Matt Sturdevant: What do you want your life to be about? When you're done walking on this planet, what do you want people to say about you? Perhaps you’ve spent some time thinking about this question, or maybe you haven’t ever given it a moment’s thought. What do you want your life to be about, and what do you want people to remember about you? I want to give you about 10 seconds right now to think about that question. What do you want your life to be about?
We’re continuing our series, All In...Holding Nothing Back, where we’ve been taking a look at what it means to go all in for God. What does that look like? What does that mean? Last week, we started this series taking a look at what it means to be all in as a church. We did that as we celebrated our 42nd anniversary. We took a look at where we’ve been, where we are now, and where we’re going. Where we’re going is all in as a church. This week, I’d like to briefly share some of my own spiritual journey and some key lessons that I’ve personally learned over the years of walking with Jesus. These are some of the things that God has taught me.
If I’m going to lead us as a church to go all in and I’m going to call you to go all in, then I want you to know that I’m all in. That’s a personal commitment that I have made, so I want to share part of my own story with you so that you can see something that I’ve wrestled with. There’s been some key things that have happened in my life along the way that have helped me be at the place where I am, and that is committed to being all in for God.
After being in vocational ministry for nearly 15 years now, I’ve found that the lessons I want to share with you are sort of more like patterns in life. They’re not necessarily totally unique to me. I want to encourage you and challenge you to think about your own life and think about what it means for you to be all in as I share my story. I want to invite you as we go all in as a church to join me and to join us and go all in with us. What do I mean when I say, “Go all in”? Here’s what I mean. It’s really about a state of commitment. It’s really, truly committing to hold nothing back from Jesus, to aggressively follow after Him and use your life to be about the things that He’s about.
We’re all in different places spiritually. We’re all in different places on the journey, but we can all make a commitment to go all in, to be fully engaged. Really, to ask the question, “Lord, what do you want me to do now?” Keep asking the question, then taking the next steps, thereby doing the things that He tells us when we ask the question. Being all in means surrendering all of you to the Lord Jesus, holding nothing back, and then orienting your life to be about the things He’s about and to be about doing God’s will here on this earth.
Our lives really are a journey. We start that journey out on the day that we’re born, and along the way, we make a lot of temporary stops until we make the final stop. Until we reach the final destination, that day that we are no longer here on this planet, but we have moved into eternity. A moment ago I asked you, “What do you want your life to be about?” Maybe that’s something that you had thought a lot about or not about at lol, but it’s actually something that I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about over the years. For me, there’s a verse in the Bible that really sums up what I want my life to be about when it’s over. That’s found in Acts 13:36. It says this. It says, “...for David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and was laid with his fathers.”
Isn’t that a great way to be remembered? As one who served God’s purposes in your generation? A few verses right before that, David’s referred to as a man after God’s own heart. You could say that when it comes to following God that David is all in. Now, he certainly was not perfect, but he was all in. When I think about my life and I think about the end of my life when I’m no longer here and years after I’m no longer here, I would like nothing more than for people to say, “Matt served God’s purposes in his own generation. Matt was all in.” Now, I’ve got to be honest with you. I was not born with this picture of what my life should be all about. It’s been a journey of over 36 years now of walking with Jesus.
That journey started on December 3, 1983, when I decided to follow Jesus. It’s been a journey of learning and sometimes relearning again and again what it really means to follow Jesus, what it means to align my thoughts and my actions and my desires to be more like His and less like what comes so naturally to me. I grew up in Southern California. I grew up in a Christian home with a mom and a dad who loved Jesus and taught me about Him from an early age. I can remember growing up and going to church together as a family. I am the oldest of three kids. I have a younger brother and then a younger sister, younger than him.
I remember growing up going to church, and then I remember at the age of five committing my life to Jesus, deciding that I wanted to follow Him. Between ages 8 and 14, I wasn’t able to run, jump, or kick due to a hip condition that I had developed and the procedures I had to have to correct that. When I was 14 years old, I was run over by a drunk driver while I was inner tubing on a lake. When I was 19 years old, I met and several months later started dating the woman who would eventually become my wife, who I would marry at age 23. I was also introduced to a man who would become my pastor and someone who was very key in helping me really understand what it means to walk with God.
As I moved into my 20’s, at age 23 I graduated from college with a business degree. I got married; I moved here to Fort Worth, Texas, to be a part of Hope Church and to start my business career. At the age of 27, God called me to leave the business career that I was in and transition into vocational ministry. At the time, the Lord provided an opportunity for me to join the staff here at Hope Church. Over those next about 10 years or so as I exited my 20’s and moved into my 30’s, I had some amazing experiences. I got to meet some incredible people, and I also walkedthrough some extremely difficult and hard times. As I neared the end of my 30’s, I became a dad. Something I wondered for a while if that would ever be a part of my story.
First, I became a dad to a baby girl in 2017, and my wife and I were so incredibly grateful to God for answering our prayers, as well as the prayers of many of your prayers, in giving us a child. Kensi was born, and then just about 19 months later, we had a son, Malakai, who we call Kai. Just last weekend, we celebrated Kai’s third birthday. As I am in my early 40’s now, I recently began a new phase of my commitment to be all in. You see, I wrestled for a number of months with the opportunity and the process of determining what God’s will was for me and my future as I was presented with the opportunity to become the next lead pastor of Hope Church and follow our founding and senior pastor of over 42 years.
I’m now in my 84th day of being lead pastor, and this new adventure is the newest expression of me being all in and following Jesus where He takes me on that journey. Maybe you can relate to some parts of my journey that I’ve already briefly shared with you and can see some of the opportunities and challenges I’ve faced are similar to the ones that you have faced. But when I reflect over my life, almost 42 years and over 36 years of walking with Jesus, there’s really five key lessons that rise to the surface. Obviously, I’m not going to share with you everything that I have learned in almost 42 years of life and 36 years of walking with Jesus. But what I am going to share with you are sort of the big picture theme lessons. I can tell you that all of these lessons are real. They have been learned by experience, and I have some of the physical and emotional scars to prove to you that I have walked through and learned these lessons.
So you don’t discredit any of these lessons and say, “Oh, he’s a pastor. He should learn those things; he should know those things,” I want you to know this. All of these lessons were learned before I became lead pastor of Hope, and most of these lessons were learned before I was even called into vocational ministry. I was just a regular guy. However, I’m still in the process of learning, and some of the things that I’m going to share with you, God is still teaching and re-teaching me as I walk forward in faith and obedience and follow Him on the adventure that He has me on as I’m committed to being all in. So, let’s take a look at these five key lessons.
The first one is this that God loves me so much more than I can actually understand. These are my lessons, so I’m using the personal language that God loves ME so much more than I can really understand. Let me stop right here, and let me tell you. If you have never heard this, I want you to know that God loves you more than you’ll ever really understand. You see, God created us in His image. He created us to have a relationship with Him. After we, His creation, messed things up, we broke the relationship because of our sin. He took it upon Himself to make a way for us to be made right with Him.
I mentioned that I grew up in a Christian home, and I’m so grateful for that experience to hear about God and Jesus and their love for me pretty much as far as I can remember. In fact, I think probably one of the first verses that I ever memorized was John 3:16–“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Then there’s 1 John 3:16 that says, “This is how we know what love is...because Christ died for us.” I grew up understanding all about God’s love. That was very much a part of my childhood experience. But as I grew up, I had some experiences, some actual experiences that I walked through, some times of difficulty that really helped me take that lesson that I learned to the HNL. The HNL is the “whole ‘nother level.”
I want to share a couple of those experiences with you. When I was eight years old, I had developed a significant and painful limp. I was diagnosed with a hip condition that was going to require some surgeries to correct it. In fact, the first round of surgeries that I had, I had double leg casts. I could actually walk with those casts on. It looked kind of funny to see me in them walking. Then I needed to have some additional surgeries. I spent some time in a wheelchair as I had these casts on for three to five months at a time and wasn’t able to walk. Through these experiences of having the casts on my legs and the surgeries, I began to understand what really is the power of prayer and relying on God in difficult circumstances.
You can imagine being an eight or nine year old little boy and having these casts on your legs and not being able to be out there running and jumping and kicking with your friends. In fact, it wasn’t until the spring of my eighth grade year that I was released from the doctor with a complete, full bill of health. I could once again begin running, jumping, and kicking. Just a few months later after I had been released from the doctor, my family and I took a weekend trip to Lake Havasu in the state of Arizona. What was supposed to be just a weekend trip of boating and skiing and tubing turned out to be a lot more than we thought.
It was about 6PM on a Saturday evening that I jumped on the tube again, and we were going to go out for another round of tubing. I fell off the tube, like what happens when you tube, but what was unusual was that there was a boat coming right for me. The boat didn’t see me, because the driver of the boat was drunk. I was actually run over by a boat after I fell off the tube. I was rushed to the emergency room there in Lake Havasu City, and they took me in and said, “There’s nothing we can do for you here. We’ve got to fly you to Phoenix and go to a major trauma center.” I had some serious injuries.
My injuries were a collapsed lung, a severed liver. I had lacerations on my bicep and my torso and my hand. Frankly, I had lost nearly all of the blood in my body. I spent about 10 days in the intensive care unit and a total of about a month in the hospital. When we were released from the hospital there in Arizona, we knew that God had done something significant in the way that He had healed me. We found out from the doctors that they had only given me a 30% chance to survive when I came in on that Saturday night. And, they had never seen anyone leave the hospital, who came in as bad as I had. Everything that I had learned about prayer and relying on God in difficult circumstances was taken to a much deeper and much harder level as I walked through this experience.
I really feel like the fact that I’m standing here today unscathed and having all of my arms and legs and being able to do all of the things that I can is really a significant work that God did in my life and a miracle that He performed when I was just 14 years old. Through that experience with the boat accident, what I learned was that there is, without any question, a God who loves me and cares for me. What I had read and been taught growing up in the Bible that was true became very real for me as I walked through those very difficult experiences.
Since becoming a father in the last four and a half years, I also gained a new perspective on God’s love for me. I gained a new appreciation for 1 John 3:1, which says, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” When we accept Christ as our Savior, we immediately become part of God’s family. We enter into a new family. When our daughter was born that night, I remember holding her in my arms, and I remember looking at her in the eyes. I got this new picture and this new appreciation for God’s love for us as a Father. I’m so glad that she couldn’t talk at that time, because as I looked at her little face and just had so much love for her, I thought if she asks me for anything I’ll probably give it to her right now. I learned so much about God’s love. So, the first lesson is that God loves me so much more than I will ever actually understand.
The next lesson that I want to share with you is that God is absolutely, 100% in control, even if from our perspective from our point of view and what we’re experiencing in the moment seems like life is totally out of control, and we’re headed towards disaster. Maybe we’re not getting that thing that we want or that thing that we feel like we deserve. Have you ever felt like that in life? Have you ever felt like life’s out of control, and you’re not getting what you want or deserve? We are kind of in a time period like that right now as we walk through the challenges that we have with the Covid pandemic and some of the national unrest we’re dealing with. There’s just so much uncertainty, and there’s a feeling of not being able to be in control of anything. But even in those moments, God is in control.
One of the major difficulties that I walked through in my thirties was having an extended period of time where my wife, Jessica, and I really desired to start a family and have children. We weren’t able to get pregnant. Our plan—the plan that you create when you are thinking about getting married—was that we would wait about five years because we were pretty young when we got married. Then, we would start our family. Five years came and went and became ten and even more, and we still hadn’t started a family. So, we decided to go to the doctor and just investigate this. We wanted to know if there was something wrong. Is there something else that we need to be thinking about? After spending several months of consulting with the doctor and having a variety of tests done, I remember sitting in the doctor’s office that day and him looking at Jessica and I and saying, “I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is there’s nothing medically wrong with you, but the bad news is you fall into this very small percentage of unexplained infertility.”
Hearing that word from the doctor was really hard, but also at the same time what I felt like the Lord was saying to us was “the reason that you can’t have children right now is that I haven’t said it’s time.” God didn’t promise us that He would ever give us children, but He made it really clear that the reason we didn’t have children was because He hadn’t said it was time yet. He hadn’t given us a family. That was really a hard word to hear from the Lord because wanting a family, wanting children, is a good thing. The Bible talks about how children are a blessing and a good thing, and we weren’t getting the good thing that we wanted.
Through that time I was reminded of my initial call into ministry and really the desire to have the greatest impact that I can in this world for the kingdom of God. With that, Jessica and I decided that we were going to make the most of the time that we didn’t have any children. Some of you who are parents know that there are certain things that you’re able to do or maybe able to do more easily before you have children or after your children grow up. We had this unique time and really this opportunity where it was just the two of us. She was also on staff here at Hope Church, so we decided we were going to go all in on our commitment to following God, all in on our call to ministry. We were going to make the most of the time that we had, just the two of us, not knowingly we would ever start a family, but we were going to go all in in following Jesus and expanding His kingdom.
After we made that commitment in early 2014, the Lord really began to open up a lot of opportunities for us to train and encourage others locally, nationally, and even internationally. The Lord began to open up additional opportunities for some training programs that we worked on, some training programs that Jessica had developed for the 17:6 Network—our network of churches. We were able to secure a partnership with our Antioch Project to have a Master of Divinity degree linked to the training that we were doing and also create and implement the NorthStar Training program. Then, when we least expected it in a very busy season of ministry and going all in and traveling all over the place and just looking for all of the opportunities that we could to expand Christ’s kingdom—in a very busy season when we least expected it—we discovered that we were pregnant. That was late May of 2015.
We discovered that the Lord had answered our prayer and literally the prayer of hundreds of people throughout the country praying that God, if it would be His will, would give us a family. Then, our daughter, Kensi, was born in January of 2016. Then just about 19 months later, God gave us a son. A couple of the verses that were really important to me I’ve listed there for you in your handout, but one particularly I want to share with you comes from Genesis 45:5-9. If you don’t know the story of Joseph, I want to encourage you to read the entire story of Joseph. This is at the very end of the story after he has been reunited with the brothers, who sold him into slavery. Listen to what Joseph says to his brothers.
“And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God send me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharoah, and lord of all of his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.” What Joseph is telling his brothers here, even though they’re the ones who sold him into slavery because of their own sin, is that ultimately God is the One who sent me here to Egypt. It was through your hand, but God sent me here so that I could do what He’s called me to do.
We live in a broken world. We live in a world where there’s sin and problems all around us, and sin has consequences, whether it’s our own personal sin or someone else's sin. Like in Joseph’s brothers’ situation, they sold their brother into slavery. But even in the middle of all of that, God is in control. The negative experiences that we have, the difficult experiences that we have, don’t mean that God’s not in control. He’s in control even in the middle of all that, and He can also use it to help us become the person that He wants us to be so we can do all of the things that He wants to do in us and through us. God had Jessica and I wait 14 years before we were able to start a family before we had our first child. Then as I mentioned, just 19 months later He gave us a son, Malakai. God is in control—100%—regardless of what’s going on in the world around us or what we’re feeling or what we're thinking.
The next lesson I want to share with you is that life is God’s training program for me. Life is God’s training program for you, as well. It's a required course. It’s not an elective that we get to choose whether or not we want to take it. We all share common experiences, but yet we have our own unique training program that is specifically tailored. Mine is tailored specifically to me. Yours is tailored specifically to you based on what God is doing in each one of our lives and what He wants to grow in us at that particular time. Actually, the challenges that we face are opportunities. They are opportunities to learn, opportunities to grow and be prepared for the next challenge or the next opportunity, which is usually more difficult than the previous one that we’ve just finished.
Yielding our life to Jesus, becoming a follower of Jesus, is not just a problem-free, worry-free, easy life. We’re still going to experience problems, but what we have as Christ-followers that the world around us does not have is the presence of the resources, the help of the Holy Spirit, to walk through the difficult times in life, those difficult moments that are a part of our training program. For me personally, I’ve walked through a lot of difficulties. I’ve shared with you the health challenges between eight and 15. I shared the experience of wanting children and God not giving us children for quite awhile. I can say that it’s by God’s grace and with His help I’m standing here today as a better man than if I had not walked through those experiences.
A couple more verses that I want to share with you are kind of hard to swallow when you first read them, but they give great encouragement when you’re walking through the middle of difficulties. James 1:2-4 says, “Dear brothers, is your life full of difficulties and temptations? Then be happy, for when the way is rough, your patience has a chance to grow. So let it grow, and don’t try to squirm out of your problems. For when your patience is finally in full bloom, then you will be ready for anything, strong in character, full and complete.” Then, Romans 5:3-4 says, “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” These verses are very encouraging because they tell us when we have pain when we have problems when we have difficulties there's actually a purpose.
There’s something bigger that’s happening than just the problem or the pain in the moment. We’re actually growing in character. God is using the circumstance that we’re walking through in any given moment. He’s using the things that are on our plate in front of us to grow us in character. Then as we grow in character, that’s actually producing hope. I would not want anyone to have walked through the problems and the pain and the difficulties that I personally walked through that are a part of my story. But, I wouldn’t be the person that I am had they not all been a part of my own unique training program. I wouldn’t have the character that I have today. I wouldn’t have the hope that I have today had I not had to walk through those things.
Here’s something that I don’t want you to miss. I’m a pastor. I’m your pastor, but I’m still in God’s training program. When I accepted the position of lead pastor of Hope back in January, I had no idea that we would have Covid that would start up here in the states around the middle of March and that we would stop meeting for several weeks. I had no idea that I would become the lead pastor of Hope Church in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, which then led to or added onto that some national unrest for us here in the States as we move toward this election coming up in the month of November. I had no idea of all of the craziness that we’re experiencing on a daily basis now would be part of my future as I followed Jesus.
But, here’s the thing. God knew as He was leading me that this all would be a part of my training program. By the way, let me just say that I need a lot of prayer from you as we walk through this time. Here are a couple of quick things that you can pray for me about. Pray for strength. I mentioned we didn’t start our family until later because that was part of God’s plan for us. I’m an old dad of preschoolers. Pray for strength and energy. Also, pray for wisdom and courage as I lead us through the middle of this very strange and uncertain time. Also as part of my training program in just my first 84 days, I got to have a major pastor-fail moment. If you were with us last week, then you know about that. I had a typo in my notes, which translated to a typo in the handout and all the screens. I actually gave the wrong reference for the theme verse to this entire year. Talk about a pastor fail, but I guess, I'm the new guy. Right?
The correct verse, the correct reference for our theme verse, is 2 Timothy 1:7-8a. I want to read that again for us right now because this is our theme verse as we walk forward and go all in as a church. It says, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. So never be ashamed to tell others about our Lord.” By the way, thank you to everyone who texted me and let me know about that typo there. I’m so glad my phone was on silent and was back in the booth when we had our live, in-person service on Sunday morning.
The fourth key lesson that I want to share with you is this—as I pick my friends, I’m picking my future. The thing with friends is this. Unless we are intentionally picking people who will lift us up, they will eventually, gradually bring us down. 1 Corinthians 15:33 says, “Do not be deceived. ‘Bad company ruins good morals.’” Proverbs 13:20 says, “He who walks with wise men becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.” Those that we spend time with, our friends, have a big impact on our future. As I’m picking my friends, I’m picking my future. As you’re picking your friends, you too are picking your future. If you want to know where your life is heading, just look around at your friends. Where are they heading?
Here at Hope Church, this is a great place to meet people, to make connections, and then over time to develop real and deep and lasting friendships. I’ve been a part of Hope Church for over 18 years. In that time, I’ve been able to make so many friends, dear friends, good friends, friends that encourage me when I’m down and call me forward when I need to be called forward and celebrate with me when God does good things in my life.
The last lesson that I want to share with you is this—walking with Jesus on this side of eternity is made one step at a time. The average person walks about 2,000 steps for a mile. If you’re taller or shorter, that number might change a little bit, but one mile is about 2,000 steps. If you look for the recommendation to be healthy and how much/how many steps we should have in a day, it’s about 10,000 steps, which is about five miles. Some days I hit my 10,000; some days I don’t hit my 10,000. Some steps are easy. Some steps are more difficult.
I’d had an amazing opportunity in the summer of 2015 to go with a small team to Guatemala and to go into the jungles of Guatemala to work with some pastors there. That was one of the hardest experiences I’ve ever had in my life. We trekked 20 miles in just two days at one point in the week. What I found during that time was an easy illustration of some easy steps and some hard steps. I’ve got. a couple of pictures I’m going to show you. One here, this is Jeremy Good, who is a part of our church here. Jeremy was on that trip with me. You can see sort of a nice paved downhill. That was part of the experience. What we didn’t know was that the next morning we were going to have to walk up that same hill. Most of the terrain looked like this next picture. This is a picture where I held the picture in front looking back and then turned around behind so that you could just see. We were doing hand over fist crawling up rock and going up and down terrain like that.
I learned the valuable lesson that translates to just about the same as our walk with God. There are some really hard steps, and then there are some steps that are not so hard. Then, there are some really, really, really hard steps. The point is that we have to keep moving forward. In our case with the trip and trekking in the jungle, we had a destination we were getting to. We couldn’t stop taking those next steps. We, too...it’s very important for us as Christ-followers to take next steps. Walking with Jesus is not just about knowing things. It’s not just about knowing facts and memorizing verses and knowing stuff. It’s actually about having a relationship with a person, and it’s about doing something with the knowledge we have and about obeying what Jesus says.
In fact, I love The Message paraphrase of Matthew 7:21. It says, “Knowing the correct password—saying, ‘Master, Master,’ for instance—isn’t going to get you anywhere with me. What is required is serious obedience—doing what my Father wills.” Then, John 14:21 says, “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me.” It’s actually really easy to say, “Jesus, I love you.” Anybody can say that. They’re just words, but what we actually do demonstrates our love. As we obey Jesus that demonstrates our love. So, how do we demonstrate it? We do what He tells us to do, and we don’t do what He tells us not to do. How do we know what those are? Well, we find them by reading God’s Word, by reading the Bible.
In fact throughout the Bible, you’ll find all kinds of stories of men and women who faced very difficult and challenging times when they were called to trust God and to take steps. Sometimes the steps were way beyond what they thought they were capable of, but God met them in the moment and the challenge that they were in. I mentioned David as we began and the quote about him serving God’s purpose in his generation. David was anointed to be king of Israel when he was just 15 years old. Then, he had eight hard years before he became king over Judah, just part of the nation. Then, it was seven more years before he was king over all of Israel. In those eight years, going back to the calculation of the steps, he probably took over 29 million steps! They actually walked a lot more back then than we do now.
Some of those hard steps that he took were fighting the giant, Goliath, and running from the current king that he was going to come after, King Saul. As you read your Bible, you’ll find that some of the steps that God calls His people to take are smaller steps. They’re easier steps, but oftentimes, God calls us to take big steps that are maybe a little bit scary and require everything that we’ve learned up to this moment about walking with Jesus and all the faith that we have to take that next step and continue to grow us in our faith. But, God provides. God provides the strength and the courage and the resources that we need as we follow Him when He calls us forward. So, walking with Jesus is made one step at a time.
Here’s the thing about next steps. Every single one of us has a next step to take. Every single one of us. It doesn’t matter. Wherever you’re at on your spiritual journey, you have a next step to take. I have a next step to take. What do I mean about taking a next step? I simply mean that wherever you are in this moment, it’s one step forward in the direction that God is calling you to follow Him in faith. One step forward to become the man or the woman that He is calling you to become, so that He can do everything that He wants to do in and through your life. Again, some of those steps are small, tiny steps. Some of those steps are regular steps. Some of those steps are big, gigantic steps of faith to take because they’re your next step moving forward.
I want to invite you to take a next step towards becoming all in with Jesus. I realize we have a pretty diverse group watching this message today. We’ve got all kinds of different steps to take. Some of you this is your very first time joining us in our online campus of Hope Church. Your next step might just be to join us again next week or sometime in the future. That’s a great next step to take. Join us again. Others, your next step is to make some kind of a connection. Maybe you’ve been hanging around for a little while...a couple of months or a couple of years. You’ve gotten to know some people, but you really don’t know people. Your next step is to maybe get connected in a deeper way. Actually, take some of those acquaintances and develop some friendships with them. Let people in. Let people get to know you, and you get to know other people.
Coming up in September in just a few weeks, we’re going to be launching some new groups. We’re going to have in-person groups and online groups. Groups at Hope Church are a great way to make connections with others. For some of you, your next step is to make a commitment. I don’t know exactly what that commitment might be, but you’re ready and your next step is that you need to make a commitment. Maybe it’s a commitment moving towards being all in with Jesus. Maybe it’s a commitment of actually deciding that you’re going to follow Jesus for the first time. You’ve had all your questions answered, and you’ve maybe been dragging your feet because you weren’t sure or you didn’t want to. Or, you just needed that moment. If that’s you, I want to invite you to make a commitment to follow Jesus today. Make that commitment right now.
For others, maybe your next step is that you’ve been kind of hanging around Hope a little bit, and you’ve kind of got one foot in and one foot out. If nothing better comes up, then you’ll be a part of what we’re doing. Your next step is a step of commitment, but it’s a commitment to be all here, to be all in, to be a part of what God is doing at Hope Church. Join us as we seek to invite people to discover and experience God’s ways to really be a part of what we’re doing. Maybe it’s a commitment to membership, a commitment to actually join Hope Church.
Now, I realize this is kind of a strange time to talk about being here when we’re in the middle of this Covid pandemic. Many of you watching right now have some real, valid, serious health concerns, and that’s why you’re not physically here in the room with us. That’s okay, but I want to invite you to commit to be with us. Commit to be here with the “here” being online and being a part of what we’re doing at Hope Church and being a part of groups. Then, when you’re ready and when we get past all of this Covid stuff, commit to be here and join us in person.
For others, maybe God wants to challenge you to make a commitment to contribute—contribute with your time, with your talent, with your treasure. I don’t know. Maybe it’s to join the church. Maybe it’s to give financially. Whatever that is, maybe God’s been speaking to you already, or maybe He’s starting to speak to you about what it looks like for you to be all in. It’s time to make that commitment. A next step, again, is just a step from where you are to a step where you’re going. We take steps one step at a time over a lifetime as we follow God. So, I want to invite you to take a next step today.
Would you bow with me in prayer? Father, thank You so much that You have allowed each and every one of us to be on our own journey. This morning the paths of our journey have come together as we are together watching this service at the same time. Thank You for sending Jesus Christ. That while we were still sinners, He came and He died and He rose again. And, He made a way for us to be right with You. Father, I pray for my friends watching right now that You would show them what their next step is with You. Show them what that next step of faith and that next step of obedience, what it looks like to take a step toward going all in, and what that looks like for them wherever they are on their spiritual journey. Then, give them the courage to take that step. I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
