What it Takes to Share the Gospel

But there's a difference between trying to win arguments and addressing genuine questions that people have. Paul says here that when we openly display the truth, we're honest. We don't manipulate people and we respect people's minds and the questions that come up. When people have intellectual objections to the Bible or to faith, we take them seriously and we address them honestly. But he also shows that we also appeal to conscious, not just to emotion. the gospel resonates with something that has already written on our hearts. And as we dive into 2 Corinthians chapter 4, um to kind of catch you up a little bit to speed here, this is written by the Apostle Paul who is writing to the early church. And as we've been going through this series, Paul has been kind of challenging the church at Corenth of how do we go deeper? How do we root ourselves in something that matters and that is greater than ourselves? And one of the themes we've seen throughout this is we said the statement that what we are rooted in determines what we'll be ready for. that in a world that is increasingly more hostile to the values of the Bible, increasingly more hostile to the truth of who Jesus is, is in order for us to be ready for how we give a witness of how we can speak to how we can love a culture like today. We need to be rooted in the holiness and the word of what God has given us. And today, as we go into chapter 4, Paul is going to talk about evangelism. And as we talk about kind of rooted evangelism, you hear that word and a few things may come through your head. The first thing might be what in the world does that word mean? Evangelism in in its base sense um it means to tell others about the truth of the Bible. To tell others about the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. It is to proclaim, to preach, to share the news of Jesus with people around you. Now, as you've heard that word, maybe over the years you have different mindsets. You think of that. Maybe some of you with evangelism might think of Billy Graham in a giant tent, right? He did all big old tents and did revival and share the gospel and people would come to Christ and then go fill our churches. I don't know if they did that in Phoenix. I'm tech. They definitely didn't do it in July in Phoenix, right? They're like, "Can we just like skip that? we'll do it during spring training or something instead when it's not 119° outside. But maybe it's not that. Maybe you think of like tracks. If you don't know what a track is, that's okay. You're not missing out. Um, but there are these little like comic strip type things that share the good news of scripture and people will give them out. But here's the problem is sometimes people just give them out and be like, "You're saved now, right?" And then walk away and it doesn't quite work that way. But I I don't know about you, but you've probably had some experience, whether they're personally or witnessed a bad evangelism of sharing the news of Jesus with someone around you. I think of one of my worst experiences, and you can put that in your head of what yours was in a second, but I used to pastor this guy named Billy at our Phoenix campus, and I love Billy. Still talk to Billy. He lives in Texas now, and he he lets me share these stories because he just has such a heart for the church. But Billy was a contractor and Billy was just amazing at telling people about what Jesus had done in his life. And one time we were at lunch and he's telling the people in the restaurant all about Jesus and how it's transformed him and how he's done all these great things. And he's just exuding and I'm like so proud of Billy. I'm so proud of Billy. And we're like getting to leave out. And something to know about Billy is he's literally like scientific or medically he is bipolar. So he's on medicine for it. And as we leave, Billy gets in his car and someone like cuts him off in the parking lot and then he starts, "F you." and starts flipping him off and honking his horn all while having cross church stickers on the back of his car. And I'm like, "Oh, Billy." Right? Um and in that I was like, "How do I how do I correct this right at this moment?" Right? And some of you like maybe have seen a certain experience a similar to that is like you've seen someone share about Jesus but then immediately be rude. And it's almost like they shared the truth of God, but their life did not match it. Well, today in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, Paul is going to take us through a journey of how do we evangelize? How do we, as we say it in our language here at Cross Church, how do we make Jesus known? And we're going to look at five elements that we make Jesus known with. And in the way that this is a kind of a whole body experience, it's not just making him known with our mouth, but it's making him known in all these areas that he works through our life and through our soul. And we start here in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, starting in verse one. This is what Paul writes. He says, "Therefore, since we have this ministry, because we were shown mercy, we do not give up." The first thing as we start to go through this and Paul is going to show us how we make Jesus known as we first make Jesus known with our heart. I I love here how Paul starts to dissect this and break this down a little bit. The first thing he begins with here is he says that we have been shown mercy. And what's important here is Paul right off the bat establishes that in order for us to be able to love other people, for in order for us to be able to share the gospel, we need to first reflect on how much Jesus has done for us. This word mercy, what it means is it's not getting something you don't deserve. It's not getting something you do deserve. Meaning as Christians, the Bible tells us that all people, we deserve judgment for our sin. We deserve to be eternally separated in a place called hell from our God. But because we have this mercy that all of a sudden we are spared from that. And here's why this is important when we talk about evangelism and putting our our shoes in the feet of someone else is when we begin to tell people about Jesus, we do it from the source of our heart. There's old phrase and we'll have a phrase and a kind of a quote that will go to each one of these. Some of them I'll give credit for, others I just rip off because if a lot of people have said it and if chat GPT gave it to me, it's fair game, right? I don't need to credit an author after that. But the old saying is nobody know or cares how much you know until they know how much you care. One of the first early authors of this is credited to Teddy Roosevelt. But this truth is seen throughout this passage that Paul says they don't care about the ministry we hold unless they understand that we care for them. When we have this mercy, when we remind ourselves that we have been forgiven of so much, it allows us to see people in a different way who also need that forgiveness. But look in this verse again as we break this down a little bit more. It says, "We have been shown mercy, so we give mercy to others." But I love this. We have this ministry. Now hear this. Paul doesn't say we have this responsibility. He doesn't say we have this obligation. He doesn't say we have to do this thing like the good church person thing to do is you've started going to church now you have to share about your faith instead it's we get to do this that we get to be a part of what God is doing that we get to be a part of this ministry and we don't give up even when there's resistance even when there's hesitancy in this I think about a few of the things here and this idea of we do not give up I love this is because I think of the people in our church that usually when you pray for someone to see Jesus, to know Jesus, it's usually not like the next day all of a sudden they're saved and you have this miraculous experience. I think of the very first of the year, a first sermon we had to start this year in January, uh during our last song, and it was like midway through the song, so I wasn't expecting it. All of a sudden, this man came up, his name Edward, and he came, he's like, I want to give my life to Jesus. And I was like, it's halfway through the song. I thought, we're already done. Like, no one's coming forward anymore. But I but I knew Edward. Here's why. because his family had been praying for him for months and they had shared that with their Bible group. They had shared that with me. They had been praying for him and now he's in our men's ministry. He's serving in our cafe on Sundays. He's doing all these things. He even actually texted me on Father's Day. Happy Father's Day. And I forgot to text him back and just remembered that. So, I really need to text him back and say, "Happy late Father's Day." But in this guy's life, people did not give up. They just kept praying for him, knowing in their heart that God wanted something greater for him. But I love this again. this ministry, this ministry that we get to be a part of, that we get to participate in. My wife recently made this rule at our dinner table. And you know, sometimes you have rules at dinner that really you have to make because of one kid. All right? They're the problem child. So, you make a rule for everyone. But really, it's for that one child. And Archie, my oldest boy, we have a rule at the table now that there is no talking about Pokémon. You know why that rule is there? because Archie only wants to talk about Pokemon. Um, and he's talking about Pokemon so much and I'm like, "Bro, we got to tone the Pokemon down." And he actually two nights ago he told my wife, he's like, "I know I'm not allowed to do this and I just want to do it, but I just want to say one thing about Pokemon." And he even asked for her to say, "Okay." He just started talking about Pokemon. And his one thing was actually 15 things with no periods. I thought he was going to pass out. I'm like, "Take a breath, bro." But in his little heart, he just loves Pokémon so much, he can't help but to share about it. What if we saw ourselves as this ministry we have for Jesus that we can't just help but to tell other people about it because of what God has done in our lives is our hearts are overflowing that we want to make Jesus known. We want to evangelize. We want to share this good news because of the mercy and this ministry we have been given. But Paul continues in verse two. He says, "Instead, we have renounced secret and shameful things, not acting deceitfully or distorting the word of God, but commending ourselves before God to everyone's conscience by an open display of the truth." Paul shows that not only do we share this gospel, do we make our Jesus known with our hearts, but we also do so with our head. And and I love this as Paul continues on here and starts to look at the head. Paul in this verse that there is so much in there. Paul talks about truth. He talks about the human conscience. He talks about honest communication. And this whole thing is kind of about in intellectual integrity in evangelism. Here's kind of our quote that goes around with this. And and when we talk about this idea of using our head in evangelism is that you can't argue Jesus into someone's heart, but you can explain away the hesitations in their head. That you will never give a logical argument and and have a PowerPoint and say, "Man, you are an idiot for embracing all these things of the world." Like repent and believe and yell at them and all of a sudden their heart be transformed be like, "I'm ready to give my life to Christ." But what you can do, and we talk about this, and a word for this is apologetics, to to give a defense of what the gospel states and what the Bible has for us, is we can start to explain away the hesitations that people have. And and here's the difference is there's a difference between trying to win arguments. I know the difference because this is usually what I do. I win arguments. I don't lose a lot of arguments. Sometimes I lose relationships, but I usually don't win the or lose the argument. All right? But there's a difference between trying to win arguments and addressing genuine questions that people have. And Paul says here that when we openly display the truth, we're honest. We don't manipulate people and we respect people's minds and the questions that come up. And how do we do this? Let's break this verse down a little bit. First, we see that when we talk about this rooted evangelism that uses our head, it's honest about questions and objections. Paul here, I love the verbiage he says. He says, "We don't act deceitfully and we don't distort the word of God." When when people have intellectual objections to the Bible or to faith, we take them seriously and we address them honestly. But he also shows that we also appeal to conscious, not just to emotion. I love this. He says we are commending oursel to everyone's conscience. Paul knows that deep down people have a certain belief that there are certain things they want to be true. The gospel resonates with something that has already written on our hearts. I I think about this uh one of the greatest um I would say kind of apologists of our day. His name is Wes Huff. Go look him up. He's a he he looks a lot like me. Not quite as good-looking, but a lot more buff. And he's Canadian. So, I think he's probably nicer by being a Canadian. Isn't that true? Aren't most Canadians nice? I feel like that's the um the genuine thought out there. But Wes Huff is this great um apologist of our day and he kind of goes to the original text and he breaks these down and just does an amazing job with this. But Wesley Huff, one of I I listened to an interview with him last week and one of the things he talked about is so often we want to argue with people rather than hear what people are saying when they have these objections. And he uses an example. Like people, one of the most uh uh things of atheists, agnostics would say, "Well, I can't believe in a god who allows evil and I can't believe in a god who would hurt people." And and before he said, "My first instinct was to just go to scripture and tell them how wrong they are and use scripture to defend everything it was." But then his he said his question has changed to well, what kind of god are you talking about? And then they start to describe the god that they can't believe in. He's like, "Oh, that's great. I don't believe in that god either. Let me show you the God of the Bible. And often people have questions. Often people have a wrestling in their conscience. And instead of just trying to argue into their heart, we try to see what they're going through to enlighten the word of God. And I love this. Lastly, we see that he says in verse two that we do this by an open display of the truth. That when we have rooted evangelism, it doesn't hide the truth. truth. Instead, it displays it. We're not trying to trick people into faith or manipulate them. Instead, we present the gospel, the good news of Christ clearly and let the Holy Spirit do the convicting. After co there's a lot of shakeups in our churches, but one of the things that I loved most seeing is I saw nonchurch people come to churches to seek and try to find something because I think there was this need that they saw. They needed community and they didn't know where to find it. So postco there's people who are agnostic and atheist more than I'd ever seen going to churches and asking questions. One of the friendships I got to develop and I'm still friends with him today and see him on Facebook and we interact every now and then is a guy named Ken. And Ken was a staunch atheist. He's like, "Dude, I don't believe in this, but I feel led to go to church trying to find something, trying to explore these questions and find community." And and I had him over our house for like Fourth of July parties. We would meet for coffee, but this is how our meetings went is we would meet for coffee and I would kind of share with him some scriptures and some things that were burdening on my heart and then I would give him a book and I would give him a book on some sort of apologetics that he was hung up and I was like, "Go read it and let's argue about it lovingly and discuss it." And and in that relationship, it was awesome to just see how God started to break down barriers. And I wish that story ended with me baptizing him and kind of the bow on it, but it didn't. But I know God is working in the life of that man. And you see here if Paul is showing that we not only have the heart of loving our neighbors, but we have the head of being able to point them to resources, not being an expert on everything, but knowing that we can defend God's truth. But he keeps going in verse three and he says this in verse three. He says, "But if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. You see, Paul tells us we not only make Jesus known with our hearts, with our head, but this is probably one of the most important that I think we miss and one of them that is when we leave this out is so hard because we are missing so much is we make Jesus known with our humility. What Paul is saying in this and kind of to summarize these two verses, he's saying there are people that when you tell about Jesus, they will not hear it. And sometimes I think we can fall into this trap as parents when it comes to family members or even when you have that co-orker that you've annoyed about church and about Jesus for so long. They've seen it in your life. You've made the greatest arguments. You've done it all and you're like, "Why have you not just given up yet?" But Paul is saying it's not because you're not being faithful. It's because you're not the one that can save someone. And the humility comes up that we have to work like it depends on us, but we have to know that ultimately is God who does the saving. We've used this phrase before in different ways um and kind of one that we've used a lot in cross church um in this, but here's one. When we talk about this humility, it is knowing that people respond on God's timeline but not ours. That you cannot save someone. You cannot argue into their heart. You cannot be Jesus to them, but you can share with them the Jesus that has changed your life. And Paul tells them, well, why is that the case? Why do people not hear it? Well, he says, there is a veil to those who are perishing. Meaning, they are clouded. They can't see it. And why can't they see it? because he says in their case the god of this age that is Satan and demons and and their sin keeps them from seeing the light of the truth. And sometimes when I think we get discouraged that it's like why has this person not all of a sudden opened up? Why has this person not seen the hardship of their life that Jesus can free them from their anxiety or their depression or whatever else is in their life? Their sin is keeping them from seeing the glory of God. And Paul in here, he shows us that this is almost so freeing that we can lighten the burden off our shoulders. That it's not your job to save people. It is your job to be the bearer of the good news that does save people. And all of this leads to verse five. And Paul continues to build on this. He talks about evangelism. This making Jesus known being something that starts in our hearts, that works in our heads, that we have to have humility knowing that it is not about us. And in verse 5, he says this, "For we are not proclaiming ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and we are proclaiming ourselves as your servants for Jesus's sake." Evangelism also, and this is our fourth one of five, it also involves our hands. Paul talks here very practically about some of the aspects of evangelism that our actions and our service speak in huge ways that it's not just about saying the words of scripture but it's about doing them and as you go into this verse he says what we're not proclaiming and other translations might say we're not preaching ourselves but instead we are preaching Jesus one of the sayings that we've said inside our church that goes along with this is that we dig ditches knowing that God will send the rain. You can't save people, but you can work like it depends on you and pray and expect God to do the saving, to do the work. And in all this, Paul shows and he's unpacking this. He's building this thing. He's showing that as we get into here and as we start to proclaim who Jesus is, it is not on us to bear the weight of it, but it is on us to work for it. What do we mean by that? Well, a couple of ways that he shows us is first is when our evangelism is rooted like it should be, we are serving others but not ourselves. Look as Paul says at the start of this verse. He says, "We do not preach or we do not proclaim ourselves, but we're proclaiming Jesus." You see, Paul is clear that we don't do good things so people think we're good people. You know, sometimes we want to do that. Like, you know, you put the shopping cart back at the grocery store cuz you know people are watching you. And like, if you put it on the curb, you would put it on the curb, but then you saw other people get in their car, you're like, "If I put on the curb, they're all going to see it." And then you see that card attendant who makes 10 bucks an hour in 119 degree weather. Like now I really can't put it on the curb. I got to go all the way to the cart corral that I'm going to sweat as I go there. So it's like sometimes we want to do good things. We feel like people are watching us. We feel like it's going to hurt our reputation if we don't do it the right way. But Paul is saying it's not about you. You're not preaching yourselves. You're not trying to make yourself look better. Instead, you are trying to make Jesus look better. But he continues on. And we also don't uh serve for ourselves. Um, but we also serve people for Jesus's sake, not for the results. He he says here that we are proclaiming, we are preaching in the latter half of this ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. We serve because Jesus calls us to serve. Not because we're trying to manipulate people into conversion, not because we're trying to get the result we want, but we're just faithful leaving out, living out what we're supposed to, knowing that God will provide the avenue. And all this leads to in this verse, how we see this rooted evangelism also sees Jesus as Lord, not just savior. Here in the middle of this verse, he says, "We are proclaiming, we are preaching Jesus Christ as Lord." Here, if I'm being honest, I think this is one of the mistakes that often the American church falls into when we talk about making Jesus known. We talk about evangelizing. We talk about sharing the gospel is we almost think the end goal is getting people saved and it is. But part of salvation is declaring the lordship of Christ. Meaning we I think a lot of people don't have a problem of Jesus as their savior. Think about this for example. If Jesus can all of a sudden save you from your sins, he just wiped this slate clean. No longer all the bad stuff that you've done. You don't have to pay for it for all of eternity. All of a sudden you can have a new life in Jesus. You can have a fresh start. All that sounds great, but the only way you get that is if you also declare Jesus as the savior and lord of the universe. That he is the king of kings. That he is everything. That I'm also going to reorient my life. I'm going to change the way I live to follow this Lord. Not just to get my get out of hell jail free card and then move on, but now I actually have to do these things. Be part of a church community. I should to be loving towards others. I have to sin less and love Jesus more. And people are good with Jesus as their savior, but Jesus as their Lord is a hard step to take. And Paul when he talks about how we live this out, how we show this is our job in here with when we talk about our hands is we serve others, we love others, not caring, not knowing what the result is going to be. I never have to drink water. One second. I always make fun of pastors when they have to drink water in the middle of a sermon, and I just did it. I'm like, "Bro, your voice can hold up. You don't need that water." I have that for after the sermon, and I just messed it up. All right. But here's what Paul's saying. He's like, "Hey, you got to do like it all depends on you, but knowing God works in his way. So, you serve, you're faithful, you love, you act in the community, but you leave the results to God." One of the things we talk about here at Cross Church, and we even put it in our website, we say Cross Church cares, and we have t-shirts and things that say we care. And when we say we care, what do we care about? We care about people coming to Christ. We care about people being saved. We care about people being baptized like we witnessed in first service, like we're going to witness in second service. But we also care about those people who are far from God and don't see themselves getting close to God anytime soon. We care about how we can serve them, how we can love them. We've done this over the years and we're actually in the process of planning this out right now in October. We're going to have a we care day where we're just going to love our community. We're going to do projects in our schools, in our community, and we're not going to do that and be like, "Hey, you better come to church Sunday now that I like mowed your lawn, right? Or or you better like, you know, here's a track like give your life to Jesus right now." We do it because we love people and we're being faithful to what God has called us to do. And you see Paul here as he's building this, he's saying, "Hey, we make Jesus known." It starts with our heart of being softened for people. continues to our head as we we reason with them that we are humble knowing it's not about us then we work with our hands and all this builds to verse six where it says for God who said let light shine out of darkness it has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ the last part of this is Paul shows us that as we continue to build as we continue to make Jesus known as we do all these things that he's covered so far. The last way this happens is we make Jesus known with our holiness. I love how this verse kind of plays out. He he's saying the light shines out darkness, but where is that light? It is shown in our hearts to give the light of knowledge not only to ourselves but to the other people around us. Paul says that when we know about this Jesus, when we have this knowledge of who he is, when he is our Lord, all of a sudden people start seeing that light shine through us. And and here's the beautiful part. It is not our holiness, but it is God's holiness shining through. And here I I love there's this great quote and and I had to attribute this one because you knew I wasn't smart enough to make up this quote. Um but this is from the great pastor John Owen and he said holiness is nothing but the implanting the writing and the living out of the gospel in our souls. That when God he implants his holiness on us through the Holy Spirit. He writes his holiness in us through the obedience to his word and then we live it out to the world around us so that we can show them that is not about us but it is about the God we serve. And I love all this as Paul shows and he walks through this path in these six short verses where Paul goes and says, "Hey, you want to have an impact. You want to tell people about who Jesus is, this good news. If you want to make him known, you need to do it very practically. You need to make sure your heart's in the right place and you're focused on how you love people and you have seen his mercy so you can give more mercy to them. You need your head to be wrapped around him, not to know all the answers, but to be able to point people and remove the hesitations from their life. That you need to make sure that you are humble enough to see that you cannot win someone to Christ, but it is on God's timeline. But then you also need to work as hard as you can with the urgency to make sure you are loving people to showing them who God is. And all of this will then reflect the holiness of God to show our community how amazing he is. This past Wednesday, I decided I needed to get back on my health fitness track. And I don't know about you, but my fitness journey has been stopped for like 10 years. Like, I haven't moved past that stop. All right. Um, temporarily, I made some improvements and I'm like, let me just be real with you. I hate running. Um, it's dumb unless I'm running from something. All right. Um, lifting weights, get really bored really quick, uh, and not good at it. Um, so as you can tell, and I'm like, what do I do? I love winning things. So, a couple years ago, I picked up a hobby and I started playing pickle ball because I can win and and I want to win and if I don't win, I get really mad. But then I try harder so I can win again. And it's been a long time since I've had a good consistent pickle ball group. And last Wednesday, uh we we finally got one. I'm like, I think I can make this work. We can do this. And it's really close to my house, which is the most important factor. And I called Josh, our worship pastor, who lives like a couple miles from me. And then two other guys in our community. we met to play pickle ball in one of their communities. All of us live very very close. Some of them walked there. And as we're playing pickle ball, um just got to throw this out here. Uh we played like eight games. Um I was on the winning team every single time. I was the only one on the winning team every single time. Josh was on the losing team every single time until he joined my team the last time. And my winning overcame his losing cuz I'm that awesome. All right. But as we were playing pickle ball and I was dominating, um, this couple and this family was in the park and they came up and they're like, "Are you guys going to play all night?" And we're like, "Uh, we started at 7:15 at night. All our kids were in bed." We're like, "Uh, well, we're just going to play as long as we kind of can, but like would you want to rotate in?" And so they rotated in this husband and wife as a pair. They had like a three-year-old outside and a baby. And I'm like, "My kids are in bed." I'm like, "Whatever." I was like, "Good for you." Um, and as they did that, they rotated in and then like half our group like watched their kids and played on the park and then we played pickle ball. They were trash. Um, I told my partner, I'm like, "We're going to go easy, but if we give up a point, like we're going to run laps after this cuz we deserve it." Okay. So, we won 110 and it was nice. Um, but then we started talking to them for like 30 minutes. We learned their names, Kade and Kota. And uh he's a Phoenix PD um or a PD in Phoenix and was military before they lived here about the last year and a half. We got to hear a little bit about their story. Uh literally, we got to meet their kids and play pickle ball with their little daughter as there. And as we were just talking to them, we just started learning more about him and loving them in that instance. And even one of our uh people said like, "Yeah, how do you guys know each other?" Like, "Oh, we met each other at church." And they're like, "Oh, what church?" We told them um and and and as and they're like, "Are you going to tell them you're a pastor?" I'm like, "No." Cuz then they'll stop cussing as soon as I tell them I'm a pastor. All right. I I save that to the very end. They're like, "What do you do?" I'm like, "I talk to people like weekly on stage." Um like, "Don't ask more questions about it." But in this, and this is how it ended. So, we got to know them. And this is the cool thing is they walked there. So, I know they're in that community. I'll probably find their house eventually. And we have people who live in that community. So, I know like there is a very high chance we're going to see those people again. And as they were leaving, I was about to be like, "Hey, I hope to see you this Sunday at 9 or 10:30. Give the cross church invite." And it was the first time the Holy Spirit like literally kept me back. I was like, "Don't say it yet." I was like, "What? I need them at church. This would make a way better sermon illustration if they're here during second service." But I was like, "No, just let me work." And in that moment, it was like God was like, "Hey, sometimes evangelism is just about loving people. It's about serving people. It's about being unabashedly about the truth, about letting the holiness of my life flow through you guys, of looking different, of standing out. But it's not about us. It's about us being faithful to loving our community and proclaiming his word." And you see everything Paul is saying here, and all of this leads up to this kind of holy mission we have here at Christ Church. The reason we exist, we unpacked this last week with Pastor Jackie, but the only reason we are here is Cross Church exists to make it harder for people to die and go to hell from our zip codes. You see, church, this is why we are here, church. This is what we get to be a part of is that we get to use our hearts that God has given us to say, "A man, I'm such a sinner, but there are other sinners out there that I have to share this news with." that he uses our heads to say, "God, you have gifted me in other ways, but you have also gifted me to know you and to share that knowledge. God, you have given us a holy, a humility." That humility was not present in pickle ball, but it is in other areas in my life. I promise. But that we get to share and we say, "This is not about us, but this is about you." And then we get to put our hands in the dirt. We get to dig ditches of relationships. We get to share that gospel boldly. We get to present with truth all that God has done in our life. That Jesus raised from the grave after dying on the cross to save our sins in all of this. Church radiates his holiness through our lives so we can make a difference in our worlds. [Applause] But all of that first has to start with God moving in our lives and in the communities around us. So as we talk about how do we begin to do this? How do we go make this whole missional thing happen? How do we go make Jesus known? None of it will happen apart from the hand of God. [Music]