 Howdy, radiant church. I wanna say hi to those online. I wanna say hello, good morning to Portage and everybody at Richland. It's good to be together in the house of the Lord on Big Give weekend. You guys fired up about the Big Give. Hopefully, hopefully. I'll tell you what, when I see the video of like India and I see what's going on at the school of Spring Valley over in Parchment and the prayer center downtown, I'm just excited about all three of these endeavors and we will receive the Big Give offering at the end of the service this morning. But before we get there, I want to invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Mark chapter two, Mark chapter two. And I have a message I want to bring this morning entitled In This House. Thought Pastor John did an incredible job last weekend. I watched a little bit of his message online. I just appreciate him so much. And I was amenning him all the way from Florida where I was for a couple of days. And don't worry, I wasn't outside absorbing any sunshine at all. It was not 80 degrees there. It was snowing and it was like negative 20. So it wasn't fun at all. But I was speaking at a missions organization there for a couple of days. And while I was there, I got an opportunity to kind of peek in and I just thought his message on grace and truth was just so appropriate and so timely. This morning though, this message is really built around this big give weekend. And so I want to begin reading in verse number one of Mark chapter two and we'll read the first 12 verses. And it says that when he, that's Jesus, returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at the home and many were gathered together so that there was no room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them and they came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, son, your sins are forgiven. Now, some of the scribes who were sitting there questioned in their hearts, what does this man speak like this? He's blaspheming, who can forgive sins but God alone? And immediately, Jesus perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves said to them, why do you question these things in your heart? Which is easier to say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven or rise, take up your bed and walk. But that you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He said to the paralytic, I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home. And he rose, immediately picked up his bed and he went out before them all so that they were all amazed and glorifying God saying, we never saw anything like this. I love that last verse. We've never seen anything like this. How many know that Jesus has a way of just blowing people's paradigms? The gospels are not powerful because they just showed Jesus living like everybody else. They're powerful because Jesus brought heaven. He brought the fullness of who God the Father is into our experience and we see him heal, we see him save, we see him break bondages off of people's lives. Jesus is unlike anyone else. This weekend, I had planned on bringing the first message in a new series called God With Us. And we're gonna do that next weekend, especially as we launch into Advent Christmas season where we really focus on the incarnation of standing back. And I think we need to do that. We should never become familiar with the Christmas story. And I'm not talking about the Santa and Rudolph. I'm talking about the fact that God became a man in order to save humanity. And we're gonna look at that God With Us Emmanuel and we'll start with that next weekend. But this week, as I said, last weekend I was in Minnesota with Nathan Roosh and Jane and I went over there and spoke and ministered. She shared with some of the pastor's wives and I shared in their faith weekend. And then we came home for 12 hours and then I took off again for Florida and I went and spoke at One Hope, which is one of our missions partners, spoke to their global team. And when I was coming home, I started getting this sense that God wanted me to go in a different direction for this weekend. And so I kind of just plowed through that and then I asked Jane the other day, I said, if I go in this other direction, what do you think? And she said, I think you need to do what the Holy Spirit tells you to do. And what I sense the Holy Spirit was speaking to me was this, Leah, this weekend I want you to speak to the heart of radiant and not just the head. I want you to speak to the heart of who we are as a church. I want you to talk about the why behind the what. You know, oftentimes we can come into anything, whether it's a church, whether it's a situation, whether it's a business, whether it's a family, and you can get caught up with seeing the what, but you can fail to understand the why. And I think it's important as a leader, I think it's important for any of us that lead other people to constantly be bringing people back to the why. Because if you don't always understand the why, the what sometimes can get foggy. Especially in a big give weekend when we're gonna be taking a special offering and we're gonna be believing God for hundreds of thousands of dollars this weekend in the next couple of weeks as people give for all of these projects, India, Spring Valley Elementary School, and the prayer room in our radiant city center downtown. We can focus so much on the what that we miss out on the why. And this morning, I wanna bring this message entitled In This House. Because before we take the big give offering, I wanna talk to you just about the heart of who we are called to be as a church. See, in this story, I think it's so significant. In Mark chapter two, because I find in this story a blueprint of what God really wants his church to be about. How many know that Jesus and Matthew chapter 16 said that he would build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it? He didn't say he'd build my church. He didn't say he'd build your church. He said he'd build his church. See, if I build a church on my name, it can crumble. If I build a church on your name, it can crumble. But if we build our church on what God is looking for, if we build it in his name, the gates of hell can't prevail against it. It's an overcoming church. It's a victorious church. It's a church that sees and brings a move of God to wherever it goes. And in the story of how Jesus deals with the situation of this paralytic, I think we find a pattern for what God wants out of us. Because here's what I know, no matter what happens, anytime Jesus shows up into an environment, it becomes automatically inconvenient. Jesus is the ultimate disruptor. And so this morning, I wanna share with you five things, all of them under the banner of this house. So I'm gonna say, in this house, number one is this. In this house, as we look at the story, and as a church, in this house, Jesus is going to be the center of everything that we do. Jesus will be at the center of everything that we do. In this story, here's Jesus. He's been doing ministry from village to village, city to city, town to town. And everywhere that go, everywhere that Jesus and his disciples go, he messes whatever the devil has built up royally. The devil gets a stronghold of sickness and disease. Jesus comes in, he eradicates sickness, heals everybody that's there. Can you imagine Jesus walking into a hospital in Sidon or Tyre and he just walks into the ICU unit and he just goes boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Everybody get up and go home. I mean, that's crazy, right? And there are places where it says that Jesus went and he healed every single person. Only Jesus can do that. And everywhere that Jesus goes, he's drawing crowds. He's healing the sick. He's opening blinded eyes. He's feeding the hungry. He's preaching in a way that nobody else has ever heard. He's calling people to radical obedience. He's telling people to forsake everything and follow him. And instead of losing followers, he has no place to put them. And so Jesus comes home. I think it's interesting that Jesus even had a place that he called home. And it says that word began to spread that Jesus was in the house and it says that the crowds came and they filled the place, filled his house to where there was no more room in the house and people were even spilling out into the doorway. And at the center of everything that was happening is Jesus. He's preaching the word of God to them. By the time these four guys show up with their paralyzed friend carrying him in on the car, there's absolutely no room for them to get in. But as they look into the center of the house, they see Jesus at the middle of it all. And I think that that is a great pattern. As we become larger, as we proliferate and do a bunch of different programs and the different ideals, one of the things that we have endeavored and we commit ourselves to do is that no matter how, no matter what we do, no matter how we do it, no matter how large we become, we always want Jesus to be at the center of everything that we do. We want His presence. We want the presence of God. We want Jesus to feel very much at home. You know, when we were a small church just beginning in the Goliath community high school down the street, we met in the cafeteria. It was neither a cafeteria or an auditorium, but it was both kind of smashed together. And there were 50 of us in there. We didn't have video projection. We didn't have sound. We didn't even have air conditioning. We didn't have any of those things. But what we had was a expectation and a hunger to create an environment that Jesus was at the center of it. And we made a commitment then that no matter what we're going to do, we're gonna preach this. We're gonna preach this. Not gonna preach my opinions. I'm not gonna preach my feelings. I'm not gonna preach my philosophy, my wisdom. I'm going to preach the word of God because when I see Jesus at the center of it all, I'll tell you what kind of environments Jesus is attracted to. He's attracted to environments where people are hungry. Jesus is attracted to environments where he is honored and his presence is welcomed. And he is attracted to environments where his word is elevated. And you know what has happened in the church over the last several decades? I feel like there was a time when the church held the word of God in such high regard. It was like here, it's like this is God's word. And whatever it says, we are going to do it. We're going to follow it. We're going to obey it. And here's my opinions and here's my feelings and here's what culture says and here's consensus. And over time what has happened is God's word and our feelings, opinions and culture have leveled and even tilted this way to where we begin to put other things ahead of God's word. And we say, well, God, I love your word but as long as it agrees with me, as long as I can read it and understand it, as long as it makes sense, as long as the rest of culture checks the box and says, okay, we're okay with that, then God, your word will be brought up here. But if my feelings are different or if my experience is different or my philosophy is different or my friends and culture say something different, then it's going to be that over your word. Can I just tell you something that in this house we may not have a lot of other things that other places have, but the one thing that we will have as long as I have breath in my lungs and a Bible in my hand, is I'm going to teach from the word of God. We are going to be a word center church. We're going to elevate the presence of God and the word of God above everything else because listen, I'm a one trick pony. All I got is the Bible. If I can't preach the Bible, I need to go sell lumber and electrical supplies at Lowe's or something. And I'm really bad at that. And so I need job security. I'm going to preach the Bible. In this house, the presence of God is going to be welcomed and at the center of everything we do and the word of God is going to be at the center, so help me God because in this house, we're going to put Jesus at the highest place. Number two, in this house, it can't just be about us. In this house, it can't just be about us. Verse number two, when these four crazy friends brought their paralyzed, paralytic friend to where Jesus was, it says that there was no more room for them. Verse four says, and when they could not get near because of the crowd, how many know you need about four crazy friends in your life that are not willing to take no for an answer? They're going to do whatever it takes short of sin to get you back into the place that you need to be. You need about four crazy friends just like that in your life. And when I read this story, here's what catches me is that the paralytic had no say in the matter. We don't even know that he wanted to go. These four friends are going to church today. And when they showed up, it says that there was no room. There was no room. People were spilling out into the doorways and they're carrying this full grown man, four of them. That's heavy. And they brought him there. And you know, they could have gotten frustrated. They could have said, well, we tried. We'll try a different time. We'll come back. They could have gotten really super spiritual about it and said, well, this must mean that it's not God's will. If God wanted you to be healed today, he would have, you know, we would have had, oh, angels would have parted the crowds and we would have walked right through the door, right up to Jesus. And you could have touched the hem of his garment and bam, and you could have been healed. But that's not what happened. So it just must not be the will of God. So let's just go home. God wants you to stay the way that you are. No, that's not what they did. They saw that they could not get in and they walked around to the side of the house and they began to climb up the side of the house with a full grown man on a cot. Do you know how much work that takes? I've never tried it, but I can only imagine. I tried to carry a piano up the stairs with John and Pastor Mike Polbin hanging one time and I thought I was gonna die. Steep staircase with a piano and I'm just like, don't let go, bro. Do not let go. I can't imagine carrying a man. I mean, who carries a ladder with you, by the way? And they got up on top of the house and you know, the rest of the story, I mean, Jesus is preaching. I've got this image in my mind of Jesus standing in front of a room going, bless it all the meek or whatever. And all of a sudden, dirt begins to fall in his head. And he's like, huh? And all of a sudden sunlight breaks through the roof as these guys are not taking no for an answer. There's really four groups of people in this story. Number one, there's Jesus and he stands alone. Number two, there's the scribes. Those are the professional lawyers, theologians who know exactly how Jesus should do it. Let me put it this way. They know exactly how church should be. And then there's the multitudes who are there because they're just hungry to hear what Jesus has to say. And then there's the four crazy friends. It can't just be about us. I wanna be your pastor for a moment. And I wanna speak to us about a family matter. Sometimes in families, things change. You know, all of us struggle with change and I get that. And so sometimes when change happens in our homes, we kind of process it. And I feel like this is one of those moments. I try not to do this very often, but I feel like I need to do that. Recently, we made some changes with our ushering. And I know that it has changed where everybody sits. It affects how everybody comes in. At both of our campuses, this has happened. And I know that anytime change happens, most people are really slow to adjust to it. And so so many people, by the way, the majority have just been so gracious, cooperating, saying, hey, we'll do whatever it takes. We appreciate that. And then several people have asked the question, hey, can you explain why? Or, you know, this isn't the same and we don't like this. And can you give us the why behind it? And I appreciate that. We have had, though, also some people who posted on social media. I'm never coming back to that church. We're gonna go find another church. We've had people swear at our ushers because that's what you do when you're a Christian. And we've had people get upset about that and just, and gripe and complain. And I wanna just take a moment, and I just wanna, first of all, just say, blessed are the flexible for they shall not be broken. But I also wanna do this. I wanna tell you the why behind it because I take responsibility and say that I have not done a good enough job of communicating why we made that change. This is not a sudden change. We've been talking about it for a year because when we moved into the sanctuary years ago, we had about 200 in the service so anybody could sit where they wanted to. And then we had some incredible ushers who began to help seat people. But what has happened is over time, God has blessed us immensely. We've grown. I mean, in the last couple of years, we've grown two campuses and we've grown multiple services. And last year, so over 2,000 people received Christ. And I mean, it's just, it's good problems. It's growth problems. And over the last year, we've been like, we have to change the way that we usher. And let me tell you why. It's because when you come in, you sit down and you look at the stage and you see us. When we're on the stage, we see what's going on in the back of the room. And what has happened is all of our services have grown to about 700, 800 people in a room that has 1,000 seats. But when everybody gets to sit where they want to with big gaps and margins or kind of spread out, what has happened is we've had several, several times, like four weeks ago, I saw a family of five came in and I don't know if they were new or what, but they came in and could not find five seats together. And so they left. And we've had groups of three and four come in and can't find seats together because there might be a seat here and it might be two here, but they couldn't be all together. And so they left. It's the same reason why years ago, we began to park people when you came into parking lots because we needed to maximize every parking spot. And we have made a decision. We want to optimize every seat that we have in the room. We want to make it number one so that when you worship, you're not being disrupted. And we want to make it when anybody comes to radiant church, no matter who they are, because Jesus is in the house. We want to make sure that they actually have a seat, that they can find a place to sit as they come in. They might come in late, they might come in the middle, they might come in in a group of five, six, seven or whatever. We want to make sure that we don't say no or that we don't non-verbally say no to anybody that everybody who comes hungry, harassed, hopeless and helpless can find what they're looking for when they come into the house. That's the why. And like I said, whenever Jesus is in the house, it becomes automatically inconvenient. This last week I was with Rob Hoskins from One Hope. I mentioned that and we were at dinner Tuesday night and I just said to him, he said, well, how are things going at church? I said, well, we're growing. I said, but you know, with growth comes growing pains. And he said, oh really? I said, well, we just changed some ushering. We've gotten some pretty harsh emails and some things from people who just aren't thrilled with it and they don't like, and he said, what's the problem? I said, well, they're basically being told where to sit. We're filling rows, our ushers are filling rows from the front to the back. And he said, oh, they don't like being told what chair to sit in. I said, that's right. And he goes, can I just tell you? He says, the church in China would just love to have chairs. Church in China has had 1,500 of their buildings this last year bulldozed by the government. They don't have buildings anymore. You know where they're meeting? They're meeting in apartment basements sitting on the floor, on buckets. You know, it all puts it in perspective. So here's what we're asking. We're just asking you, would you just have a little grace for us as a family? So over the next couple of weeks and probably next couple of months, we're gonna be figuring this thing out, tweaking it, making it better. We're not trying to be the Gestapo. I prayers what I can promise you. We are not waking up on Monday morning and coming in after church and going, wow, people were way too comfortable. How can we make this a lot more inconvenient for people? How can we do it? I mean, we need some negative emails. So here's what we'll do. We've been racking our brain, trying to figure out how can we do this and maximize every seat? How can we do this? And this is what other, this is we've studied, we've looked at other options. This is the best option. We're just asking for a little bit of grace over the next couple of weeks. Be nice to the ushers, be friendly. And you know what? If you need special circumstances, we've got special seating. If you need a seat next to you, by all means, if you need to save seats for some friends that are checking in their kids and are gonna join you a little bit later, that's fine. But we're just trying to make room because listen, church, it cannot just be all about us. We're not saved in followers of Jesus so that we are comfortable and so that we are convenience all the way to heaven. The goal of following Jesus is not to arrive safely at death and having never been inconvenienced. We're in this because God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. And his attitude of generosity has got to be our attitude of generosity as well. It's not about living the American dream. It's about living the kingdom of gospel. The American dream makes much of me. The gospel makes much of him. And so number two, in this house, it's not going to be just about us. Number three, in this house, Jesus is looking for great faith. That's what he says. He says that Jesus saw their faith. Oh, I love that. He saw their faith. Because a lot of times when we talk about faith, we talk about beliefs. A lot of times when we talk about our faith, we talk about intellectual belief systems. But here's what I know, is that belief becomes faith at the point of action. What you really believe becomes demonstrable faith at the point of your action. And these guys crawled up on the roof and they didn't take no for an answer and they began to peel away the barriers. They began to take away the lid. Anything that was between them, any obstacle that was between their friend who was in need and Jesus who was in the house, they were willing to move and they put their faith into action. They began to peel it back and then they lowered their friend down right into the front row, right in front of Jesus. Jesus couldn't say no if he wanted to. I love that. I would love it if our church was so packed out that all of a sudden in the middle of preaching, I look up and there's a sunroof because somebody is lowering somebody down into the front row here who's in desperate need of Jesus. Every kid in Kids Church right now wishes they could do that. All the boys are like, I wanna live that out and peel it off, peel it off. Little ninja ropes sliding down into church. We'd pack out Kids Church if we let them do that. Jesus saw that take place and he goes, woo, look at that faith. God wants us to be people of extraordinary, of extraordinary faith. Moving obstacles, making openings, doing whatever it takes so that those who are far away from Christ can be drawn close to Christ. What about us? Are we willing to do whatever it takes to make openings? Are we willing to do whatever it takes for people who are far away from Christ? You know in our county, Kalamazoo County, and if you take Kalamazoo and Calhoun and Alleghen and you put them all together, there are over 400,000 people that do not have a relationship with the living God. 400,000. Many of them have never even heard the gospel. They've been to church, but all they got was a vaccine of the gospel, a weakened form of the real thing that they've been inoculated so that if they ever get exposed to the real thing, it won't take. And Jesus has parked us right here, and we don't necessarily think of it in any terms, but when the Bible talks about a paralyzed person, it's talking about somebody who's been traumatized. The Bible will use the term cripple to talk about somebody who was born immobile, but this guy in a paralytic person is somebody who had something happen to them that changed their life and affected their walk. You know right now in our city, in our generation, our culture, we have entire generations of people who've been traumatized spiritually, traumatized in their families, traumatized and neglected and abandoned, traumatized next generation, Gen Z and even the millennial generation have been traumatized in so many different ways and they're looking for Jesus. We gotta be the type of people that have great faith that when Jesus looks at us, we're not just reciting the things that we believe, but our actions are actually executing what we believe because that's when Jesus came, that's what he was doing. He was coming because his heart's motive was full of generosity and it is because of his heart and his posture towards us that he took action. That's why the Big Give is so significant and it's so important, the projects that we're taking on. It's not just the projects as much as it is us putting our faith into action. It's why we're putting up a prayer room in downtown Kalamazoo. It's like, well, I've never heard of a church putting a prayer room in downtown Kalamazoo. Well, that's all right because I'm not looking for the results of every other church that's ever come along. If I wanted the results of every other church that came along, I'd just run the playbook of every other church that's ever come along, but I wanna see a move of God. I wanna see a generation impacted by the presence of God. I wanna see the word of God become dominant and I wanna see the number of disciples in this city in our region multiply. And here's what I know, if God's people will pray, if we will pray, God will respond. So let's do something radical that nobody else has done before so that we can get some results that nobody else has done before. Let's put our faith out there. Let's believe for God for something beyond status quo and mundane and comfortable. Let's not follow Jesus like fans. Let's follow Jesus like radical followers of Jesus who actually believe what the things in this book says. I don't wanna just know this stuff. I wanna live this stuff. I'm not satisfied to come into a room and talk about Jesus. I wanna meet with Jesus. If you're looking for a room where you can lay out, there are all kinds of rooms all over the city if you want to where they'll talk about Jesus and you can have a whole row to yourself. But if you wanna go to where Jesus is, it might be a little inconvenient. If we wanna bring people into proximity to Jesus, it's gonna be a little inconvenient. Inconvenience is an opportunity for us to rise up and say, God, I believe, therefore I'm gonna remove every barrier and every lid that separates my city, my generation, my family, my friends, my coworkers from him. I'm gonna be that crazy friend who does whatever it takes to lower them down into his presence. I'm gonna wave a hanky at myself this morning. In this house, number four, lives are gonna be changed. This man's life was never the same. Jesus says to him in verse nine, which is easier to say to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven or to say rise and take up your bed and walk. Live, his life has changed. How many who are listening to me right now here over in a portage would say, because I've encountered the love of God, my life is forever changed. Raise your hand. Look at that. Do you know what you are? You're a miracle. You're a miracle. But do you know what I know? Is that there are still miracles that God wants to perform in people's lives. He's still in the miracle working business. He still is a healer. He still is a savior. He still is a life transformer. He still loves to put marriages back together that everybody say are hopeless. He loves to take nobodies and turn them into somebodies who tell everybody about somebody. He loves to turn your test into a testimony. In this house, I prophesied this morning we have only begun to see lives changed and transformed. Not because we're good enough but because he's more than enough. And here's what I know is God, listen, God is the only one that can forgive. I can't forgive your sins. Number two, I know that God is the only one that can heal. Jesus alone is the healer. I can pray for people but I can't heal any people. Only God can do that. But here's what I also know. Only you can care. God already does care. He's done everything that God's gonna do. He sent Jesus. And next week we're gonna dig down deep into what that looks like. Guys, it's blowing my mind. I've studied the scriptures. I've preached 24 Christmas messages, all different in 24 years. And I've thought I've taken every angle that I could possibly take. How many different ways can you tell the Christmas story? And as I begin to dig down deep into John chapter one that the word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, it's blowing my mind. God already has cared. God already has given. But you know what? God can't make you care. God can't make you give. Only you can do that. Allow yourself to care. Allow yourself to be moved. See, when Jesus saw the multitudes, he saw them different than his disciples did. In Matthew chapter nine, it says, when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion. And he said to his disciples, he said, pray that the Lord of the harvest would raise up laborers because the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. He's saying this to his disciples. He's saying, guys, do you see these people? They're harassed. They're broken. Far away, they don't have any hope. That's why they're drawn to Jesus. And Jesus turns to his disciples, and his disciples have proven over and over again that when they saw crowds, it was like, great, can we never get a break? Oh, can we just have a little vacation, Jesus? We've got some red-hot questions. We'd like to ask you, Jesus, about the Old Testament and stuff. And it's like, I got to upgrade my Instagram. I got, come on, Jesus, we got a platform to build here. And Jesus says, no, do you see? Do you see the multitudes? These people are broken. He said, guys, pray. Pray that the Lord would raise up laborers. See, God cares, but he can't make you care. God is given, but he can't make you give. God's done everything that only he can do. Now he's calling us, as his church, to do what only we can do, which is to live extravagant, generous, kind, in truth, but full of grace, lives. If we'll do that, lives will be changed. I'm telling the church, the best is still yet to come. God's just waiting for a people who will believe him for greater things than we've ever believed were possible to pray bigger, more audacious prayers than we've ever prayed. He's waiting for us to care more than we've ever cared before. If we'll do that, lives will be changed. And then number five, in this house, may the extraordinary become the ordinary. Ha! May the extraordinary, crazy, supernatural, over-the-top stuff become the ordinary. You guys wanna hear a testimony, a big gift testimony? So we have this radiant city center downtown that we're putting our prayer room in. We're trying to renovate it. One of the big costs was heating and cooling. We knew we had to buy three heating and cooling units, big commercial units, so that it's cool in the summer and hot in the winter. And we had an HVAC company that does all of our maintenance on all of our equipment, call us about two weeks ago and say, hey, we just renovated, put all new HVAC units into a bank, one of our customers, and then the bank's corporate offices decided to knock that building down, so they gave us the units back. They're only six months old, they're brand new. Would you guys like them? Listen, $75,000 worth of equipment, of HVAC units. Come on, Jesus. Extraordinary, extraordinary. We've never seen anything like this. You know why you can't think of what God can do? Because you've never seen it. It's always easy to look back and go, do you remember that time? That's called a testimony. I'm ready to take some of the biblical testimonies and turn them into our prophecies. Let's prophesy those things over our church. We've never seen anything like this before. Listen, I'm telling you, the best is still yet to come. The best is still yet to come. I want radiant church to be a place where God is very much at home, where we're living lives where it's not just about us, where Jesus sees amazing faith, where lives are changed, and the extraordinary becomes our ordinary. We do that, and I promise you this, in this house, Jesus will never cease to blow our minds. I wanna pray for us, and I'm gonna invite the ushers to come down forward into place at both of our campuses this morning. And I'm gonna pray, and then we're gonna receive our Big Give offering. To remind you, it's going towards Spring Valley Elementary. It's going towards our prayer room in our radiant city center, and it's going towards building a school in India. We're believing for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's already starting to come in. And if you didn't come prepared to give today, you can give online. You can give right now. You can give over the next couple of weeks. And I don't want any single person to give because you feel pressured. I want you to give because God speaks to you. If right now you're just like, oh, I gotta give something, I'll just keep it. Because we get to do this. This is the greatest privilege of our lives. Do you know what Jesus said about giving? It is more blessed to give than it is to receive. I don't know about you, but I'm pretty blessed when I receive. One hope gave me a Michigan State Spartan football said, thank you for all that you do for one hope, signed Kirk Cousins. I was like, I like that, baby. Come on, bring him back. Can he be quarterback again for a little while? It was a blessing to receive that, but Jesus said, it's more blessed. Let me put it this way. It's blessed her to give because it changes us. Giving more than changes the circumstances you give into, it actually changes you. And positions you for greater blessing. So as you give today, just keep that in mind. And then we're gonna worship together as we close out. Lord, today as we give into this big of offering, Lord, we know that your hand is on it. Lord, unite our hearts today and in the future. We wanna be what you are part of. We wanna see Jesus high and lifted up. We wanna see our city, our region, our generation changed. We wanna follow you radically, Lord. Reckless, radical obedience. Thank you for the invitation that you give us. Christ be magnified, in Jesus' name. Amen.