Why do we not always value the Word of God? You ever thought about this? Like, why do we not actually value the Word of God? I'm convinced of this: that every single one of us knows that in this book there are the words of eternal life. That in this book is everything that we need for life, everything that we need for godliness. And yet, for some reason, we don't pick it up. It sits on the nightstand and it collects dust. I'm convinced of this: that so often the reason that happens is not because we don't actually think it's valuable, but the reason that happens is because we don't know where to start. We don't actually know how to pick this up.

So, a couple weeks back, we started a series entitled How to Read the Bible. Has this been helpful? Have you all been getting something out of this series? I love it, because today, y'all, we made it. Today, we are in the New Testament. Praise God. And we're going to be talking about the Gospels today, and then next week we're going to be dealing with all the letters.

Jesus is perfect theology

But to kind of kick it off, I wanted to start by reading a Scripture that is found in Colossians 1:15. And it says this: "Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created, and he is supreme over all creation." Man, that is just good by itself. That Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.

What you need to know is this: Jesus is perfect theology. Like, if you want to know what God is like, you need to look at Jesus. If you want to know how God deals with sinners, take a look at how Jesus deals with a woman caught in adultery. If you want to know how God deals with those who are religious, take a look at how Jesus deals with the religious elite. He actually says this in John 14:9. He says, "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father." In Jesus, we get to see the fullness of who God is.

Which is why I am so excited to talk about how to read the Gospels, because I think in this is so much of what we need — even to set up the Old Testament, even to understand the letters. This is the apex of the Bible. So, here's what I need you to do. I need you to turn to your neighbor and say, "Hey neighbor. It's all about Jesus." Turn to your other neighbor — your second option. I don't know why they're your second option — but say, "Hey neighbor. It's all about Jesus." It's all about Jesus. It's all about Jesus.

The ultimate plot twist

Man, I don't know about you guys, but one of my favorite pastimes is watching movies. Anyone love just watching a good movie? Like, a good idea of a good time for me is Paige and myself on a couch watching a movie, some popcorn. I'm like, "That's amazing." And have y'all ever watched a movie that, when you're watching the movie, it feels like it makes sense? You're like, "Okay, I get what's going on. I kind of understand the whole picture." And then the movie ends, and in that last five minutes, something happens, and you're like, "Oh my gosh, I did not understand at all." It's like that last five minutes makes everything else make sense.

Anyone ever watch a movie like that, that just has that twist at the end? I remember the first time I watched Shutter Island, I felt that. Some of y'all know. First time I watched it, I'm like, "Oh my gosh." I'm watching this and I'm like, "Okay, I think I know — this dude is an investigator." And then at the end, all of a sudden, you're like, "Wait, is he crazy, or is he pretending to be crazy not to deal with the fact that he has trauma?" And you're just like, "This is insane." And if you're like, "That's a spoiler alert" — it is 16 years old. If you haven't watched it now, you're not going to watch it. But I felt that way when I watched Inception. I've heard that about The Sixth Sense. Never watched it. Can't recommend it. But like, at the end you're like, "Oh my gosh. That was there the entire time, and I just never saw it."

Okay — that is exactly what happens with the Old Testament. When you're reading the Old Testament the very first time, you think you understand what's going on, and then all of a sudden, the ultimate plot twist: Jesus comes, and all of a sudden you're like, "Oh my gosh, it makes so much sense." Without Jesus, we can't actually understand the Old Testament. It is the ultimate twist.

And what happens is, when we enter the Gospels, we're reading about people who are still under the old covenant. The new covenant comes when Jesus is raised again from the dead. They're under the old covenant, and they don't even get it. And you actually see the aha moment. You see the plot twist. You see the moment that they recognize what is happening. It actually is captured in John 20:8. And it says this: "Then the disciple who had reached the tomb first" — this is on Easter Sunday; they've run to the tomb. It says the one who had reached the tomb first — that's John. Y'all remember, we just studied John. He likes you to know that he got there first. He is quicker than Peter. "He went in, and when he saw, he believed. For until then, they still hadn't understood the scriptures that Jesus must rise from the dead." He has this moment when all of a sudden he's like, "Oh — that's what it was all about."

You see, because in the beginning, God creates the earth, and it is perfect and it is good, and then He creates us, and we mess it up. We mess it up, and then sin comes, and all of a sudden we're separated from God, and we get really evil, and God is like, "Let's wipe out everyone and let's start again with Noah." And then we get evil again. And then He goes to Abraham. He creates a covenant with Abraham and says, "I will establish my people through you." And what you see time and time again in the Old Testament is people come to God and they're blessed. And then when they're blessed, they forget about God. Sound familiar? And then they enter into a moment of oppression, and then they're down. And then they're like, "God, help me." And then all of a sudden, God restores them. And then they get blessed. And when they get blessed, what happens? It's a downward spiral — which is exactly what we do.

But what I love about the Old Testament is it shows this: God always has a redemption plan. And I hope that encourages one of you that have come in here and you've been like, "Man, I'm so stuck in shame. I'm so stuck in sin. If anyone really knew what had happened in my life, no one would look at me the same." Know this: God has a redemption plan in Jesus. He came to save.

What is the gospel?

What is that? That is called the gospel. That is called the gospel. It's good news. Say good news. The gospel is good news. The Old Testament — it starts good and it ends bad. The New Testament — it starts bad, but how many of you know it ends good? At the end, we win. Jesus wins. That is the gospel.

And today, we're studying the Gospels. There's four of them: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And often, when you say that word, people have a question, and they're like, "What actually is the gospel? What does the gospel mean?" Here's what the gospel means. In the Greek, it's euangelion, and what it means is good news. It means good news. But it's not only good news in theory — like, good news that I understand. It's good news that is proclaimed.

Is anyone grateful that the gospel wasn't just something that someone understood and never shared? Someone at some point shared it with you. And what we need to do is we need to share it with everyone else. We need to share it with Chandler. We need to share it with Phoenix. We need to share it with Arizona. We need to share it with the United States. The gospel needs to be proclaimed. That's what needs to happen, time and time again.

Here's a formal definition. The gospel is the good news that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God made a way for us to be forgiven, restored, and brought back to Him. Can we just take a second and give God some praise for the gospel? It's the best news. Because even if you're broken, you're wounded, you feel so much shame — God can restore. So people ask, what is the gospel? That's what it is. That's what the gospel is.

Why are there four Gospels?

But another question is: why are there four of them? Like, why Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Why not just one of them? Why did we need four?

And to help you understand this — because you need to know this — your Bible's not chronological, right? We talked about this. Someone's like, "It's crazy. In Matthew, Jesus is born, he lives this life, and he dies. And then all of a sudden in Mark, he's a baby again." Like, how does it happen? It's not chronological. It is four accounts of the exact same story.

And the best way to actually understand this is to tell you about King Charles I. Like, what does this have to do with the gospel? Okay, trust me. King Charles the First. I'm from South Africa, which is a British Commonwealth country. So, something about South Africans: we love the royal family. You probably did not need to know that about me, but we love the royal family. But King Charles I was in the 1600s. Right now it's King Charles III who currently leads England. King Charles I — he was in the 1600s. And what they wanted to do is they wanted to make a statue of him. But they were like, it is impossible to make a statue of this guy, because the greatest artist was in Rome, and he was like, "I'm not coming to London."

So what they decided to do — when you're trying to capture the image of someone, you're trying to create the statue of them — they were like, "How are we going to solve this problem?" And what they did is they decided to hire an artist who made a painting of him. And that is the painting that that artist made. They were like, "If we're going to really describe his likeness, we're going to get someone to paint an image, and we're going to see him from the front and from the side, and we're going to get all these perspectives of him." And they sent that painting off to Rome. And from that painting, they created the statue. They needed all angles to truly understand who King Charles was.

The four pictures in the Gospels are four perspectives of who Jesus is. And it was so important to God that we truly understood who Jesus was, that He says, "No, I'm not just going to give you one account. I'm going to give you four. I'm not just going to give you one picture. I'm going to give you four." And in all four pictures, you can see who the Son of God — God Himself, the visible image of the invisible God — you get to see who He really was. Four Gospels, four authors, writing to four different contexts, all choosing and picking specific things. And in doing that, it creates this beautiful picture of who Jesus is.

Why are there differences in the Gospels?

But that creates another question that people often have, which is this: why are there differences in the Gospels? Why are there differences? Because if you read, you'll see that there are some differences.

And let me just say something. If you are here today and you have questions about the Bible — welcome to Spirit Church. This is a place where it's okay to have questions. Sometimes we can feel such shame for the questions we have about the Bible. Or maybe you've been told you can't ask that question. Let me just tell you something: the Bible can handle your questions. The Bible is strong enough to actually handle our questions. So whatever questions it is that you have, bring them. But bring them to the right people. Bring them to people who know the Word. Bring them to people that can actually explain the Word. It's okay to have questions.

But there are some differences in the Gospels. Like, if you read Matthew — the story of Jesus rising from the dead — what you'll see is that there was one angel who was speaking. But in Luke, it wasn't one angel. It was two angels at the tomb. If you look at the story of Jesus being born in Luke, they go from Nazareth to Bethlehem, back to Nazareth. But in Matthew, they go from Bethlehem to Egypt and back to Nazareth. So you could say, why are there differences?

Here's what you need to know: in the Gospels, there are differences, but there are no contradictions. There are differences, but there aren't contradictions. As people are telling their story, as they are writing it to their specific audience, there are specific things that they are choosing to say and choosing to leave out. Does that make sense?

In fact, one of the best explanations of this was Dr. Henry van Dyke, who was talking about these differences. And he wrote this: "If four witnesses should appear before a judge to give an account of a certain event, and each should tell exactly the same story in the same words, the judge would probably conclude, not that their testimony was exceptionally valuable, but only that they had beyond a shadow of a doubt agreed to tell the same story. But if each man told what he had seen, as he had seen it, then the evidence would be credible. And when we read the four Gospels, is that not what we find? The four men tell the same story, each in his own way."

It actually proves the credibility of what happened. That you have four people writing a story — there are no contradictions, but there are these beautiful differences as they all choose to focus on something else. Does that help anyone? Does that make sense? So, that's why there are four Gospels.

So, here's what we're going to do for the rest of our time. I'm going to help you understand what each of the four Gospels is for. We're going to go one by one, and we're going to start in the book of Mark. You're like, "Okay, wait. Why not Matthew?" Because Matthew is the first Gospel in the Bible. Yes, Matthew is the first Gospel in the Bible — but it wasn't the first Gospel written. The first Gospel that was actually written was Mark.

Mark: the powerful servant King

It was written in AD 60, about 30 years after Jesus had died and rose again from the grave. In fact, Luke and Matthew actually use Mark as a source. So, we're starting in the Gospel of Mark.

Here's the core message of Mark: Jesus is the Son of God and the powerful servant King who wins through suffering and not conquest. Jesus is the Son of God and powerful servant King who wins through suffering and not conquest. The key verse is Mark 10:45, and it says this: "For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve others, and give his life as a ransom for many."

It is written by John Mark. He was not one of the twelve disciples, but he was a travel companion of Peter. So, he's getting this witness account from Peter, and he's busy writing down the gospel, trying to get all the stories about what Jesus did. It's one of what is called the three synoptic Gospels — syn meaning together, and opsis meaning seen, which means they can be seen together. If you take Matthew, Mark, and Luke and you read them in parallel, they read incredibly similarly, because again, they're all referencing Mark. Does that make sense? So, it's one of the three synoptic Gospels.

And here's what I love about Mark: it's fast-paced. If you have ADHD, you're going to love Mark. Mark skips the genealogies. He just goes straight into the action. Like, if Mark was a movie, it would be an action movie. It'd be Die Hard one, two, and three. That's what Mark does. He is just jumping straight into it. Like, when he writes, it's so funny. He says, "And immediately Jesus did this. And then immediately this happened. And then immediately this." He's just like, "We are going. We are moving." So if you have ADHD — Mark. You're going to love Mark. Mark is awesome.

And what he is showing is this: that Jesus had power and authority, but He was a servant leader. He didn't just talk the talk. He actually walked the talk. There are 37 miracles of Jesus. 22 of them are in Mark. He's skipping teachings. He's skipping all of it. He's just like — miracle, miracle, miracle, miracle. That's what he's doing.

If you understood who he was writing to, that would make sense. You see, because the entire book is actually written to Romans. How many of you know that in Israel, they were oppressed by the Roman government? There is this religious system under Rome. And what he's doing in this moment is he's actually writing to those Romans. And what do they care about? Power. What do they care about? Authority. They're looking at Julius Caesar and they're like, "Man, that is a man of authority." And what he does is he lords his authority over everyone. So Mark is saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah — but let me show you a dude who is powerful that doesn't lord it over anyone, but what he does instead is serve."

True power is not in Julius Caesar. True power is in service. Jesus doesn't come with a title. He comes with a towel. He doesn't come to be served. He comes to actually serve. So he skips the genealogy. Why? Because Romans don't care about the genealogy of a servant. They don't care. So he starts the book and he's like, "Let me show you all of these incredible things that happen."

But here's what's insane about the book of Mark: throughout the book, he actually hides the divinity of Jesus — that He is God. And the first time that He is recognized as God in the book of Mark is when He is on the cross, by a Roman centurion, who looks at Jesus — who dies, and the earth shakes, and everything turns dark — and a Roman centurion says, "Surely this must be the Son of God." Y'all see the genius of Mark? He's saying, let me show you power. Let me show you power. Let me show you power. By the way, he dies. And by the way, someone like you, who understands authority, says, "This must be the Son of God." Absolutely brilliant in the way that he frames everything, and shows that Jesus' coronation was not on a throne. His coronation was on a cross, where He wore the crown of thorns.

Here's what you need to know about the book of Mark. What it teaches us more than anything is that as Christians, our calling is to serve. Our calling isn't to be served. Our calling is to serve. To lay our lives down. If you're a husband in the room, what is our calling? Our calling is to lay our life down for our spouse. Lay our life down for our family. We lay our lives down for God's church. People are like, "Brad, why do you do all of this?" Because here's the thing: I serve here, but I also serve there, because that is the most important thing I can do to create an environment for people to come and serve God. That's what our dream team does. They're laying down their lives so that they can build something where people can meet God. Can you all do me a favor? Can you give a round of applause for the dream team? We don't come just to be served, but to serve. If you want to join the dream team, go to Growth Track right after this. Come join the team. It's fun.

Matthew: the Messiah who fulfills everything

Okay. Next book is this: the book of Matthew. The book of Matthew. The core message is this: Jesus is the Son of God and Messiah — say Messiah — who fulfills everything God has said.

The book of Matthew is not an action movie. It is like a Netflix documentary, where Matthew is just making all the connections, and he's like, "Oh, you need to see this, and then you need to see this, and ooh, by the way, this happens — and this was in the Old Testament, but here it is in the New." And the reason for that is because Matthew is writing to Jewish people who would have known the Old Testament. And what he is trying to do is he's trying to prove to them that Jesus is God. That He is the one that you've been waiting for.

And I love that God uses Matthew to write it. Because Matthew — also known as Levi, before Jesus changes his name — Matthew was a tax collector. It was like a corrupt IRS worker who sided with the Romans. So, this is someone that was hated by the Jews. So God comes and calls the guy who is hated, changes his identity, and then gets him to be the one who writes so that they can be saved.

I don't care what you've gone through in your life. I don't care where you're stuck in your life. In a moment, Jesus can come, and He can call you out. He can give you a new name. He can give you a new identity. And the thing that you were running from, you can now run towards, and you can reach people in the thing that you struggled with. The best person sometimes to help someone deal with the things that they're struggling with is someone who has been there. Let Jesus change you, so that you can reach people.

I love Matthew. The entire time, he is trying to show them: man, this is the Messiah you've been waiting for. So he's incredibly teaching-heavy. The Sermon on the Mount, the parables — you're going to get all of that in the book of Matthew. And what you're going to see is this. Because the Jews — what did they understand? They understood the Torah and the Old Testament. And what he's trying to say is, this is the one that you've been waiting for all this time. The funny thing is, even Jews right now in Israel — what they need is the book of Matthew. Because they are still waiting for the Messiah. They still believe that someone's going to come and just bring worldly peace. And they don't understand that they've already missed Him.

Sixty times he references the Old Testament. In fact, so often when you're reading the book of Matthew, there's something called the fulfillment formula, where he says, "This happened to fulfill blank. This happened to fulfill blank. This happened to fulfill blank." When you're reading the genealogy, he traces it back to Abraham. Why? Because he's saying, they're all looking for this Messiah that's going to come from the line of Abraham and the line of David. And what he's saying is: this is He. So when we skip the genealogies — because we're like, why is it important that they begot — for them it was important, because he's saying to the Jewish people, this is Him. This is the guy you've been waiting for.

And it shows how Jesus fulfills all of these prophecies. Do you know there are 300 messianic prophecies, and Jesus has fulfilled every one but the one that He's coming back — because that's still going to happen. He's fulfilled every one. You need to know this: Jesus just fulfilling eight of them is 1 in 10 to the 17th power. And you might be like, "That makes no sense." Okay, let me help you with this. A Christian mathematician named Peter Stoner wrote this: if you were to take the entire state of Texas — the entire state — and spread silver dollars two feet deep across the state, if you marked one of them and buried it somewhere in the state, and if you chose one person, blindfolded them, and told them that they could only pick one in the entire state — his chance of getting the marked one on his first try would be 1 in 10 to the 17th power. That is eight. Jesus fulfilled them all. We can't even comprehend that. That's what Matthew is all about.

He's broken it up into five discourses — five teachings. You get the Sermon on the Mount. You get the mission discourse, the parables of the kingdom, the community discourse, the Olivet discourse — the Mount of Olives discourse. Five teachings. Does that look familiar? Where did we learn about five? The Torah — the five books of Moses. And what he is saying is: Moses was their guy. They're like, "We love Moses." And what he's saying is, Jesus is the greater Moses.

You see this comparing and contrasting happening all the time. Jesus represents and succeeds where Israel fails. Israel passes through the waters of the Red Sea and fails in the wilderness. But Jesus passes through the waters of baptism and succeeds in the wilderness — 40 days and 40 nights, He overcomes Satan. Israel fails under the law, but Jesus keeps it perfectly. Moses goes up a mountain and gets the law. Jesus goes up a mountain and teaches the law. Israel suffers under exile and turns away. Jesus suffers on the cross and remains faithful, and blesses those who are cursing Him. Can you all see that? That is the book of Matthew. Man, I love the book of Matthew.

Luke: the Savior for everyone

Which then brings us to Luke. My man Luke. Dr. Luke — he writes factually. His whole point is: Jesus is the Messiah and Lord, who came to save everyone, not just a select few. He's saying this isn't just for the Jewish people. This is for the least, the last, and the lost. If Luke was a movie, it'd be a drama. It's just really, really people-heavy. That's what it would be — just getting all the stories of all the people.

And what he shows is that Jesus comes for those who are broken. He's a doctor. Luke is a doctor. He understands pain. So it brings meaning to Luke 5:31, where it says this: Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners to repentance." It is for the lost person. Luke 19:10: "For the Son of Man came to seek and save that which is lost."

Luke would have been Paul's missionary partner. He would have used Mark, but then he is investigating. He is all about the facts. And the reason for that is he's writing to the Greeks — Theophilus, one of the Greeks. What you need to know about the people in Greece — the Greeks — is this: they were really into mythology. Zeus, all of that. So, what Luke is trying to do is he's trying to say, here is God. But what you need to know is He's not just some mythical creature. What He is, is He is actually human. He actually came.

Which is why, when you read the book of Luke, he doesn't take it back to Abraham. He takes it all the way back to Adam. What he's trying to say is: no, Jesus was a human. You read about Jesus's childhood. Luke 2:52: Jesus had to grow in wisdom and stature with God and man. What is he doing? He's humanizing Jesus. He's trying to help them see: this was a real man. This was the God-man.

Which is also the significance of what Jesus did. Because before Jesus actually comes in the flesh, you see Him throughout the Old Testament, but He is not actually in the human form. He is not in His incarnated form. But then He comes — and that's actually the sacrifice of Jesus, is that He comes, He becomes human. He dies, He receives His resurrected body, and He is in that resurrected body forever. It was the ultimate sacrifice.

It shows how Jesus deals with those who are oppressed, forgotten, and rejected. The prodigal son — it's in Luke. The good Samaritan — it's in Luke. An outsider who would have been hated. The thief on the cross — it's in Luke. Jesus is the God-man. He is fully God, and He is fully man. And where Adam messed up, the second Adam redeemed. It is the divine reversal. The humble are exalted. The outcasts are welcomed. The lost will be first. And grace redefines our status. No one is too far gone. If Jesus came for them, He came for you, too. That's the book of Luke. Jesus was human. He was real. "I talked to multiple people" — eyewitness accounts.

John: believe and have life

And then the final book is one that's kind of all on its own. And that's the book of John, which is very different than the other three. If Mark is an action movie, and Matthew is a documentary, and Luke is a drama, then John is a Hallmark movie. He's the romantic Gospel, is what he is. Mark is what Jesus does. Matthew is a documentary — how He fulfills the story. Luke is the drama — who He came for. But John is relational. It's who He is.

The core message of John is this: Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and by believing in Him, you can have eternal life in His name. You see the entire theme in John 20:31. It says this: "But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in him, you might have life in his name." It's where we get such beautiful writing like John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but will have eternal life."

Ninety percent of his content is unique, and he is writing to all who will believe. Every chapter in the book of John mentions the deity of Jesus, and he completes everything. We've talked about this — we just did a series in John — that he's using sevens all over the place. What is that? Seven is the number of completion. These seven miracles, these seven signs, that show you who Jesus is. In the first chapter, these seven titles of Jesus, that we understand who He is. Seven times Jesus says, "I am." Period. Referencing Exodus, where God reveals Himself to Moses and says, "I am that I am." And seven times He makes these declarative statements, where He says, "I am the light of life. I am the door. I am the way, the truth, and the life."

He doesn't start with the genealogy. He starts with theology. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." That's the beauty of his Gospel — that Jesus is the Word made flesh. He always existed, but He didn't always exist as the God-man. In the Old Testament is something called a theophany. And what that is, it's that picture of Jesus that we see. And often you'll see Him appear in the Old Testament — He appears as the angel of the Lord. But then He is incarnated. He wraps Himself in flesh, comes, lives the life that we couldn't live, dies on a cross, is raised again in His glorified body — which is how He still looks today — which gives us a picture of what we will be when we die and we're raised again from the dead at the end of time. And we get to spend forever with Jesus in a glorified body.

Jesus loved us so much that He changed. He incarnated Himself and is forever the God-man. Beautiful. That's the sacrifice of who Jesus is. He isn't just a good man. He is God. And we have to put our faith in Him. That's the book of John. That's the book of John.

Come to Him

So what do we do? We get these four pictures of who Jesus is. We get to see that He is Messiah, and He is the Son of God, and He was incarnated, and He came for the Jews, and He came for the least of these, and He came that we can have eternal life and abundant life. What do we have to do to experience everything that Jesus has for us?

Matthew 11:28 says this: "Come to me. Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." You're feeling weak. Feeling tired. Feeling like you don't have what it takes. Feeling shame from the sin that has held you down. So afraid if someone knows your story. You have to know this: Jesus is inviting you today to come to Him. Just come to Him. Bring it to Him. You've tried carrying it by yourself, and it's not working. Why don't you give it to Him? He says, "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

Can I pray for you today? God, I want to thank You for every single person that's here. Lord, I don't know the weight that they're carrying. God, I don't know the things that they're feeling, but Jesus, I thank You that You do. And in this moment, whatever that weight is, we just say we give it to You. Whatever that is, Jesus, we give it to You. We thank You that Your yoke is easy, that Your burden is light. And I just pray for such peace to come into the room.

While you continue to pray — we've been talking about Jesus. We've been sharing the gospel: that we all were separated from God, but Jesus came that we can be brought back to God. And there's some of you sitting in this room today, and right now you feel so far away from Him, and you actually have never made Him Lord of your life. You haven't actually taken that step. And let me just say, if that's you, and you're like, "Man, I want to come back to God. I want to be back in relationship with Him. I want to be restored to Him. I want to go all in with Jesus. I want to make Him my Lord. I want to make Him my Savior" — no one's looking around. I just want you to say, "Hey, Brad, that's me." Thank you. I'm so proud of you. I love that. Praise God.

For all of you who just did that, I want you to just pray after me. Just say, "Dear Jesus, I believe that You're the Son of God and the Savior of the world. I believe You came to this earth. You died on a cross. And You were raised that I can have life. And right now, I make You my Lord. I make You my Savior. Change me from the inside out. In Jesus' name. In Jesus' name. Amen."

Hey church, can you do me a favor? Can you put your hands together for everyone who just did that for the first time? We love you so much. And if you are watching and you just said yes to Jesus, congratulations. This is the best decision you could ever make. But you do have a next step. We want you to text the word Jesus to the number 480-485-3405 so that you can let us know, because our team has a 21-day devotional that we would love to send you. It's called You Said Yes, so that we can walk with you in this journey. Make sure you know you are not alone on this journey with Jesus.

And also, if this ministry has impacted you, I would love for you to pray about two things. First, pray about sharing this message with someone. You never know how much a simple share could impact someone's life. And secondly, we would love for you to pray about partnering with us financially. Your giving enables us to share messages just like this all around the world. And so, thank you for giving. You can go to spiritchurch.co/give if you want to participate in that today. So, we love you, church, and we will see you right back here next week. And remember that with God, there is more.