Maturing Like a Child

Opening Prayer

… who loves your heart, who wants to be a son, who wants to be a conduit of your love reaching up to you and reaching out to others. And Father, you have given him a word for this week and we just bless this word. We bless him to deliver it with power, with anointing, Father God. We bless that it would be your words flowing through him and to us. Father, let our hearts be open to receive. Let our spirits be open to receive all it is that you have for us today in Jesus name. Amen.

A Pure Picture of the Father

Amen. As a bit of a preamble, I’ve shared in the past that this summer I went to the Father Heart School that’s put on through Father Heart Ministries. It’s a week-long thing of just learning about the Father Heart, and it’s amazing. It’s really a great time. And in that process I was struck by this idea that, you know, this Father Heart message that we’ve been privileged with holding and carrying and being ambassadors of. This message is amazing. It’s transformative. The body of Christ needs this message. And at the same time, it is the very most basic foundational level of Christianity that we are reconciled to the Father through the price that Jesus paid on the cross. That is, we are reconciled to the

Why Adam and Eve Hid

Father. In Genesis, when there’s the fall and Adam and Eve sin and then they go and hide from the Father, something struck me. Why? Why did they go and hide? And we can look at, oh, they felt shame or they felt guilt or they felt things. Okay, well, you know, sure, and they’d never felt those things before. But they had never seen a Father that was angry. They had never experienced that. They had never seen anything that was angry or judgmental. They had no grid for a God that could be anything but loving and kind and benevolent.

They had no grid for that. So why did they hide? Yes, they felt guilt and yes, they felt shame, but they also lost the picture of what God’s nature was really like. And so I believe it’s a foundational job of people in Christianity, in becoming a Christian and maturing in Christ, to regain a pure undefiled picture of what Father is really like. And what he’s really like is that benevolent, kind God that wants to love us and not judge us or shove us

A Conspiracy to Change Church Culture

away. I have this idea in my head that the church shouldn’t actually invite people in with a bad picture of God as a judgmental person, learn a whole bunch of new rules about the way that we should behave in church and be held up against this list. I heard about a pastor recently of a fairly large church who was in a home meeting and completely surprised somebody in the home meeting accepted Christ. And then the pastor of the church had no idea what to tell them next. He told them to go to our website and sign up for the class.

I don’t even know what to say next. And I believe that God is going to move the church into a place, and I believe he’s invited us as a church into being a part of this conspiracy to change the culture of church as a whole, so that people will come in with the right understanding of the Father. They will see God as he is when they experience him through salvation and then we as a body will help that person mature in Christ in a way that is healthy that reinforces the way that the Father is supposed to look the way that he actually is without any of that tainted brush that was painted in the garden over him.

I’m excited about that. I had a look as I was preparing all of this online and you know I’m pretty technical. I know how to do really good searches for things across the web. I went looking for what resources are available for discipleship training. And there’s some good information but it’s not filled with love. It’s not filled with an understanding of the Father first. It’s filled with, like, read your Bible, go to church, pray. There’s a list of things: don’t sin. It doesn’t really explain what sin is necessarily but just don’t do it.

And anybody who slips is going to get called out. It’s not a great scenario. We end up coming to church feeling like we’re not measuring up and everybody else looks good so we try and look good and in the end we’ve created this performative culture of people that are trying to follow Christ, but they’re inside, they’re still broken and weak and feeling shame and feeling guilt and they’ve still got the wrong picture of Father. So, somehow that needs to change. I went looking online to see if there is anybody that teaches that when you come in to Christ, when you come into the body of Christ, when you become a brother and sister in Christ, is there anyone that actually teaches that you should first connect with the Father and that he should change your heart?

And the only thing that came up, and I kid you not, and I looked in a bunch of different ways, it came up with the Partners in Harvest FIRE values. They have better SEO. So, Harvest Alliance needs to work on their SEO because they also have the same FIRE values. They got them from the same place. SEO, that’s search engine optimization. It’s so that you show up first on Google. The FIRE values that we just taught on: the only groups of churches that have them are Partners in Harvest, which is out of Toronto, and then Harvest Alliance, which we were a part of, out of South Carolina.

They embrace these FIRE values, and that is the only option in the entire world that I could find. That’s cool, but that’s wrong. How do you change a church culture that is this vast and this big? And this is where I go to prepare something like this and I’m like, God, am I really supposed to share on this the way that you’re giving me to share on this right now? And then Stewart stands up today in the prophetic and makes my second point really clearly. And so it’s like, okay. That’s why I was laughing while he was saying that because it’s like, okay, God, I get it.

I’m sharing what you want me to share. So I’m talking today about how we are supposed to mature. So if you understand the concept, I mean, it’s pretty easy. We have people coming in to Christianity. They know nothing. They’re brand new babies. They should be accepted as completely restored to the Father immediately. And then we need to mature. And then we need to help those people become mature Christians. And at the same time, we kind of need to be able to be introspective about ourselves and we need to continue to mature as Christians.

Everybody does, right? And it really shouldn’t be that complicated, but it actually is a really big social and structural change from what we have been exposed to in the

Maturing Like a Child

past. So I’m inviting you to listen to this as I go through what really should be kind of foundational scriptures and knowledge, but listen to it from the perspective of how do we make this the culture of our church? How do we make this the culture of us getting together as brothers and sisters in Christ and growing together in Christ and letting his love fill us and pour out into each other and to the world? How do we do that? So maturing like a child, this is for all Christians and it’s the culture that we’re aiming for. So let’s

Milk and Solid Food

start. Hebrews 5:12: “Have you been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others? Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong.” We are expected as Christians to mature based on what we partake in, what we eat.

Everybody understand that? Agree? So children don’t improve overnight. Has anybody here ever had a baby come home and you’re like this child is perfect? Yep. When you hold the baby in the hospital, you say this baby is perfect. Right? Yet is that child ready to move out and establish their own life? No. They’re going to have to do some things. They’re going to have to grow. With all of my children, at some point I look at them and I go, they’re 15. They turn 16 next year. There is no hope that I’m going to let them get their license.

No chance. Every single one of my kids was ready to take their license at 16 because they mature. They gain new knowledge. They gain new responsibility. They begin practicing it in their life. And yet those 16 year olds could not for the life of them handle a budget just to be able to put gas in the car. But eventually that comes. As Christians, we don’t mature overnight either. We don’t come in all of a sudden having a complete understanding of everything that we’re supposed to do so that we can all behave nicely and look really good for the church postcard.

We come in. We’re broken. God starts working on our heart and sometimes he works on the stuff that’s on the inside first, before he starts working on the stuff that’s on the outside, but we mature as

What Solid Food Looks Like

children. So what is this solid food? I think it’s Paul that wrote Hebrews, but nobody knows. What is this solid food that we’re supposed to be eating? Not an exhaustive list. We could actually do like a whole series on spiritual disciplines that will help you grow. And this is not an exhaustive list. But the thing that I want to make clear is that this list is not something that you look at to judge yourself or judge the person next to you to see whether or not they’re measuring up. We’ve done tons of that.

Your identity. Identity is something that’s on that list. It’s learning who you are and living from that identity, not pretending to be good or hiding behind a fake identity. Childlikeness. The kingdom of heaven is for the childlike, right? Coming to the father as a child, being excited about that relationship with your father, having that attitude that says my dad can beat your dad, you know, being childlike. Worship, learning to recognize the good thing that God’s doing in your life, learning to express that in different avenues and different ways throughout your life, giving worship through the way that we give our finances, worshiping God in the Spirit.

We can learn and grow. There’s so many ways that we can worship and we can get better at worshiping. Knowledge. Read the Bible, read commentary about the Bible, talk to people, listen to teachers, and all of a sudden your knowledge starts to grow and you start to learn what practical things help in the Christian life and you become more mature through that. Bearing fruit. The Bible says that when you are mature you will bear fruit and he will prune the vines that don’t bear fruit and he will prune the ones that do so they bear more fruit.

So he’s constantly working on us to bring fruit. And I’m going to give you a little bit of a spoiler alert. The fruit is father’s love flowing out from you. So new babies are perfect, children grow up under an identity, learning skills and developing behavior. So how do we mature? How do we do those things? If we’re not going to give people a new list to measure up to, and say that you have to do all of these things or you’re not mature, how do we do

First, Receive the Father’s Love

it? The number one thing is we need to receive the Father’s love. Hebrews 12:6 says, “The Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as a child.” That’s a troublesome verse for my point because the punishing word is something that we interpret through our own experiences. Let me give you a frame of reference that might help. I have had a number of jobs in my life and I’ve had a number of bosses. I’ve had bosses that were not great and those bosses would bring people in and they would berate them and scold them for messing up or for doing something wrong.

They were punishing them and correcting them in a way that tore that person down. That’s not good. Nobody looks at that and says, oh, that’s a good boss. God’s a good father. Very good. I think I’m a pretty good boss myself. I’ve had a couple of companies where I’ve had employees. I have a rule that I go by because I learned it from bosses that were good. I always honor people publicly and I always correct them privately in kindness, in love. Hey, you know what? This is the target we were aiming for.

This is what ended up happening. How do you feel about that? Is there something that could have changed that would have helped that outcome to be more like this? You know, okay, I’m going to note this in your file. Let’s see if we can do that for a while. That’s it. That’s the punishment. That’s the correction. Father is along those lines. When you look into what the Greek words are and all that other sort of stuff, the Father disciplines, he corrects, he guides the people that he loves in good ways.

It continues in Hebrews 12:9: “Since we respected our earthly fathers who disciplined us, shouldn’t we submit even more to the discipline of the Father of our spirits and live forever? For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years doing the best they knew how. But God’s discipline is always good for us so that we might share in his holiness. No discipline is enjoyable while it’s happening. It can be painful, but afterwards there is there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.” There are a couple of things here that are really important to

God Claims the Responsibility

understand. God claims the responsibility for helping you mature. It’s not my job to help Patti mature. Definitely not. It does not work well for me. It’s not my job to help anybody mature in Christ. It’s my job to receive God’s love and pour out love for them. Right? God claims the responsibility. He might use people around us and circumstances around us, but he claims the responsibility. So that means that if you’re living in a way that doesn’t look right, but you’re heading towards God and you’re living for God, I can still walk with you knowing that God has claimed the responsibility of working in your life.

God has claimed the responsibility. His discipline is always good. Sometimes it’s a quiet prompting to stop, apologize, forgive, take a hard step. It’s that moment when you’re challenged and instead of turning away and hardening your heart, you turn towards him. This is where he impacts your life, where he pours his love in and you open up a little bit and let him pour into those crevices in our heart that were still hurting, still damaged, still having a hard time. So all of the things that we can do, that list that I gave before, all of the things that would be in a discipleship training class, read your Bible, pray, attend church, give financially.

I love a discipline that I learned from Alf to start every morning asking, “Father, what do you want to say to your son today?” Journaling that. You go back and you look over it and you can see some amazing things that God’s walked me through. I’ve matured a lot through doing those things. But if that list becomes a standard that we judge people against, then it will prohibit growth rather than encourage it. Receiving God’s love and his correction and his pouring into our lives makes the second part possible. We have to receive Father’s love first. This is absolutely critical. We have to be good at receiving his love. We have to be good at trusting him with our lives and with our

Second, Love Each Other

hearts. We have to receive from him first, because the second step in maturing and in growing as a Christian is that we love each other. Now, James 5:16 says that we should confess our sins and pray with each other. Real growth needs that level of openness. I said Stewart made my second point really well. There’s somebody here that is struggling with something secret and could they share it? Would they be open to share it? But would we be okay hearing it? Like that’s literally one of my main points here. How do we confess and share and have that openness and have the ability to create those levels of those circles of accountability and trust unless we can actually receive and love each other?

But if you haven’t been filled with the love of God first, then we don’t have anything to carry that with, to love on that with, to pray into that with, to support and lift with. We have to have that supply before we can pour out. If you’re not filled with the love of God, the only thing that’s left for you to do to help another Christian is scold. To tell somebody else where they’re wrong and point them in the direction because you don’t have it in you to walk with them in the right direction.

So you’ve got to be filled first. In Matthew 28 Jesus gave a great commission. He said, “Go and make disciples, baptize them, and teach them to obey everything that I have commanded.” So we’re supposed to go. We’re supposed to make disciples, not necessarily doing what we’ve done for the last I don’t know how many hundred years of discipleship training, but we’re supposed to make disciples. The discipleship training is to teach them to do what Jesus told us to do. What did Jesus command? John 13:34 says, “So now I am giving you a new commandment.

Love each other just as I have loved you. You should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” So discipleship training is this: love the Father, love each other. I think loving the Father is easy enough to understand. We talk about that all the time. I think it’s still transformational. I think it’s still like amazing. The most exciting part of Christianity for me is to know that I have unfettered access to the Father. I can go to him boldly no matter how I’m looking or feeling or doing and he loves me.

Oh, he’s so excited to see me. He’s excited to see you too. Loving each other is the part that I think the church has been the weakest at and in my opinion it’s the biggest game changer. It’s the culture change that I really believe God is calling us to be a part of. The love each other part. Who are you supposed to love? Each

Pointing at the People You Love

other. Let’s do a little bit of an experiment. You’re going to have a little bit of room between you, but that’s okay. Let’s point at the people that you’re supposed to love, brothers and sisters in Christ. Let’s point. Okay. So going around the room, keep doing it. Keep pointing at the people that you’re supposed to love. Okay, so I want you to recognize you’re pointing at a lot of people, right? That’s a lot of work. How many people are pointing at you? A lot of people. We think about loving each other in terms of what it costs us.

But when we all come together and we all participate in the loving each other, then there’s a lot of people loving me. I am not only giving out, I should also be receiving the love that somebody else has, which is the love that God has poured into them. I think it’s transformational and amazing. For this to work, Hebrews 10:24. A lot of Hebrews. “Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together as some people do, but encourage one another.”

Meeting together is critical to being able to love each other. Not just because we need the numbers. Really that’s not about it at all. Coming in and warming a seat does not make the church bigger or better. What we need is we need people who can come together and love each other, be a part of the foundation of coming into a place that is safe and secure where people love who is next to them, they love them in the challenges that they’re having in life, where there is love and where you are

Circles of Trust and Accountability

loved. I know a guy who works with high risk offenders. And I was talking to him about this topic. And he was saying, oh, it’s circles of trust and accountability. So what this guy does is these people are all have been convicted and they’re out sort of in the community, but in order to not reoffend, they have to participate in circles of trust and accountability. And these trust and accountability circles are places where they come together and they talk about very openly what they’re challenged with, what their prompts are, what’s been stressing them in their life, and then they call each other out.

Hey, when that happens, you’re supposed to do this. Did you do that? You know, they call each other out. There’s trust and accountability, and they have tried all kinds of different ways, all kinds of different threats, all kinds of different systems. The only system that helps these high-risk offenders to not reoffend is to participate in circles of trust and accountability. As a church, we haven’t done a good job of that because we’ve created a culture of appearance. I remember growing up in a church where we knew who the Christians were because they wore the polyester suits with the tie and they sat at the front.

And the non-Christians or the people who were kind of on the fence, they wore jeans or they took smoke breaks. It was all outward appearance. Even though they would say from the pulpit, we don’t judge from the outward appearance, we judge from the heart, but we still did. And you’d have an altar call for somebody to come forward for some, you know, sin or something and like, you know, who’s going to go forward? I remember the first time I was at a conference where there was an altar call for people to deal with pornography.

And nobody went forward. And 90% of the guys are struggling right now. Who’s going to admit to that? Who’s going to go forward and say, yeah, I need trust and accountability on that level. Because they’re going to be judged, and maybe even asked to leave the church. That legitimately happens. And so as a society, as a church, we need to be a lot better at being okay with people coming in and creating a place for them to be

A Safe Place for Messiness

safe. Scolding and pointing fingers creates shame. I heard this quote from somebody: “All addiction is using something that you can get your hands on to cover for something that you can’t get your hands on.” So what you can’t get your hands on, say for instance, that might be like affirmation from your earthly father or you know restoring your marriage or something like that. That’s something you can’t get your hands on. So you use something that you can get your hands on that helps cover that emotion like alcohol or drugs or something else that you can escape into.

So you’re using something that you can get your hands on because there’s something that you can’t get your hands on. I’ve dug to the bottom of a handful of people that I know who are dealing with it. It might not be a universally true statement, but I think it’s pretty accurate. But I’ll tell you this. There are people that want to come to Christ that have issues in their life that are difficult and they’re dealing with addiction. And when they come in, our nature, the way that we are, what makes us comfortable, is to deal with what’s on the outside, to deal with the behaviors and try to fix them as quickly as possible because that makes things more comfortable society wise.

Meanwhile, what God needs to do is work on the thing in their heart that they can’t cover. So we need to allow God to do that and somehow be okay with the messiness of people who are still dealing with addiction while God’s working on the issue in their heart. And we don’t know. We don’t know what the story is. Like Stewart was saying this morning, you know, can we be okay with each other’s messiness? That’s actually a great question. There are people in here today that are not perfect. I know.

Shocking. There are people in here today that are struggling with something. Are we a safe place for them to share that? Would you be okay hearing about somebody else’s messiness? Would you be okay sharing yours with the people that you’re sitting next to? If you’re not, we need to get

The Story of Doug

there. So here’s a practical story that I kind of wrote out that explains all of this. There’s a guy named Doug. We’re calling him Doug because he dug himself a deep hole. His life is in shambles. He’s drinking. His marriage is coming apart. Kids are estranged. He lost his job. He’s got outstanding warrants. He’s deeply in debt. And somehow Doug receives Jesus. And through Jesus is brought into a family of faith and relationship with Father God as his true son. Amen. God loves Doug. God accepts Doug exactly as he is.

But Doug is new to his sonship identity. And he has some maturing to do. Some legitimate problems in life to address that don’t magically fix themselves. And some of them might improve just from Doug being blown away by the Father’s love. Doug’s going to receive the father’s love and there’s some healing that’s going to happen from that. It’s going to be transformational when he comes in contact with the father. Absolutely. But it doesn’t make everything go away magically. Right? So some of the maturing might come from a Christian brother coming alongside of him and making sure that he is not perpetrating violence while he’s drunk because we love his wife and we love him and we want to make sure that they move forward in the right direction.

Some of the maturing might mean that we encourage him and go with him to AA meetings. Some of it might mean that we go with him to court to deal with the outstanding warrants and he might even have to go and spend some time in jail, deal with that, clear it up. The maturing life in Christ is rarely clean, easy, or direct. There are thorns along with the roses, and Doug should never be alone in those journeys because the Father loves him and we love

Who Is Mature Enough?

him. So who is mature enough from all of us to do this? A lot of people think that they don’t have anything to offer. People sitting in this room think that they don’t have a lot to offer. But the reality is that this challenge that gets thrown out, follow me as I follow Christ, this is something where God is working in your heart and you’ve received something. And you may be a new Christian and you may have only figured out that God loves you because of who you are and not because of what you do.

That might be the only thing you’ve got figured out. You’re not in any position to give somebody relationship advice or parenting advice or anything else. You’ve got nothing else figured out, but you know that God loves you. You know what? You have something to give. There are people in the world that desperately need to know that and you have something to share. Father has poured that into you. That can be poured out. You can be a Christian for a really long time, make it all the way up through the ranks (we give each other ranks), all the way up to senior pastor.

You could be in ministry for ages, you could be leading people to the Lord. You could have spiritual gifts that you’re fluent in and topics that you can speak on and all kinds of things. You could even hold classes to help Christians become more mature and still struggle with jealousy or still struggle with unforgiveness or still struggle with something that is just kind of a little thing holding you back. And so everybody has a place that they need to mature, and everybody who has received anything. I’ll say this: You need to have received something from the Father and be okay with other people’s messiness without them feeling guilty.

Those are the things that are required. It’s again it’s a receiving and a loving. If you can receive and you can love, you can give into this maturing as a church. It’s 1 Corinthians 11:1: “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” So to answer the question of who is mature enough to do this, anyone that has received an impartation, a change or healing in their life by following Christ and at the same time has enough grace not to condemn others or make them feel

Keep Heading in the Right Direction

guilty. So new Christians in conclusion, new Christians need to know that they are fully reconciled to the Father. Through what Jesus did on the cross, you are accepted, his full children and heirs, exactly as you are today. You are that perfect baby. Look at this baby. He’s perfect. Okay, and all Christians need to know that they are expected to keep growing and maturing. Keep receiving what the Father is giving you, keep responding to what he speaks to you, keep becoming closer and closer to him. He has claimed the responsibility of helping you walk forward.

It’s not our job as Christian brothers and sisters to do that. Not that we condone sinful living, not that we condone things where people aren’t measuring up to what we believe in scripture. But we can accept where people are at. My father used to tell this analogy of a horse. The horse is running south and then he turns around and he’s running north, and a horse can run just as fast north as he can south. It just matters which direction he’s pacing. Right? So if somebody’s been heading away from Father for a long time and their life goes down into a deep hole like Doug, they need to turn around and start heading in the other direction and they may have some traveling to do before they get back across even the start line.

But as long as they’re headed in the right direction. So our job as brothers and sisters is to encourage each other to keep pointing in the right direction and let God do the changing. Okay? Don’t let people go off the rails. Don’t let them go and live in a completely different direction and ignore the Father. That’s no good. Bring them back into the family and keep pointing in the right direction. You never graduate from being his child. And from that place and under the Father’s love and within his family, we keep maturing.

Nobody ever graduates to the point where you don’t have anything. We have to be able to trust each other. I mean, as a church, we give people badges for the prophetic class. We give people badges for prayer ministry. You know, we tap people for specific things like that because those are places where I don’t want somebody saying the wrong stuff to you. I don’t want somebody saying something that’s not biblical to you. And there’s a lot of people having a lot of conversations with a lot of people and I want you to know, at least for what you’re receiving here, we’ve affirmed that these people are in a place of maturity and they’re in a place of trust where you can trust at least that part of what they’re giving you.

So prayer and prophecy are two of those things. But those aren’t badges because they’re super Christians. All of those people that have those badges, they all have some improving and maturing that they need to do in their life in some way. Right? Even

The Tip of the Spear

me. So I’m going to close and I’m going to invite people to pray and stuff. But first, this is a bit of a conspiracy to change church culture worldwide. I don’t know how we do that. I had somebody say once that they had a prophetic picture of Abbotsford and something being the tip of the spear in Abbotsford. And I believe God is forming a spear that can pierce darkness and is going to have a significant difference and the tip of the spear might be really tiny but it opens up for everything that comes behind it.

And we might be tiny as a church comparatively. You know, there are some churches that are way bigger than us, but if we can get this we can have an impact on the entire global church because we have to become a place where we love each other. The whole church needs to. The whole universal Catholic church. That’s what Catholic means. Universal worldwide church. We all need to get good at this. Let’s all stand. The first part is not an invitation for prayer. It’s an invitation for you to participate. And so what I’m going to encourage you to do is there are people right now that come into church and feel isolated and lonely.

And I don’t want that to continue. In order for this to move forward, we need to get good at not being that. So I’m going to encourage you to leave here with somebody’s contact information. And get together for coffee or have a phone call and share something from your life with them and receive something from their life. Okay? In my business, I’m part of a networking group and I’m supposed to have a handful of one-to-ones. They encourage two or more per week one-to-ones with other business leaders and there’s a structure to it.

We show up and we talk about our story, who we are, our families. Then we talk about our business and what we do. And then we talk about what would make the ideal referral for my company. It’s a structure to it. When we get together with each other, there should be a structure to that. That structure should, first and foremost: don’t go empty. Don’t go thinking I’m just going to go and share with somebody and they’re going to share with me. Go in saying I am going to receive the Father’s love.

I’m going to pray that God fills me with his love and then I’m going to go and share with them. Okay? Don’t go empty. And then pray with each other and share with each other and talk about something that you’re going through in life. And you don’t have to give them your deepest, darkest secrets all right away, but start connecting with people and getting to know the people that are here and what some of their challenges are. And pretty quickly you’ll learn who you can trust and we will begin to create a culture of this kind of trust and acceptance of people that are all together moving towards relationship and maturity with the Father. So get somebody’s contact information, connect with them: coffee, phone call, something. And nobody leave here feeling

Prayer

lonely. Then I want to pray and I want to invite the prayer team to come up. And I’m going to invite people to come up for prayer who, this morning, Patti felt a really strong call for people that wanted to give God their yes, give him their everything. This is giving God our everything. This is joining the family of faith, no holds barred, nothing held back. I’m going to be a brother and sister in Christ and I’m going to help change the way the church brings new people in and teaches them to mature.

And so if you want to participate in that, come up and declare that, even if you don’t connect with the prayer team. If you’re feeling lonely because the church hasn’t been accepting and hasn’t been a safe place for you and you’ve been feeling like you’re holding everything back come up and let’s get some prayer for that because we’re going to wash that off and we’re going to invite you to participate in the family a fresh. And if there’s something in your maturing journey that you’re feeling convicted of today take the risk to come up and get prayer for it.

So prayer team coming up. Father I have no idea what you’re calling us to in terms of what’s actually going to happen, but I know you’re calling us to something.