Living a god focused life life is being honest if you stray.

Tim Beal: 01:26 Hey, what is happening Cornerstone? How are we doing? Ah, dude, it's good to see you guys.

Tim Beal: 01:27 Thank you so much, man, for coming, for being a part of this if you're a guest today. Thank you, man, for being here with us. It doesn't matter where you're at, if you're at Scottsdale, if you're in San Tan, if you're watching online. Thank you for being a part of what God is doing here. This has been a fun series I think. I love that we've taken this idea of how we forget Jesus sometimes and we've, we've kind of walked through that. So if you have missed the last couple of weeks, man, you got to go back and watch these.

Tim Beal: 01:51 It started two weeks ago with a guy named Ted Cunningham who came in and he talked so much about how sometimes we can forget God in the waiting room. That sometimes we wait, and we wait, and we wait, and we wait so long that we forget that God is bigger than whatever it is we're waiting for. And we forget God in those moments, and how important it is to trust God even when we're, when we're waiting.

Tim Beal: 02:10 Then last week, Pastor Lynn was in the house, and he was talking about how, man, maybe sometimes we just need to readjust our lives because we get so busy that sometimes our success causes us to put everything in front of Jesus. And that we need to re-evaluate sometimes and make sure that God is at the bottom, and he's at the start of what we are, then all the busyness stuff comes in.

Tim Beal: 02:28 Today I want to walk us through something that I think is hopefully, hopefully is all of us. Hopefully if we're honest, it's a little bit of all of us through it. So to do that, I need you to think with me for a moment. What's the weirdest thing that you've ever lost?

Tim Beal: 02:42 Like seriously, think, think for just a second, what's the strangest thing that you've ever lost? If it's a cat, you don't lose a cat. They just run away and you pray they don't come home. So cats don't count.

Tim Beal: 02:52 I'm talking the weirdest thing you've ever lost. Anybody ever lost a dog? You ever had your- lose your dog? Dude isn't that, like the worst feeling in the world? I had a basset hound named Flash, that dude ran away from home. I was, I was sick for the three hours it took me to find him, like just trying to find Flash was horrible. You lost your keys before, anybody?

Tim Beal: 03:11 Anybody ever have your kids put your keys in the refrigerator? I don't know why they do that. I think just, possession or something- I don't know. So I'm not talking about, like, you lose something because your kids work for the devil sometimes. I'm talking about, like, you misplace something. Have you ever been at the store with your kids and you misplace them?

Tim Beal: 03:33 I remember as a kid, like when my mom would yell, and when she yelled out to Timothy Lee, dude I knew the world was ending quickly. And she was in frozen foods and I was in toys but like two seconds, I was at her side when she would bust out that yell. I think the weirdest thing ever lost was a alligator. I had a pet alligator for a little while and it's a long story. But really, how do you, how do you not understand that, just knowing me. And it got out of my house, and I had lost it for just a couple of hours. That was weird to try to look for.

Tim Beal: 04:01 It's so much stress, when you're trying to find that angst of knowing that it's supposed to be here, but it's not and you're really trying to locate where it's at. It's just so much, like just, anxiety. If we were honest, and we were just to take a poll, man I bet none of us would say, "Hey I've lost or I've forgotten God." Because none of us would do that, right? Like that's, come on, that's my neighbor. That's not me. I would never do that. Good, grab your Bibles.

Tim Beal: 04:30 Let's go. Grab your bibles, let's go to Luke real quick. I want to walk us through a very familiar story, but to do it we got to set it up a little bit. So go to Luke Chapter One. If you're new to the Bible, new to any of this, kind of start in the middle, work your way to the right just a little bit. Hit Matthew, Mark, and then Luke Chapter One. It's a story, Christmastime we read this all the time, we've heard this a billion times before. I want to talk us through it again because I think there's parts in this story, that if we'll watch, that are us. I think there's moments in this story that, if we'll pay attention, we can pick out parts of our life and hopefully we can apply some of that in, and make us a little bit more like Jesus when our time's done.

Tim Beal: 05:03 So, Luke Chapter One is where we're going to start. And starting in verse 26, and this is one of the coolest parts I think in the Bible, because this is where we find out about Jesus. Luke One verse 26. It starts with this, "in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the Angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, 'Greetings, you who are highly favored, the Lord is with you.'" I think that's how they talked. "Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid Mary. You have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son. You are to call him Jesus. He will be great and he will be called the son of the most high. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever. His kingdom will never end.'"

Tim Beal: 06:01 How cool of a moment is this? Like, this is so sick. You're sitting there in your house, ladies, and then out of nowhere an angel shows up, and the angel looks at you and he knows your name. And when the angel speaks, he's got that deep voice and you sound super cool, Rico Suave. And he comes in and he looks at you and he's all, "Greetings, you who are highly favored," and, right? And then the most underrated, like this, this statement next is just so weird. Verse 29, "Mary was greatly troubled."

Tim Beal: 06:30 Yeah. I'd a done more than greatly troubled. I'd had to change clothes if an angel had come in and starts talking to me, like for real. I love this story. And what I love about this story is Mary's response. Mary in this moment has a chance to look at the Angel and be like, "Oh I don't think so boss, like, I'm going to give birth but I have- No, no, no, no, no. Hold up, back the truck up, because this ain't me." Mary had all these opportunities to say this. Oh hold on, can we, can we take a vote on this? Because I don't remember anybody asking me this question. Excuse me, you want me to do what? I'm going to be the mom of the savior of the world? Like, God's going to be my son?

Tim Beal: 07:03 I can't discipline him because he'll give me leprosy and you're going to give me that as a kid? For real? No no no. And I love what Mary does. She makes room. She makes room for Jesus to come in, and instead of running from God, she embraces God in that moment and makes room for Jesus. Go just a little bit to the left, go to, go to Matthew because there's more than just Mary in this.

Tim Beal: 07:26 There's also her friend Joseph. And if you go to Matthew Chapter One, the same thing happens, the same thing takes place just a little bit different. It's Matthew One verse 20. Matthew One verse 20, Joseph is involved in this now and it starts with this, it says, but after he had considered this, and you got to understand this, what Joseph is considering is the fact that his fiance is now pregnant and he didn't do it. So there's a lot going on that he's considering. He's considering the thought that his, the girl that he's about to marry is now pregnant, but it is not his baby. And so he's considering, like, do I marry her?

Tim Beal: 07:59 Or do I just be like, peace, here's a gift certificate, talk to you later. What do I, like how do I get out of this?That's what he's considering. But so after he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, Son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins."

Tim Beal: 08:26 Now, some cool things in this. One: Joseph's story is way shorter. I don't know if ya'll picked up on that but when Joseph and the angel talk, it's just a couple of sentences. He's just like, dude stop trippin'. Marry the woman, name him Jesus and he's going to save the world. When the angel goes and talks to Mary, dude it's a long conversation of, "behold most favored, honored by God," and there's way more in it. So I feel like, man, we get hosed from the very beginning.

Tim Beal: 08:48 Just my opinion. I love this though. I love this about Joseph. Man, because this is a great moment where Joseph, any other guy in the world probably would've bounced. Any other guy in the world would have looked at this situation, realized that this, "hold up, no, no, no, no, no. This is not at all what I back, what I thought of when I was thinking marriage and family, this isn't what I thought. Forget this, yo, I'm done." Anybody could have bounced out of that but not Joseph.

Tim Beal: 09:13 He makes room for God. He makes room for this moment and embraces the fact that he's going to be the dad of Jesus. And they both knew who Jesus was because the bible told them, Angels told him, and he's going to be the savior of the world. This messiah that you guys have waited on your entire life, that's your kid. Can't imagine that anxiety through those 9 months of pregnancy. Like, just that thought of, "oh my goodness, this is the Messiah. We've prayed about him for generations. I remember my grandparents talking about this moment. That's our son." And they both made room for Jesus, and they both accepted God's plan for their lives and they both embraced that.

Tim Beal: 09:53 Now we don't have a whole lot of their life from this point until Jesus is an adult. There's not much in there. And when you read, this when you read the Bible and you go through Scripture, it's really, there's a lot of Jesus's life left left out as a teenager and as a little kid. That there's one small window though, and that's what I want us to look at. So, work your way back to the right, to go back to Luke real quick, to Luke 2 and that's where we'll camp out. Luke 2 gives us a really small window into Jesus's life as a little kid, a real small window, and what it would be like to be the parent of the savior of the universe. How crazy it would be to be a dad to Jesus.

Tim Beal: 10:32 It's Luke 2. We're going to start in Verse 41 and we'll read through it and break it down together. So Luke 2:41 starts here. It says, "every year Jesus's parents went to Jerusalem for the festival the Passover. When he was 12 years old they went up to the festival according to their customs."

Tim Beal: 10:47 Now you need to understand this, a good Jewish person had three customs, three festivals that they did not miss. There was Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacle. Those three festivals, dude you made sure that you and your family were there and you were celebrating those three festivals. The Passover festival though. Dude, this is the Super Bowl for the Jewish people. Like this is their, "you don't miss this game." You're at the Festival of the Passover because the Passover was huge in their history. You see, the festival the Passover, it celebrated the moment that the Jewish culture, that the Israelites were set free from Egypt. And it went all the way back to the time that Moses was in Egypt, and the Israelites were enslaved, and they were praying out to God send us a deliverer, God, get us out of here. Slavery stinks, man, would you please deliver us from Egypt? And God goes in and, you know the story, and God goes in with Moses and Moses is like, telling Pharaoh, "Dude you got to let my people go." And Pharaoh is like, "I don't think so." And so God starts sending like, all these plagues and all these things to try to get Pharaoh's attention. And Moses is like, "Oh, baby let my people go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." I should have gone to youth camp because that joke's way funnier if you know the song.

Tim Beal: 11:51 All this stuff is hitting Egypt and still Pharaoh's like, "Man, I don't think so, I'm not letting them go. Right now they're working for me, they're building my stuff, they're doing all these things that my people don't have to do, so forget you I'm not letting them go." And the festival of the Passover, it celebrates this moment where the Israelites are set free from bondage of slavery. It celebrates this moment that's even bigger than physical slavery. It celebrates this moment that sets up Jesus. You see, the festival of Passover, it's celebrated when God sent an angel to Egypt that was going to kill the first born male of everyone including livestock. And the only way that your family would be safe from that, is if you were to sacrifice a lamb and you were to take the blood of the lamb, and you would smeared on the door post. And when the angel came, if he saw the blood on the door post, the angel would pass over your house.

Tim Beal: 12:36 And it's foreshadowing Jesus. It's foreshadowing the perfect sacrifice of who God is, the perfect lamb, and how he's going to be sacrificed. And his sacrifice is going to give us freedom, not only from physical freedom, but freedom from spiritual death. And it's going to allow us to pass over spiritual death and to eternal life.

Tim Beal: 12:57 And so, every year Mary and Joseph have gone, and every year they've celebrated this festival celebrating Jesus. And now, for the last 12 years, they've celebrated it with Jesus. This would be like you coming to Christmas next week with Jesus. Like, let that soak for just a second. You roll in next weekend for Christmas Eve services and you all start singing, I don't know, Jingle Bell Rock or something, and Jesus is right there beside you. Like, you're celebrating "O come let us adore him," and him is right next to you. And him was in the car ride on the way there. That's what just happened. And not just once but for 12 years Mary and Joseph have taken Jesus to Jerusalem to celebrate this festival in honor of Jesus.

Tim Beal: 13:41 How cool would that be? I can't think but man, the pride that Joseph had to sit, as they're sitting there in the temple and they're celebrating. I mean I, I just picture as a dad wanting to look at everybody and be like, "Dude that's my boy right there! What ya'll are talking about. That's my son! We'll sign autographs in the back. This is him right here!" 12 years. Verse 43. "After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the Boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem but they were unaware of it."

Tim Beal: 14:16 After the festival finished, Mary and Joseph gathered their stuff up, and they started to prepare for the trip home and left. Only problem was, Jesus wasn't with them. You get that you can have all the information in the world about who God is. You can celebrate your entire life. You can go to church, you can do all the things that you think you're supposed to do. You can be the most religious person on the planet and be on a dead sprint away from God and not even realize it.

Tim Beal: 14:49 Because it's not information that brings transformation, it's application. Because application is where you put to work the things that you know. Mary and Joseph knew more than anyone in this world, how important Jesus was. They knew better than anyone on this planet who Jesus was. They had just for the last 12 years celebrated an entire festival based on his life.

Tim Beal: 15:12 And then forgetting. And they leave him in Jerusalem and take off. And if it can happen to two people that had angels show up in their house and tell them who Jesus was, it's a pretty good chance it is going to happen to us too. And if we were honest, for just a second, before we dive into any more of this story, it's happening right now to all of us.

Tim Beal: 15:32 There's parts of our life that we've left Jesus, and don't even realize it. And maybe, I don't know, maybe they just thought Jesus would follow them, because they're his parents. Maybe that's what we do. We think Jesus is just gonna follow us because of who we are. Maybe they thought he was going to follow them because they were just at the festival to Passover and they just celebrated, and Jesus was right there. So they just assumed that Jesus would follow.

Tim Beal: 16:11 Verse 44. "Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then, they begin to look for him among their relatives and friends." Thinking he was in their company, they travel for a day. These fools lost Jesus for a day. Can you imagine, like, that ride back to Jerusalem when they finally realized. "I thought he was with you. I thought he was with you."

Tim Beal: 16:33 This is like, this is Home Alone, like, this is the very first home alone. They're going back and Joseph is like, "This is all your fault. I'm not taking the fall for this Mary. This is you. I don't think so. This is you." And this- for a day. I lost my dog for three hours and was sick to my stomach. I've got three kids and when I left the house today all three were accounted for, like I know where all three of them were. In 20 years of doing youth ministry, I've never lost a kid on purpose.

Tim Beal: 17:01 I did lose one kid. But it was, it was intentional and it was to prove a point. But we got him back. So it was a long time ago. I can't imagine that anxiety, that stress. Not only did you lose your kid, you lost Jesus. The world's- we're, we're toast now. Like, this whole world's jacked up because you lost Jesus. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Let me ask you this real quick, and just be honest in your life. And again, if you're, if you're looking at your life, the areas of your life that you've left Jesus behind, if you are honest, are you chasing God or are you expecting God to chase you?

Tim Beal: 17:45 I think too many of us, because we're religious, because we do the right things, because we stand and we come here, and we sing, and we lift our hands, and we get the Christian's sway. And we close our eyes, and if we really, I mean, we got both hands going. And we got a Bible that's got all different colors of highlights in it and it's like this, we write. And when we pray, we end with Amen. Every single time we pray, we end with Amen because that's what we do.

Tim Beal: 18:07 And we do all these, man, we do all these things that are great and don't get me wrong we should do these things. But I wonder, if we were honest in our lives, if we're chasing after Jesus or if we're expecting Jesus to come chasing after us. And maybe it's because of who we are. Man, because we're, dude I'm, I lead small group, Jesus. I give up two hours of my week, every week to lead a small group and pray for these people that come into my house, eat my food and don't even say thank you, and I do it every week.

Tim Beal: 18:44 If you were to look at your life right now, is there an area, is there a part of your life that you're expecting Jesus to follow you. If so, you get how backwards that is, right? Go back to verse 44. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then, they begin looking for him among their relatives and their friends. When they didn't find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. These guys got up the next morning and did their normal thing. Dude they had some toaster strudel, they did their stuff and they're like, "Oh hey, didn't we have a son? Oh yeah." And you see, Jesus.

Tim Beal: 19:22 And it goes on, and for a full day they can't find him. And when they don't find him, they go back to Jerusalem. Let me give you this as just, maybe some hope. If there's a part of your life that you feel like you've walked away from God, the smartest thing you can do is go back where you last saw Jesus work.

Tim Beal: 19:45 The smartest thing you can do is go back. If you're a student in the house you understand this probably better than the rest of us. If you've ever been to a youth camp, you remember this moment. You go away to youth camp and it's such a great experience. Man, you go up, usually they don't have, like, cell phone coverage or social media. So you get out of all that stuff for just a couple of days and you go into this moment where you spend an entire week, where you wake up in the morning and you read this book. You go to a church service, and you sing songs, and people talk to you about this book. And then you get in small groups, and people surround you with this book, and then you go and you eat lunch. And then you go back and you spend time in this book, and then you go back at night and you sit in the service where people talk to you about this book. And then you pray, and you do this for a week solid. And you have this incredible experience with God, and you leave that mountain top and you're just like, dude, I'm going back home in Arizona. Better hold on because I'm going to wreck shop when I get back. And you come back from the camp and you're like, "Yes!" And then Monday morning rolls around.

Tim Beal: 20:39 And you really don't have time to read your Bible because you have to get up early to go to school. And then you really don't have time to pray because now you've got a geometry final coming up. And you really don't have time to go to church or to a small group because you've got too much algebra homework. And you really can't hang out with your friends that love Jesus because now you've got football practice and you got to go and hit people, and it's not intentional.

Tim Beal: 21:05 You just look up and you're not in the same place. Can I. Can I say this maybe as some hope if you've stepped away from God, you can't step too far from God. It doesn't matter how far, and, I love this. It doesn't matter how far you run from God, you can never outrun God.

Tim Beal: 21:33 And I don't know if you've picked up on this, but Jesus doesn't love you because of you. He loves you in spite of you. It's not you, it's him. He's in love with you because of who he is. And you may have ran from God, and you may be at a dead sprint from God, and just now you're realizing that running from God doesn't really get you where you want to go.

Tim Beal: 21:51 It's never too late to turn back. And I love that in this story. Mary and Joseph show us it's never too late for you to go back to Jesus. It's never too late to turn around and to come back.

Tim Beal: 22:02 And that's one of the things that I love about God is, His grace really is amazing. And it really is forgiving. And His love for you is bigger than you and it doesn't matter what you've done. You can't out-sin His grace. And you may put distance, and please listen to me, you may put distance in your relationship but you can't sever your relationship. Mary and Joseph walked away from God and put distance, but they were still mom and dad. And you may have ran from God, but you're still a son and daughter of the king of the universe. And it's never too late to come back.

Tim Beal: 22:36 It's easy. I don't know if you saw this, verse 44, the end of it it says, they begin looking for him among their friends and their relatives. It's easy for us to look for God in the wrong places. When we run from God, usually the first thing we do is we go to the wrong place to look for him. And usually it's religion. Usually we dive into, "Man, I've got to be good enough now." And then you're frustrated because you can't really be good enough. And it's, "Man I've got to do more good things," and then how many good things and you just get tired. We look for Jesus in the wrong place. The smartest thing for us to do is to go back to the last place that we saw Jesus. I don't know if you are picking up what Luke is laying down here. Jerusalem is where Jesus's life ends.

Tim Beal: 23:18 You see, that's where Jesus is sacrificed. And when we go back to God, there's a sacrifice to it. We've got to sacrifice our pride. We've got to sacrifice some time. We've got to sacrifice some of the things that make us who we think that we are, and trust God with those things. We've got to go back to that place. And if you've ran from God, one of the smartest things you can do is go back where you last saw him. Maybe that isn't a small group, maybe that's in this book. Usually, when I talk to people that are far from God, they spend very little time in this book and very little time praying to God and that's the best place to start. If you've ran from God and you're struggling with that right now, the best place to go is back.

Tim Beal: 23:55 Spend time in this book, man, start reading this book and start spending time with God. Praying, asking God to come alive as you read this book. Asking God to show you different things, asking God to speak to you. Go back to that last place that you saw him. And I love that Mary and Joseph, that they do that.

Tim Beal: 24:16 Verse 46. After three days, they found him in the temple courts sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. These fools lost Jesus for three days. Let that soak for a second. Some of you are better parents than you thought. You're kids are terrible and they lost Jesus for three days.

Tim Beal: 24:44 As I read this and I think about it as a dad, I think of Joseph, probably just stressed out of his mind. I can't imagine. I can't imagine losing your kid. But for three days? And then throw in, oh yeah, He's also the savior of the world. I can't imagine that anxiety. As I read this though, it says that Jesus is sitting at the temple. He's chilling. He's sitting at the temple courts among the teachers listening to them and asking them questions.

Tim Beal: 25:19 You get that when we run from God, it stresses us out but it doesn't stress God out. You understand that, right? Like, we can sprint from God and it's going to stress us out, but it doesn't stress out God because he's bigger than that. And Jesus was right where he was supposed to be.

Tim Beal: 25:48 You see, it was Mary and Joseph that took off. Some of us, you may have increased the distance, but please hear me. Man, you cannot sever the relationship. And it's never too late to come back. Some of us, man, we get away from God and we think there's no way that God would want us. There's no way that God would want anything to do with me because of the things that I've done, because I've separated myself. I've done this for so long and, some of you it's not three days, maybe it's 30, 40 years. You've ran from God for so long you think, there's no way that I can come back to him.

Tim Beal: 26:17 And you're missing what makes grace amazing. I love this story because you have two normal, ordinary people that make room for Jesus and then forgetting, but then come back. If we're honest we would look at this and I think we could see us. So again let me let me ask you this, I did a moment ago. What's a part of your life that you've left Jesus behind?

Tim Beal: 26:53 Maybe it's Christmas. Christmas is weird.

Tim Beal: 27:00 Dude, we get, we get nutty at Christmas time. Man, we get all worked up about Christmas trees, and do we have the right wreath, and where the box of ornaments at, and now the lights don't work and I've got to spend six hours chasing the light bulb. And we get fired up about, did I get the right presents, well you got six for him and only four for her, so now you got to go shop more. And what am I going to get grandma? I don't know.

Tim Beal: 27:17 And you just get, Christmas is crazy and it's easy to forget what we're doing. I think some of us have forgotten so long that we forgot who we're celebrating at Christmas. We're celebrating a God who came down from heaven to be the sacrifice that gives us freedom. And we're celebrating the birth of the savior. This God that loves us in spite of who we are, because of who he is. That sets us free, that, that gives us peace. And today if I could give you the best Christmas present that I know, it's just this. You may have ran from God. It's not too late to come back.

Tim Beal: 28:18 And maybe you're super religious and you got all of that side of it down. Are you forgetting God in any of that? Because it's not knowledge, it's application. Can we take a second and just, just pray. We get so busy sometimes I think that we forget to pray. And prayer is such an awesome moment where we communicate to God. And some of you right now are like, "dude he better not call on me." I'm not going to ask you to pray, don't sweat that, and you're not going to have to hold your neighbor's hand. Nothing weird like that. I just want us to do this, can we take a second. Because if we're honest, and looking at our lives, there's parts of our life that we've left God behind. And I can't think of a better way to start the week of Christmas and that celebration than to look at those moments and to come back. And it starts just with the simple you, me, communicating with God and just being honest and saying, "God, I've left you behind in this and I've expected you to follow me and God I want to switch that. I want to chase after you." And I would love to give you a moment to do that. So now, in this moment, before the world gets crazy, would you do that? Just, God, whatever that is. And you don't have to say it out loud so it doesn't get like, shady with your neighbor.

Tim Beal: 29:28 God I've left you behind in this and I want to give this back to you. Some of you, this is that moment. Man you've ran so far from God. You really thought that he hated you. You thought that he was so upset and so mad at you. And maybe, something in this morning, the truth of this simple message, that you can't outrun God. Maybe that's what it was and you're coming back to God is just a really simple moment where you just say, "God I'm done running, and I'm yours" And maybe that's where you're at today. Jesus, would you help us to not forget you this season, and to not celebrate Christmas and leave out the most important thing, which is you. So God would you help us today to realize that we can't outrun your grace and we can't outrun your love.

Tim Beal: 30:26 Jesus help us to remember you.

Tim Beal: 30:30 Lastly I want to guide us through this prayer because I know that this is going to happen. Next week is our Super Bowl. Dude, next week your friends are gonna come because you ask them, and we'll have more people come than any other week in the year possibly close to Easter. This next weekend we're going to have so many people that will just come to church because you reached out and you asked them. And I would hate for them to not come just because you didn't take that opportunity. So could we take just a second as a family and pray for those people. And I would even bet that right now as we're thinking about it, there's a face or a name or somebody that's coming up in our mind. And we've made it as easy as we could for you. We've got these little cards in the back. They're already cut up and torn out so you can invite all your friends and you just take it and just hand it to him and say, "Dude I don't know what you're doing next week, but this is what you should be doing."

Tim Beal: 31:15 Can we take a second and pray for them.

Tim Beal: 31:19 And this is how I would love to pray. One, that God gets them here but then two, that, that God shows up in such a powerful way that we see so many people accept Christ next week that we can't explain it away with music, and with eloquent words, and cool illustrations. That the only way that it could really happen is because God showed up. Would you take a second and just pray that God would get your friends here?That he would use you to do it, that you would be faithful and invite them and that he would be faithful and change their lives when they show up. So would you take just a second and pray for that?

Tim Beal: 31:56 God, there's so many of our friends, and there's so many people around us; Neighbors, co-workers, all these people that don't know you. Jesus would you help us to have the courage this week to invite them. And Jesus would you show up next week in which you speak through Linn in such a powerful way, God, that the gospel, that the message of your love is so clear. That it's so easy to understand, that it cuts through their hearts, Jesus. That it opens their minds up to who you are. And God, that next week that we see hundreds of people trust you with their lives. And not just here, God, but all over churches across America, as people come to celebrate, really probably not even knowing that they're coming to celebrate you. Would you show up and do something that we can't explain away with programming?

Tim Beal: 32:35 And God, not so that we could look good but so that you could be famous and so that lives could be changed because of who you are. So Jesus do these things in your name.



Recorded in Chandler, Arizona.