Holy Moments Part 3 // Nick Serban III

Holy _Christmas_ Moments [Part 3] __ Nick Serban III

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

lord, shepherds, moment, god, church, people, heard, share, angel, today, change, hesitation, boldness, born, week, hands, hesitate, flock, life, jesus

So a few weeks back, I went to a football game. How many ever been to a football game before? How many know what football is? All right, hallelujah. So I went to this football game, and I have a picture of it on the screen right now. There it is. And while I was there, there are 104,000 people at University of Tennessee football game, they happen to win that particular morning, or afternoon. And while I was there, I took this picture. And I took the picture because I was like, I wasn't thinking about this service today. But in preparation, the Lord kind of brought it to my memory. And I'm not saying this is bad. I'm not saying it's good. But I'm just saying it was kind of a unique, awkward moment. But if you notice, it says University of Tennessee. And then over here, there's a gentleman standing with a sign. And the sign says, after death is judgment, repent, turn from your sins. Jesus said, why call ye me, Lord? King James, I guess do not do not the things which I say there's another scripture of reference. And in his hands, he has a big megaphone next to his hands, and he's talking into it. And I mean, the place is jammed. It's like sardines. And here's this guy, and uniquely, where he's standing. People are trying to get away from him. People are trying to move out away from him. And so I, I don't share it in a negative sense. But I share it in a moment of, you know, here's, here's someone trying to make a difference unto the Lord. But I kind of wondered, you know, what were people thinking during that time? I know, for me, it's kind of like, I'm good. I'm trying to join. I didn't tell him that. But as you know, as I was this way, I kept on walking this way. And, you know, just kind of it was kind of unique, unique moment and unique time. And I thought, in conjunction conjunction with our message today. It's amazing how often we have the opportunity to share the Lord. And some may choose to share it that way. And, and some may choose to share different ways. So over the over the past 30 something years in ministry, I want to share a couple stories with you have these incredible moments that I've had. And some of them have been when every say when. And some of them have been fail, say fail. I've had I've had fail moments. And when moments in sharing the Lord. And you say, Well, you're a pastor, how can you how can that happen? You know, how can you have a win moment and a fail moment, I've had plenty of them. It's crazy. I like to play golf, if you haven't heard about that, or I tried to play golf, there's some in the church that play much better than I do. But for some reason, I like to go out and hit and, and as long as I have one or two good shots, it makes me want to go back. I think maybe I can make five better shots next time. And it's kind of a unique, sad thing. But that's kind of what it is. But usually, if I don't go with a four if you when you play golf, you play by yourself, but you'd normally if you go, you play with a foursome. And so sometimes when we go, I try to organize the foursome so I know exactly who we're playing with. Sometimes I get I try to get people that I can beat and feel better about myself at the end of the day. Not really, but, but sometimes I don't have a foursome. But I'll have a twosome. And that means that if the, if the course is pretty busy, they'll put two people with us that we don't know. I don't know. And so I tried to stay away from that for a few reasons. And I'll tell you why. And you'll see why in just a second. So a couple years ago, I was golfing right over here at the bridges golf course use befores crossings. And it was a to some meet another gentleman from the church. And so we went out golfing and and sometimes that happens quick. You know, you got the chatty, chatty people and the other other twosome, you know, and they're just, they want to know what you do. You know, they, it's kind of like, it's, this might be so inappropriate. It's kind of like two dogs meeting one another, you know, and try. And, you know, and just trying to see, you know, who's the more domineering dog, you know, in the moment, and, and so here in this moment, there wasn't a whole lot of conversation, you know, it's kind of like, we hit first and then they hit and they weren't the greatest golfers. And I'm not the greatest golfers but I was better than them on that day. Hallelujah. And so it was great. So we went about 910 holes and round of golf is 18 holes. And so about the, about the 10th 11th hole, they started to warm up, I don't know, I don't know, if they were gaining on feeling better about their game or you know, all the all the feelings of apprehension were kind of kind of dropped. And so, sometimes, earlier, like I said, sometimes it's later but about the 10th 11th hole, it comes out and they ask the question to me. So what do you do? What do you do? And I know that some of you are just like, well just tell them you pastor. Well, that's very easy for you to say. But once I say that, I'm Pastor everything changes. And you can say well, I changed for a good reason. You know, they stopped cursing, they stopped dropping the F bomb, they start with, you know, stop doing those things. And they will, you know, order alcohol sometimes and all that and, and they'll always say something, oh, I need to, then they'll apologize if they happen to say something after that. What anyway, we got to talk and this one particular guy we're golfing with, he happened to be in recovery in remission from like, I think it was leukemia treatment at the time. And, and so I'm there just trying to figure out, you know, so how do I, how do I slide this in here? You know, he asked me, you know, busy asked me what my faith was, you know, because I told my pastor, I told my pastor at church around the corner, I invited him to come and all that kind of stuff. But um, we started talking about healing. And we started talking about what he had just gone through and, and his faith and where he stood and where he didn't stand. And what church maybe he attended even know that just because you go to church doesn't mean you're you do You do realize that right? Are you guys with me this morning, because I'm. And so we get talking back and forth. And every now and then I jumped back into the conversation. He was actually, he had been off work for maybe three months, and he just trying to get his stamina back up, and he's out playing is probably 30 something years old. And I think he was going through maybe a marital challenge and all this kind of stuff. And I felt the Lord like shared different things for me that just to kind of like the Lord's like, revealing stuff to me about this guy. And so I just kind of throw it in there, not knowing that maybe he thought he told me this, or whatever it was, it was a very unique moment, just to just be honest with him. And, and I never pressed situation, even though I felt like I felt like you know, the Lord, kind of put it on me to kind of just just kind of throw it out there. Hey, where are you with the Lord? And I? I was I was like, am I have a good conversation here? I don't want to you know, has anybody experienced that before this? This is me. And so in this moment, he actually asked me the question, he's like, we know. I, and this is part of our message today. I usually get the hard questions. And he asked me, he's like, do you think this this disease I have is from the Lord? You know, then he asked me, Do you think God can totally heal me as well? And I always get the hard questions. You know, I was like, oh, and I'm, I'm trying to think of myself, you know, the 14 Spiritual steps of serving the Lord, you know, and he's asking me just plain vanilla. Where is God in his moment, and so we finally finished finished the 18th hole, we took our hats off, shook hands. And we start going back to our go back to our cars. I don't say much more than Hey, it's a pleasure playing playing with you today. And, and, and all that, and I get to I get in my car, and like my heart's pounding in my chest like, failure, failure, you know, I didn't follow through with what God had put on my heart to do. And I'm just like, Oh, my goodness. And I'm trying to get out of there, you know, and I see him in the parking lot. And but he's not like, it's not like right there. He's like, on the other side of the parking lot, and my cars here, and I'm thinking, Oh, God, you know, if this is really what do you want me to do, you know, would have been so much easier to work this anybody with me here? It'll mean so much easier, so much more convenient. And I ended up shutting my car, put my clothes in there changing my shoes, and I walked across the parking lot. I walked slow to think and maybe he leave before I get there. Like, all the way there. And I called him by name. I said, Listen, I said, the Lord really put this on my heart. And I and I actually said this, I was like, you know, I'm not expecting you to come to church, I'm expecting you, whatever. It'd be nice. But you know, the invites always there. But the Lord just reminded me that there's power in prayer, and I needed to pray with you before you left. And he welcomed that moment. I was like, you know, everything I was kind of anxious about was kind of like, ah, you know, here we go. And I prayed with him in the parking lot. And he was slain in the Spirit began to speak in other tongues, and it was just amazing. No, I'm kidding. Did that actually didn't happen? But wouldn't be great. If it did happen for you. That would have been the script that I wrote, that didn't happen quite like that. But I remember he had tears in his eyes, he turned to me said thank you. And he drove off. I've never seen them again in my life. Holy moments, divine moments, for the next few minutes this morning. And time is fleeting as we speak. But for the next few moments, I want to speak to you about your ministry and my ministry. Because there are going to be moments of wins. There are going to be moments of seemingly that we failed. And we didn't follow through. Exactly See, oftentimes when people ask you what you do or or you're in the situation you may not have the the title per se of you know, well I'm born again Spirit filled believer, you know baptize, water, baptize Holy Ghost filled, you know all that. But you may be an architect, you may be a school teacher, you may be a stay at home mom, you may be we're gonna mortgage company you may, whatever you may do but at the end of the day is do you know that God has equipped you for holy moments? Can I get an amen in the house. But oftentimes, just like I did, there's something called hesitation. We hesitate. I've hesitated. Now I hope that you know that I've gotten better at it. I did walk away from the guy with the big sign that the other day at the UT game. Because it goes through my mind. In my mind, I'm like, I don't want to be pushy. I don't want to be I don't want them to feel weird. I don't want to put them on the spot. I don't want to be just another annoying, maybe another annoying preacher in their life. And so I've hesitated. Just to make one more comment about sometimes I get the hard questions. We're all gonna get hard questions. But I can assure you of this, that this if the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you is according to Scripture, he will quicken your mortal body. Now, my interpretation of that is he's going to quicken not only your mortal body, he's going to quicken your mind, you're going to have the words to say. And even if your mind goes blank, he can't even think of this or that. The other thing, I believe that there is a way that through the power of the Holy Spirit's words may even come out of your mouth that you don't even understand. And God will give hope to the hopeless and the hurting. It may look like an entirely normal conversation. And to her may look like you're running across the parking lot, to pray for someone to encourage someone. But in all cases, none of it is really normal. But it's extraordinary. How God will use the simple and the normal. Like you and I when we're prompted. Or two areas I want to speak to this morning as we look at our series by the way I heard the the speaker last week here in the church just hit it out of the park was it was that true? My wife Kim, she she's a I'll tell you what, she's a great communicator, great speaker, and we're so grateful that she spoke last week. But I've taken notes this morning, there's a two areas I want to talk about. Number one is this. You never know how God might use one moment of boldness to change someone's life. You never know how God might use one moment of boldness to change someone's life. Growing up, my dad pastored a church in a very, very rural town in Eastern Connecticut. And we we set up chairs every Sunday at a town hall building. We set up nursery area children's church area, we set up all these all these different places. And so every now and again, we'd have family come up from New Jersey. So we were in Connecticut, they were in New Jersey, they come up they we'd spend time together. And I had this one relative, this one cousin, and I'll even say his name out loud. His name is David Baldwin. David Baldwin, David Baldwin. Remember, we watched a movie Jesus revolution. Basically, he's he was a hippie. He got saved and God brought brought him up and God has used him mightily in ministry. And every time I would run across this, he's a minister today. You know, we talked about baseball, we talked, I played sports, I played soccer, all all these different pieces. But every time I encountered this guy, he would say to me, Nicky, how's your walk with the Lord? I wouldn't see him for six, seven months, you know, we're small talk, and then kind of bringing in for a landing. MJ. How's your walk with the Lord? Now grant, I'm, you know, adolescent. I'm a teenager, junior higher and the high school, you know, and immediately I began to think about all the wins, and all the failures. But just those moments, changed my life that someone would have asked me in fact, if I knew I was going to see him again I want to make sure that I can answer that question properly. You know what I'm serving the Lord do the best I can, in all these all these different areas. It's amazing when a question is asked, it's amazing when there's accountability that's given. I remember my, my father shared that one of my uncle's. When he first got saved. He understood the return of the Lord understood what you know, you had to live a life under the Lord. And through a piece of paper. He wrote on a piece of paper and slipped into my uncle George, in a church service on a Sunday night. If the Lord came tonight, would you be ready? That's kind of old school, I guess. Right? But it's today. And do you know that he slipped it over to him? And do you know that my uncle George has served the Lord ever since he's a man of God, he was here a year ago for my mom's Celebration of Life service. But it takes moments of boldness and takes moment moments that were used, and that we don't shy away. You never know how God might use one moment of boldness to change someone's life. You never know how God might use one moment, one word of faith, one moment of boldness to change the trajectory of how someone will live, and how someone will serve the Lord. And if your heart is ready, and your eyes are open, you'll have a prompting. I guarantee that everyone that's in this room, everyone watching online today, you will have a prompting. In fact, I'm excited to tell you this, that because you're here today. And because you're watching today, this week will be an extraordinary week for you. If you choose to accept what has been put before you, there will be opportunity beyond opportunity to share the love of God as we go through. And we help to create through God, these holy moments. In Luke chapter two is our text today. Luke chapter two, verse eight. That night, there were shepherds staying in the field nearby garden, their flocks of sheep, suddenly, an angel the Lord appeared to them. And the radiance of the Lord's glory surrounded them, they were terrified, but the angel reassured them. And this is when this is an angel making a prophetic declaration. Don't be afraid. He said, I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. And I thought just reading the Scripture and just so this happened years ago, couple 1000 years ago, but it was for us today. Don't be afraid. Turn the person next to you and tell them don't be afraid. Would you do that right now? Don't be afraid I bring you good news that will bring that will bring great joy. For a moment like today, in 2023. On this Sunday morning, the Savior. Yes, the Messiah, the Lord has been born today in Bethlehem, in the city of David dobrik. Good news, a great joy today in Bethlehem, a Savior has been born to you. And here's one of the unique moments is one of the creative moments is that we haven't heard the Lord's voice prophetically even written for almost 400 years until this moments until the birth of a king. And so God sent His Son, Jesus. The last one we heard we heard of God's speaking was through the prophet Malik i when he said that God would turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children, the hearts of the children back to the Father. And then at that point, it's now silence. And when do we hear from him again? Right now. I'm bringing you a promise. I'm bringing you great joy. I'm bringing you hope beyond all measure. to you one of the things that we did last week in the service I was at Lowe's, something called testimonies. Have you heard of that before? Like in the middle of the service? Anybody hear her testimony? I'm not asking but they asked as a question. Anybody here got a testimony and they would bring them up, and they would stand and they will begin to share about the goodness of the Lord. You don't talk about calling and farewell. They begin they begin talk about the goodness in the favor of God on their lives how this happened. But then this turnaround it happened because of the goodness of the Lord. But there are Malikai slugging about how God was going to pour out his Spirit father's back to the heart of children in the hearts of the children back to the Father. And then there's silence and now God is speaking again. Profoundly interesting to me, that it's this angel on behalf of God did announce the birth of the Savior to the king to the elite didn't announce it through the social media didn't put pictures on telephone posts, but it was through shepherds? And is where we're going this morning. Shepherds. Why in the world? Was it shepherds? He could have done it the rabbi's. All the scholars, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He could have done it through the priest, he could have done it through all of this hierarchy. I mean, we're announcing a king, we're announcing the Savior of the world, we're announcing what has been prophesied 700 years earlier. 700 years earlier, there was prophetic words to this. And who did God choose? But shepherds. There's some scholars who believe that the shepherds maybe came from two different tribes or two different families. And some saw scholars believe that these weren't ordinary shepherds, the particular ones that were spoken to, and I've got a theory on that, too, I kind of I kind of lean towards that as well. I believe that these these were almost, maybe the terminology is they were Shepherd priests. And so let me unfold this for you just for a moment. I want you to get this. And we've talked about this before, but it's fresh and new this morning. Shepherd priests, they were in the field preparing sheep for the Passover. They were they were directed to have the sheep without blemish ready for the sacrificial sacrifices for the altar. And they had to be have certain and perfect genes and certain perfect, no app abnormalities in their life. They had to be basically perfect. And so in this, we realized that Galatians foretells assists, but when that set time had fully come, God sent His Son born of a woman born under the ball to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption and sonship. So it became a time that now the angel comes and goes to the kings in the priests. No, he goes to the shepherd. In Micah chapter eight verses six has this in that day, says the Lord, I will assemble the lane, I will gather the outcast and those who might have afflicted I will make the lame or remnant in the outcasts, a strong nation, so the Lord will reign over them in mount Zion from now on, even forever, verse eight, and you owe tower of the flock. You owe Tao a flock, referring to this terminology called McDowell, editor, editor, MIG Tao, editor, which means the tower of the flock, the stronghold of the daughter of Zion, to you shall it come, meaning that they were the oversight of the sheep, that they were the tower of the flock of flock of what sheep here in this moment. And there was actually a place outside of Bethlehem, located not far from the place where Jesus was ultimately born. The exact location is unknown, through several credible sites had been suggested. But when it comes over to it, this place, this power of the flock was not an ordinary watchtower. It was a place that produced the Passover lambs. It was a place that produced Mary had a little one, lamb. And so look at the synergy synergy. Look at the the moment of connectivity. If these were Shepherd priests, they were preparing the lamb. Now they're going to share about the lamb that was promised years earlier. Anybody excited besides me here in this in this house right now. There was an area where the sheep were an area where, where David would have watched the sheep even from earlier times in earlier moments. And Luke two says Today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you he is the Messiah, the Lord. Now they were Shepherd priests, thinking, you know, here's an angel speaking. Here is a messiah here in this town, something is born. We know about birth. We know about moments, but there was a lamb that was promised that would take away the sins of the world. You will find a baby wrapped in clothes and lying in a manger in a feeding area. Most shepherds in those times were despised to see you know even even makes it more creative of a story here. They were the worst of the worst. No, this noted that they were not allowed to testify in court. If you ever watch a good a good documentary or a good show about you know, somebody testifying in court, you know, sometimes It comes down to the witness, a shepherd. If they saw something happen, they could not testify in court based on untrustworthiness and lack of credibility. Secondly, they could really, they really sold property. They couldn't own property. Not that maybe they couldn't afford it, but they weren't allowed. They weren't allowed to they were part of the outcasts of the system. They were ceremonially unclean. They couldn't if you invited them, if you had invited them to the temple that you couldn't do it at that moment. They weren't they weren't clean enough to come in, in those moments. They were social outcasts. If you basically, it would. It would kind of be like this, it would kind of be like, if you saw a shepherd coming. And you were they were your children, you know, you would have told your children don't look at them. Let's go. Let's go over here. Let's walk. Let's walk over here. Because they were social outcasts. unpolished, unremarkable, uneducated, shepherds. But I want you to get this look to They hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph, with no hesitation, that's my little additive there. With no hesitation, they hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph, and there was the baby lying in the manger. After seeing the baby, the shepherds told everyone that what had happened and what the angel had said to them, Luke chapter 17, verse 18, All who heard the shepherd stories were astonished. Without hesitation, they didn't sit around trying to figure out well, how can we make this trip? You know, what do I have enough air miles for this? You know, what somebody lent me some air miles here, and we I can, I can work this out here, I need to take this trip, the Lord's kind of pushing me to go here, you know, I don't have to do it in six months, you know, if I did it by this time, next year, you know, took you know, took over the team, you know, but without hesitation, the shepherds, the lowly, those who didn't have a vote, those who couldn't testify, those who couldn't go to church, those that were outcasts, those who couldn't own property, the Lord chose to expose the promise through an angel. And then there would be spiritual urgency, anticipation. How do we disseminate the voice of the Lord? How do we share the goodness of God? We just recently finished a series a two week series if you get a chance to go back and watch it about the Lord's return, the rapture of the church, the coming back to the Lord. I don't know about you, but I'd go home after Sunday morning after, you know, studying for it all week, but then going home after the service on Sunday and thinking to myself, Oh, my goodness, you know, what do we need to do here? What would I do differently right now? If I told you he was returning at the end of next week, what would you do this week? What moment would you have with the king for the king? Who do we share with who we love on who we get forgiveness to who we let off the hook? Who do we share the love of God the salvation of the Lord? Do you know that we're in the we're in the time now? This is the most precious time of the year these next two weeks to share your faith, invite people to church, the bring somebody to do a Christmas program by the way we got we got kids, we got some kids thinking here next week. It's gonna be a production in a half. Come early. No pressure for Brittany in the back. It's gonna be amazing. The following week, we've got the Katyn as they're gonna be here. Unbelievable. But when it comes down to it, let us just keep showing up by ourselves. When does it change in our spirits? I want you to get this don't take this as a textbook. You could take it however you want. No apologies here. When will we get it in our spirits of how important and special and purposeful it is that we would share the love of God without any hesitation. I heard this and I was gonna share it on my table the other night on Wednesday night and I hesitated. But I in preparation of this message I have just heard some others people speaking about the topic of hesitation and one guy he used Is this terminology and he says he's as a minister of the gospel. He said To hell with hesitation. Then he went to hell you Thank you. Then he went on to say he said this is and for those of you that are so concerned that I use the word hell isn't isn't an amazing, you'd be more concerned about me using the word of hell than you would about about sharing the love of God with somebody to keep them from going to. But I didn't say it. I've told you what somebody else said, all right. But Lord, help us that we would not hesitate one second more. It's 2023, the Lord will return. God reached down so that we can be lifted up. God took our sin so we could take our His righteousness and God was born into poverty. So that we could experience spiritual riches. Don't miss the opportunity for courage that it took to be a despise people group. overlooked, not deemed important, clean enough, in a temple. Don't overlook the courage it took this morning for those shepherds to boldly share what they heard of an angel. Because they had every reason to hesitate. They had every moment to hesitate and think to themselves, well, what did we eat tonight that we would have seen this angel? Do we really see that? Hey, did you see that? No. Did you hear what they said? And paint it off and push it off to someone else? We're all tempted to do it. Quite honestly, we all do at some point or another. We don't we don't want to be pushy. We don't want to change the scene. But I pose this question and, and Jonathan income, the keys. I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to land this. But I pose this question today. When we are current. Let me explain what I mean by this. When we are current when you are current. Realizing the love of God in our lives, realizing the forgiving power of the blood of Jesus Christ in our lives, realizing the power of God in our lives, when we currently realize his goodness and mercy that has chased us down and has changed our lives. When we are current. We're the relevancy of his of his mercy, the relevancy of the fact that we have eternity, the relevancy of the freedom that we can live in today. It changes how we're not to be hesitant. How we're to share, how we're to love, how to where to encouraged, because no one is too far from God to reach. No one is too low for God's love. And no sin is too great for God's grace. The shepherds told everyone they could everyone, the Messiah, the one you've been praying for. He's here. All who heard the shepherd story. They were astonished. Now, uniquely, when we share the story, we don't know how it's going to hell will be response on the other side, we just don't know. But God helped us that we would be willing to share to encourage, you never know how God might use one moment of boldness to change someone's life. From a holy moments here, and secondly, a conclusion. God often chooses the unlikely to do the extraordinary. God often chooses the unlikely to do the extraordinary in all our lives, whether you realize it or not, you probably go back and share stories with one another, how you got to where you got today. The other day I sat down with MJ, we were here we before small group started, I heard an amazing story of God's faithfulness and goodness on this woman of God's life. Just amazing. And all through that. If I use this terminology, someone somehow some way, put a hand on your shoulder to help push you forward. To encourage you in that in in all of our lives. I can tell you about men and women, men of God, women of God, churches, people who've come alongside Me and put their hand on my shoulder visibly and said, You know what? I can help you with this. I'm going to set you up for this church today we're in a society that says everything's for you. Everything's for me. It's all about me. Me, me. Me Mee Mee Mee as opposed to There you are. You know we share with our small or our small groups and and our team our huddled in the morning before we get going a couple weeks I shared, you know, when I show up in a room, when any of us show up in a room, it shouldn't be this. Here I am. Here I am. Here I am. As opposed to There you are. There you are. CZ. There you are love that. There you are. There you are. Watch the trajectory change when we swap things. And then that's the last key point we share with our with our teams. You know what? Oftentimes we have the ability of our human because our human nature. If Jeff you shared a story with me, I'm going to try to share one to one up, you know, I'm not going to do you know, I'm going to do a kind of but you did something I'm going to share something that kind of kind of comes alongside of what you've done. And maybe it's a little well, you know, I shot a birdie here he only shot par, you know, type of deal as opposed to somebody shares a story for the Target, Walmart, Walgreens, Publix, Kroger's. someone shares a story and you're like, as opposed to you trying to one up. You say this. Tell me more. How about you tell me more? Tell me a little bit more. What's going on? Church. Holy moments. Again, over the weeks we've we've heard from, from Joseph, to marry, to now shepherds. These holy moments that God has made us for today. You could have been born at any other time of life. You could have been born in the 1700s You could have been born away back. You could have had sandals on and walk with Jesus. But he chose for you. As we dedicated Veera today. He chose for you a time and appointment and a place and a moment just like today to share the love of God make me bold make me bold Lord. Help me to be bold, or Lord all of you in my life. Don't make caught up with anxiety, fear of man. Are they going to think? We kind of go through it. I won't know what to say. If you're current today, your current and your walk. Current means your new relationship. That's what it means to be current. I'll talk about Sunday relationship. I'm talking about Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. That you fear the Lord, that you seek out his direction. I depend upon miracles in my life. Every day. I pray I look to him. He leads the Lord we come against today hesitation. There it will be met with boldness that he would use us mightily. Make me bold Lord, one moment of boldness. The loss might be found. The blind might be healed. The Deaf might hear the dead might come to life. And God might break the chains of addiction and free people from depression and restore broken relationships and answer prayer and change countless lives because you have no idea what God might do. In one moment of boldness. Two weeks ago you heard about having a moment of obedience. And today it's a moment of boldness. Lord, help me. Lord help us. We just stayed with me this morning. The message is simple today, the Savior of the world. We're going to celebrate his birth just a couple of weeks. His name is Jesus. I want to take a moment, very plain vanilla very simply. But you're here today, just where you're at. You're here today and before the Lord Elian, you'll need to raise a hand, God sees your heart. But you're here this morning and you've hesitated at one way or the other. To get up on that moment, when encourages take them home before the Lord and said, Lord, forgive me. Give me another chance. Give me another moment that I'd be tuned in that I would hear that I'd be your hands and be your feet. More people, more people will change their lives in the next two weeks. And it's hard for you to believe that, you know, it's almost unfathomable that people have not heard a clear presentation of the word. People have not heard about our relationship with Jesus. He thinks, you know, with with everything around Christmas, you know, Jesus is the reason for the season. But there are people who just need a hand on their shoulder to be used with the Lord, like shepherds who don't hesitate. But completely go all in. That's my challenge from now to the end of the year for this church for my life. When we're current, we want to get the church as quick as we can because we know that God's gonna move through worship. Somebody say out your Amen. Come on. Now this 15 minute late stuff every Sunday, let's get here. When we're current, we don't think twice about God can heal here. When we're current, more we need to be we don't think we don't hesitate when the Lord prompts us in the hallway, when we're prompts us, to bless somebody, not honk the horn at them, but bless them when you're driving. To encourage somebody tell me more. Tell me more. Tell me more. There you are. There you are. God that I would be your hands and be your feet. The Word of God today is Jesus in the beginning was the Word. And the Word was God Word was with God. He been Jesus was in the beginning. John chapter one. So what does that translate? What you've heard today is from the Word of God, it's alive. It's well let it change us today. That we say no hesitation. We don't hesitate anymore. But we allow God to use us. Would you do something with me this morning? We're going to close in prayer. But just symbolically. These are our hands. Would you just put them before you before you like to pray over your hands this morning.