was bold. They knew it was expensive. They knew it was dangerous.
But here's the point. They counted the cost and they realized what could happen in this guy's life is greater than any of the opposition or any of the costs that it takes to get him to Jesus. They were persistent. They looked at their friend who needed Jesus. They weighed the cost and they concluded that this man in need of Jesus is worth the embarrassment. This man in need of Jesus is worth the danger. This man in need of Jesus is worth the expense. This man needing Jesus is worth the fear. This man needing Jesus is worth all of the awkwardness about this story. And listen, for us church, I believe every one of you want to be used in this community, but you know what we do a lot of times? Any times we get asked something that we don't know that full answer to, maybe from scripture or theological, what do we do? We kind of clam up and we're like, man, I'm not the guy for this. Let's let a pastor get involved here. Anytime we invite somebody to church or something spiritual or an event or you try to open up a gospel conversation and you get rejected, what do we do?
We quit and we think this is it. This is not for me. This is for the pastors of the church.
This is for other people. A lot of times we run and what I'm saying is that if we want God to work in our community and we want God to do things in our community that are so great that everybody would say, wow, we've never seen anything like this before. It's going to take you and I being persistent about our gospel conversations that are happening in our community. We have to be persistent in it. But number two, we have to, or I'll say it this way, don't forget that Jesus still has the power to save anybody.
Now listen, I'm just going to tell you right now, when I wrote this point, don't forget this. This is kind of a duh kind of moment, right? Like you guys are church people. You look at this and you think, well, duh, we know Jesus has the power to save anybody. We believe that. But here's the thing that struck me about this is that, you know, they say that what we believe will be revealed in how we behave, right? You believe that. True statement. It's true of life. What you really believe will dictate how you behave.
I'm just not sure we all really believe this. Like if I was to go around this room and ask every single one of you, when was the last time you shared the message of Jesus with somebody? When was the last time you shared the gospel with somebody? When was the last time you invited somebody over to your house so that you could have a gospel conversation or build a relationship with somebody who needs Jesus? If you say, man, pastor, I don't know if I've ever done that, then do you really believe that? You can say in the church house, oh man, I believe this all day long, but how that really is going to be demonstrated is what we do with it out there.
What we do with it out there. And when you think about this story, what's amazing to me is here in verse number five, it says, when Jesus saw their faith. When Jesus saw their faith.
You know what's interesting to me? Jesus didn't recognize their strategy, did he? Like I'm a church guy. I'm a church leader. I love good strategies, but you know what? Jesus didn't say, wow, what a fantastic outreach strategy of these guys.
He didn't say, wow, I love your process. I love your idea. I love your style.
I love all of this kind of stuff. And those things are important and there's nothing wrong with those things because I actually do a lot of those for a living and I care about those things and I think they're important. But here's what I want you to know. What's the most important thing when we interact with our community? It's that we really believe this. That we really believe that if we get our neighbors to experience Jesus, that he can change their life. If we get the person that we work with to experience Jesus, that he can change their life.
Strategies are great, but belief in this is what matters more than any strategy known to man. Because when Jesus saw them lowering him down, it says that Jesus saw their faith. You know what these guys believed? They believed that if we could get him to Jesus, Jesus will change their life, change his life. They believed it and they meant it and it was recognized by their faith. Number three, we got to give all the glory to God.
If you look at the end of this story, I love this. Immediately he arose, he took up the bed and he went forth before them all, before everybody. I think that's, you know, Mark saying this like fact check me. This isn't just something that I said. This is something that everybody saw. This man who had never walked before is now walking in front of everybody.
Ask any of them, they'll tell you the exact same thing of what I'm writing to you today. In so much that they were all amazed and glorified God saying, we never saw it on this fashion before. When you see Jesus, listen, when you see Jesus on display, it wows us.
It amazes us. And when we think about our community, the place, the circle that we live in, that's what I want. I want our church, Union Grove, when I pray through Union Grove and I pray for our future and I pray for our mission and our vision, here's what I want. I want us to be so enamored by what God is doing. I want us to watch and to see. I'm so grateful that we get to celebrate with baptisms today because there's a lot of churches that don't get to celebrate this often.
Like don't get over it. When you celebrate this and you rejoice with those who have trusted Jesus and they're not scared to make that public within us, like that should excite us. That should wow us. That should help us.
We should want to rejoice with that. And when I think about this community, I'm thinking like, God in our community, what in the world can you imagine for just a few moments if every follower of Jesus that is in this place said, you know what? I want to be like these guys. Now I'm not telling you to go and just tear open places of your place of employment and other people's houses, but if you're like, man, I want to be like these guys in the way I believe about Jesus that the amount of faith that these guys had that Jesus could save them.
I want to live like that. Could you imagine what would happen in our community if every single one of us in this place took Jesus to our ball teams, took Jesus to the gym, took Jesus to our places of employment, took Jesus to our schools, took Jesus to our neighborhoods and took Jesus everywhere we go. Man, could you imagine for just a moment what would happen in our community? I believe that if every single one of us committed to do that, I'm not kidding, I really believe that God would do something in this community where the only answer is, wow, we've never seen anything like this before. Listen, church, God's doing some things here. I believe it. We get to baptize seven people today, I'm super excited about that, over the last couple of months, and this is just a testament to you, and I'm grateful for you that are really taking the mission of Jesus personally and owning it. But I celebrate these kind of numbers.
In March and April, we saw 53 first-time guests come through our doors. Like, that is awesome. And here's what that is. That is you and people in our church saying, hey, I'm taking this mission and I'm taking it upon myself. This isn't just the pastor's mission, it's not just the staff's mission, it's not just the deacon's mission, it's not the Bible Fellowship teacher's mission, it's our mission. And you've taken it upon yourself and you've invited people in so that you could help them experience what Jesus has done in their life.
And today we get to celebrate with seven people, seven people who have said yes to Jesus Christ. That should wow us, and that should excite us for what God is doing. But listen, God is not done in this community. God is not done. He still wants to do something great, but for us, the challenge is simple. Are you willing to take Jesus into your neighborhood, to your friends, to your family, to your co-workers, to your community, to help others experience what you have experienced with Him?
Sometimes we gotta take it. We gotta take the message of Jesus. Like, it's easy to be a Christian in this place. It's easy to sing and to say amen and all that kind of stuff. But what, like what you say you believe in here is simple. But what really dictates if you really believe it will be determined by what you do with it out there. And we should take God, don't let God just be something we do on Sunday. Let God be something that impacts the way you interact with your community around us. Can we bow our heads for prayer?
