Following Jesus

We’ve been covering in southwest Florida a series entitled Following Jesus. As you can see up here, his walk, his mission, his family. And we got together as a leadership group, and I was reading in a book, and it asked, what is your church all about? And I had all these different answers. Like, my church is about serving, and so we’re really good at serving the poor, and my church is about making sure that we’re on time to service. But all these different things that I had categorized or seemed to be very noble and very important kind of rose to the top of my mind. I thought, I wonder what my leadership group think? So I just kind of did a little poll and asked, hey, what do you think our church is about? And I said, but you have to write it down and then bring it to our family group leaders meeting. And you have, like, your one phrase, what is our church about? And they were all noble, and they were all amazing, but they were all different.

And we’re like, okay, so there’s a lot of great things going on, but we’re all going in different directions. No matter how strong a herd of horses are that you want to pull this amazingly heavy thing, if they’re all going in different directions, you’re never going to go anywhere, right? So I felt like, wow, I mean, as amazing as our brothers and sisters are in Southwest Florida, we’re all kind of going in different directions. So I thought, let’s get together and let’s put something together. It’s called our identity statement. Who are we? So we took about a month to figure this identity statement out. Following Jesus, right? Well, we want to imitate his walk and walk in his footsteps, do what he did, say what he would say, react the way that he would react, change our default settings.

So we spent the first part of the year, four months on looking at his walk. How did Jesus walk? What did he say? How did he react? How did he treat the poor?

I mean, if we want to be like God, right, we got to be like Jesus. So then we spent the next four months looking at his mission, right? His mission. That’s what Jesus was all about when he was here. His mission, seek and save the lost and take care of the poor, right? Amen. That’s our mission. So we spent four months looking into Jesus mission, following Jesus, his mission, and now we’re in the middle of his family. That’s what we’ve been covering, so we’re going to talk a little bit about his family. We’re in the middle of that series.

I’m also preaching to our brothers and sisters over in Southwest Florida right now, they’re kind of huddled in seven or eight different homes, and everyone’s going to those homes who have Internet and power and water, but you’re not supposed to drink it it’s not easy to be there right now. But anyway, so his family well, who are those in his family? That’s what we had to answer. Who are those that are in his family? Well, those who follow Jesus. Amen. Right? Those who follow Jesus, denying ourselves, carrying our cross daily, those are the ones who are in his family.

Okay, well, on the surface, that seems to be pretty elementary for us, right. But as we dig a little bit deeper, actually, those who have died, whose lives are gone and now are following Jesus with his walk and his mission.

Wow. So we started thinking, well, those who deny themselves carry their cross, but also those who are dead. So those who have shared in this death, burial, and resurrection. I don’t know if this looks familiar, but these are those who are in his family, those who have shared in that death, right. That have died to that old self, that old Matt is gone. He’s dead, and now I am in Christ.

Those are those who are in his family. We is dead. Now we lives in Christ. Okay, I know it’s not proper.

So Mark One, verse 17 says, Jesus is calling the first disciples. Right? We know we’re very familiar with this. Jesus said, Come follow me. Jesus said, and I will send you out to fish for people.

Okay? So we get this word follow. When we start looking into this word follow, it has a much deeper meaning than we think about. Say, hey, come follow me to the store. Hey, come follow me to the bathroom. I know where it’s at. Or even do what I do or say what I would say. And we started running into that. Well, that’s his walk, right? But then when the word follows, actually a Greek word, the way that you say is par acalatheo.

Can we say that? Par akalatheo? You could say it. You could say it. It’s the Greek word for follow in this context.

And basically what this means is Become me. He’s not saying, Come, follow me. I think a lot of times we go, oh, follow along, along where Jesus goes. Wherever he goes, I will go. And this is going to be awesome. I want to do what he would do. But no, actually, he’s saying, Come, become me. I want you to become me. You’re going to get a transformation, not an alteration. You become a new person, born again. We should not be surprised, right? So not just like Jesus, but to become Jesus.

But what’s the only way that I can pull that off? What’s the only way that you can pull that off? Well, look at Galatians, chapter two here. It says, I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me, the life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

So what’s the only way that we could pull this off? You got to die. I gotta die. We can’t live as Jesus and live as me at the same time. One of us has got to be dead.

So it’s either Jesus is alive in you or Jesus is not alive in you. The choice is, are you dead or are you not dead?

Interestingly enough, I’ve been crucified with Christ crucifixion. I’ve been publicly executed. Old Matt was publicly executed. Publicly killed. We watched the two new disciples, right, that just got baptized. They were publicly executed. And now in front of about 500, 600 people, now we all know they’re dead. It’s public. And really, these pictures are shouting out, that old person is dead. And now what we see is a baby Christ.

They’re taking their first steps as Christ. Aren’t they cute? Some of us have been around for a long time. We forget what it was like to walk as a baby Christ, you know? Everything is so new, so exciting. Then we get old.

So I die and I take basically, I’m taking on a new identity. Now, my identity is in Christ, not in Matt anymore. That’s scary, because some of us wonder, who would I be if I wasn’t fill in the blank? And we won’t want to let those things go. We’re afraid of who we would be if we let go all the way and just embodied who Christ is. It’s hard. So I got to die, and I take Christ on as my identity. And by doing that, I make him Lord, right? You can get an amen on that, right?

We make Jesus Lord. A lot of us, all of us, really, right before you got baptized, those of us are in this room that are disciples of Jesus and his family. At one point in that transformation, you said, Jesus is Lord, and everybody clapped, right? Yeah, that’s right. He said, Jesus is Lord. Come on, this is awesome. Well, we publicly say Jesus is Lord, and we have a new king. We are no longer in charge. He’s in charge. He makes the decisions.

I no longer make those decisions. So now I’m also publicly announcing that I now have taken on a new king, and I’m letting everyone know, I’ve got a new king. He’s in charge. I’m no longer in charge. Romans, chapter ten, right?

Well, that’s who makes up the family. Those who have created a new king in their life made him a new king in their life, they’re no longer in charge. Those who have done that are in his family. So this is cool. Check out Acts Chapter Two. I’m a simpleton, so I go to familiar verses.

There we go. Glasses. I’ve gotten a lot older. I was 22 when I got baptized. Here, verse 36. Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this. God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah. When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart, said to Peter and the other apostles, brothers, what shall we do? Can we do about this? How do we get off the hook?

Verse 38 peter replied, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, for all whom the Lord your God will call. With many other words, he warned them and pleaded with them, save yourselves from this corrupt generation. How? Verse 41 those who accepted his message were baptized, and about 3,000 were added to their number that day.

They in verse 42, they devoted themselves to. Who devoted themselves to the apostles teaching? Let’s look back a little bit. Those who accepted his message, right? Wait, those who died, those who shared in the death, burial, and resurrection. That’s the they here, they, these are the called out ones. We have a new word now, ecclessia ecclessia.

That means the called out ones. It also eventually became a word that’s synonymous with the word, church. But it started out by saying, you are called out from the world. Your old life has died, it’s gone, it’s over, and now your identity is in Christ. That’s who you are and that’s who this group is.

Wow, that changes things, isn’t it? They called out ones, not a born again and Christian, not someone who gets lathered up and gets really emotional and says, hey, Jesus, I want to follow you, or praying Jesus in your heart. You know, I’m not against praying Jesus in your heart. It’s an and. It’s not a but. It’s an and. Of course we pray Jesus in our heart and we follow what the Bible commands us to do in regards to salvation, right? We got to stop arguing with people and say, no, you’re right and… Didn’t read the rest of the story. Of course, Romans ten is right. We do say Jesus is Lord, right?

And there’s Romans six, Paul already covered that in his letter, right? I mean, it’s an and it’s not a but. Let’s stop arguing.

So these are the disciples of Jesus. These are the Christians, these are the church. So we get when we hear Christians, when we hear church, when we hear disciples, we need to start thinking the called out ones, the nonworldly ones, the ecclessia, right? Ecclessia. Not through some membership form that doesn’t make not even if you have this kind of religious experience or you really, really, really believe or you’ve been around for a long time. I think some of us have our accolades and credentials. We name drop. Well, I was around when I know I was in such and such as Bible Talk or D group. I was on University of Florida, whatever it might be. You guys have heard that so many, right? I was up in Boston, in the Boston movement.

But we don’t mature out of this. We don’t get to a point where now this doesn’t apply to me. I still got to be dead. I still got to kill that old life. When? How often? Daily. We know this.

How about if you’re young and you think you’re not riddled with the cPTSD church PTSD?

Oh, that doesn’t apply to me. I’m young. No, that applies to you. Are you dead? Are you dead? Are you you? Are you Christ? Because that’s the question. Are you and his family or are you not?

God’s will is not just for me to even repent and be baptized either. I’ve got to remain in Christ. John 15, right? I’ve got to remain in the vine. Most of what we read in the New Testament, besides the Gospels, is all dedicated for us to remain in the vine.

You know that? I mean, everything you read from Romans to Revelation is all about us remaining in the vine. It’s not teaching us anything new, really. It’s trying to remind us and giving us different angles. God is trying to teach us, this is how you remain in the vine.

This is how you stay around. This is how you’re going to make it to the end. And what’s wonderful is we have real life experiences that are put down in the Bible to show us what it looks like. Three D. Four D.

Right. You can almost smell it from the pages as Paul writes, right? He’s talking to these churches and he knows these individuals. So God doesn’t just give us a bunch of theory on paper. He’s like, you know what, I’m going to make this. I’m going to take this and I’m going to put it on the earth so you can see what it looks like. So we have questions. What should we do when it comes to giving? It’s going to be in there. What should we do when it comes to sexual morality? It’s going to be in there. What are we supposed to do when we’re having a hard time in our marriage? It’s going to be right in there. And it’s not just pick a bunch of words. It’s actually lives that are being changed right in front of our eyes. But it’s really dedicated to making sure that we make it all the way, that we remain in the vine. We never mature out of this calling. We’ve got to maintain the relationship.

Listen to some of these scriptures. Just listen. Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means. We died to sin. How can we live in it any longer? We’re dead to that old life. How can we want to come and bring that old life back? We must pay careful attention to what we have heard so that we don’t drift away. Are we watching out through those challenges?

I’ll tell you my confession this morning is true. I wasn’t watching out. I wasn’t paying careful attention, and I began to drift away. Just because I’ve been a disciple for almost 27 years doesn’t change that. I’m still going to drift away. I didn’t kill Matt for the last couple of days. If we deliberately keep on sinning oh, Matt, why you got to bring that scripture up, right? If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sin is left but a fearful expectation. Wow.

Raging fire consume the enemies of God. We don’t mature out of that challenge. That’s not a baby Christian scripture. Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked.

A man reaps what he sows and a woman. Whoever sows to please, whoever now whoever sows to please their sinful nature will reap destruction. Whoever sows to please the spirit will reap eternal life. I think many of us believe that we can just live the way that we want with no consequences.

We checked the box. We went through the procedure, and now we get to going back to what we were doing before, bettering or tidying our lives. But we’re not dying. We’re not dead. We’re still trying to live.

I’ve got something for that. Jesus was still talking to the crowd. His mother and brothers stood outside wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, your mother and brothers are standing outside waiting to speak to you. He replied to him, who is my mother and who are my brothers? Pointing to his disciples, he said, here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. So who is in this family? The dead people. Those who have done the will of God.

Now, that can pull on some heartstrings for me. I’ve got my own father here. I’ve got my daughter Riley here. I’ve got my wife Dina here. I’ve got Lynn here.

I’ve got my sister Tracy here. And they’re my family. And I’m being whoa, wait a second. Jesus like, no, that’s your old life family. That’s your nuclear family.

This is your family. These are your family members. This is his family. Those who have died. I think I may have lost this slide, okay?

Unless you want to resurrect old you from the grave like old Matt wants to he wants to come back, and he wants to come, and he wants to drag me back down and my old habits and the old me and my old pride and my old insecurities. And he wants to get me to give back in to that old sin and that old life. Do you ever wonder why you struggle with the same thing over and over again?

Because that’s who you were before he became a disciple. There’s nothing new to you. It’s this. Tales from The Crypt starring Matt Newberg.

And I just want to resurrect and come back and drag old, new Matt down. We can become something that I call a hybrid Christian. Something new. Like, you’re not superworldly, but you’re not really ecclessia. You’re not really a called out one. You kind of, like, created this new way to maintain, I don’t know, an existence that’s not super challenged in the world, not super challenged from your church family.

You’re just kind of something new. You kind of like out of a worldly eye sticking over here, and you’ve got, like, a Jesus ear, and then you’ve got, like, the Jesus chest, because we all want Jesus chest. Maybe Jesus bicep, but you still got the worldly feet that gets you into trouble. You know what I mean? And so you’re just kind of like this weird something else. And we’re laughing, but we know them in the spirit of God goes, something’s wrong with him, something’s wrong with her, something’s weird. It’s because they’re hybrids. We’ve got to repent of being a hybrid. We got to go all Jesus or all world, like hot or cold, right?

Anything in between? Can’t be messing around with this stuff. So we are ecclessia, called out, not like the world, I am dead, and now Jesus lives through me. Okay? Remember Peter being called out by that little girl? We always talk about that in our Bible studies, right?

Jesus was being crucified, right? He’s being crucified. And right in the middle of that, this little girl challenges Peter. You were with them. You were with Jesus. You were with Jesus. What does he say? I was not. I don’t know the man. How did they recognize him? Do you remember? His accent gave him away. His accent gave him away. Their accent. He says, Surely you’re one of them, for your accent gives you away.

They were paracolotheoing following Jesus, becoming Jesus. They couldn’t hide it anymore. Peter couldn’t hide it anymore. He has become Jesus. And they’re going, I know that you are Jesus.

That’s basically what they’re saying. I know you’re Jesus. I see it. Your accent is giving you away. I know that you’ve been with them. You’re just like them. Those other paracalatheoers, those types of followers that were becoming Jesus, that’s how they recognized him. Following, becoming. They were transformed. They knew that they were a part of his family.

They couldn’t hide it. Some of us are like that too, right? Depends on where you’re from. We know people by their accent. The West Coast is more Midwestern influence. So I learned a whole new plethora of accents that came down from the Chicago area in Illinois, and they’re completely different than this area. It’s like the Northeast and Miami. It’s a whole different it’s completely different. But we know people by their accent. I don’t speak Spanish, but those who speak Spanish, they hear the different countries within the Spanish culture, right?

The same way that from the States here, we know where you’re kind of from? You’re from the north, northeast. Hey, how are you doing? You hear the New York accent if you’re from Boston, you hit the basston accent if you’re from La. I’m not sure what kind of accent you have there, but we identify with where we’re from.

Let me ask us a question. Does my accent give me away? Does my accent, the way that I follow Jesus? The way that I embody who he is give me away? Am I busted? Just a few days ago, just Wednesday, this happened.

It’s crazy. I feel like it’s been weeks, but just a few days ago, we were hit by a pretty ferocious hurricane, maybe one of the worst to hit the States. It’s right up there with some of the worst that has ever hit the States, has broken some records on storm surge. Just a few days ago, six families, now up to seven families, lost their home that night. People lost their lives that night.

These are familiar areas for us, as if this was Davey, you know what I mean? And you kind of drive by all the time, and you know the restaurant, so you know where you’re going. For us, this is what this looks like. This is just the area that we live, and it’s all underwater. This is downtown Fort Myers.

Historic downtown Fort Myers. This is about a mile away from the waters. Gives you an idea of how hard that surge came in. And if you could look in the background, you see those ships. They’re not typically there. Those are big boats. They came from the harbor, and they breached the harbor, and they just started making their way through downtown Fort Myers. This is First Street. This is a Sanibel bridge. The causeway, it looks like this on both sides. It’s impassable. And actually they deemed Sanibel Island and Captiva unlivable. They have no water, no electric, and no way to get there to fix it right now. So you’re not supposed to be there. This is Fort Myers Beach.

If you’ve ever been to Fort Myers Beach, it doesn’t look the same. There’s a new landscape, and the new landscape is stinky, smelly, and broken, and it’s going to take a long time, as Tony talked about earlier, for us to recover from this. This is Paul and Creed Blanche and their son Nico. So I’m crying early, and the story is hard to tell. That’s not good, but I’m a cry baby.

So I got received a text and a call from Paul. We had left. We started to take on water, and I looked at my family, and I said, let’s just go. And we started to make our way to a friend’s house in Gateway, which is further out west, and we realized they’re taking on water too. And this is just from the rain.

No storm surge. So we’re like, man, if we get the storm surge and we’re right near the water. We thought, this is probably not good. So we went ahead, and then the prediction was like 12ft. We’re at 8ft above sea level, so we did the math.

My wife is an engineer, so after the talk with my engineers, we decided to leave. And we ended up going to my father’s house. My dad opened arms, took us in, and we’ve been there ever since. So we actually haven’t been back. I am of no use to them.

I am a detriment when I get there. Now I’m needy, so that wouldn’t help anybody. So this is Paul and Karen and Nico. And they called me right when the eye was sort of passing their house. And all of us that live in that central area were all underneath the eye because the eye was so large.

And he was telling me my house is taken on water, he showed me a picture. I should have shown those pictures, and it was probably about a foot in his house. Then he showed me another picture, and it was about 4ft. Then he showed me another picture. They look pretty happy here, but this is after the storm that they’re huddled on the top of Nico’s bunk bed, about to go through the ceiling, and they were facing a life or death situation.

They just prayed, like, God, I don’t know what you’re going to do here. And they didn’t know. But of course, Kareem is smiling, and I’m like, she’s oblivious to what’s going on. I think she’s lost her mind. Just about when he was about to bust through the ceiling, the water stopped and it started to recede. It took a while to recede, but they lost their house.

But they didn’t lose their lives. Yeah. So we had a HOPE zoom meeting with Dave Tomlinson. He’s the head of Disaster Relief and all the evangelists, as many that can make the call from Florida. And I’m sharing this story, and I’m crying, and they’re all crying. It’s just an emotional moment, and there’s a lot more stories than this. This is just one of my best friends who went through this. And of course, they said, how can we help? We want to help. How can we help?

So we put a little plan together. We haven’t even assessed the situation yet. We didn’t even know what to ask for, to be honest with this is my first rodeo. We went through Irma, but Irma was nothing like this. It really wasn’t.

There was a lot of damag\ e, don’t get me wrong, but it was nothing like this. These are things that are hard to describe. So we said, we’re going to reconvene here’s kind of first. We’ll get the relief vehicle in on a certain date, and we’ll get that driven down there and we’ll see who can help. So, of course, Tony is like, I want to talk to you right after the Zoom call.

Okay? So Tony. We know. Tony right. He’s like, let’s do this right now. So he’s like, what do you need right now? Right now, right now. Did I do a good tony? Right now, right now, right now.

I said, I’ll tell you if you stop, no I’m just kidding. He said, But Tony says, I got a guy. He’s like, you’re in the family. I got a guy for you. Let me make a couple of phone calls and we’ll see what we could do. So he hangs up with me, and I’m thinking maybe later in the day, he’ll be able to score. He’s like, we’re going to try to get you some generating and some gas cans, all right? We’ll see what we can come up with. Like, just a few minutes later, ring and it’s Tony. I thought he had a couple more questions. He’s like, I got him. I had a guy who owed me a favor who hold this guy a favor. But by the end of the night, we had 20. And we also had some generators that we were being helped out with about 25 families that were devastated with power and gas with gas cans. You know what I mean?

And fans, you don’t think that that’s important until you don’t have power and water. Like, you guys donated so much water. We are going to have adema because of this storm.

I received a call from Keith Davis evangelist in Jacksonville that night. He’s a flood mitigator. I don’t realize what that was until I figured it out. He actually specializes in helping people to clean out those situations after a flood. And he’s like, I’ve got a group. They’re going to be self sustaining. They’ve got their own gas, everything, tents, everything. We’re going to come down. We’re going to help all of your disciples to clean out their homes.

Yes. Some pictures here. Sorry. Isn’t that cool?

That guy left happy and he’s getting a generator.

Yeah. I forgot to tell you something. Well, first of all, the HOPE, yeah, I already told you about the HOPE. Okay? So first of all, if you want to donate towards our relief, you can’t come yet. There’ll be a time for that. Even when Tony was there, they weren’t even allowing first responders in yet. Like, cops weren’t in yet, ambulances weren’t driving around yet. Tony was, but he showed me all this video, and there was, like, no one around except him and the guys.

I’m like, anyway, we’re going to assess the situation for you. But we really don’t know what we need yet. So I have a meeting later with Dave Tomlinson and a group from Hope to explain that to us on how to navigate the water. So someone will let you know, so just be patient. A lot of you have come up to me already saying, hey, I’ve got a generator. I’ve got a place for you to stay. I’ve got all these things, and, like, I don’t even know what to do. So I’m going to get some great direction. Tony is going to get some great direction and the different evangelists around Florida, and we’ll know what to do soon. So we’re on the Zoom call, right, with the different evangelists back to his family, right.

And this is just a few hours after the storm, Thursday. Our meeting was at 1230, and they asked, hey, how’s everybody doing? By 11:00 a.m. After the storm, I knew where every single member of my church was. All 130 accounted for, and there are 70 kids. I knew where everybody was. Now, they asked me that on the meeting, and I didn’t think that was a big deal. I’m like, yeah, of course I wouldn’t come to this meeting without that information, like, duh, that I got in trouble if I didn’t know. One of your lost sheep are out there. Get out there.

But what had happened when I didn’t realize the way that family is is that it wasn’t me going, hey, I need to know where this person is at. Where this person is at. Those groups were already chatting and talking, and I was getting texts and, hey, everybody in our family groups accounted for. Everybody in our family groups accounted for. There was this one woman that I couldn’t get in touch with, and she finally texted me saying, stop looking for me. And I’m like, all right. It was just one, but she’s safe. But when I said that, there was, like, a silence in the meeting, and we got off the phone and I didn’t realize it, and Tony said something to me. It’s really encouraging. I can’t see Tony if he’s in here or not, but he said, bro, that’s just how you build. You know, that’s who the southwest Florida church of Christ is.

And at that moment, I think I just never been prouder of our church, our Southwest Florida Church of Christ. It is how we build. I don’t know how to build differently, so I don’t do a great job at the macro. I’m very good at micro. So if you want to sit and have a cup of coffee, I’m your man.

But planning, I’m like, I need help. I need help. But it’s just kind of who we’ve become. We’re family. They care about each other. These people will die for each other. They knew exactly where people were. They were already getting people out of their situation and living with them. By the time I talked to them, these people are already out of their house and they’re already in another location, and they’re safe. And I’m just so proud and I’m so proud of the Broward Church.

I’m so proud to be a part of your family. It didn’t take but a few minutes to have all these things donated, and by a day later after that discussion, right Friday, a truck pulls up with what we asked for. That’s his family. I’m being offered, like, week time shares, which we’re going to take you up on that.

But the serving and the praying. I’m so proud of Florida. I’ve gotten calls from all the evangelists, all the people in different churches. I mean, it’s overwhelming. The response from just our family in Florida.

I’m so proud of his family. Sometimes we forget what we’re a part of. And you know why? We all died. We all died.

Acts 245-4445. There’s another, okay, these are people that are receiving them. Sorry, I forgot to show you the good news.

All the believers were together and had everything in common because they were all dead. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.

Just wait. Paracolitheo, right? Come follow. Become me. Tony, your accent gives you away, bro.

Like, Tony can say right now, I don’t know Jesus. And we’d go, Your accent gives you away, bro. I got proof. I got pictures. Busted. Broward can say, Nah, man, we’re not going to follow Jesus anymore. You know, I would say? Sorry, you’re busted. Your accent gives you away. Florida could say, you know what? We went through a crisis almost 20 years ago now in our movement. You know what, those who rose to the top, it’s just that their accent gave them away.

They were following Christ already. It didn’t make a difference. They were like, I’m just going to do this. It’s hard. It’s horrible. It’s clumsy. I mean, this is how we all are, right? We love confessing sin, right? Isn’t that fun? But it’s who we are because we died, and we don’t want any of that to come back and get us. Your accent gives you away.

You’re busted. Following Jesus, those who have become Jesus, the called out ones, ecklessia. Look around, ecklesia. We’re the call out ones, his family. Amen.

At this time, we’re going to go ahead and we’re going to say a prayer for the communion, and we’re going to take communion together as his family. Amen. Let’s pray.

Father, thank you so much for this opportunity that we have to connect with you through Jesus. Father, thank you so much that he decided to stay on that cross, Father, that he didn’t take any shortcuts.

He didn’t take the easy way out, and he went all the way. The reason why we’re sitting here right now is because he decided to finish. And that’s who we follow, God. And I know that. I know that we’ve got to die. We have to die to become Him. And I pray that right now we will make some decisions that we don’t need to live anymore. What are we hanging on to? It’s just stopping us from becoming more like your Son. Even if there’s something on our heart right now, before we leave this room, help us to get rid of it. We don’t want to be a hybrid Christian. We don’t want to be something else. We want to be Jesus. I pray as we take communion together right now, we’ll make some decisions to be just like your son, no, to become your son.

We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.