 Well listen, this morning we are beginning a brand new series that I'm gonna be teaching on all throughout this fall called Flourish. Now it's based on a book I wrote a couple of years ago called Flourish, planting your life where God designed it to thrive. And here's what's interesting about that. I wrote it in 2019, 2018, 2019 and then we had our release for it just before COVID. And I remember during 2020 thinking to myself, man, for a book called Flourish, this sure didn't flourish. And as a little bit of a, you know, when you write something or you create something, it's like a baby in your life. It's like, it's near and dear to you. And this book actually was and is a life message that out of all three books that I've written, I really felt like this carried a revelation that God has given to me over 30 plus years. And I was praying about it this last year. And I don't know if you ever do this where you're talking to the Lord and you're complaining. Has anybody ever complained to the Lord before? Raise your hand if you've complained. Make your pastor feel better. Okay, good. So I was complaining to the Lord and I was just saying to God, it's like, you know, I really thought that this book would do a lot better. And the Lord said, he really corrected me. And he said this, he says, well, I actually gave you that book out of season. And I said, well, what do you mean by that Lord? And he said, I gave you that book then for the period the church would be in after the pandemic, because the message that's contained with it is gonna be needed in the church. And so that made me feel a lot better. Cause I felt like, okay, now what do I do with that? And the Lord says, I want you to this fall, I want you to teach, I want you to go back and I want you to teach there because I've never really taught all the content of it. I've taught a few different times, different messages out of it, but not the kind of the full panoramic view of it. And I really believe that this is a significant message for the hour we're living in, because so many people are trying to figure out how to begin to get your life back, how to restart your relationship with God, or what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus in a brand new context and cultural reality? A lot of people are falling away from the faith, a lot of people are stumbling in their faith, a lot of people feel like their engine has been flooded and they're just trying to get it started again. And so this fall we're gonna be going through that at all of our locations, we have copies of this if you don't have from the first round and you wanna pick that up, you can. But I wanna invite you this morning to turn with me to Psalm 92. And I wanna give you a message this morning, an introductory message called designed to flourish. Designed to flourish. And, and, and real quick, while you're turning there in your Bibles, I actually wore a bright colored shirt today because I've gotten so many emails from people going, why do you always wear black? And I always wear black because the lions always lose on Sundays. And so I'm perpetually in mourning, but today I'm like, I can't teach a message called flourish wearing black. So, yellow. Okay, here we go. Or whatever color this is. Thank you. I got one person that actually cares. Look at me, Psalm chapter 92, look at verse number 12. It says, the righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord. They flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age and they are ever full of sap and green to declare that the Lord is upright. He is my rock and there is no unrighteousness in him. This scripture out of Psalm chapter 92 years ago, God spoke to me out of Psalm chapter 92 and he spoke to me this. He said that it's my design and my desire that my people flourish. Well, when I heard that and I saw this word, I went and I looked up a definition of what it means to flourish and here's the definition. To flourish means to achieve, succeed and to thrive. To grow luxuriously and be in a state of productivity to reach a height of development or influence. And so when God says I want and I've designed and I desire for my people to flourish and to thrive in their faith in life. And then you look at this and you recognize that God actually said this thousands of years ago that the righteous will flourish like a palm tree. Those who are planted in the house of the Lord, they flourish in the courts of their God that literally God has designed us to flourish. So I don't know about you but one of my favorite sporting events that only comes every couple of years is the Olympics. And I remember a few years ago watching the summer games when Michael Phelps was at his height. Does anybody remember that when he was going for his, I think it was his 21st, 22nd, 23rd gold medals, the most decorated Olympian ever. And we're watching Michael Phelps as he's coming back. There's a lot of speculation about how he's going to do because I think it was his fourth Olympic Games that he had been at. He's older, he's competing against younger athletes and watching him win gold medal after gold medal after gold medal throughout all of these years is just amazing. He's become one of my favorite all-time athletes. It's because when you look at Michael Phelps, he's flourishing, but when you look at the breakdown of why Michael Phelps is so good, obviously there's the training program. I mean, from the time he was a little boy, he was in the pool five, six hours every single day, mastering strokes, eating 10,000 calories a day. Come on, I think I could at least fulfill that part of the Olympic training. I would drown in the pool, but I would flourish at the table. He would eat 10,000 calories a day, five to six hours every single day in the pool without exception. In the weight room, training and developing as well as the psychological mental part of what it means to be an elite athlete. But all of that, a lot of people have all of that, but there was something biological about Michael Phelps that made him the best of all time. And here's what it is. Six foot four with a wingspan of six foot seven, with an extremely, exceptionally long torso and short legs with size 14 feet that are webbed and ankles that are double-jointed that give him the ability to use them like flippers and a head that the back of it is aerodynamic to cut through the water. In fact, if you were to ask a physiologist to create a human being that would be aerodynamic and completely efficient in the water, you would literally design Michael Phelps. He was designed to swim. And so when we see him in the Olympics, do what he was created to do, it brings us great joy. Because not only was he designed to swim, then he put all the work, he developed the mental game, and he committed his disciplines to achieving and flourishing in the thing he was created to do. And here's what I want you to understand. If you are a child of God, born again saved and Jesus Christ is your Lord, eternity is living on the inside of you and the Holy Spirit has made you his temple. You have been designed by God to flourish. But it's not enough for you to be designed spiritually to flourish. You also have to develop the mindset, the attitude and add to that your disciplines and environments to your life that are going to cause what you were designed to do to become your destiny and your reality. Because Jesus said this, and many are called, but few are chosen. Which means many are called, many get saved, many have heaven in their heart and someday when they die are gonna go into the presence of the Lord. But not everyone is going to flourish and thrive in their life. And live out what Jesus said in John chapter 10, when he said that I've come that you might have life and have it more abundantly. What does it mean to flourish? It means to achieve, to succeed and to thrive, to grow luxuriously and be in a state of productivity, to reach a height of development and influence. And if I told you that you were created to flourish, would you believe me? Today, in this next couple of months as we work our way through this reality, I'm praying that more than it being a series and information, I'm praying that God would get ahold of our hearts and it would become an impartation and a revelation. So at whatever places in our relationship with God we're not thriving and we're not excelling and we're not growing, that we would recognize that it's not because we don't have what it takes, we have the holy one of God living on the inside of us. We have the word of God, we have the spirit of God. Everything that you and I need to thrive and to flourish is already there. We just have to align our minds, our bodies and our spirits with that reality and everything will begin to change in our life. That doesn't mean that you're not gonna have hardship. It just means when you face hardship, you'll be more than a conqueror instead of more than conquered. It doesn't mean that you're not gonna have obstacles and giants in your life, it just means that when you stand before those giants, you're not gonna depend on the strength of your own hand but you're gonna declare that the Lord is your God and you're gonna have five smooth stones in your sling and be able to take down the Goliaths of your life. It doesn't mean that you're not gonna have something to overcome, it just means that you're not gonna get swallowed up by the depth and by the darkness that you're gonna learn how to shine your light brightly. And that's what Jesus said, that we're called to be the light of the world. Does anybody believe that the church of Jesus Christ in this hour needs to learn how to be the light of the world, salt and light in a world full of darkness and lacking flavor? Come on, somebody, does anybody believe that? Okay, so let's talk about what does it mean for us to flourish. Turn with me all the way back into the beginning of your Bibles in Genesis chapter one. I wanna show you this morning what God's original desire and design was for mankind. Genesis chapter one, we're not gonna read all of chapter one because all of chapter one and chapter two is outlining how God created everything but we're gonna zero in on how God created mankind. Genesis chapter one, beginning in verse 26. Then the Lord said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Verse 27, so God created man in his own image and in the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. Verse 28, and God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. This is God's original design for mankind. You'll notice this, that everything in Genesis chapter one that God creates, he creates by speaking. Let there be light, let the water and the land separate, let the heavens and the earth separate. Everything is binary, there's night and day, there's land and sea, there's the heavens and the earth, there's God and man, all of this stuff that God creates and now we see male and female that God creates. But what is unique and distinct about mankind or humanity when God creates them is it's the only thing that when he creates them, he creates them with his own hands. God, it says in Genesis two, when it gives us a more descriptive account about how God does this, it says that he formed any fashioned man with his own hands out of the earth. He shaped any fashioned man and then it says he breathed his life into them and man became a living being, a living soul, a nephesh, which means the breath of life was in him. And when, as we just read here, when God created man, he created him distinctly different from everything else that he created because he created him for one purpose. He says, let us create man according to our own image and according to our likeness. In other words, mankind was created to look and to act and to be connected to who God was. Theologians call this in the Latin term emago de, which means in the image of God. Mankind originally was created to be an imager, to be an image bearer of the God creator who made everything to oversee everything. And so that when all of creation looked at Adam, looked at Eve together as one, that they saw a mere reflection of who God was. Man was created before the fall, man was created to look and to be a partner or a co-regent with God on the earth, an image bearer, to walk around and to reflect God's image to everything and to walk in relationship with God the Father and to oversee all that God had created. And when God created mankind in his image, he gave him what's called the dominion mandate. The dominion mandate connects to four things. Here's what God said to mankind as he created them, that this was what they were created for. This is why God made us. Number one is identity. He said, you are my image bearer. This is your identity. You wanna know who you are? You reflect me. You are created in my image. You have an identity as a son or a daughter of God. So the first thing that God gave us as part of our design is our identity. So think about this. Mankind or Adam and Eve walked with God every single day. Every single day the Bible says in the cool of the day, God came down or he made himself known and he walked and he talked with Adam and Eve, gave them instructions. I mean, they had a perfect relationship with God. Can you imagine every day, you doing your devotions, it's not through the lens of faith, but it's actually sight and hearing, that there is no distinction between the heavenly realm and the spiritual realm and the earthly realm. Those two were completely integrated. And Eden where he created mankind and put them in the garden was actually, the word Eden means a cultivated place. So God created a scale model mountain of Eden that was like a temple from which Adam and Eve would then fulfill the rest of the Dominion mandate, which number two, he gave them identity, but then number two, he gave them authority to have dominion over all of creation. So when he created mankind, he said, here's your purpose, here's your design. Number one, you belong to me. You're my image bear, you're my child. Number two, I give you my authority, dominion over everything that I've created. And number three, he's mandated them to build families. He said, I want you to be fruitful and multiply. Now I know today in New Testament terms, when we talk about being fruitful and multiplying, we're talking about making disciples, but God was talking about making babies. I want you to build families. I want you to fill the earth with a godly seed. And listen, if you want to know why the devil hates babies and he hates families, it's because it goes all the way back to the very beginning. This was God's plan to fill the earth with righteousness. How do you stop the earth from being filled with righteous seed? Number one, you've got to destroy the nuclear family and then you got to get rid of babies because that's how righteousness and generational blessing expands into the earth. You have to stop that. And I'll tell you what, that same spirit that tried to kill Moses before he was born by killing all the firstborn children and that same spirit that tried to kill Jesus when Herod, who was under the influence of the anti-Christ spirit, tried to wipe out all the potential aged children who could be the Messiah, is the same diabolical spirit that wants to destroy children, even in their mother's womb in the midst of this generation. And as the righteous of God and the church of Jesus Christ, we need to support children. We need to support families before they're born and even after they're born because this is part of our divine design. So he gave them identity as God's children. Number two, authority over everything. So you had authority over everything. In the beginning, he said, you have authority over the birds. You have authority over the fish. Come on, somebody, salmon season. Back in before the fall, you can just throw your line in the water and say, salmon, I command you, get on that hook. And they jumped in the boat. I don't know if that's true, but I like to think so. But number three says, and I also give you authority over every creeping thing on the earth, which means ladies, God gave you authority over creeps. All the, he had authority over everything on the earth. He appointed them to build families, which is the vehicle for generational blessing. And number four, destiny. He said, I want you to subdue all the earth. What God started in Eden was just a scale model that God created and said to Adam, now what I've started here, I want you to go and extend that and fill the rest of the earth, cultivate the rest of my created world to be after the order of the environment that I created you in, in my holy mountain in Eden, where I dwell with you. And so it's like, you look at a scale model and go, okay, God made the holy mountain of Eden. God made the garden, the cultivated place. Everything was beautiful. Everything was in order. Seed, time, harvest, birds, fish, everything. And so Adam was supposed to go from there out into the chaos of the rest of the world and bring that under the dominion of God's design and Lordship. That's what man was originally created for. This was purpose. This was what he was created for. To partner with God in this, but here's what we know. We know that the devil, Satan, the deceiver comes into the garden, deceives Adam and Eve. First, he deceives Eve. And when he deceives her, he deceives her by convincing her of a lie. And here was the lie. I'm gonna paraphrase it because I can read you the whole thing in Genesis three. Basically, the enemy came and he said, did God actually say, you shall not eat any of the tree of the garden? And then he said, you will not surely die for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God knowing good and evil. That was what he said. Let me paraphrase it for you. The devil came to mankind and said this, you can flourish without God. You can do, you can be happy. You can have purpose. You can have destiny. You can enjoy sex. You can conquer the world. You can have a fulfilling destiny. You can make your own rules about what's right and wrong. You don't need God. God's just trying to hold it over you. He doesn't want you to eat that fruit because he knows if you ever eat it, you won't need him. Your eyes will be open. You can make your own decision. You'll be like God. And here was the lie. The devil says to Adam and Eve, he knows, God knows that in the day that you eat of the fruit, that you'll be like him. Rewind the tape. Mankind was created after the likeness of who? They already were like God. But now the devil says, if you rebel against God, you'll actually become like God. What was he saying? He was saying, there's more. There's more that God's holding out on from you. And you can actually flourish without him. You don't have to listen to God's word. You don't have to do it God's way. You can make your own rules. You can enjoy it all. You can be happy. You can thrive and you can flourish. But what we know is that Eve looked at the fruit and saw that it was good. She wanted it, less to the eyes, less to the flesh, pride of life. And so she ate it and then gave it to Adam. Adam wasn't even deceived by the serpent. He was deceived by Eve. And so he took it. He ate it and immediately their eyes were opened. Except when their eyes were opened, it wasn't open to a flourishing reality. It was open to their own nakedness. The nakedness wasn't just a physical nakedness. The nakedness was they now knew that they were exposed. They were not covered anymore. See, prior to this, they were covered by God's purpose and God's presence. Walking with a pure conscience before the Lord in partnership with God. But now they had separated themselves from God and they were uncovered. And instead of being covered by God's purpose, his protection, his destiny, now they were exposed and isolated and they were alone. And now they were divided even among themselves. This is exactly what Satan wanted. And here's what they did in essence. They traded their identity for self-determination. They exchanged dominion for slavery to sin. They traded family for now contention and division. And they exchanged destiny, eternal life for death. This is what they ended up with. So here's what happened. I'm gonna use this picture of this mirror here. Every time that Adam and Eve looked in a mirror, they were able to see the image of God. And they were reminded of who God was. Every day that they walked with God and he came down the cool of the day and they looked at God, they were reminded of who they were. But now sin has come in and it's broken the mirror. So now in the absence of God, just looking at themselves, trying to remember what God was like, they could see it in each other and in themselves, except the image of God now because of sin had been shattered and broken. And because it was shattered and broken, every time they looked at it, it was distorted. There were aspects of the image of God because we're still image bearers. That's what we are. The reason why we get so frustrated with the things that are wrong in the world today is because there's still something of the image of God in us. We know that this world is not the way it's supposed to be. We know that death is wrong. The reason why we grieve when people die is because we were never created to die. But yet death is a result of sin. The reason why we have a sense of justice in our heart about what's wrong in the world is because the image of God is still in there, even though it's broken. We look at ourselves and we can see the image of God. It's like there's things that are wrong. This is not how things should be. This is why we feel in our conscience. The Bible talks about the law being written on our hearts. We know right from wrong. We don't have to be told, we know it's wrong to steal. We know that it's wrong to lie. We know faithfulness is a virtue and we know, you know, disloyalty and deception is a sin. Why? Because the image of God is still there, even though sin has broken it and perverted it and contorted it in us. It's still there like a homing device pointing us back to the one who is the designer. Now here's what that has created in our world. Here's why the world hasn't flourished. It's because every time we look at the mirror of our broken image because of sin and it shows us the image of God, it's distorted. And so what we've tried to do for thousands of years is recreate God. We wanna recreate God so that we can remind ourselves of who he is and who we are. And the way that we design God is by looking into the only place we know there is the image of God, which is inhumanity, but inhumanity is broken. And so we look in the mirror of sinful broken humanity and we go, okay, I see that part of God, but it's perverted and distorted, but it's all we got. And so we take that and then we try and craft and build God back up so that we have something to worship. That's where idolatry has come from. Because we take aspects of truth about God through the lens of a broken mirror that's distorted and we rebuild God so that we have something to connect our hearts to. Because we were created to worship. But the problem is the very things that we build with our hands are not accurate and true about God, they also are distorted. That's why you can go in any place in the world today, any culture you go to and they will have something that they worship. Nobody has to convince human beings anywhere to worship, it's just in us. I'm created to worship, but now what do I worship? Now I'm divided from God. And I know that there's divinity, I know that there's beauty, I know that there's truth. And so we look at something and we're looking through the lens of the deception of Satan instead of at the lens of revealed truth from God. And we can never get back to the place of flourishing on our own. We can never get back to the place of flourishing on our own because every single one of us, listen right now, outside of Jesus saving us, we have the image of God, but it's broken on the inside of us, it's sin, it's leading us to death, but we know we weren't created for that. We recognize contentions both in our families and also in our culture. We're not, this is not right, and so we call it injustice. But we can't solve the problems of injustice based on man's best thoughts, we need God's truth. And we see it and we go, well, wait a second, we're supposed to be family. We're supposed to have family. We're supposed to love one another. We're supposed to be faithful forever. We're supposed to be a community, but there's this divide because we've created idols instead of returning to the designer. Same with authority. We've exchanged authority that we had over all of creation as regions of God, and we've allowed ourselves through deception to become slaves. We're slaves to our desires. We're slaves to what we're blind to. Yes, our eyes were opened at the fall. They were opened to our nakedness, what they were closed to our purpose. And so we become slaves of our sin and slaves that the enemy has us on a leash and he can jerk it anytime that he wants to. And we've also lost or had our sense of identity distorted. People want to know who I am, who am I? What's my purpose in life? We want to know that, can I just promise you? You will never discover that, you will never find that. Outside of the only one who can restore the broken image of God in our lives, to put the pieces back together so that when we look at him, we actually see who God is in beauty and in fullness. And in seeing who he is, we see what he's done for us so that we can become like him. His name is Jesus. He is the savior of the world. He is God who came in human flesh and he came to restore us, came to restore us to our original design. Theologians say that Jesus is the last Adam. The first Adam brought sin and death and slavery into the world. When we get to heaven, I want to have a talk with Adam. Anybody with me? It's like, hey, I got a bone to pick with you, but here's the problem. If you had been Adam, you would have done the same thing because you come from Adam. We all do these ancestry.com, 23andme or whatever. It's like, I want to know where I'm from. I can tell you where you're from, Genesis one. You came all the way from Adam. From one man and one woman, God created all of us. But with that is we all get the same nature. You're not better than Adam. You can't look at Adam and I can't look at Adam as much as I want to and say, you really blew it, buddy. You ate us out of house and home. You messed everything up because the reality is we all would have done it. No, it took God becoming a man, bypassing the seed of Adam. That's what the virgin birth is about. God impregnating a woman, the seed of the woman, Genesis 315. God mysteriously and cryptically gives an indicator. He said, here's how I'm going to restore that which I created and designed. He says to the devil, he says, you I'm going to put enmity warfare between your seed and her seed. Women don't have seed. I'm sure the devil's like, what are you talking about, God? Her seed, what do you mean by her seed? And he says, well, here's all I'm going to tell you. There's going to come a day when you're going to bruise her seed's heel, but it's going to be in the process of his heel crushing your head. It's called by theologians, the proto-evangeloum, which means the first mention of the gospel. It was cryptic. It was mysterious, but it was fulfilled when Jesus was born as the seed of the woman because the father was the heavenly father. There's no earthly father who provided the seed and because there was no earthly seed, there was no transmission of the sin nature to Jesus. He had a human nature, but not a sin nature. And he followed in the footsteps of Adam all the way through the wilderness of temptation. He was offered the very things that Satan tempted Adam with and he overcame every single one of them. He never sinned. He was the only righteous innocent human being who's ever lived, but yet he went to the cross and when he died on the cross illegally, he died so that you and I who were sin could be made the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. Once again, completely reconciled to God and to have our design restored. That's what the cross is about. It's the good news of the gospel. You can't fix yourself. You can't save yourself. You can't rescue yourself, but Jesus can. Romans 5.17 says this, for if because of one man's trespass, death relinquished all or through that one man, much more will those who receive abundant grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through Jesus Christ. You see, reign in life. How do we reign in life? In other words, come back to the place where we're no longer slaves. We recognize our identity has been restored in God and we have peace with one another and we're walking out our destiny once again. The only way to do that it says is through the man, Jesus Christ and his free offer of salvation because he died in our place on the cross. Now, what Jesus did at the cross is best pictured through a parable that Jesus taught in Luke chapter 15. It's a parable that everybody in this room has heard, I'm sure it's called the parable of the prodigal son. You guys remember that? It's a picture when Jesus shared this parable, he was sharing the parable about humanity's broken relationship with God. It says that the son said to the father, give me my inheritance now. I basically don't want to have anything to do with you. And he says he left the father's home. He went out into the world into righteous living which means sin ridden living. And he spent everything, lost everything, ended up taking care of pigs, the most unclean animals, sharing their lunch with them and broke and no hope. That is what is the reality for every single one of us who have been born into this planet broken by sin. That's us, we're in the pig pen and we have no hope. We've spent it all, but we know that there's something better. It says that when the son comes to his senses, he says, even my servants at my father's house have it better than I do. So here's what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go back, I'm gonna return to my father. And I'm gonna ask him, father, against you and you only have I sinned, please forgive me, make me one of your servants. When the story goes that when the son was still a long ways off from the father's house, the father was looking for him on the hill, looking out over the horizon, waiting for the day that his dead disloyal son would return home. And when the father saw him, it says that he lifted up his gown. And he ran to his son. He ran to him. People speculate about why he ran because Middle Eastern men do not run. And you do not show your feet. Some believe that the reason why he ran is because according to the law, the son should be stoned by the rest of the community as soon as he enters back into his father's presence because of his disloyalty. And the father runs actually and falls upon him in order to protect him from what other people would rightfully do to him. But the father runs to him, falls on him, kisses him, embraces him, and said, my son who is dead is alive again. And here's what the father does. Think about this. The father says, bring a robe and put it on him because his filthy rags will never be on him again. The robe is a picture of God restoring our broken identity. We are the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ. He says, bring a ring and put it on his finger. The ring was like a credit card. It was a signet ring, spoke of the family crest that if you mark something with it, everything that the father has, now you have access to it. What is the ring? God restoring our authority. It says, put new sandals on his feet because his feet were probably bloodied and filthy from being in the pig pen and walking on the roads without any shoes. Put new sandals on his feet. What is that in a picture of? It's God restoring destiny. Destiny is about where God is leading you to. It's the journey that he's leading you on. And now God says, you're not gonna walk by the blood of your feet and the filth of the world on your feet. How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. God is restoring his destiny. And then the last thing that he does is he says, let's kill the fatted calf and throw a party. And he welcomes the son back into his home. What is that? That's God taking his enemy and once again, making him family and welcoming him back into the environment of God's blessing that he knows his son will flourish in. Adam was kicked out of Eden because of Jesus. When we turn our lives back to the one who designed us and created us, we're welcomed back into the father's home. Would you stand with me all over this room wherever you're at today? The cross is God's great exchange. It's where we exchange the broken mirror of our lives and God puts it back together miraculously again so that we can become image bearers walking in the full identity of who God's created us to be with full authority in heaven and earth, Jesus said, Matthew 28, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. He gives us a destiny. Proverbs says, the steps of the righteous are ordered of the Lord. And he welcomes us back into his family and into his house, the household of God. Remember going all the way back to Psalm 92 where we started this morning. It says the righteous flourish in the courts of our God. You were created for the family and for the house of God. It's the environment that God puts all the broken pieces back together and causes us to grow, to mature in our understanding of who we are, of who God is, of our authority and of our destiny and the family that he's placed us in. And I want you to know today, the devil wants nothing more than to keep you living in the pig pen. And to keep you isolated and to keep you trying to do it all yourself, you were created and designed to flourish. Would you buy your heads with me this morning? Heavenly Father, we just say thank you. Because what else can we say? We don't deserve your grace. We don't deserve your mercy. But what we will confess this morning is that just like our ancestors, we're prone to deception. We're prone to the lie, to believe the lie. And in a world of confusion about all things, a world confused about identity, a world confused about power, a world confused about what it means to love one another and to build families and what a family really is and what it's supposed to do and be, and in a world that even many people who believe in you but have been disjointed and isolated from your household. Lord, today would you restore us by the power of your cross and by the power of your resurrection, Jesus. Lord, we need you. We need you. We need you to open up the eyes of our heart and speak truth. We need your truth. We need your word. We need revelation that can transform and renew our lives. Lord, you've designed every single person within the sound of my voice this morning. You've designed us to flourish, to be fruitful, to abound, to have a legacy. But the enemy wants to do everything in his power to keep us from that. And today, by the power of your Holy Spirit, Lord, would you set us free? Today, with every head bowed and nobody looking around, please, just for a moment, nobody moving. I'm gonna invite you, whoever you are today, who maybe feels like I need to be made whole. I need to be restored to a relationship with God. I need Jesus to save me. My life is broken. I know I was created for more. I've lived for myself. I believe the same lie that said I can flourish without God. Today, I know that I was created for something more. I was created to have a relationship with God. I was created to be forgiven and to have the shackles of guilt and shame lifted off of me. I was created for eternal life. But death and sin and deception and selfishness has really branded me and marked me. And I'm shaped more like the world than I am God's presence. And today, I'm saying to God, God, save me. I repent. I'm turning from the path I was on and I'm saying, Lord, I wanna follow you. Jesus, I believe you died for me and I'm asking you today to save me, to rescue me. Maybe you've never done that. You've never made Jesus Lord of your life. Maybe today, you're a prodigal, just like I shared the story and you know you need to come home. You're a prodigal. You used to be in church. You used to love God. You used to describe yourself as a Christian and Jesus was Lord. But you've kind of shifted away from that. And today you're waking up in the pig pen and you know today it's time to come home. Both of these that I just described are people this morning who know they need to get right with God. And today the good news is anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. He'll save you, rescue you and then you can begin the process of flourishing. I wanna lead you in a prayer today. If that's you, all over the room, if you say today, Pastor Lee, pray for me, I need to get my life right with God. I want you to just raise your hand. Say pray for me and hold it up. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you, hands all over the room. I'm looking to my right. Thank you, young man. Who else? All the way in the back, I see your hand. I see you that hand. All the way there back to my right and the far back, I see your hands, sir. If you've not raised it, come on today, what are you waiting for? Why would we waste one more day in the pig pen? Last call, if you've not raised your hand right now, raise it and we're gonna pray. Thank you, you can put your hands down. The Bible says this, if we believe in our heart on the Lord Jesus Christ and we confess with our mouth that he is Lord and we repent from our sins and say I'm not gonna live for myself any longer. Today, I'm surrendering to you. The Bible says we will be saved. This is what Jesus refers to as being born again of the spirit of God. So we're gonna pray a prayer. If you raised your hands, I want you to pray this prayer out loud to God, he's gonna hear you. The rest of us, even if we're saved, we're still gonna say this prayer because we're gonna join with you and celebrate what God is doing in you, in unity together. Everybody, here we go. Let's all say this prayer out loud. Say heavenly Father, I come in Jesus' name and I confess I'm broken, I'm a sinner and I deserve death and judgment. But today I ask for mercy and I ask you to save me. Jesus, I believe in you. You are the Son of God. You did die on the cross and you bore my sin and shame. And you did raise on the third day from the dead and you are alive. Lord Jesus, come into my heart, be my Lord and Savior. Forgive me, cleanse me, make me your own. From this day forward, I turn my back on the devil, on the pig pen and my own desires. I follow Jesus. I was created to thrive, I'm designed to thrive and in the house of God, I will flourish. Thank you for loving me, restoring me and saving me in Jesus' name. Amen and amen. Come on church, can we celebrate what God just did?