Slide 1
What makes you part of God’s family?

Slide 2
Colossians 1:13-14
13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Slide 3
Delivered (rhuomai) – to rescue or pull someone from danger or out of a disastrous situation.

Slide 4
A good family cannot save us. 
A broken family cannot put us beyond God’s grace.

Slide 5
Colossians 2:13-14
13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

Slide 6
Galatians 4:4-7
4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

Slide 7
How do you become a child of God?

Slide 8
Galatians 3:26
for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith.

Slide 9
How do you become a child of God?
“in Christ Jesus” 

Slide 10
Colossians 2:12
having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.

Slide 11
Acts 22:16
And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.’

Now today specifically is a unique day because we do this one time a year. We call it our all call baptism Sunday. And so, so let me just kind of lay out what is going to happen at the end of service because it looks different than most of our normal services. If, if you’ve never been here before on a Sunday morning, , how we’re going to end this Sunday is not what a typical Sunday looks like. We only do this one time and this one time a year we will do a Billy Graham style invitation. Now for some of you, you’re like, “Who’s Billy Graham?” Which is sad because he was the man back in the day. And, and he used to do invitations. He, he would go and he would do these revival services all across the country and all across the world. And at the end, they would have a moment where they would sing a song and people who wanted to respond to the gospel, they would stand up and they would walk to the front.

And largely people don’t do that as much anymore because it feels really awkward in the room. And so we’re going to embrace the awkward this morning and we are going to end the service with that. And so before we launch into that, here, here’s what I’d like to do. I’d like to open with a time of prayer. And here would be my challenge for you. If, if you are in the room and you’re not a Christian, I, I’m going to challenge you to pray a prayer that simply says, “Hey, God speak to me. God, if you’re real, speak to me in a real way right now.” And then if you are in the room and you are a Christian, but you’ve never been baptized, you are a Christian but never been baptized, , we want to give you an opportunity to do that today as well.

So let’s all pray together. And, and I would just encourage all of us to, to just pray this prayer. God, please speak to me right now. Pray that just to yourself. God, please speak to me right now in this service. And Heavenly Father, our prayer is that, that you would speak to each and every one of us. , We, we pray this in the name of Jesus through the power of your Holy Spirit. Our prayers that you would speak, Lord, help me to get out of the way. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. If you remember family photos back in the day, they look a little bit different now than they did back then. , I actually was texting with my parents asking them to send me some family photos. , It gave my kids a really good laugh. Here’s a family photo from about the year 1990.

Now, if you took a family photo in around the year 1990, then you know they looked very different than they do today. , You had to go to possibly the mall or maybe a photographer’s studio. I think this was from JC Penney’s. , Yes, JC Penney’s back in the day also had just this random photo area. And so you’d go in and of course you were dressed to the nines, like dad’s wearing a suit, mom’s wearing the dress. You can tell this is either late ’80s or early ’90s because of my mom’s poofy hair. Like it was rocking back in the day. I’m wearing the, the nicest shirt apparently that I have. And you’d go in and you’d sit down and there’d be this very fake background behind you. There’d be these big lights and then the, the camera’s on the tripod it’s set and they have this perfect square where, where they’re trying to frame you inside of.

And so they have you sit down and then you’re turning this way and they tell you exactly where to put each hand and exactly where to look and exactly when to smile. And remember th- th- this wasn’t digital. So like they were just taking snaps and hoping for the best because somebody had to go develop this thing. And so they’d take about a dozen pictures and then they’d mail them to you and you just get them in the mail. And that’s, then that thing, it goes into a frame and it goes – up on the mantle and then it’s there for the next 30 years. Like that’s how we operated in 1990. Now, now it looks very different. About two years ago, we went as a family to go take family photos. Here’s our family photo. And this is kind of how we do family photos now.

And what we like to pretend is that we went, when we show you this photo, we wanna pretend like our family was just strolling through nature because that’s, that’s what our family does. Like we just, we dress nice in coordinated color matching outfits. And even though it’s very red dirt around us, we stayed really clean and everybody’s put together. And then just as we’re just, as a family who likes to walk in nature together as we’re hanging out, somebody happens to be there and takes our photo and then we frame it and we, we put it all over the wall. Except what’s behind the scenes is it took us three hours to get ready for that. And we had a professional photographer that we spent like two hours with out at a park and you’re just roaming all over the place and there’s all these candid photos.

And they take, without exaggeration, they take over a thousand photos of you and your family looking for the seven that you will use. You’ll never see the rest of them for the rest of your life, but they’re looking for seven. And even if they have the one where it looks almost perfect, like everybody’s eyes are open except for that one person and they’re all smiling, they can just Photoshop those eyes right back open. And, and this seems normal. And yet I guarantee you 20 years from now, 30 years from now, my grandkids will look at this photo and they will laugh because something about this is dated to right now and 20 years from now, 30 years from now, we will have a whole new thing. I, I know my cousin, he grew up in a family that, that looked great on the outside, but on the inside it, it wasn’t always so great.

And so he remembers picture day with his family and, and it gives him this stress and this anxiety because he’s now, as an adult, he’s estranged from his mom, has a bad relationship with her. And she, right before the photo would be yelling and would be mean and would be toxic and then it would be, “Hey, we look perfect on the outside. That’s what we’re gonna send people with a Christmas card that everything is great even though on the inside for that family, it felt very broken.” And so I, I don’t know what kind of a family that you grew up in. I don’t know whether you came from an amazing family or a broken family. I don’t know what the, the photo ops were like for your family. But regardless of our earthly family, there’s a promise that comes from scripture where God is inviting us and desiring for us to be a part of his family, which leads us to a really challenging, important question for us to wrestle with.

And that is this, what makes you part of God’s family? Now they’ve done these surveys where they try and figure out, okay, what do people believe in America? And there was a study done a- about 10 years ago where they said i- if they were going to qualify or quantify what, what people largely believe in the United States of America, they described it as moral therapeutic deism. That, that what most people, including the people that claim to be Christian, what most people actually believe is some version of this story. They believe that, that, okay, there is a God that’s kind of distant up there and, and God wants me to be happy and God wants me to do good things. And so God who wants me to be happy has told me to do good things. And if I do enough good things and at the end of my life, that God is going to take the good people and those good people who have done good things, they get into heaven.

And the bad people that have not done enough good things, they don’t get into heaven. And, and that’s largely what Americans believe. But, but here’s the problem with that belief, is that it’s not what the Bible teaches at all. The Bible does not teach that the way that you get into the family is to earn your way into the family. It teaches something radically different. If you’ve got a Bible, turn with me to Colossians. We’re gonna look in Colossians chapter one. We’re gonna look at verses 13 and 14 in Colossians chapter one. But to give a little bit of context, you have to look at what Paul writes in verse 12. In verse 12, he says, “Giving thanks to the Father, our heavenly Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance.” So, so Paul oftentimes uses this language around the family of God being adopted into the family of God and this language of inheritance.

Now in the first century, inheritance was something that really you had to earn. It was not just, hey, first time, automatically you get things, but the expectation was that over the course of your life, that you were earning the inheritance that, that you felt like you deserved by doing the right things, by honoring your dad, by honoring your parents, by, by living according to the things that they would expect you to do. Now, Paul, with that as the mindset, he says something that sounds radically different. He says that our heavenly Father is the one who has qualified you, qualified us. So in the earthly realm, we qualify ourselves to be a part of the family. He’s saying in God’s family that the Father qualifies you, that you haven’t qualified yourself. Instead, it’s God who has qualified you in this inheritance that we receive from Him.

And then verse 13 says this, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” Now, now there’s something profound when, when it comes to understanding the Bible as a whole. The Bible is one big story. It’s one meta narrative from the beginning to end. Even though it’s 66 different books, there’s one story it’s trying to tell us. And this verse helps us to understand the big picture point of the book. The big picture point of the Bible is that you and I live in the domain of darkness. Sometimes people say, “Well, if there is a God, why is there brokenness in the world? Why is there evil? Why is there sin? Why is there wickedness?” Well, the Bible gives us the answer for that. The Bible says that the reason that evil exists, the reason that there’s pain that they’re suffering is because sin enters into the world and as a result of that, we live in the domain of darkness.

That’s the really bad news. We live in this domain of darkness, but it says that he has delivered us from this domain of darkness. , That word delivered in the Greek is the name, i- is the Greek word rum – ruamai. Ruomai, your translation might translate it as delivered. It might translate it as rescue. , The, the meaning of that word is to rescue or to pull someone from danger or out of a disastrous situation. So the picture it’s trying to paint is imagine that you have a small child and they’re in a burning building and they are incapable of saving themselves. Ruamai to rescue would be somebody else steps in, grabs a hold in them.That’s the picture that literally they’re being pulled away from that danger. Or, or imagine that somebody is drowning, somebody cannot swim. A- and that person who cannot swim, they cannot save themselves.

They’re incapable of saving themselves. So somebody else rumize them, that they save them. They deliver them away from the danger, away from certain death into safety. That’s what the Bible tells us that Jesus does for us and to us from the domain of darkness, that he rescues us away from the domain of darkness. Now most of us, we don’t really love the idea of being rescued because if I’m honest as a guy, I don’t even like the idea of needing help. Like I, I like giving help. If, if my wife ever needs help, if she has something heavy that she can’t pick up by herself, like there’s a part of me that’s like, I can pick it up because I’m the man. Yeah, let me help you out. If she needs help fixing something that’s broken, if she needs help because she’s got some type of an issue and I wanna give my advice, most of the time she doesn’t actually want that help.

Even, even if she says, “Can you help me?” That’s, that’s a different type of help. But physical things, you think, “Hey, yeah, I’m, I’m happy to help.” But then on the other side, when people offer help, I, I oftentimes am reluctant to receive help. Like sometimes I will get the groceries. And back in the day we had the plastic bags. I know those don’t exist anymore, but back in the day we had the plastic bags. And, and I would try and get every single grocery in one trip no matter what. , Like, like you, you’d slide those plastic bags all up and down both arms, it’d start cutting off your blood circulation, like you’d just be shaking and your wife’s coming out, your kids are coming out and say, “Hey, can we help you?” And you’re like, “No, I’m good. I got it. I’m fine.” You carry some heavy thing and somebody will say, “Hey, can I get the door for you?

Can I help?” And there’s a part of you that’s like, “No, I’m good. Like I, I don’t have any more hands, but I will try and open this door with my foot. I do not need your help.” So a part of us doesn’t like help and we definitely don’t like the idea of needing rescue because rescue implies what? It, it implies I am incapable of saving myself and I am reliant upon someone else being the one who saves me. And now we, we naturally, when we think about God’s family, we, we have these connections where it causes us to think of our own earthly family. And so with your own earthly family, I’ve got some good news and some bad news as it pertains to God’s family, that a good family cannot save us. So if you come from an amazing home, a Christian home, they love mom and mom and dad both love Jesus and they, they took you to church, that that does not save you, that does not make you a Christian.

Or maybe you fall into the category you say, well, but I come from a really broken home. And, and maybe you yourself, you just say, I’m really broken. I’m so far away from God, there’s nothing that could ever save me. Good news, bad news. Good news is even if you are so far away from God, there’s nothing you can ever do to be beyond the reach of God. But bad news, even if you are from an amazing, amazing Christian family who went to church every single week, that does not automatically save you, , nor does it mean that you are a part of God’s family. How then do we become a part of God’s family? , Flip over a page to chapter two of Colossians verses 13 and 14. Here’s what it says. “And You who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made a life together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

This he set aside nailing to the cross. “So It starts with the problem that we and you were dead in your trespasses, that, that we are dead, that we are separated away from God. We deserve a punishment. It says that we had this debt to be paid. So we’re dead because of our sins separated from God, deserving a punishment. And then it tells us how that gets paid. It says that, that we’ve been forgiven from all of our trespasses. We’ve been made alive with him Jesus because Jesus has canceled the record of our debt that stood against us. He set it aside and it says it was nailed to the cross. , You see the, the scandal of the gospel and it, and it truly is when you really understand it and grasp it, it is scandalous. The scandal of the gospel is that no matter how terrible someone is, they can receive forgiveness, they can receive transformation and they can be embraced into the family of God.

So imagine the worst person that you could possibly imagine, someone that has done evil, atrocious, awful, awful things. The gospel says that that person can receive forgiveness and be embraced into the family of God because of what Jesus has done on the cross, that all of their evil, all of their wrongdoing gets, gets nailed to the cross with Jesus. But what we tend to do is we think, well, okay, that person, they really need Jesus, but we tend to put ourselves in this, this qualifying manner. We say, well, hey, but I’m not that bad. Like most of us, we can all name somebody worse than ourselves. Like if you really, it didn’t even, you know, you have to try hard to like, well, I’m bad, but I’m not as bad as that person. Like there are way worse people in the world than I am.

Probably you even do that with your own family. Like, like you’re like, I’m like, I’m not doing great, but I’m better than my sibling. Or, or if you don’t have a sibling that you’re better than, you find a cousin or a second cousin or a third cousin. You’re like, there’s some, that uncle, somebody is doing worse than I am. But the scandal of the gospel says that that person who’s a really good and moral and wonderful person who lives a pretty good life, that that person also needs Jesus, that the evil person and the person that morally seems like a good person, that both equally need Jesus and both equally, when, when they put their faith into Jesus, both equally receive adoption into the family of God. It’s this scandal of the gospel that, that everybody equally has access to put their faith into Jesus.

And now there’s a part of that that makes us slightly uncomfortable because we are used to earning. Like probably even in your family, there’s some amount of earning that exists in your family. You think, okay, if I. And, and your parents maybe didn’t even ever say this, but there’s a part of you that thinks, hey, if I really want my parents to be proud of me, my mom and dad to be proud of me, then I need to achieve. I need to be successful. I need to be smart. I need to be a good athlete. I need to be rich. I need to make good decisions. And we think there’s a part of us just the way that we’re wi- wired is that, hey, the more I do things, the more I am embraced by my family. And so we naturally then, we think that the gospel works the same way.

That God loves everybody, but the, the more I do good things, then he loves me even more. And that’s not the gospel. The gospel is I can do nothing to earn his love. It’s what he has done for me. , Look what it says in Galatians. Galatians chapter four, starting in verse four. It says,” But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts crying to Abba Father, for you’re no longer a slave, but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God. “So In the, in the first century, inheritance was, was everything. And now we think of inheritance as, as just stuff, but in the first century, it was, it was name, it was future, it was so much of who I am is based off of the family that I belong to.

And you gotta remember in the first century, one third of all of Rome, they were slaves. A- and so what he’s put, getting this picture of, this idea that, hey, regardless of your own earthly family, regardless of your background, regardless of what you have done, what Jesus has done for us allows us to become heirs to the kingdom of God. He offers us this inheritance that we do nothing to deserve. That means we get put in their mind that they’d be thinking, okay, well, the son of a really important person naturally becomes a really important person. He’s saying that God, the creator of the universe makes you and I adopted into his family because of what Jesus has done. So possibly the most important question that you and I can ask ourselves our entire life is this question. How do you become a child of God?

, What does it look like to be adopted into God’s family? What does that mean? Scripture tells us, it says in Galatians three, verse 26, it says, “For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith.” And so that question, how do you become a child of li – o- of God? We become a child of God in Christ Jesus through faith. It, it’s not what I have done. It’s not what I have earned. Instead, it’s what he has done for me. It, it’s this picture that the Bible is trying to get us to understand that we are born into brokenness. We are born into the domain of darkness, that we’re separated away from God, that, that I am separated from him because of my sin and I deserve a punishment. I deserve the death that Jesus took for me, that that’s the reality of my situation.

But God sends Jesus to save us. I, I can’t earn it no matter how nice of a person or good of a person I am, that, that will never qualify me to get into the family of God. But instead, Jesus living a perfect life, a sinless life. Jesus never does anything wrong. Jesus chooses to go to the cross. , That’s where it says that, that my sin, my debt, your sin, your debt is nailed with him to the cross. He took the punishment that we deserve so that by putting my faith and my trust into him, my debt has been paid. And now I can be adopted into the family through faith because of Jesus’s work, not by my own work. I, I, I think one of the challenges, especially with American Christianity, is that we have this general idea of, well, hey, I grew up in the church, therefore I’m a Christian.

Or I’m a pretty good person and therefore I’m a Christian. But that’s not what the gospel says. The Bible teaches us that we are far, far worse than, than we think of ourselves. We live in a domain of darkness, but it, it also teaches that God’s grasp, God’s, the breadth of his love is far, far wider, far, far deeper than we can ever fathom or comprehend. And he adopts us into his family when we put our faith and our trust into him. And so he, so here’s my challenge for you today is maybe you’re in here and, and you are not a Christian. Or maybe you’re in here and you think you’re Christian, you say, “Well, I have always gone through the motions,” but your definition, your idea of Christianity somehow looks like moral therapeutic deism. Well, hey, I, I, I just do good things and if I do a good enough, enough good things and eventually at the end of my life, maybe that’ll get me into heaven.

And, and the gospel says, “Well, no, hey, that’s not the gospel.” The gospel says, “You have to be saved. You have to say, I can’t do it alone. I can’t earn it alone. I put my faith, I put my trust into Jesus.” And, and it’s not just this, “Hey, well, I say a prayer and I’m good to go.” Putting my faith and my trust into him represents making him my identity. Look what it says in Colossians chapter two, verse 12. It says, “Having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith and the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.” So, so baptism, there’s two connection points to, , to make to this verse. One is about what it means to be a Christian, and then one is what does baptism represent? What it means to be a Christian is that I am joining with Jesus on the cross, that there’s a death and a resurrection, that Jesus died for our sins, and then he conquered death rose from the dead.

That when I become a Christian, I am now identifying with Jesus, that my old self is now dead and gone, and now I have new life in him. , That means that, that I don’t just say, “Well, hey, I’m gonna live my life the exact same way as I’ve always lived my life, except I said a prayer and so now I’ve got some like Jesus spirit sprinkles and otherwise my life looks the exact same.” That, that’s not what the Bible teaches being a Christian is. The, the Bible teaches, “Hey, I recognize that I’m in this domain of darkness. I, I’m broken. I can’t do it by myself. I, I’ve gotta put my faith and my trust. I need him to save me where I cannot do it on my own. And now I’m putting my, my identity in him.” That means that going forward, who I am, first and foremost, is based off my relationship with Jesus.

That, that how I try to think and how I try and talk and how I try and act, how, how I try and live is based off of my identity in him first and foremost. And, and so if, if you’re in here and you’ve, you’ve never made that decision where you say, “Hey, Jesus, save me,” then today I wanna give you an opportunity to do that. Today, an opportunity where here’s, here’s what it, it tells us in scripture, Romans 10:13 says, “For all who call upon Jesus will be saved.” That, that just means I’m crying out, “Jesus, save me.” And oftentimes we, we connect it to a prayer, but it, the prayer is not the thing that makes you a Christian. It is your heart’s condition saying, “Jesus, save me.” That is what makes someone a Christian. And then that next step is the step of obedience and baptism.

If you are here today and you are a Christian, but you’ve never been baptized, my challenge for you would be, and why not today? , There’s this cool story where, where Paul is telling the story of his conversion story, where he’s on the road to Damascus and he’s a terrible person, he’s a murderer, he’s killing Christians. And then Jesus shows up to him, this blinding light, he puts scales on his eyes where he can’t see. He has this conversion moment and he gets to Damascus and he looks for a guy named Ananias, who’s a Christian. And then in Acts 22, verse 16, he’s telling his testimony, the story of his conversion, and then he repeats what Ananias told him. Ananias to Paul says, “And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.” , baptism in the Old Testament, Jesus didn’t create baptism, , even his cousin, John the Baptist was baptizing before Jesus.

In the Old Testament, we see baptism. In the Old Testament, it’s this baptism that represented a washing away of sins. And that’s still what baptism has this picture, this symbol of, is washing away from sins. But Jesus adds something to it. The baptism is a washing away from sins, but also it’s joining with Jesus on the cross with death and resurrection. In, in the first century church, they saw baptism as being embraced into the family of God. Why, why did they see it that way? Because oftentimes when someone became a Christian in the first century, their whole family rejected them and said, “Wait a second. You’re gonna believe it in a God different than the one that we worship?” Y- you’re gonna go with that group that they though were crazy and they’d say, “If you’re gonna do that, hey, you’re away from the family.

You’re no longer a part of us.” And so the decision to become a Christian was forsaking everything else. And so baptism was seen as this moment where they’re being adopted into the family of God. And now there’s nothing about baptism that saves us, but we just read verses that, that say, “It’s only the work of God that saves us.” But there’s something profoundly powerful about in obedience saying, “Okay, God, I, I’m gonna fall after you.” A- a- as a, as a Christian, there’s a lot of times in life that we’re not sure the right thing to do. Like we pray and we say, “Okay, God, what do you want me to do in this situation?” And we’re like, “I, I think that this is the right thing to do.” Can I tell you that when you get baptized, if you’re a Christian and you have never been baptized, when you get baptized, it, it’s one of the only moments in life you can be a thousand percent certain you are right in the center of God’s will.

Why? Because Jesus told us we should get baptized. Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Baptism. It, it is a symbol of my old self, my sins being washed away, my old self being dead. Now I have new life in Jesus. It’s also this beautiful moment of saying, “Hey, I have been adopted into God’s family. Old self is gone. Now I have new life, a new identity with Christ in him.” So here’s what we’re gonna do. I, I’m gonna pray, , and once I pray at the end of my prayer, , we’re gonna go into a song of invitation so, so the band’s gonna sing a song. And during that song, if God leads, I’m gonna invite you to stand up and walk down front. I’m gonna be standing right here, , over here on the, on the table.

I’ve got some t-shirts. And so maybe you’re here and you have given your life or you want to give your life and become a Christian. You say, “I need to be rescued.” Then during this next song, as God leads, I want you to stand up and walk down. We’ll talk to you about what it means to be Christian. Maybe you’re here and you say, “Well, hey, I, I am a Christian, but I’ve never been baptized and, and today’s the day I wanna get baptized.” Now I know there’s a lot of excuses of, of why you say, “Well, today’s a bad day.” You say, “Well, hey, I, I didn’t bring any clothes.” Good news, good news. We got clothes for you. Like this is a whole table of t-shirts, plus we got shorts, plus we got towels. Like all the things you need to get baptized, we’ve got for you today.

Then maybe you say, “Well, hey, I, I got something really important to get to. The Broncos don’t play till tomorrow night.” So you’re good there. Like there’s not, there’s no urgency there. , Maybe, maybe you didn’t drive yourself. Can I just tell you, if you didn’t drive yourself and you’re like, “Well, I’m not sure if they’d be willing to wait,” turn to the person next to you right now and just say, “Hey, are you willing to wait?” And if they say no, I will drive you home, all right? Like what, whatever might be the excuse or the reason, I, I promise that there’s a solution that we can come up with together. Now, now there’s a few reasons not to get baptized. Like don’t, don’t get up just because a buddy is getting up or somebody tells you that you should get up. , Don’t get up because you just feel like an emotional rush.

Like get up because you feel this is the right thing and I’m doing it in obedience and in worship to God. If you’ve been baptized, like sometimes people are like, “Well, I got baptized last year and the year before that.” Like that’s not. Baptism is this one time picture of death and resurrection. And so if you’ve never been baptized, that’s what today is about. I’m gonna pray. They’re gonna go into a song and during this song, as God leads, you stand and you come. Heavenly Father, we give you this time and I pray that you would use this invitation in a powerful way. Anyone in this room that does not know you, that needs to be rescued from you, even if they grew up in church and are a good person, if they need you, God, I pray that today would be the day that they put their faith in you.

God, for anyone in this room, That has never been baptized, but is a Christian. God, I pray that today will be the day in boldness that they stand up and come down. We pray all this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. As God leads, as we sing, you stand, you come.

<Sing>.

Can we give a big round of applause for these guys that came down?

All

Right, here’s what I’m gonna have y’all do. If you would look that way to Matt, that’s Matt right there. If y’all would follow Matt out that direction, and what we’re gonna do is we’re just gonna have a one-on-one conversation and, , if, if, if you are with somebody that’s walking down, they’re being walked right out towards the atrium where we’ll have a one-on-one conversation with them, make sure that they understand the decision and we can answer any questions. Can we give them one more big round of applause? Okay, we’re not done quite yet. , We’re gonna give it a little more time. , The, so at, at the, the nine o’clock, I, I said, “Hey, listen, if you’re in the balcony, if you’re in the room, if you’re watching online, hey, it’s not too late. Come on down.” , one of the ladies that just walked down, she’s from Colorado Springs and she said, “I was watching online.” And you said that.

And so I got in my car and I drove up here for the 10:30.

And so I promise if she is, , all in enough to say, “Hey, I’m willing to do it.” , if, if you are here and you say, “Man, there’s something about right now that I wanna stand up and walk down, , I’m gonna give you about two more minutes.” , and it might be awkward. We might just sit kind of in, in quiet when nobody walks down and that’s okay because when people walk down, they’re not walking down from me, like they’re responding to God. It’s really between them and God. And so I’m just trying to give opportunity for it to move, , for, for the Holy Spirit to, to work in your life. And so for about two more minutes, if God is leading in your life for you to make a decision, I don’t know what that decision is, it’s between you and God, but if there’s some decision that you wanna make for him, then for about two more minutes, we’re gonna wait.

And as God leads, you stand and you come on down.

Bless you.

About one more minute.

The balcony. Now, if you’re watching online, you’re probably not gonna make it here in this room on time, , but we’ll be baptizing for a while. And so if that’s you, come on up to the church. We’d love, love to have that conversation. Let’s all stand together. , So here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna go out and, and have a bunch of baptisms. So the people that just responded, they’re gonna get one-on-one conversation counseling and a- as long as they understand what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, then, then they’re gonna get baptized. We also had a bunch of people that were preset to get baptized. We’ll baptize over 50 people today, , on this All Call Baptism Sunday, which is a cool thing.

And so you are invited to the celebration. We, we got ice cream out there. We’ve got, we’ve got some umbrellas so that there’s a little bit of shade out there. And so we will just celebrate the- these life-changing decisions as people, , fall after God in baptism. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, thank you so much. God, thank you for these decisions. , Thank you for what you’re doing in our church. I gotta pray for anyone else in the room that, that feels like they should make a decision. Gotta pray, , that it’s not too late, that they make their way back to Trailhead and, and they nail down whatever decision that they’d like to, to make. God, we give you all the glory, all the praise that’s in the mighty name of Jesus we pray and all of God’s people said, “Have a good week.