[0:00] Hope you enjoyed yesterday's football games. We won. Yeah, well, OU and OSU both won. I have a brother-in-law, Phil Beck. He's a retired lieutenant colonel of the Marine Corps.
[0:30] You know, one of those guys. He is absolutely an OU fanatic. I mean, he has OU shirts. He has OU pants. He has OU belt. He has OU socks. He has OU shoes.
[0:44] And I don't want to know it, but I'm pretty sure he's got OU underwear, okay? He's just one of those fanatical. They moved from Lawton to Norman. And he said it was so he could be closer to his kids. But the truth is, as soon as he got there, he said, I can see the lights of OU.
[1:00] You know, he's right down the road from the stadium. And, you know, he just gets all excited about that. And he just, he's very, very, very passionate about Oklahoma football.
[1:14] There's some other pastors in our association who think it's Halloween all the time. I don't know what that's about. But anyway, I've never seen them in orange. The only thing I've ever seen them wear is orange or black.
[1:28] I don't, is that an Oklahoma, is there an Oklahoma team? Okay. Anyway. So anyway, they're phenomenal. They just are passionate about OSU and all the things that are going on with football.
[1:39] This time of year, it's football. You know, we all want everybody to win and we want to be national champions and all that kind of thing. It's just, we're just passionate about that. You know, you're like me. I've been an OU fan all my life.
[1:52] And I get nervous, you know, like yesterday afternoon, I was nervous. I just kind of, you know, wow, man. You know, and you get, I'm really getting nervous this year because they're not winning a whole lot.
[2:03] But anyway, you can be passionate about a lot of things, can't you? There's a lot of you. You have other things that you're passionate about. Some of you grandparents, I know you're passionate about your grandkids, especially you grandmas.
[2:18] You love your grandkids. When they were born, you were sure that they were the only children that did not inherit original sin. I mean, they were perfect. They are perfect and they were perfect.
[2:28] I don't have any grandkids, but I imagine when I do, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get back at my daughter for her teenage years. I'm going to sugar them up and get them all fired up and send them back with her.
[2:41] That's going to be, that's going to be a wonderful experience. But anyway, you know what I'm talking about. You're passionate about certain things. Well, the apostle Paul was passionate. We sung a little bit about it today.
[2:54] He was passionate about his relationship with Christ. If you have a Bible, if you turn to Philippians 3, there's one in the pew back. And as Mike says, if Brother Mike says, if you want a Bible, take that home with you if you don't have one.
[3:06] But chapter 3 of Philippians, chapter 3, it's in the back. If you don't know, it's a wonderful book of the things that he had to write to the churches in Philippi and the church in Philippi.
[3:21] He had to say certain things, but then he turns his attention in chapter 3 to himself. What I really want to do, it's verse 7, but I want to, if you would help me out here.
[3:32] Let me go back to verse 4, okay? So we're at chapter 3 of Philippians, verse 4. Let's stand in the honor of the reading of the word today. Therefore, I myself have reasons for such confidence.
[3:46] If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more. For the sake of the Lord, circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, in regard to the law of Pharisee as for zeal, persecuting the church as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
[4:06] But whatever was my prophet, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
[4:18] For whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ.
[4:33] The righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, in the fellowship of sharing in his suffering, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
[4:56] Thank you. You may be seated. What a passage of Scripture as Paul turns away from the affairs that are going on in the church and reflects on his own life and in so doing talks to the church in Philippi and talks to us through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit this morning.
[5:14] What are you really passionate about? Where does your passion come in relationship to your relationship? with Jesus Christ our Lord.
[5:25] Folks, I know, and I'm not up here to gripe or complain, but I know that you know as I do that we are facing a different world. Just in the last years, we have seen things happen here.
[5:38] Go through the pandemic, and I don't know, some of you say that pandemic was an absolute curse. Well, what it really did, it just sped up things. We've just, what was going to happen in five or ten years away has now happened in a year.
[5:50] And so we're facing issues and things that are going on in our world, and especially in our culture today, like never before. The church of the living God has never been under more pressure than in the United States than it is right now, today.
[6:06] Our culture has completely turned away from the things of God, and it's from the things of Christianity, to a secular world that will continue to be like this for the rest of our lives, our children's lives, and our grandchildren's lives.
[6:26] We must understand that if we're going to face the future, we've got to change our ways of doing things, of showing up to church and making sure we have everything, all the boxes checked.
[6:38] Now, if you're a box checker, don't hear me saying that you shouldn't do that. But what I'm saying to you is this, we've got to change our ways of doing things from the point of doing things to being in relationship with Jesus, a relationship that is on fire for Him.
[6:53] Because as we face the world that is ahead, people are dying. People are wanting to know, who is this group of people called Christians?
[7:04] How many of you have said to a person, well, how about, have you ever had a relationship with Christ, and they come back to you and say, I don't want anything to do with church? Yeah, yeah.
[7:17] See, we've got to change the whole conversation that has to do with church and change it to our relationship with Jesus. The reason you come to church, I hope, is because you have a relationship with Jesus.
[7:29] Now, I know some of you got drug here. You got drug to church when you were a kid. You got drug problem. You know, you got drug to church. You got drug to church. You got drug to Sunday school. You got drug to this. I understand. But there comes a point in all of our lives when we must understand that our relationship is what motivates us.
[7:48] Our relationship with Jesus is what keeps us going. It is a thing that we must know and know Him better each and every day.
[7:59] Let me just give you a quote. Calvin Miller, the great preacher up in Omaha, Nebraska, once said, The world is poor because her treasure is buried in heaven, but all of her treasure maps are of the earth.
[8:14] Do you know that people are seeking today?
[8:31] Do you know those people who say, I don't want anything to do with church. It's just a bunch of hypocrites. It's what they're really looking for is a relationship with Christ that goes beyond going to church, that goes beyond going to Sunday school and small groups and all those other things that everybody does, that goes beyond all the things that happen in this church week after week after week.
[8:53] Don't hear me saying those things are bad. Don't say to me, Oh, well, our director of mission said I don't have to go to church anymore. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that your motivation for your attendance and your being here today, and I know I'm preaching to the choir, okay?
[9:08] I understand that. But listen, I know that there comes a point in all of our lives where we've got to say, I'm doing this because of my relationship with Jesus.
[9:19] These scriptures are so special to me. I've written in the top of my Bible right up here, and I'm a person that writes in their Bible. You may not do that, but I do. Years ago, I wrote this on the top of my Bible concerning these passages.
[9:34] Oh, that I may know him. You see, as Paul is writing here, it's not about something he's just writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and giving instructions.
[9:46] This is his heart. And literally, he is saying in these verses from verse 7 to verse 11, Oh, here is passion.
[9:56] Oh, that I may know him. That I may know Christ more and more and more and more.
[10:07] Friends, we must have that same kind of passion because people are seeking, wandering, they're looking for something, but they don't know what it is.
[10:18] And Jesus is standing on the edge of all this stuff in the middle of all these things. And he's saying, I'm right here.
[10:30] I'm right here. Dear Christian brother and sister, listen to me. We have the hope. We have the living hope. It was just sung for us. Of Jesus Christ living in our hearts.
[10:43] My question is, where is your passion today? Where is your passion? For he is calling us these days into a higher place.
[10:55] He's calling us beyond just the mundane. He's calling us beyond the business as usual. He's calling us to a higher calling. Let me share some things with you that I believe he's saying to us today, and I hope that you will gain something from it.
[11:11] The first thing he says here is, I want to win or gain Christ. I want to gain Christ.
[11:21] The real word there, and the reason I said win is because the real word there is win. I want to win Christ. Now the NIV, the new international version, says gain.
[11:34] Now I think the King James says win. Again, that's the better translation. I want to win or gain Christ. Have you ever won anything?
[11:46] Have you ever just had a sweepstakes? My dad used to enter in the Publisher's Clearinghouse sweepstakes every year. He thought Ed McMahon was going to show up at his door with one of those great big checks, you know, and all the balloons, and all that stuff.
[12:01] He entered it every year. One year I said, Dad, you know what they really want you to do is buy magazines. I'm not buying no magazines. I'm just going to. And he'd enter it every, never won one time.
[12:14] The reasons why we have casinos on every corner of this state is because people want to win something. I got news for you.
[12:25] You go to a casino this afternoon, you're not going to win. Well, I was over there. Wait, you were? Wait a minute. Listen, that should not be even in our experience, but there's a lot of people who think they can go and play a game and they can outsmart the house and they can win because people want to win something for nothing.
[12:46] Well, I'm here to tell you something. If you're in Jesus Christ, you've already won. You have won Jesus Christ.
[12:56] And it's a jackpot that goes beyond just a few little quarters. It's a jackpot that leads to heaven. You're a winner here today if you've got your life in Christ.
[13:06] You have won Jesus Christ. Ding, ding, ding, ding. I mean, it's wonderful. When you said yes to Jesus, he came by your heart. He found you. He was the one that pursued you.
[13:17] And you, from the beginning of time, he knew that you were going to be in his forever family. And that day that he came by your life and you recognized him as the one that you're only savior and you gave your life to Jesus, you won.
[13:33] You can go back to that day. You can go back to that day and say from that day forward every day of the week, you're a winner. Now the world will tell you, no, you're a loser.
[13:46] As a matter of fact, you go to people and you say, hey, wouldn't you like to have a relationship with Christ? No, I don't want to go up there with a bunch of losers. You're not a loser. You've won Jesus Christ.
[13:59] Listen to this. I want to gain. I want to win Jesus Christ. How do we do that day after day after day?
[14:11] Number one, it takes focus. See, we, so much, we are seeking other things these days. We're looking for an experience these days.
[14:25] We think we've got to, every life, every day has got to be a new experience and we're easily bored. We get bored of life itself.
[14:36] But what it really takes is focus. Have you focused on the right things? Notice here. He said, I have taken my focus off of all these other things that seem to be important and I have lost them for the sake of Christ.
[14:56] You see, you not only have to focus on some things, you also have to lose. You have to lose everything else. As a matter of fact here, he says, I consider all those things that he was talking about, Hebrew of the Hebrews, Pharisee of the Pharisees, persecutor of the church.
[15:12] He even says, I was faultless. Wow. He must have kept all, he says, I'm legalistic righteousness. I was faultless. That means he was perfect and that he got A plus and all those kinds of things.
[15:22] But he's considered all those things as loss. As a matter of fact, what he really says there, I consider them as rubbish in the New International. They're great.
[15:33] Here's the, I won't tell you the real translation, but it's, I'm going to tell you a nice way of saying it. It's like a pile of manure. I consider all of that stuff as a pile of manure.
[15:46] It is nothing important to me anymore in relationship with my, in relationship with my relationship with Jesus Christ. You see, I think there's some of us today who think that you can rely upon these certain things and as a result, it makes you feel better.
[16:04] Instead, you should need to consider those certain things as rubbish. Now, Brother Mike, I love you so much. I'm not telling you to consider your doctorate as rubbish, although you could. I mean, you know, I remember when I did my doctorate, I didn't have four or five guys to preach for me, so.
[16:23] I had to get up every Sunday morning, no matter what, and preach, you know, and Sunday night, and Wednesday. We were men, you know. Anyway, what was I talking about?
[16:39] Oh, yeah. Yeah. You got to consider some of this stuff as nothing more than rubbish. You got to take a trip to the dump and dump some things.
[16:53] You ever been to the dump? Not the most wonderful thing in the world. It's not like going to Disney World. But some of us have got to take a trip there. I had a guy in my church over here at Eastern Heights years ago, Charlie Hendricks.
[17:10] Charlie was a great man of God. I loved him so much. Him and his wife. His wife actually was named Jimmy Hendricks. Anyway, I play a mean guitar.
[17:21] But anyway, Charlie was a great guy, and we were wonderful friends. He was quite a bit older than I am. He's gone on to be with the Lord now. So, every once in a while, he called me up, and he'd say, hey, preacher, you want to go to the dump?
[17:37] I think, oh, my goodness. Yeah. The first time he did that, I thought, hmm, I guess. You know, so I said, yeah, sure. And so we went, and it was an experience.
[17:48] We drive from over here on the east side of town. You know where the dump is over on 123. It's a, by the way, it's a bigger mountain now than it was 20 years ago when I was here. It's a bigger mountain, and there's a bunch of my stuff and the stuff I threw away is in there.
[18:02] And anyway, but we go to the dump, and he put in Bob Wiggles and the Texas Playboy. You know, and he'd play, aha, you know, all that kind of stuff.
[18:15] Boy, and we, he'd turn that thing up. We'd roll down the windows, and everybody thought, well, what is that? What is that noise? You know, it wasn't like one of these guys, but man, it was, it was going everywhere.
[18:26] We just have a great time, and we'd sing along. Hey, everybody dance. Yeah, whoo, whoo, whoo, and we'd go across the town. It'd be so much fun, and we'd get to the dump, and we'd go back in the back of his, I didn't have a pickup back then, so he had a pickup, and we'd just dump all that stuff out.
[18:42] We'd get back in the car. He'd put that tape back in there, and we'd sing all the way until a certain point. We'd get up here to 123 and Adams Road, and he'd turn down the music.
[18:54] I thought, okay, here it comes, and what he really wanted to do was dump stuff in my ear that he was dealing with.
[19:06] You see, Charlie and I had that, we do this all the time. Every once in a while, I'd call him and say, hey, you want to go to the dump? I had stuff I needed to take to the dump too, or I'd make up stuff and go because I needed to talk to Charlie, and we dumped it.
[19:19] We'd get it back over to his house where my car was, and he said, boy, I feel better, and I said, well, I wish I did, but no. No, I, yeah, great.
[19:33] Folks, some of you need to go to the dump. Some of you are keeping things that are worthless, and there are things in your life that just, you think you've got to have them.
[19:47] You think they're worth a lot, but they're not. You ever watch that show, Hoarders? Cindy and I had a Hoarders marathon this summer. We watched all of those. I've got them all.
[19:58] I know them all. Some of you watch it because you just say, well, at least my house isn't that bad, you know, but, but, but, I mean, these people, they have a mental illness. They're dealing with grief or loss or something, and they just can't let certain things go.
[20:11] Things like, one lady had a box of, of locust skins. You know, what are they called? You know, the thing they, she had a whole box of those things, and they said, well, we need, we need to, we need to throw these off.
[20:26] She started crying. I just don't think I can let those go. Those are just so gorgeous. Some of us have things that we think are important to us. Things that we, that we would hold on to.
[20:40] Like the Apostle Paul, he said, I have all these things. I'm righteous. I've got all these things going on in my life, but I consider them as rubbish in comparison to knowing Jesus.
[20:51] Some of us need to just go to the dump and dump some things like unforgiveness. Pastor Mike talked about forgiveness last week.
[21:04] That was a tough time when we were gathering together last night, I mean, the night of, of that message and started to talk about forgiveness. some of you need to dump some things like you just got a grudge against somebody.
[21:18] Some of you need to get rid of some stuff about prejudice, racism. Some of you need to get rid of some things that you're mad about somebody that wronged you years ago.
[21:32] You're just holding on to it. You think it's so, it's so precious, I just can't let that go because I won't know how to live. Listen, some of you need to just take a trip to the dump. And just let those things go.
[21:47] So, I want to win Christ. And the reason, the way I do that is to focus on some things and to lose some things. Secondly, he says here in verse 9, I want to be found in Him.
[21:59] This is the word for accountability. I want to be found, I don't want to be found in my own righteousness, I want to be found in the righteousness of God because he does this comparative here.
[22:10] He says, I don't want to be found in a righteousness derived from the law. You know, he says there, I've got all this legalistic righteousness and I'm faultless, but the truth is he couldn't keep the law.
[22:21] None of us can keep the law. Used to have a Seventh-day Adventist, not putting anybody down, but I just want to hear what I have to say. Have you said, they had to his friend, we would walk the neighborhood and she would come by sometimes and want us to have some of the stuff that she's talking about.
[22:37] One time she said, you know, we need to go to church on Saturday because Saturday is the Sabbath and if you break one part of the law, you broke it all. You know, she's very right. All of us, not that we need to go to church on Saturday, I'm saying that we need to understand, we can't keep the law.
[22:55] And if we're trying to keep the law, Galatians 3.10 says, all those who rely on observing the law are under a curse for the scripture says, cursed is the one that doesn't observe the law.
[23:08] Galatians 3.11 says, the righteous will live by what? By faith in the word of God. And that's where he changes it. He says, I don't want these things to be of my own righteousness, but instead I want to have faith.
[23:24] Hebrews 11.1 says, faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. You know, we worship science these days because it's about seeing and touching and knowing and all kinds of things.
[23:42] Faith for the Christian comes in those things which we cannot see. Being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
[23:53] There are things in all of our lives that we do not see, but we need to be certain about. That's where faith comes in. We must build our lives on the rock, the solid rock of Jesus Christ, our Lord.
[24:08] It is the only way that we will survive in this day and the day to come. We must understand the little song that we sang when we were children growing up.
[24:19] Some of you in church know the song I'm talking about. The wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. Remember that? And the rains came down and the floods came up and the rains came down and the floods came up and the house on the rock stood fast.
[24:34] The other verse of that says the unrightly, oh, what is it? Anyway, the stupid guy. Oh, we're not supposed to say stupid. The foolish man. There you go.
[24:45] Same thing. Okay. The foolish man built his house on what? On the sand. Rains came up. Rains came down. Floods came up. And the house on the sand went splat.
[24:58] Now, I used to love to sing that song because we couldn't shake. We couldn't clap our hands in my church. Okay. That was just not very spiritual. You could say amen, but we couldn't clap. Okay. So when I did that, oh, I just love that.
[25:12] But it's an illustration of what I'm talking about. We have got to understand that we must build our lives upon the rock of Jesus Christ.
[25:24] Our world is looking for this. You say, oh, no, they're not. They're looking for somebody to elect for the next president. Well, that may be true, but that's building your house on sand. You probably know that Washington, D.C.
[25:37] is built on a swamp. Okay. And you have to understand that our hope is not in who's in the White House. Our hope is in Jesus Christ, who is in our heavenly and his heavenly home, waiting to come and get us.
[25:53] And there's going to come a time in all of our lives when he will come to get us, whether we have preceded that time in death or whether we are still here, and there will be a time in our lives when he will be there.
[26:07] Those two kinds of righteousness. I want the righteousness of faith. I want to be found not in my own righteousness, but in the righteousness of Jesus Christ and my relationship with him.
[26:20] And then lastly today, in verse 10, he says there, I want to know Christ. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and somehow to attain the resurrection from the dead.
[26:42] Here's the crux of what I want to say today, what God's speaking to us today in this scripture. I want to know Christ.
[26:53] Now, when I say I know somebody, some of you all I know, we're an acquaintance. If I were to see you out at Brahms, I would recognize you and I would say, hey, how you doing?
[27:07] And probably embarrass you as I did Kayla the other night. But anyway, you know, we would recognize each other. You know, I know you.
[27:17] I know you. We're an acquaintance. And some of us would be a recognizable face and we would say, yes, I kind of know that person. But what about, that's not the knowledge that he's talking about here.
[27:33] What about an intimate friend? What about somebody that you know so well that you finished their sentences? You know everything about them.
[27:44] You know where they came from. You understand what's happening in their life and where they're going. And you understand how you've lived with them day in and day out. Some of you have spouses that are like this.
[27:56] You even look alike, you know, that kind of a thing. That's a wonderful thing. That's an intimate friend. Friend, this is the word that he's using here for knowing Christ.
[28:08] I know you're an intimate friend. Here are three things and I'm going to share these with you and then I'm going to be done today except for the fill-in-the-blank questions tonight.
[28:21] This is where it gets difficult. Because I want to know Christ but I want to know these three things about Him in my knowledge of Him. I want to know the power of His resurrection.
[28:33] Dear friends, the power of the resurrection is what gives us hope today. When I do funerals, I go out to the cemetery for the internment and while we're standing there, I always say some little funny thing about the person who's passed to share at the graveside because I love laughter in a cemetery.
[28:58] You know what laughter in a cemetery does to Satan? He runs. He don't like that. He wants to say, oh look, I got him, I got him, ha ha, he's in the grave.
[29:09] And listen, we have power over the grave. And it comes to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Do you know that's where our hope is today? You know we have that whole high and holy day of Easter where we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.
[29:24] Do you know why we meet on Sunday mornings? Because it's Sunday morning when he was resurrected. You know why you're here today and not on Saturday? It's because when Jesus Christ rose over the grave, it was on a Sunday morning.
[29:38] And so we praise the Lord and I identify with his resurrection even by showing up and worshiping him on a Sunday morning. But it doesn't have to happen just on Sunday.
[29:49] It's got to happen every single day. To know Christ is to know him in his resurrection. His resurrection is the hope that we have that the ultimate thing that we're all afraid of, death itself, has been conquered.
[30:05] Not that it's going to be conquered. It's already been conquered. It's in the present tense. What was it? You said the present... I'm not a Greek scholar.
[30:17] Whatever it was, it's like it's all... I use a computer for that. I don't need that. Anyway. It's happening. It's happened. It's happened.
[30:27] It's happening. And it's going to happen. And it all is the same right now. We are triumphant over death when we identify with the suffering and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
[30:42] That leads us to the next one. The fellowship of his sufferings, of sharing in his sufferings. We identify.
[30:54] Everybody's saying, well, I identify as this or I identify as that. I identify as a European American or I identify as an African American or I identify as this kind of person.
[31:06] How do you identify that? If you are, you are. I mean, you know, so the identity comes here. I identify with his sufferings. Now, does that mean we've got to jump up on a cross and be crucified again?
[31:19] Do that mean we've got to take a cat of nine tails across our back? Does that mean we have to put a crown of thorns on our heads and identify with his suffering? Absolutely not. It does not mean that at all.
[31:32] For the suffering of Christ came beyond just the physical suffering. It came with a broken heart. We need to see who Jesus is as he came over the Mount of Olives and he sat on that rock or wherever it was he sat and he looked out across the city of Jerusalem and he said with all the passion in his heart and all the love in his heart, Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I've wanted to gather you as a hen gathers her chicks, but you would not have it.
[32:05] You see, our Lord was broken hearted for those who had not identified with him. So today we have to identify with the suffering.
[32:18] You say, I don't want to be broken hearted. I understand that. But you have to understand that if you know Jesus, you've got to understand his suffering and his broken heartedness for people and how he loved people.
[32:31] And then the conformity of his death. Again, it doesn't mean we get to be crucified. It just means we have to take a trip to Gethsemane.
[32:44] In Gethsemane, he knelt before the Father. And you know he sweat those drops of blood. There's a physical thing that you can see. And he sweat those drops of blood because he knew what was getting ready to happen.
[32:58] It was not necessarily the physical stuff, but that he was going to take on the sin of the world, not only in the present tense or the past tense, but in the future tense.
[33:08] He knew he was going to take on your sin. And he said to the Lord, Lord, if there's any way, God, Father, if there's any way that you can pass, that I can pass this cup to somebody else, if there's any way.
[33:26] He did that three times and finally he came back to his Father and said what? Thy will be done. Beloved, today, listen.
[33:41] There's got to come a time in your life when you pray that prayer no matter what. Thy will be done. So many things happen in our lives and we pray to the Lord, Lord, please make this happen and Lord, please make that happen and Lord, please do this and please do that and I just think it's better if you just do it this way and yeah, you're God, but you know, you haven't been down here in a long time and so you just know that this is just the way things happen and by the way, I'm going to check in on you to make sure it happens the way I want it to happen and all of those things instead of what we need to be praying is thy will be done.
[34:21] If we're willing to surrender ourselves at that point, we're on our way to knowing Christ better. If he was willing to come to the place in his own life where he said, I don't want to do this and I, my, he's the most perfect, the perfect person, the only perfect person that lived and here he is pleading with the Father, Father, there's another way, but thy will be done.
[34:49] You're on the journey. You're on the steps toward knowing Christ more and more. So, I want to win Christ.
[35:03] I want to be found in Christ and I want to know Christ. Let's turn to these questions we have at the bottom and then I'm, I'm going to give an invitation and then we'll, we'll be going today.
[35:23] The questions here are, what are you passionate about? This is for tonight. Some of you are not in a, in a little small group and that's okay. You can take these home and think about them. What are you passionate about?
[35:35] Has this affected your relationship with Jesus? Number two, list some things that could get in the way of living an abundant life.
[35:48] Which of those things do you need to get rid of? And thirdly, the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his suffering and the conformity of his death is mentioned in the scripture.
[36:05] Which one is the toughest to achieve within your quest to know Jesus Christ? Those are the questions not only for tonight, they're the questions for right now.
[36:21] Where's your passion? Where do you really end up when it comes to the point of saying I'm, I want to know Christ? You say, oh preacher, you don't know, you know what I'm dealing with.
[36:32] I understand that. I understand you're dealing with a lot of things as all of us are. But what about your relationship with Jesus? Are you passionate about that?
[36:46] Are you just kind of doing your own thing? Where are we? In a few moments we're going to sing a song of invitation and Brother Mike will be here at the front and I'll be around.
[37:01] If you want to use these prayer altars, the steps or whatever as a prayer altar unto the Lord and count this as your trip to the dump, maybe you just need to come and just get rid of some things.
[37:15] We'll wait on you. It's an important time. And this is not something showy or something pharisaical. It's not something that says, hey look at me. It's about, hey look at Jesus.
[37:27] Look what Jesus is doing in my life. Let's take just a few moments to do that and then after we've done that we'll go. Okay? So let's pray. Father God, thank you for your love and thank you for all that you have done for us even today that we're not even aware of.
[37:46] Now Lord, we ask you to speak to the hearts of those who the Holy Spirit, you're dealing with them this very moment and they know that there's some things in their life they need to let go of and they would bravely come to the front of this building to give those things to you.
[38:12] But they wouldn't leave from this place a different person than how they documented. May you be glorified as that happens and may you be honored.
[38:26] We ask this in Christ's name. Amen.