Okay, let me pray for us and then we'll jump into the message this morning. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your grace. We thank you for this morning. We thank you, Lord God, that your love has caused us to open our eyes to see the truth of what it is that we have.

And we know, Father, that even our understanding of the Gospel is because you've been gracious to us. I pray, Father, God, that your Holy Spirit would continue to convict, renew, strengthen, and revive us, Lord God, for the sake of your name. We pray that the power of your Holy Spirit would be real this morning, that your word would go forth and it would convict us, revive us, encourage us, Lord God, to run this race with perseverance.

So we pray, Father, for your grace. We pray for your Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. >> You know, a few years back I was helping a doctor friend of mine move from one apartment to another place. And then he had a bunch of his doctor friends come.

And I got in a conversation with one of the doctors who was an oncologist. And in the context of the conversation, I asked him, "It must be really hard for you because part of your job is to tell people that they have cancer. And oftentimes when they find out about it, it's too late.

And so part of their job is to sit down and counsel families and tell them to prepare for the end and that death is coming." And I asked him, "It must be really difficult. How do you not bring that home?" And he said, "You know, after a while you just become numb to it." You know, he said sometimes he would actually sit, he would have his colleagues who would go in and tell somebody, "You have three months to live." And then they would come outside and they would just joke and laugh like nothing happened.

And he said that that's very common in the oncology department. So not to say that every doctor is that way, but he says that that's how they've learned to deal with what they have to do on a regular basis. And obviously it would be very encouraging to be able to help somebody who is sick and to be able to heal them with the medicine.

But oftentimes that's not the case. But again, it was surprising to me how callous we can become toward life and death. But as I was thinking about that, I think about how even spiritually we can become so callous in the way that we live our Christian lives, where our doctrine and our life is so segregated and separate that we say tremendous things up on the pulpit in our daily, in our praises and our Bible studies and memorizing scripture.

But it doesn't always reflect in the way that we live our lives. We know if you are a believer, biblical believer of the gospel of Jesus Christ, part of the gospel tells us not only are we going to be saved, but he says judgment is coming to the world.

Matthew 13, 49 to 15. So it will be at the close of the age, the angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth for every single individual in this room who professes to believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ must embrace that too.

You can't just pick and choose certain parts of scripture that I believe. And if you, again, if you confess your faith in Jesus Christ, that this is part of your confession that there is judgment waiting for those who have not been, since have not been atoned for. In fact, he said, the judgment is so severe in Mark chapter 9, 42 through 50.

He says, if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the quenchable fire, unquenchable fire. He said, this judgment is so hideous that it would be better to have your limbs cut off than to allow that limb to drag you into hell.

Verse 45, if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. Is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched, for everyone will be salted with fire.

I know in our generation that we try to shy away from passages of judgment because it rocks our world. We don't know what to do with it. It's not a message that we would like to share. We want to highlight the grace and love of God, but yet at the same time, the scripture makes it absolutely crystal clear.

The reason why we are in dire need of grace is because of the judgment that is coming. It is not because we have a hard time living. It's not because we are lonely. It's not because we want to have hope that when we die, we're going to go to heaven.

All of these things may be true, but at the core of why we need the mercy of God and the atonement of Jesus Christ is because the scripture says there's judgment waiting for those who are not saved. And so we celebrate as men and women who have been saved from this fire, from this judgment.

And yet, I think we have to say, we have to honestly admit that at times we're no different than some of the oncologists that we talked about where we can talk about all of this, hear this, maybe even be shocked a little bit for a momentary time, and then we go out that door and we just click it off.

We just click it off. We talk about it sometimes. We maybe share it in Bible study, but we turn it off when we go to work. We turn it off sometimes even with other Christians because the reality of what this message says, what the reality that is pictured for us in scripture is too heavy to bear.

So we choose to become callous. We choose to marginalize some doctrines in order that we may live a peaceful and quiet life. Psychologists actually has a term for this. They call it hedonic adaptation. Hedonic adaptation. Basically what hedonic adaptation is that we have a tendency that if we share, no matter how shocking of bad or good news it is, eventually we become numb to the news and we kind of learn to adapt and kind of coast along.

This is basically what it says. Hedonic adaptation is a mental habit of overstimulation of certain things which eventually becomes mundane. Once it becomes mundane, we become insensitive to hearing, seeing, feeling, tasting what is around us. Sometimes it is called hedonic treadmill. It's kind of like when we're riding on a treadmill, we don't think.

It just goes. Because it's going, you just go along with it. But you're not really meditating. You're not really thinking. And that's what that psychological state is. Where you've heard the message so many times, where we don't think much about it. In fact, we become dull. That's why Jesus Christ, whenever he said something of significance, remember he says, he who has ears, let him hear.

Who doesn't have ears? Who can't hear? He's talking about an individual who has become so numb to the truth of God that when the Lord himself, the Son of God himself is speaking the truth, they could not hear him. Maybe there's certain things that we do that we kind of have to learn to turn off the consequence.

Maybe. You know, I can understand that. Maybe if you're a police officer and you're seeing horrendous things, that you've got to learn to turn that off when you come home. Maybe if you're an oncologist, you have to learn to turn that off and not to be able to have a normal life.

But as a Christian, when our heart is not engaged with the things that we profess, we can no longer be worshipers of God. Because you and I know that worship is more than what we do physically in this room. In fact, if you remember the Old Testament, God deliberately, he forsakes Saul and he chooses David, but his rationale behind why he chooses David to lead his people, again, it's explained in Acts 13.22.

He says, "He raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, 'I have found in David, the son of Jesse, the man after my own heart.'" He says he chooses David because he sees beyond the surface and he sees what's in his heart. And here's a man who knows my heart.

And as a result of that, he says, he's a man after my own heart, "who will do all my will." The one who does his will is the one who understands his heart. You and I cannot disengage. If we have a callous heart, it affects even the way that we understand scripture.

What comes through this morning is also contingent upon the condition of your heart. What you receive and reject, what seems reasonable and unreasonable, what seems fair and unfair is directly linked to the condition of our heart. See, the scripture says that you and I receive the mercy of God because he had compassion on us.

He didn't act simply logically because it would be logical that you and I be punished for our sins. It would only be just if God, a holy God, looked at his creation and said, "These people are rebelling against me, dragging my name through the mud," that they deserve judgment.

So what the scripture says, he had compassion. Hosea 11 verse 8, he describes a relationship with his people where they keep forsaking him to seek after idols, but he says, "I will be patient with Israel because of my compassion." In Micah 7, 19, he says, "Israel is receiving the judgment of God," but he says, "I will not remain in my judgment because I have compassion." In fact, in Psalm 103, 10 through 13, our salvation is described this way.

He does not deal with us according to our sins nor repay us according to our iniquities, for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us, as a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

It is because of his compassion toward us that you and I are here. And that's why when he looks at his people, he desires us to be compassionate, that we are not callous. In fact, if you look at scripture, everything God does is an act of compassion. In Matthew 14, 14, it says, "When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick." He wasn't simply like, "Oh, you know what?

I'm God and I need to be obligated." He said, "He looked upon them and he had compassion." Matthew 15, 32, it talks about why he fed the 5,000. We know that he did it to prove his identity. We know that he did it because it was at the peak of his success, but his underlying emotional motive said he had compassion.

It was compassion in Mark 1, 40, why he healed the leopards, it says. It was because of his compassion, he healed the demon-possessed in Mark chapter 5. It was because he had compassion in Luke 7, 11, that he had compassion for the widow of Nain. The two blind men mentioned in Matthew 20, 30, 34, is because he had compassion.

Why is this so important? Because if we confess that there is hell and judgment waiting, and I know that, again, in our culture, that we don't want to talk about this because it makes people feel uncomfortable. Life is difficult as it is. You don't know what it is like at my work.

You don't know what my family is like. You don't know the trouble that I'm in. So we don't want to be at church and talk about heavy things. But we would be lying to ourselves if all we do is pick and choose the things that makes us feel comfortable.

And you choose to marginalize things that are clearly spelled out in Scripture for us. How can we not have compassion? The opposite of compassion is callousness. Callousness is described this way in the dictionary. It's a synonym for the word "callous-are." To cauterize. Be thick-skinned. To be hardened. Insensitive. Deadened feelings.

Indifference to suffering. Cold-blooded. Emotionally hardened. Jesus said to His disciples, Matthew 8, 17 and 21, when He was teaching them about Himself as the bread and how He was going to go to the cross, He was frustrated with them. But in the way He described why they weren't able to understand, He says, "Do you not understand why have you become so hardened?" Their ability to even understand what Jesus was saying was because of their hardened heart.

In 2 Corinthians 3, 14, He talks about the Jews. Why they were rejecting the Messiah. He said, "But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted because only through Christ is it taken away." The whole reason why they rejected the Messiah is because their hearts were hardened.

And they chose to harden it. Hebrews 3, 13, "We are warned to persevere in our faith." And this is how the perseverance, encouragement to persevere is explained. "Exhort one another every day as long as it is called today that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." Paul says in Acts 24, 16, "I always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man." Now before, when I used to read that term, to have a clear conscience, I just automatically assumed he's talking about the way he lived his life.

And I think that is a huge part of it. There's no way you can take that part out. But have a clear conscience is more than what you do physically. Is more than just a checkoff list to come and say, "I did this, this, this, and this." How do we recognize if our hearts are not callous?

If we are simply fans of Jesus Christ, if we're simply fans of Jesus Christ, we don't need to keep our eyes on Christ all the time. Just do it every once in a while. Maybe once a Sunday, maybe at Bible study, maybe in small group. But we don't need to fix our eyes upon Christ all the time.

If we're just simply fans of Jesus Christ. But if we're followers of Jesus Christ, the moment we take our eyes off of Christ, we are lost. There's three instances in the scripture where the Bible describes three sets of people, three groups or three different churches that have hardened their hearts toward God and become callous.

The first is the Hebrews. And the book of Hebrews is written to these people who are drifting away from God because their hearts were becoming hardened. The second group of people were the Ephesians, the church of Ephesus, written in Revelation. And he said, "These people were doing all the things that are externally correct, but they have forsaken their first love." And then a third group of people mentioned in the scripture are the Laodiceans.

These are people who become so hardened that they felt like they didn't even need Christ. And obviously the greatest rebuke goes to the Laodicean church. Each one of these churches had a reason why they were hardened and became callous. The Hebrews, these are people at one point were passionately and excited for God.

But they took their eyes off of Christ and they weren't deliberately denying Christ and they weren't running toward their old life. They were just drifting. It just, they got tired of holding on. And it got harder. So basically what happened was they just drifted back into their old way of life, the Judaizers.

And that's why the whole book of Hebrews is to convince them the consequences of drifting, allowing your heart to cauterize, to become hardened toward the things of God. And so he reminds them systematically that Jesus is greater than the angels, greater than Moses, greater than the prophets, greater than the priesthood, greater than the sacrifice itself.

And the covenant is a greater covenant than the old covenant. See the book of Ephesians, these people on the surface would seem like a great church. You know, and oftentimes it's a lot easier to just be religious because all we have to do is do the right thing. Just go to church, pay your tithe, serve the church a little bit here and there, you know, do what's required.

But he says you have forsaken your first love. He said you have forsaken, he didn't say you lost it, he didn't say you dropped it. He said you have forsaken it. Why would somebody forsake their first love? Why would they choose to be callous? Because it's easier. Because it's easier.

If we remain soft in our heart and eager to listen and eager to obey, it will rock your world. The gospel will force you to take a look at your spending. The gospel will force to look at yourself in the way you spend your time. And so when we take a step back and we recognize the spiritual reality that is painted for us in scripture, it is easier for us to compartmentalize that into church and non-churched.

So it is easier for me to live my secular life without having to think about these things. But when the reality of heaven and hell is real in the way that we live on a day-to-day basis, it's much harder to live your life. So we choose to be callous.

We choose to compartmentalize. "Well, that's pastor, you know, of course it's easy for you because you're a full-time pastor, right? Of course it's easy. Well, you don't know me, you don't know my job, you don't know how difficult it is." And we tend to rationalize everything. Basically, what we're rationalizing is a secular life.

He says to the Ephesians church, "You have forsaken your first love." And third and finally, the lay of the sins. These are people who are so callous, and there's no mention of wrong doctrine necessarily. There's no mention of immorality necessarily. It's just that their salvation was their wealth. Here was a church who maybe on the surface looked like Christians, but at the core of what they believed and what they pursued and what brought joy into their life had nothing to do with Christ.

So even though they may not have verbally said, "I don't need you, Christ," Jesus sees right through that. He says, "You are lukewarm, and I'll spew you out of my mouth." But if you look at all three situations, the solution is the same. With Hebrews, it says to fix your eyes upon Christ.

With the Ephesians, consider the height in which you had fallen. Remember the first time when you met Christ, when you first heard the gospel? When you first heard the warning? When the first time you found the reality of judgment that's coming upon mankind? How that caused you to say, "I need to share the gospel." Remember the height from which you had fallen, and look at where you are, and he says to repent.

Why does he call them to repent? Why doesn't he just simply say, "Remember the height," and try to get back up there? He says to repent, because it was a deliberate act. We deliberately placed ourselves in a place where the truth of the Word of God would no longer shake our lives.

I'm willing to go to church. I'm willing to maybe even tithe. I'm willing to maybe even serve the church. But if we're honest with ourselves, we're more fans than followers. In Hebrews chapter 12, when he says to fix your eyes upon Jesus, it's not just a casual look. It's to turn your head and see where Jesus is and look.

The word means to gaze, to intently look, and don't take your eyes off of him. You know, when I was visiting China a couple weeks ago, Pastor Alex had two scooters. He had one that was more stronger and powerful, and then he had a smaller one that Vince used to ride.

And so, you know, he's the big guy, so he rode the big one, and then him and Flo, and those two knew their way around. So we were supposed to go somewhere to take care of some business, and me and Andy, in this little putt-putt thing, we were riding behind him.

And typically when it's just me and Pastor Alex, we were able to just kind of go, you know. But this day, we had Andy behind me riding. Was it Andy? Yeah, it was Andy, and then Flo was riding with him. And she said, "Yeah, let's go." So he would take off, and usually I would just kind of putt-putt and then just follow him.

But this day was raining, so I think he wanted to hurry up and get out of the rain, and so he was just on his way, and he didn't look back, and he just took off. Two blocks down, we lost him. And Andy and I were, you know, we're in a new area, we're not in Wangjin, we're in Wudako, some of you guys who know that area.

And so it started raining, and we were like, "Where did this guy go?" So we were lost in the rain for about 40 minutes, and we got drenched, you know. If you are casually just a fan of Jesus, you know, you can go to a stadium, kind of watch the game, and go to the bathroom, and get some food, and come back, and rejoin, and just kind of casually, you know.

If you're just a fan, you don't need to be sober all the time. You can allow your heart to be callous a little bit, because the consequence isn't that great. But if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, the moment we take our eyes off of Christ, we begin to drift.

I've never heard of anybody who just drifts towards Christ. We all drift toward the world. We all drift away from God. And we drift toward callousness. Why we are able to say that judgment is coming upon the world, in the church, and then yet never think about it while we're at work.

Because we learn to, "That's at church. I'm at work." We allow ourselves to become callous. Because to live day to day with the reality of what the gospel teaches us, would shake our lives up to the point where we would be uncomfortable. We will be uncomfortable the way we live.

We will be uncomfortable in the things that we pursue. Therefore, we leave it at church. If you look at, what is the heart of God? If God is looking for people who is after His own heart, what is His heart? It is absolutely crystal clear, Luke chapter 15, 1 through 32.

Jesus is hanging around with the sinners and the Pharisees say, "Why are you hanging around with the sinners?" And He gives three parables. The first parable is a lost sheep, that He would leave the 99 to pursue the 1. Meaning that God loves the sinner, that He would return.

He is pursuing them. The second is a lost coin. So He loses the one coin and He sweeps the whole house. And in both instances, when they find a sheep, when they find a coin, they have a huge celebration. Why was Jesus telling this story? Because He was rebuking the Pharisees.

You do not know the heart of God. This is why the Bible was written. This is why the church was established. This is why we have discipleship. This is why we have prayer meetings. This is why we study the Bible. This is why we have retreats. This is why we send out people to China.

This is the heart of God. And that is why He said, "You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth. If you lose the saltiness, what good will it be?" The final, last one is the parable of the prodigal son. And you know that story.

I'm not going to go into it, but the prodigal son, he hits rock bottom and he chooses to return and his heart is, "I'll go home and live like a servant. And even my dad's servant lives better than what I'm experiencing here." So he chooses to go back home.

And this is how his reception is described in Luke chapter 15. His father looks to the horizon and the picture that we see is a father who is there, who's been waiting. The only reason why he's even given his son his inheritance was that it was probably the only way that he was going to win his son back.

And he is there waiting for his son. And he finally sees his son in the horizon. And he says he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him.

And the whole reason for this parable is to reveal to the Pharisees that you do not know the heart of God. It's because your heart has become so callous that even when the son of God is standing before you, you don't recognize him. There's two instances in the scripture where Jesus' compassion was so deep and so strong that it welled up in him as weeping.

First instance, we mentioned in John chapter 11, 35, Jesus wept, the shortest passage in the whole Bible. And this is in front of Lazarus' grave. He deliberately takes his time to get to Lazarus' grave because he's waiting for Lazarus to die. He comes and Mary is weeping and all the friends and family are gathered around the grave and weeping.

And Mary comes to Jesus and says, "Jesus, only if you had come a little bit sooner, our brother would not have died." It's in that context Jesus is found to have been weeping. A lot of people were kind of debating, like, "Why would Jesus weep? It doesn't make sense." Because Jesus deliberately waited.

If he did come earlier, if he didn't take his time, he would have been there and could have healed him. So the fact that Jesus is there deliberately giving enough time for him to pass and then to weep because Lazarus is dead doesn't make any sense. In fact, if you look at the word for weep in both instances where the crowd is weeping and Jesus is weeping, it's two different Greek words.

And I believe the meaning behind why he wept is more clarified in the second instance where Jesus weeps, is in Luke chapter 1941, where Jesus is entering into Jerusalem on a donkey and there's a huge parade for him and everybody is expecting something spectacular to happen and it's a huge parade for Jesus.

Some say that there may have been more than a million people in Jerusalem at that time. Doesn't mean that all of them were there receiving Jesus, but the crowd, the parade-like atmosphere, and yet we find Jesus in verse 41 of Luke chapter 19, "When he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it." But here it describes why he was weeping.

He was weeping because he saw Jerusalem, because they completely missed him. If you only knew today what would bring peace, destruction would not be coming. And he was weeping over the judgment that was going to come upon his own people. I believe the reason why he was weeping in Lazarus' grave is because death is the most tangible evidence of this judgment.

That he wasn't weeping because Lazarus physically died, because he was going to raise him physically. But that's not why Jesus came. He came because there is a bigger and deeper cancer in every human being. And the only way to cure that is by the blood of Christ. It was in the presence of the judgment of God.

It was in the tangible evidence of the judgment of God, where Jesus had the greatest compassion, and he wept over his people. He wept over the sinners. If we compartmentalize this truth, and we choose to hear it on Sunday, and block it off when we go to work in our homes, it not only causes us to be callous toward the things of God, it affects even our understanding of truth.

It affects our understanding of even being able to hear the voice of God. My sheep, they hear my voice and they will follow me. That is not just a mental exercise. In Matthew 24 verse 12 it says, "Because of lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold." You guys know about the decision that was made this week at the Supreme Court.

And I know a lot of people were shocked, but if you've been paying attention, none of us should be shocked. It was just a matter of time. But what was shocking to me is not what the Supreme Court said, not what the world is saying, but what the church is saying.

The church is divided. Fifteen years ago we would talk about this subject and there would be no rumbling in the church. I would go to a Bible teaching church and mention something passing about homosexuality and I would get two, three people standing in line to talk to me about it.

He says, "Because of lawlessness, love of many will grow cold. For the last 10 to 15 years or longer, the church has been trying so hard to be relevant in our culture, by our music, by the way we preach, the way we dress, the way we present our church to the world.

And we've been trying so hard to become relevant to the world. We may have become irrelevant to God." It says, "Because of increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold, but the one who endures to the end will be saved." When he talks about the one who endures, he says that love of many will grow cold, but the one who endures to the end.

So when he talks about enduring, what is he saying? The one who does not allow his heart to grow cold. That's what he's saying. He's not simply talking about somebody who didn't physically leave the church. He's not talking about somebody who's just doing the right thing, like the church of Ephesus.

He's talking about the love that has a tendency to grow cold when the world's wickedness increases, but the one who endures that, the one who endures and his love for Christ remains. He says, "Shall be saved." And then it says, "And the gospel of this kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come." End will come when people who are passionate for Jesus proclaims the gospel to the remotest part of the world, he said, "Then he will come." The scripture is absolutely crystal clear.

Either you are with me or you are against me. Either you are among the people who are helping me gather or you are among the people who are helping scatter. The world has always rejected Christ. The world will always reject Christ. We should not be surprised by just how dark this world can become.

That's why we're here. That's why we're light. Jesus did not send us into the light to be a light. He sent us as light into the darkness. And if our hearts are callous, we wouldn't even recognize. Again, you and I live in a culture where we're not allowed to think critically.

Everywhere we go, even while you're hiking, you have earplugs in your ear playing music. You go to a coffee shop, got music blasted. You get in your car, and if it's more than any five, six minutes, you have talk radio or music on. You go home, TV is on.

Internet is on. And we don't have time to sit down and think critically. We're constantly being bombarded and told what to think, what to like, what to buy. And as a result of that, we become callous to the things that really matter. Do we believe the gospel? Not just as a security blanket.

Not just something that you check off so that when we die, that we can say, "Hey, I believe the gospel." Jesus did not come to make fans of Jesus. As a fan of Jesus, we can say, "I like him. I like what he says." Maybe even say, "I might love him," because who wouldn't?

I mean, he is a man who gave himself to die for people who are undeserving. I mean, what culture, what generation would not celebrate that kind of sacrifice? But Jesus did not come to make fans of himself. He called people to follow. And we cannot follow with callous hearts.

When was the last time you pleaded on the behalf of those who are under judgment? "Lord, send the workers." When was the last time you had compassion for somebody that you profess to believe is going to hell? When was the last time you made a decision to do something because you were moved with compassion?

Have we allowed ourselves to be callous and be okay with it? Have you marginalized the voice of God because it's uncomfortable? I encourage us, I encourage all of us, never be okay with a hardened heart. To come before the Lord and plead, first and foremost, "Lord, my heart has become hardened.

What I profess on Sunday and what I do during the weekday does not match, Lord. It's not the same. Lord, help me. Help me." We're all desperately in need of revival. Myself included. If our heart's not broken for the lost, then we lie to ourselves. Let's take some time to pray.

And again, we can easily just file this away because after this we have to take care of our children. We have to go eat. We have to take care of our business. But I pray with all my heart, today, tomorrow, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and every day, that my faith would be real.

And that your faith would be real. That we're not just building religious people. But that what we profess and what we feel and what we do is consistent. Would you pray with me? As our praise team comes up, first and foremost, let's come before the Lord. I know already that even in this room, already, that some of you are kind of like, "I've heard this so many times." And you're just going to click it off.

Go back to your normal life. Now I'm not asking you to do this for me. I'm not asking you to do this for anybody else. But for yourself, are you here because you believe in Jesus? Are you a worshiper of God in spirit and in truth? Because God is not fooled.

He sees right through all of that. And I'm in just as need as you are. So let's come before the Lord in honest prayer and not build religiousness in our homes, not build religiousness in our church, but to be genuine followers of Jesus Christ. Would you take some time to pray with me as our worship team leads us?

(upbeat music)