Welcome to the Valley Baptist Church sermon podcast.
We're so glad you're here and we hope this message inspires you,
builds your faith, and moves you toward a deep relationship with God.
Today, you'll find great insight into the Bible
and learn how you can apply it straight to your life.
So welcome and enjoy the message.
If you have your Bible, please open it with me to the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes.
We're beginning today a brand new series of messages going verse by verse through Ecclesiastes
in a message and a series that I'm calling Life Under the Sun.
Now Ecclesiastes is right in the middle of your Bible.
If you don't know where it's at, you find Psalm, flip a few more pages, Proverbs, then
it's Ecclesiastes.
Now the book of Ecclesiastes has sort of a funny name, but it has a very profound message.
Solomon, the human writer, poetically and powerfully describes the emptiness of a life
lived without God.
Now, as we read Ecclesiastes, if you're not careful and you don't understand the context
of the book, you may even question why it's in the Bible.
Because at first glance, it's quite pessimistic.
I would even say at first glance it's a depressing read.
But there's a reason the Holy Spirit inspired it
to be written.
And to me, the reason's clear.
God gave it to us so that we would slow down
and we would really contemplate the purpose
and the meaning of life.
Now, there's two phrases that are key in understanding the book.
The first phrase is life under the sun.
And Solomon uses this phrase 29 times throughout the book.
Most of the book is about what life is like under the sun without considering God.
Which brings me to the second key word, and that is this word vanity.
Solomon uses it 38 times in the book.
Now, vanity simply means empty.
Futile, meaningless, nothing.
It was a word that was used to describe a vapor that's here for a moment, but then it's gone.
Solomon is going to tell us that life without God is vanity.
It has no real meaning.
Now, Solomon's a little more poetic than that.
He's a little more methodical in the way that he makes his point.
He didn't come out and say right up front, life without God is vanity.
He says life is vanity.
But as we'll see throughout the coming months, whenever Solomon interjects God into the issues of life, his tone changes.
from vanity and despair to a sense of joy and fulfillment.
Pastor O'Brien, in his study on Ecclesiastes,
said that it's like Solomon has
two different pairs of glasses,
and throughout the book, he switches back and forth
which pair of glasses he's wearing.
Sometimes he has the under the sun glasses on,
which filter God out.
And whenever he has those glasses on,
life looks boring and empty.
But whenever he puts on the second pair of glasses, the above the sun glasses, he brings
God back into the equation and purpose and significance return.
Throughout Solomon's life, he was on a quest for meaning, a search for significance, a
pursuit of purpose.
And in many ways, Ecclesiastes, the book, serves as a journal about his findings.
Now, we find out that Solomon is the author from the opening line of the book.
Verse one, he says, The words of the preacher,
the son of David, king of Jerusalem.
Now, King David had many sons, but the king of Jerusalem part,
it narrows it down for us because there really was only one king
in Jerusalem after King David.
That was before the kingdom was divided.
And that was his son, Solomon.
Now, Solomon calls himself here, and throughout the book, he calls himself the preacher.
Some have translated that as teacher.
And I think that's probably a pretty good translation.
It refers to a person who has gathered information together in order to share it with others.
And really, that's what Solomon did throughout his life.
He wrote three books of the Bible that ride in the middle of our Bible.
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon.
You see, after Solomon's dad died, King David, the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream.
He said, ask anything you want and I'll give it to you.
Sort of like the Disney movie Aladdin, you know, where Aladdin rubs the lamp and out pops the genie and gives him three wishes.
Well, this was different because it wasn't three wishes.
It was one.
And it actually happened.
God gave Solomon one wish.
You ask, you'll have it.
And Solomon asked for wisdom and knowledge to understand the difference between right and wrong.
And because he asked for wisdom, God made him the wisest person in the world.
Plus, he made him the wealthiest.
it's been estimated that in today's currency Solomon was worth nearly
three
trillion dollars
that's four to five times more
than what Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, today is worth
and as a very wealthy and wise man Solomon ruled the nation of Israel as
king
now as a young man
Solomon wrote Song of Solomon. That's in our Bible.
As a middle-aged man, he wrote the book of Proverbs.
And I think as an old man who had experienced all that life had to offer,
he wrote the book of Ecclesiastes.
I think probably just before he died.
And so Ecclesiastes is written by a man who had experienced tremendous success in life.
And Solomon says, that's all a big, fat nothing without God.
So let's begin. Verse number two.
He says,
The book starts out pretty depressing,
and I wish I could tell you that it gets better,
but as we'll see, when Solomon describes life without God,
his description of it remains bleak.
He says, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
Life is nothing but nothing.
It's all nothing.
It's empty.
It's meaningless.
There's no profit in life.
I mean, what return on the investment of your life?
What do you get in the end?
At the end, we all die. Death is sort of the great equalizer. One generation comes and it dies.
It's followed by another generation who comes and they die. But the earth, it keeps on going.
So Solomon says, you think all of your work, you think you've got such great significance,
so the labor under the sun, you're accomplishing something. Think again. Sounds pretty bleak, but
He continues in verse number 5.
He says,
Solomon uses three illustrations from nature to describe how nothing is ever really actually accomplished in life.
He says the sun rises and then the sun sets and then it goes back around to where it first arose.
And it does the same thing over and over again. He's saying life is monotonous.
It's boring. It's just the same thing every day.
Ever feel like that?
You wake up in the morning, you brush your teeth, you get around for the day,
you go to work, you come home from work, you go to bed,
only to wake up again and do the same thing.
You brush your teeth, you get ready for the day, you go to work,
you come back home, you go to bed, and it's just on repeat.
Same thing over and over again.
Sometimes it feels like we're on the hamster wheel of life.
You ever see a hamster on a hamster wheel?
I mean, that thing, he's really getting after it.
He's running and running, fast as he possibly can.
He's not going anywhere.
Sometimes that's what I feel like at the gym when I'm on the treadmill, you know.
All this running, all this labor and striving, but it's the same view.
It's the same thing over and over again.
Solomon said that's life.
The wind blows from the south.
It turns.
It blows from the north.
It comes full circle.
He's saying there's all this motion, this power from the wind, but it doesn't really go anywhere.
It just comes back around to where it began.
He said the rivers are just like that as well.
They all run to the sea, yet the sea is never full.
The waters of the rivers, they just end up back where they first started.
What Solomon is doing is he's describing the water cycle.
The water's moving, there's action,
but ultimately it's not going anywhere.
And Solomon's saying, that's what life's like.
We're moving, we're active, we're going.
We think we're going somewhere,
but actually we're not making a difference at all.
It's vain, it's futile, it's empty.
Verse number eight, he said, all things are full of labor.
That means they're wearisome.
Man cannot express it.
We have a hard time articulating it.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
He said, whatever we have in life is never enough.
Whatever great things that we see with our eyes, we just got to see more, don't we?
He said the average person spends between five and seven hours on their phone every day.
endlessly scrolling, their eyes being given a form of entertainment that's addicting.
In fact, over 45% of adults admit they're addicted to their phones.
Think what our teenagers would say.
It's estimated that the average American will scroll 86 miles this year.
It's estimated that the average American will likely spend 12 years of their life of vanity looking, staring at their phone.
Why? Their eyes are never satisfied.
They've got to look and see the next thing.
Our ears are like that. They're never full.
If you question that, just count how many songs you have on your playlist.
I'm guessing it's a lot.
I've noticed that most people are uncomfortable with silence.
They're riding in the car.
They've got to have the radio on.
They're in their house, maybe even cleaning.
They've got to have the TV blaring in the background, noise.
Whatever experience we have, it's not enough.
We need more.
We eat a big meal.
Oh, we're so satisfied.
A few hours later, we're rummaging through the fridge trying to find something to eat
because we fill ourselves, but it's not enough.
We need more.
Verse number 9.
He says, "'That which has been is what will be. That which is done is what will be done. And
there's nothing new under the sun. Is there anything which can be said? See, this is new.
It has already been in ancient times before us.'" Solomon says, we're all searching for some new
experience in life that's going to bring meaning to our lives, but he says,
"'There's nothing new under the sun.'"
Our culture is searching for something new.
Our culture largely blames Christian values for their emptiness,
for their vanity in their life.
They think that if we could just remove the concept of right and wrong,
then people would be free.
They would be happy.
Hey, the Bible, what it says about sexuality, it's holding us back.
It's oppressing us.
So here's what we need.
We need something new.
Let's sleep with whoever we want, whenever we want.
Let's try something new, right?
Folks, a sexualized culture is not new.
It's been the norm throughout human history.
The Romans embraced what our culture is now embracing as a culture.
It led to the collapse of their empire.
There's nothing new under the sun that's going to be meaning and significance to your life.
Verse number 11.
He says,
There's no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come by those who come after us.
You know, later, Solomon's going to write in Ecclesiastes that God has written, He's
put eternity on our hearts.
We want lasting significance.
God has wired us with a deep desire to matter, and that's because we do matter to Him.
But that's not what the world says.
Evolutionists are telling our kids that, you know, you're a product of blind chance.
In other words, you're an accident, and if you're an accident, that means you don't
really matter.
I mean, that's the natural conclusion of an atheistic worldview, isn't it?
And so Solomon reminds us of that, of how futile life is without God.
One generation passes, another one comes, and someday all those generations, they won't remember us.
They're not going to remember you.
They're not going to remember all of your accomplishments here in life.
Oh, there's a few, a few people who get their names written in the history books,
but those people are rare exceptions.
And I've found that most students, as they study for a history exam, they forget it the next day.
Okay.
It don't matter if the history remembers you or not. We are going to be forgotten. Solomon is
pointing out the sad reality that we've got to come to grips with, that someday, not too many
years from now, no one's going to remember us. Our family won't even remember us. Oh, our name may
come up, some Thanksgiving meal, you know. What was her name again? Her name was Kelsey.
I think you're right.
What was her husband's name?
And after a moment of no memory,
stuff another bite of potato salad in her mouth,
they'll move on.
We're not going to be remembered.
You think I'm lying?
You tell me the first names
of all of your great-grandparents.
Yes.
My guess is you can't, not unless you consult a genealogy.
Solomon says it's all vanity.
It's empty.
There's no meaning in life.
Why?
We want to be remembered by our loved one, by our own flesh and blood a few years from now.
Verse number 12, Solomon tells us about the quest.
for meaning that he's been on. The quest of meaning for life. It really is the context of the book.
Verse 12, he says,
I, the preacher, was king over Israel and Jerusalem, and I set my heart to seek and to search out
by wisdom concerning all that is done under the heaven, under the sun. This burdensome task God
has given to the sons of man by which they must be excellent. In other words, all of us are on
this search. I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and indeed,
All is vanity and grasping for the win.
What's crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be numbered.
It can't be counted.
Now, Solomon's wisdom and wealth was the envy of the ancient world.
So much so, the Queen of Sheba came to him, and after her visit said,
the half has not been told about King Solomon.
In other words, he's so much more.
We've heard about how much great Solomon is, how amazing he is.
He's much more than we've ever been able to describe.
So now, that being the backdrop of Solomon's life, a life of prestige, a life of envy, a life of honor,
now he comes to the end of his life, having experienced all that a person could want,
wealth, wisdom, power, women, strength.
He had it all, and he says, it's all vanity.
All along, I've just been grasping for the wind.
There's nothing to take hold of.
You ever feel like that in life?
Like you're trying to grab onto something significant,
something of substance that actually matters in life,
but it's like you're grasping for the wind.
Solomon says, what's done is done.
What's crooked can't be made straight,
and what doesn't exist can't be counted.
This word crooked describes a world that's been broken by sin.
He's saying the world is so broken, it's so messed up, it's so crooked, we can't possibly fix it.
All the politics in the world, social reform, all of these, we cannot fix what's been broken.
We can't create purpose where there is none.
Amen.
Verse number 16, he continues.
He says, I commune with my heart, saying, look, I have attained greatness and have gained more wisdom than all who were before me in Jerusalem.
My heart has understood great wisdom and knowledge, and I set my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly.
I perceive that this also is grasping for the wind, for in much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
What a weary and tired soul.
But I love it because Solomon is being honest.
Most people aren't honest about life.
They know deep down inside, they know that they have no lasting significance, yet they act like they do.
Their lives don't have significance, but they act like they do.
They're content to live in the matrix of existence and meaning they've created for themselves, even though it doesn't exist.
But that's not Solomon.
No, no, no.
He's at the end of his life.
The pride isn't there like it once was.
He's being very honest.
He's being very vulnerable with all of us.
And he says, I got everything I ever tried.
I got everything I ever tried and it all left me empty inside.
Now what's interesting is that
here and throughout Ecclesiastes, Solomon admits, he says, I tried wisdom, but I also tried folly, foolishness.
He said both left me empty.
Now as Christians, we can think, well, I can understand how foolishness is vanity, but how is wisdom
Vanity. Well, because no amount of knowledge or education is ever going to bring significance and satisfaction in your life.
If it did, our college campuses would be the happiest place on earth, but they're not.
Nothing in this universe brings lasting purpose.
All of this has been created.
And if there's nothing that brings purpose within our universe, there must be someone who is not bound by the universe.
Someone who's outside the universe's system who can provide that purpose and meaning for us.
Now, let me frame the book for you this way.
Throughout Ecclesiastes, we're going to see that there's three ways that a person can live.
Now, that's a little different than earlier in Solomon's life when he described in the book of Proverbs basically two ways a person can live.
A life of foolishness and a life of wisdom.
But I think as an old man nearing death in his repentance, Solomon is recognizing there's a third category that's important to point out.
He describes all three ways, and we've got to pay careful attention to what he's on.
He's putting on these different glasses.
The first, though, he describes as a life with foolishness.
This is the wrong way to live life.
This is a life that has lived contrary to God's design.
This is a person who's living for the here and the now with no thought of the consequences, no thought of the repercussions.
It's the most...
empty and miserable life there is, a life of foolishness. But Solomon also describes a life
with wisdom. This is doing the right thing. This is a life of knowing and living in accordance
with God's design for creation. The person with wisdom is the person who understands certain
principles of life that have been written, have been coded into creation by its designer.
Solomon tells us throughout the book, he said, I lived the wrong way, and it was vanity.
I lived the right way, and it also was vanity.
He even says here, the right way, this way of wisdom, it caused me more heartache, more grief.
Now, why would that be?
Well, it's because really smart people can often identify the problems of life.
They don't always experience the solution to life.
So Solomon says, he says, life with foolishness is vanity. Life with wisdom is also vanity. But
there's another way. There's a way of life that brings significance and meaning to you, and it is
a life with God. Solomon nears his death. He gives the conclusion of life at the end of the book in
chapter 12, verse 13. He says, let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter.
Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man's all.
Now, the fear of God doesn't mean a terrifying fear.
No, it means a loving reverence, a respectful fear, an awe of God.
It's one nuance in the Bible of biblical faith.
What he's saying is trust God and obey everything that God tells you.
For this is man's all.
This is man's purpose.
It's like the old hymn that says, trust and obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.
Solomon, sadly, lived most of his life with his under the sunglasses on.
No experience of God.
His dad, King David, knew God personally and intimately.
He was a man after God's own heart.
He walked with God, and no doubt, the wisdom David gleaned from a life with God,
he no doubt passed on to his son Solomon.
So Solomon gained all of this wisdom, the right things.
So Solomon was wise.
He had all the answers, but he ignored the biggest answer to his most pressing question,
what is the meaning of life?
And that is a relationship with God.
See, we were all created for a relationship with God.
You were created for a relationship with God.
But because of your sin, because of my sin, we have been separated from that relationship.
We've been separated from God.
So now we're left wandering about.
Jesus said we're lost.
We're trying to find our way, but the more we search, the more lost we become.
We're trying to find purpose apart from God, which is an exercise in futility.
Solomon says it's vanity.
Now to be clear, Solomon knew the right answers.
He even knew the God answers.
I mean, he wrote earlier in his life, Proverbs chapter 9, verse number 10,
that says,
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
But while Solomon knew the right answers in his head,
he chose to walk away from his personal relationship with God.
See, God had told Solomon very clearly,
You are not to marry foreign wives because they're going to pull your heart away from me.
They're going to cause you to start worshiping their pagan gods.
But we read in 1 Kings 11 that Solomon loved many foreign women.
In fact, he had 700 wives and 300 concubines.
I'll just let that sit in for a moment.
You can understand why he was so miserable.
He had problems.
Here's what happened.
In Solomon's sexual sin, he chose to leave God out of his
life, and now as an old man, he's dying, and he says,
I made a terrible mistake.
I'm writing you this book so that you know that from a person that has experienced all that life has to offer,
please learn from my mistakes.
Please learn from me.
I tried to find meaning in sexual pleasure.
We're going to read about it.
I've tried to find meaning in my work.
I've built all of these amazing things in all of my gold, all of the wealth.
I tried to find it even in wisdom doing the right thing.
But now I know.
Now I know that the only thing that matters in life is a life with God.
To be connected to the one who made us to be surrendered to him.
In 1989, Jason Lehman wrote a poem, a powerful poem that he wrote.
He entitled, Present Tense.
I want to read it for us this morning.
He says,
It was spring, but it was summer I wanted.
The warm days and the great outdoors.
It was summer, but it was fall I wanted, the colorful leaves and the cool dry hair.
It was fall, but it was winter I wanted, beautiful snow and the joy of the holiday season.
It was winter, but it was spring I wanted, the warmth and the blossoming of nature.
I was a child, but it was adulthood I wanted, the freedom and the respect.
I was 20, but it was 30 I wanted, to be mature and sophisticated.
I was middle-aged, but it was 20 I wanted, the youth and the free spirit.
I was retired, but it was middle-age I wanted, the presence of mind without limitations.
My life was over. I never got what I wanted.
That's us. Far too many times, isn't it?
Always thinking the grass is greener on the other side.
But if we would just invite God into our present, into our lives right now,
He'll make it greener right where we're at.
You see, God brings joy and purpose even into the most mundane tasks of life.
So if you're punching a clock or you're changing a diaper or you're mowing the lawn,
if God is with you, he's giving you purpose in that moment, being connected to the one who loves you.
See, the key to a significant and satisfying life is the presence of God.
Whether you're in a high moment of joy or a low moment of despair,
it is the presence of God that is the meaning of life,
to be connected to the one who made you.
The one who made us, the one who loves us,
the one who died on the cross for our sins,
so that we could be reconnected and joined again with God forever in eternity.
Amen.
who's a philosopher, Blaise Pascal,
who said that within every human person
is a God-shaped vacuum,
a hole.
Solomon would say, God shaped vanity.
There's nothing there.
Now, the hole is shaped like God, and the hole is there because of our sin.
God didn't create us with the hole.
No, everything God created, it was very, very good.
We created the hole with our sin and our rebellion that caused God to leave us.
And when he left us, he left a giant hole behind.
And so what do we do?
We try to fill the hole.
with everything that we can possibly think of, we know it's there.
We're striving for meaning and significance and purpose.
We know there's something missing in our life, so we try all these things,
drugs and alcohol and parties and money and sex and power and fame and influence,
prestige, honor, all of these things.
We try this, it doesn't satisfy.
We try that, it doesn't satisfy, hoping that something new will fix the problem.
Listen, we do not need something new.
We need to be made new.
We need God to come back into our lives, to fill the hole where there's no longer emptiness,
to make us new. And that's what God offers to do through his son, Jesus. He offers to put his
spirit who departed from us because of our sin. He offers to put his spirit back in the hole to
fill us up and to make us new creations in Christ Jesus. I'm talking about a miracle.
That's what God offers. He offers a miracle for you to actually live your life with Him,
Almighty God, a life of significance and meaning, a life that actually matters, a life with God.
Jesus said, I came. Why did I come? I came to give life and life more abundantly.
Oh, Jesus certainly, when we come to him in faith, he gives us eternal life,
but he doesn't wait until we're dead before he gives us life.
No, he offers us abundant life today,
a life of significance and joy and purpose and meaning if we'll just surrender to him.
Jesus said, what prophet is a man if he gains the whole world and yet he loses his soul?
That was Solomon.
He'd gained everything, all the gold, all the women, all the power.
What profit is it?
He's going to die like the rest of it.
He's coming to grips with it.
What profit is it if you gain all of those things and yet you lose your soul?
You see, the Bible teaches that the key to life isn't a life under the sun, S-U-N.
It's a life in the sun, S-O-N.
And his name is Jesus.
Jesus.
One of the greatest Christian minds of the last century was a theologian by the name of Karl Barth.
Now, there's a lot that I disagree with concerning Barth's theology, but there's no denying his brilliance.
Well, Barth, one time, he took a long journey around the world.
He visited Latter-day Saints.
all seven continents.
He received,
you know, awards
for his contributions in theology.
He spoke at large cathedrals.
He spent a lot of time in nature,
various parts of the world,
searching out the deepest
truths of reality.
Well, when he returned home,
a friend asked him, said,
What's the single most profound
thought you had on your journey?
Bart thought for a moment.
And he said,
Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
Barth was right.
That is the most profound thought we could ever have.
That the God of this universe, the God who made us for Him,
And we walked away from him in rebellion and our sin.
We wanted it our way instead of his way.
We did all of that.
We broke his heart, we broke his word, we broke his will.
And yet God still loved us so much
that he sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins.
What greater thought is there than that?
So my question to you
is have you accepted Jesus' love for you?
Have you received it?
I found that there's a number of people who don't receive Christ's love for them
because they don't think they're worthy of it.
Pastor, you don't understand.
You don't understand my thought life.
You don't understand my motives.
You don't understand what I've done.
Listen, I understand what Jesus has done.
He died on the cross for your sins, and he loves you.
I want to invite you to receive His love today, to experience His love, to receive Him.
Now, have you received His love and received Him into your life, or are you simply running
on the hamster wheel of life?
No purpose, no direction, no real destination, but, well, man, there's a lot of movement,
there's a lot of effort going into it, but you're not going anywhere.
I want to invite you to just get off that hamster wheel today.
Just step off of it today and to trust Jesus with your life and experience real life,
the life that God offers you, a life with him.
The starting place for that is to trust Jesus as your Savior.
Open your heart in humility to admit that you need him.
Admit your sin.
Cry out to him for his forgiveness.
He'll meet you.
He'll forgive you, and he'll bring you life.
Let's bow together in an attitude of prayer, both here and at Olive Drive.
This is a holy moment in the life of our church.
The Bible says,
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.
I want to invite you to experience the life that Jesus offers you today.
It's a gift.
The gift is Himself.
Well, you've got to receive Him.
You've got to open your heart to Him.
You've got to say yes to Him.
Many, many choose a life without God
because they love their sin more than they love Him.
I want to invite you.
to trust Jesus as your Savior today.
In just a moment, on both campuses, I'm going to pray.
As soon as I pray, we're going to stand to our feet,
and we're going to sing a song together.
It's a moment of response for our congregation.
There's going to be pastors and other leaders
and prayer partners here at the front,
and we're going to ask you to just step out
and come and give your life to Jesus.
As you are, you come as you are.
It's not that you clean up your life and then come.
No, you come as you are.
You allow God to meet you where you're at and to forgive you and to make you clean before Him.
No one has ever loved you like Jesus.
I want to beg you, receive it today.
Allow Him to change your life.
Maybe you say, I want to be baptized like others today.
You'd like to join our church family.
This feels like home.
God's brought you here, and you want to formalize that and make that official.
You come let us know.
Or maybe you just want to come to these steps.
Let Him serve as an altar between you and the Lord.
You've got business to do with God.
There's been thousands of people before today that have used these steps as a meeting place between them and God.
There are many, many times in the middle of the week, something heavy upon my heart, something burdening me.
I'll walk over from my office and I'll kneel at these steps.
I'll pour out my heart to the Lord and give Him the burden and just let Him carry it like many, many others have done.
Maybe that's what you need. You don't need a pastor. You just need the master.
These steps are open for you to do business with him. Let's have a life with God, not a life of
trying to do right, not a life of foolishness, but a life with God in the center of it.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you so much for your love.
Thank you that we love you because you first loved us.
You've pursued us.
You saw us wandering and lost, pursuing a life of vanity.
And so you stepped out and came for us to rescue us and to save us.
And Lord, right now you see some people.
that you love so much
and your heart breaks for them
because you see the vanity of their lives
that they're living.
It's empty.
It's pointless.
It has no eternal value.
And Lord, you're looking on them in love.
And I pray, Lord,
that your spirit would touch them
in a deep place right now.
You would go beyond anything that I've been able to say, Lord, and that you would meet them where they're at in their brokenness, in their pain, maybe even in their success.
That has brought them to the point where they've realized even the successes of life are empty without you.
Lord, would you do a great work in our midst?
Would you draw our hearts closer to you, open our hearts?
Would you give the people courage that it's going to take to step out and come?
Maybe you're pressing on some people's heart to do that, to make a decision for you,
but they're fighting it and they're wrestling with it because they fear how uncomfortable it might be to step out and come.
Lord, I pray that you would give them the courage.
to take that step of faith.
I pray Lord that we would love them very well
as a church family.
Lord, we give this time to you, it's your time.
It's dedicated completely to you.
This is our time for having a life with you.
Lord, we set aside this moment to respond in faith.
So some of us, Lord, we need to be convicted.
Would you convict us?
Some of us need to be encouraged.
Lord, would you encourage us?
Some of us desperately need answers.
Would you give us the answer?
We ask in Jesus' name, amen.
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If you feel the Lord calling you to take the next step in faith
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No matter where you are in your journey,
know that we love you, we're praying for you
and we can't wait to see what God will do in your life.