 How's everybody doing this morning? You guys doing good? Good, we're fired up this morning. My brand new book is being released at both campuses this morning, I'm very excited about that. We haven't released it publicly, but we wanted to release it to you guys first. And we're very excited about it for a lot of different reasons. We'll get into that in just a moment. But real quickly, I wanna highlight two quick things that I want you to be aware of, this is family information. Number one is last weekend, Easter was phenomenal. We had in church over 8,200 people between our two campuses. So it was amazing. But even more impressive than that is that while there was 8,200 plus people in church, we had over 10,000 people that were watching online. So we actually had more people. Over 200 people gave their lives to the Lord. And then as many of you know, not only do we have two campuses here in Kalamazoo, but we have radiant churches kind of spread out all over the place. Guadalajara, Mexico, Radiant Church, Nashville, Tennessee, Radiant Church, Kansas City, Missouri, Radiant Church, Louisville, Kentucky, Radiant Church, Luddington, Bay City, Jackson and Arbor. So combining all of our radiant churches last weekend, just in church, we had over 15,000 people that were in church in a radiant church on Easter Sunday. Come on, that's where we're celebrating this morning. So thank all of you for praying, for inviting, serving. You guys made it a phenomenal, phenomenal weekend. The second thing we wanna just highlight to you is that we are offering our first of many to come what we're calling impact teams that are gonna go on short-term mission strips. Radiant Church for 23 years from the very beginning, we made a decision, Jane and I, that Radiant Church was going to be a missions-giving church. In fact, first check we ever wrote was to world missions. Getting the gospel, how many know that the Great Commission is the only commission that Jesus gave us, which is to go into all the world, preach the gospel, make disciples, baptize them, and lo, I am with you even under the end of the age. The Great Commission is what Jesus has called us to do. It's the reason why you and I are still alive on planet Earth and not in heaven is because there's still a mission for us to carry out, right? Come on, right? Okay, so we've always been a mission-giving church. One of the things that we felt the Lord speaking to us is, our next phase is for us to become a mission-sending church, which means not just sending missionaries who move onto the mission field permanently, but sending people that live right here in Southwest Michigan on short-term trips to the mission field around the globe to partner up with our global partners to make an impact. And here's what we believe. We believe that if any of us will go on a short-term trip, five days, 10 days, 14 days, whatever it is, you will never come back the same that you leave. You will get on an airplane, leave one way, but you will come back differently because you will see what God is doing around the world, in the nations of the world. It will change your life, radically change how you go to work, how you raise your family, how you manage your money. It will change everything about your life. It's what you were created to do. So our first of many trips is coming up in August. It is a trip to the Philippines. And you will go there, work with our global partners, Paul and Marcy Babor, who go, there are over a thousand islands into Philippines. They have planted thousands of churches in that nation. You'll go into villages. You'll be involved in praying for the sick, sharing your testimony, preaching, serving, doing practical things in very, very specific, pragmatic and spiritual ways. And you will make a lasting impact on the nation of the Philippines. We're taking eight people, five people have already signed up and we need three more people who will step out of the boat, be sheep among wolves and say, you know what, Lord, I'm gonna step out of the boat. I'm gonna follow you in the global missions. And if you are interested in being one of the last three, then you can either speak to Pastor Joel Dorlag, call the office, speak to him, or better yet, you can go to radiant.church slash impact teams and get all the information that you need about it. So the first three, get to go. The rest of you, you gotta wait for the next trip, but we're planning some incredible trips like Northern Iraq and Kurdistan. We're talking about trips into China and different things like that. And we want everybody who calls radiant church to have an opportunity to go. Everybody say, okay. Thank you. Turn with me and your Bibles this morning to Psalm chapter 92. Psalm chapter 92. The title of my message this morning is created to flourish. And obviously it's tied in with the book. And if you haven't noticed, I have a shirt that matches the book cover. And I just wanna give a disclaimer. This was not my choosing. Our creative pastor, Joel Sorgi, bought this for me to wear on the release of the book. And when I saw it, I'm like, there's no way in the world I'm wearing that. He's like, I'm a black and gray, maybe on a crazy day wear a navy blue. I saw this. That looks like wallpaper. I can't wear it. And he's like, no, no, no, trust me. I have learned to trust younger people. So I put it on and I wore it and it fits. And by the way, this is not a necklace. This is Nike, which in Greek means victory, which means flourish. So it's all tying together. Do you see it's beautiful? It's a beautiful thing. So the reason why I wrote a book called Flourish is not just because I needed something else to do. It's when you write a book, it's different than preaching. Preaching, when you share a message like I'm doing this morning, you immediately see people's faces and you know that you're communicating in a way that people are grabbing hold of it. When you write a book, you have no idea. It's the most vulnerable thing in the world that you could do. So the reason why I tell you that is you don't just sit around going, oh, I think I'll write another book. When you write a book, you better be passionate about it. And I am passionate about the message of this book. It's entitled Flourish, but planting your life where God designed it to thrive. And the reason why I'm passionate about this is because I've noticed over the years as a pastor, not just take being a Christian out of it, but being a pastor, I've noticed that so many people who follow Jesus live far below the call that Jesus has on their lives. And it's because they believe certain lies. They believe that only exceptional people, one out of a million people actually do something that leaves a legacy, makes an impact, changes the world. Only a very small select group of people actually find fulfillment in life. The rest of us are just, we just kind of gotta muddle through, do the best that we can, and look forward to heaven. And now I'm not saying that life is supposed to be easy, but what I'm saying is that life is supposed to be purpose-filled and meaningful. We're created to flourish. My desire in writing the book is, and there's a whole bunch in it, that I won't be able to touch this morning, but it's to give seeds that get planted in people's hearts that will ultimately produce a flourishing life in Jesus that aren't just going to happen by default, because we are the sum total and we bear the fruit of the things that we call truth, even if those things that we call truth are actually lies. Your life is the fruit of whatever seeds you've received into your life and believe them to be truth. If it's the world's version of truth, it will produce the world's fruit, that if you accept, receive with meekness the implanted word of God, it will produce kingdom fruit in your life. So title of my message this morning is created to flourish, and Psalm 92 is where we're gonna look here, beginning in verse number 12. Look with me and your Bibles are on the screens. It says this, it says, the righteous flourish like the palm tree, and they grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord and they flourish in the courts of our God. Look at verse 14, they still bear fruit in old age and they are ever full of sap in green to declare that the Lord is upright. He is my rock and there is no unrighteousness in him. Notice that it says the righteous and the righteous in God's eye are those who have been made right in relationship with God. It's talking about Christians, it's talking about children of God. Those of us who have received Jesus as our Lord and Savior, you have been declared righteous, not by your good works, but by his grace. We are the righteous and notice what it says, that we're created to flourish like the palm tree and we're supposed to grow strong and wide with deep root systems like the cedars of Lebanon. And it's interesting that then it gives us the environment in which that happens. It says they flourish where? In the house of the Lord and in the courts of their God, the courts of our God. There is a corresponding environment that God has created for Christians to reach their maximum potential. For you to fulfill the purpose, the meaning that God has in your life. I wrote it like this. God has designed human beings to flourish from the very beginning of creation and designed an environment in which their maximum potential and purpose will be realized. And that environment is uniquely created and matched up to the way that God has not only created us in the first place, but then recreated us in Christ Jesus as new living creations. It's true, everything that God created, he's created with a corresponding environment that once it finds that environment, it will reach its maximum potential. It's all about environments. It doesn't matter what your potential is on the inside of you. Potential is only released when it finds the right environment. You see, you can take an egg corn and you can throw it in the water and what's inside that egg corn will never be released. But if you take that same egg corn and you put it in soil, it will activate the destiny on the inside of it and it will grow into a tall tree. It's all about environments. You can take a fish, put it in water and it'll swim everywhere. You can't catch it. I mean, people spend millions and millions of dollars trying to figure out how to catch fish, but you take a fish out of water and you leave them on dry ground and anybody can grab them. It's why it's because it has nothing to do with the lack of potential or the lack of success or the lack of ability on the inside of the fish. It has everything to do with the environment. Same with, it's true with birds in the air. Birds were created for the air. When God created birds, it says they were in the air. Fish were in the sea. Stars were in the heavens. Water was in the ocean. What about human beings? Human beings were created to flourish, but in relationship with God, in the presence of God, in the household of God, in proximity to God. That's our environment. One of the things that I love to watch on TV, there's a lot of different things, but the thing that I love every four years or now I think it's every two years that comes along is the Olympics. Anybody else enjoy watching the Olympics? And I don't care if it's winter Olympics or summer Olympics, I'm an equal opportunity Olympic viewer. And when the Olympics are on, I get super patriotic. Anybody else feel like that? It's like, man, I start crying when they, you know, the anthem plays and you see the red, white and blue and it's like, there we go. And I watch things that I would not normally watch. Like in the winter Olympics, how many of you have ever heard of the biathlon? Biathlon, right, you've never heard of it, but I watch it. It's guys on cross country skis who ski to targets and then shoot guns. Is there anything better, by the way, in life? And, but I'm like, I don't know who matched these two things up, but it's an amazing sport. Now I don't watch it any other time, but I watch it during the Olympics. How about curling? You ever seen that? It's like people on ice with brooms and flat bowling balls. And one guy is like, you know, he's like bringing it and then you got a guy with a broom. I don't even know the point of it, but it's cool. I don't even know when you win. I just watch it. It's fascinating to me because these people give their lives to develop these skills for one moment in time. One of my favorite athletes to watch in the Olympics over the last decade or so is Michael Phelps. Anybody remember watching Michael Phelps swim? I mean, this man is amazing. In fact, a couple of weeks ago when Tiger Woods won his first masters in 14 or 15 years, at one of the holes on the back nine, they looked at Tiger and he's locked in and then there's Michael Phelps. And he's like, ah, he's cheering on Tiger Woods. And I'm like, look at that. I mean, I'm two champions standing there like that. It's just amazing. Michael Phelps, think about his repertoire, his eight gold medals in a single Olympics. In 2008 in Beijing, he won eight gold medals. And over several different Olympics, he's won 23 gold medals. He's the most highly decorated gold medal-winning athlete in Olympic history. And it's because he knew the environment that he would flourish in. He's a swimmer. So what's interesting is biologists and sports, kinetic, sport, analysts and experts have actually studied why he's so incredible in the pool. And it has everything to do with his physiology. Think about these details about his body. He is six foot four and 194 pounds with a six foot seven wingspan. So I mean, that's pretty wide. He has a disproportionately longer torso than his legs. His legs are actually shorter proportionately to the rest of his body. He's six foot four. He should be wearing a 34 inseam but he actually wears a 31 length inseam pants. So he has a long torso, short legs. He wears size 14 shoes. It's 14 inches foot and his toes are webbed and they are connected to his ankles that hyper extend making them the perfect flipper in the water. His hands are hydrodynamic in the way that they move and his lung capacity is exceptional. Literally in the kinetic book that I was looking at online, they, scientists put him up next to a seal and said, if you were to take a human being and make him as close physiologically to a seal, his name would be Michael Phelps. He was created to swim, right? And that's why we all watch him. And obviously he has to do a lot of hard work and a lot of training, if I could train as hard as I want, I would sink like a stone. My body is not made to swim. Anybody else like that? But if you take Michael Phelps out of the pool and you say be a basketball player, he might be average. If you take Michael Phelps and you put him on the track for the Olympics, he would be average. But he found the environment that would bring the best in him out. Now I call Michael Phelps Aquaman. I know that DC Comics has a new Aquaman. Last night I made the mistake to a sleepy Saturday night crowd of saying, I knew a new Avengers movie's coming out. Part of the Avengers is Aquaman. And the only time anybody budged was a bunch of college students who was like, he's DC, he's not Marvel. It's like, I wish you knew your Bible like you know your comic books. But don't, but don't at me, don't at me. Spoiler alert, end game. It's called the Bible and we win. How you like that? And by the way, I will go see the movie. Okay, so. But if there was an Aquaman, it's Michael Phelps. You equally were created by God not to be succumbed to failure, fear and futility. You were not created to stand back and watch other people do exceptional things. You see the lies that we bought into even as Christians is this, is that there's just a few people that do really exceptional things. The rest of us, the best that we can hope for is to get through life with the least amount of resistance or experience the least amount of pain. Most of us, we kind of grow up thinking, well, don't get your hopes up too high. You're probably gonna experience a lot of disappointment. You're gonna be average at best. You're gonna be like a snowflake. You're unique, but nobody's gonna know when you land. And we just, we make heroes out of people that do exceptional things. But that's not at all how God sees you. And that's not at all how God created you, especially recreated you in Christ Jesus. He's created you, Ephesians 2.10 says, for good works, that he prepared beforehand that you should walk in them. Do you know that in Jesus Christ, you're seated with Christ in heavenly places? You've been made brand new. You are a vessel of clay, but you contain the spirit of the living God. You have a destiny that predates your personhood. You were in the mind of God long before you ever had a name. And when you were saved, when you were born again, he began to unleash, there's stuff on the inside of you that he wants to come out. But as long as we believe the lies that we can never do anything other than just hold on and make it to heaven, we will live so far below our birthright. Church, we need to know that we were created to flourish in Jesus. We were created to bear fruit. We were created to fulfill the mandate God has always had on our lives from the very beginning. Turn with me over in your Bibles to the very first chapter of the Bible, Genesis chapter one. There's a principle in theology, as you turn there, it's called the first mention principle. And here's what it says. Anything that God mentions for the first time in scripture is actually a guide for every other aspect of that theme or that subject that you will study in the rest of scripture. So there's things that we find in scripture when they're first mentioned that we can't find anywhere else, but it gives order and it gives distinction and qualification to that subject. So if we wanna know what we were created for, we need to go back to the very beginning when God created mankind in the garden. Look with me here at Genesis chapter one, verse 26. God has created everything, the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the seas, the birds, the fish, the creepy things on the earth. I love that scripture, God made all the creepy things. And God now turns his attention to form into fashion the crowning achievement of his creation, mankind. And here's what God does. Everything else was stage and props for what God really wanted to make, which was mankind. It says in Genesis 1.26, then God said, let us make man in our own image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heaven and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. In 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 heaven and over every living thing that moves on the earth. So here's God, God creates the heavens and the earth and like telescopically, he begins to zero in on the purpose for why he's creating everything. And it's mankind. And God has a conversation with himself within the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And he says, let us make man after our image. So God creates Adam. And Genesis chapter two gives you a more detailed version of the creation event where he makes out of Adam woman. And he brings man and woman together in the first marriage, the first family, the first institution. And then he gives four descriptions of why he created them. He said, I've created you, I've blessed you so that you will flourish in four arenas. You will fulfill your destiny if you flourish, if you thrive, if you grow in these four arenas. Number one is identity. It says, let's create them after our image and according to our likeness. In other words, let's make them like us. We were created as sons and daughters of the living God to bear the image of God, the Latin is Imago dei, which means we are icons. When you see, originally when you saw Adam, when creation saw Adam, they were looking as if they were looking at God himself. Not because they were God, but because they were created in the image of God and they were a signpost of who they belong to and whose sons and daughters they were. So their whole identity was based around who they belong to, who they were in relationship with. So they were created to walk the earth, Adam and Eve, mankind, knowing who they were. I am a son of God. I walk with God, I know God, this is my identity. I look like my dad, I act like my dad, I represent my dad. And that's a powerful, powerful concept because what we realized today is now on the other side of the fall, we live in a broken world, not a perfect good world, not an ordered world like God originally created, and we'll get to that in a minute, but the world is broken, it's dysfunctional, it's turned upside down. And do you know what the number one issue that is facing our culture and our world right now is the issue of identity? People don't know who we are. And do you know the number one area of a person's life that the devil challenges? The devil never shows up at your front door and says, hi, I'm the devil. I'm here to confuse you and destroy you. He messes with us in the battlefield of our mind and our weaknesses and our vulnerability, and he reinforces it by cultures that are under his influence. And what does he do? He's challenging the issue of identity. So many people are confused about their identity. So many people think I'm messed up, I'm dysfunctional, I'm living in a body that doesn't match my true identity. And so the devil takes incredible pleasure in distorting human identity. And you wanna know why? It's because you were created in the image of God and when he distorts, attacks and perverts and deceives on the issue of identity, he's actually disfiguring the image of God in the earth. And he's making a mockery of God by disfiguring and distorting God's children. But originally it was not so. Originally God created mankind so that we would know who we are. You see, when you figure out who you are, you cease to become vulnerable to influences outside of God. But as long as you are vulnerable in the area of your identity, you become susceptible to every attack of the enemy. Do you know that when Jesus was in the wilderness being tempted by the devil, he was tempted in every one of these four arenas I'm about to give to you. Number one is this. He said, if you are the son of God, turn these rocks into bread. What is that? It's a challenge of his identity. And it was right on the heels of him being baptized when God the Father tore open the heavens and said, this is my beloved son. Do you know the same's true over your life? The devil will attack you in the area of your identity. Because he knows it's one of the four realms you were created to flourish in. Number two is authority, authority. How many know that we live in a world right now where there's chaos, lawlessness, and all authority is being challenged? The greatest authority that there is is God's authority. God, all authority is derived from God and it's delegated from God. When God created mankind, he also gave mankind authority. He said this, I want you to have dominion over all the earth and I want you to subdue everything in the earth. What does that mean? I've given you authority. I've given you authority. If you've ever raised kids and had an older kid that you left in charge to be the babysitter over their younger siblings, you know how this goes. It's time for you to go to bed. You're not my boss. Why, it's because we're equals. Oh yeah, no, tonight I have mom and dad's authority and they said, you go to bed at night. I'm here to enforce it. And you know that never goes well, there's always conflict, but that's delegated authority. When we have sheriffs that drive around and you'll see a car that says Kalamazoo County Sheriff, it's not necessarily the sheriff in that vehicle, but it's somebody who's been deputized or given delegated authority from the sheriff who's driving around enforcing the laws of the land that we live in. Adam and Eve were supposed to be icons that represent the image of God who carried the authority to carry out God's will in all the earth. Let me back up and ask you a question. When God created Adam and Eve, when he created the world, where did he plant Adam and Eve? Where did he put them? Somebody shout it out. He put them in a garden. Genesis two says, he planted them in a garden. Let me give you a definition of a garden this morning because it will help you. A garden, I know we all think gardens tulips and daisies and flowers and little pots and mulch, but the Hebrew word for a garden is defined as this. A garden is a place of protection, shelter, and order. An environment of boundaries under protective guardianship, it is a cultivated place. So it has boundaries, limitations, it has rules, it has order, and it's under the protective guardianship of the ultimate authority. In other words, it's a prepared environment that God planted Adam and Eve in. He said, when you're planted here under my guardianship, submitted to my word, when my boundaries and my limitations are your guidelines, then this becomes a place of safety. It becomes an environment in which you will flourish and reach your maximum potential. Now the garden that God created was not the whole planet, it was a specific garden. The rest of the world was still under disorder. Why did God not do the whole world the way that he did the garden? It's because that was the job he was given to Adam and Eve. He gave them a scale model. He said, you see how I've done this in the garden? Yeah, everything's in order, there's boundaries, there's limits, it's submitted to my word and relationship, yeah, we get that. That's what I want you to do to the rest of the planet. Adam and Eve were, how are we gonna do that? You have my identity, yeah, I know that, and I'm giving you authority, go subdue it, bring everything under dominion, great. So when they were stepped over the boundaries, they did it on behalf of God to make the rest of the world look like the scale model of the garden. It was the great commission, go into all the world. But instead of them exercising their dominion and bringing the world under the influence of Jesus, what they did was they came under the influence of the devil and gave up their authority and their identity was broken. And they failed to flourish. The last two areas that God called human beings to flourish in number three is fruitfulness. He said, I want you to be fruitful and multiply. You see, God's idea of marriage was that whatever God brings together will complement one another and when they come together, they will be able to do something together that they could not do apart and there will be fruit in life that is produced as a result of that. So God created the marriage, first marriage, he conducted the first marriage, Adam and Eve and he brought them together and he said, now I want you to be fruitful and multiply. How many know what that implies? God was not caught off guard when human beings discovered sex. God wasn't in heaven, I had no idea they would do. Cover your eyes, Gabriel. What in the world, that is not what, wow. No, God said it's good. In the bonds of covenant, in complementarian, you're coming together, man and woman and all of a sudden both of you bring something and there's life that's a result of it. God said, I want you to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth with other icons, with other image bearers so that the earth is covered with a godly seed. He wanted sons and daughters that would flow out of this. That's why he said, be fruitful, be fruitful, multiply. Now, we can look at that in a natural and say, obviously it's talking about having kids but it's more than in a spiritual sense. The word there to be fruitful and multiply means whatever is on the inside of you reproduce and multiply more of it. So God is a creator, he's given human beings the privilege of also being able to give life to immortal beings. We give life to children and we carry on what God started in us. But the whole overarching idea of multiplication is this, is that when we leave this planet we're supposed to leave more of the image of God, more righteousness, more of the kingdom of God, more of a legacy, more disciples than were on the planet when we arrived. See, a lot of us live our lives like snowflakes. We had snow last night which was disgusting. But here's what they tell us about every snowflake. How many have ever heard this? That every snowflake is unique and different. If you've ever heard that, raise your hand, okay. You've never heard a snowflake land. Billions of snowflakes fell last night, all unique. But as soon as they landed, they melded in to the overall. That's how most of us view our lives. I'm unique, I'm special, I'm a snowflake. But when I'm born I just kind of blend in with everybody else and eventually I melt away dust in the wind. But God didn't design you to just be a unique snowflake. He designed you to be a unique meteorite, an asteroid so that when you hit, baby, you make a crater, you leave a mark that's gonna far outlive you. So that when you hit, everybody oughta know. When you come into the kingdom of God, when you discover who you are in Jesus, when what's broken gets healed, when heaven begins to merge in and take up residency on the inside of a believer, male or female, it does not matter. It should leave a legacy and it should leave a mark in the midst of a generation. We should not just slowly melt away. We're here to leave a mark that far outlives ourselves. We're here to bear fruit. That's what we're created to do. And the last of the four that we're called to is we're called to divine partnership with God. In other words, crafting the world. God's overall purpose for the earth was that heaven and earth would come together. And the earth would literally become a dwelling place for God. That God would come and heaven and earth would be one. Well, what went wrong? The fall. The fall happened where Adam and Eve were tempted by the devil, the serpent, and they succumbed to temptation and they surrendered. Listen, they surrendered their identity. How did they do that? Because the enemy came and said, did God tell you not to eat that fruit? Yeah, he did. Well, you know what? God knows if you really do, your eyes are gonna be open and you'll actually be just like him. What was he saying? Because you can have an identity without being submitted to God. You can be your own person. Make your own decisions. Make your own rules. Whatever feels good, whatever looks good to you. You can have your own identity. When they ate the fruit in disobedience to God, they actually chose that other identity. What they didn't realize is that identity would be broken, it would be frail, and it would be vulnerable and ultimately lead to death and futility. They chose that identity. What else did they lose? They lost authority. How did they do that? Because what we see in Jesus' temptation and the wilderness is the devil shows up and he shows them all the kingdoms of the world. And he says, the devil says this to Jesus. He says, all of these kingdoms in their glory have been given to me and I can give them to anybody I want to. When did that happen? I thought God gave mankind all authority. And I thought he gave them all the earth to subdue it. I'll tell you what happened. When mankind bowed the knee to the devil's word and rejected God's word, they handed the keys of all of the earth over to the enemy and he had them. That's why the world is jacked up, messed up, turned upside down. That's why it's not filled with light, it's filled with spiritual darkness. That's why death reigns instead of life. That's why he's called the God of this age instead of the God of gods and the king of kings and the Lord of lords. That's where everything went wrong. We messed things up, not God. And when the fall happened, we fell in all of these areas. Our identity was broken. Our authority was lost. We're still creative, which means we're still multiplying things, but instead of multiplying life, we're multiplying spiritual sickness and disease and hatred and selfishness and pride and greed. And instead of partnering with God, here's what happened at the fall. We hid from God. Remember at the beginning, I said we were creative for the presence of God? Genesis chapter three tells us that after mankind fell, it says in verse number eight, that Adam and Eve heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden. Now I want you to think about this. What would it be like if your relationship with God was so close that every day that you went to work, when you came home, God the Father was waiting for you in your living room to have a conversation. I know he's with us, but I'm talking about as real as we could see and verbally express ourselves. Imagine Jesus sitting in your barker lounger when you get home or in your chair, whatever it is, your couch, whatever. And he's like, how was your day? I was amazing. But what about this Lord? And he's like, oh, let me tell you about that. Well, it seemed like this. Well, don't, you take authority. Can you imagine that level of relationship? That's what Adam and Eve had. After they fell, they quickly realized that everything they had been created to flourish in had been broken. So now when they heard the voice of God, instead of running to him, because he would come down in the cool of the day every single day. But now when they hear him, they hide behind trees. Why? Because they're afraid. They're hiding from the presence of the Lord. The very environment they were created to flourish in is now the very thing that they're hiding from. It's the effects of sin. It's the effects of the fall. This is how we got in the mess that we're in. But I got good news this morning. God's always had a plan to restore everything that's been broken. That's why he sent his son, Jesus. Jesus came not as the first Adam, but as the second Adam. Adam was called the son of God. Jesus is called the son of God. Adam fell at the base of a tree. Jesus, the second son of God, the second Adam, died on a tree to set us free and to restore everything that had been lost by Adam in front of the first tree. Last weekend we celebrated Easter. We celebrated Jesus' resurrection from the dead. Why is that significant? Because what did Adam introduce into our broken world that has affected all of us? Death. Now the second Adam comes, he goes to the tree and instead of choosing independence from God's will, he says, not my will, but yours be done and he dies in our place on the tree. And on the third day to show that God accepted his sacrifice as being full payment for the recompense in the garden. What does God do to Jesus? He raises him from the dead. And I want you to think about this for a second. When Jesus is raised from the dead, where is he at? What kind of environment is he in? He's in a garden. And in fact, Mary and Martha, when they encountered the resurrected Jesus, they thought he was the gardener. And you know what? Indeed he was. Because in the resurrection, Jesus is cultivating a spiritual environment in which broken men and women are called back in to full relationship with God the Father, given access by one spirit and God is cultivating an environment that when we plant our lives in Jesus, when we submit our lives to God, our roots go down into Jesus. We begin to flourish and fulfill the potential and the destiny that God has always had for us. Death is defeated. Failure is not an option. Futility is a thing of the past. Identity is restored. Authority is restored. Listen to these verses. I'll rattle them off quick. Talk about identity. In John chapter one, it says, but to all those who received him, he who believed on his name, he gave them the right to become the children of God. That's identity. You want to talk about authority? Matthew 28, Jesus said in verse number 18, after his resurrection, he said, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore you go and make disciples of all nations. You want to talk about fruitfulness? Jesus said in John chapter 15, you did not choose me, but I chose you. That you might go and bear fruit and that your fruit should remain. You want to talk about an inheritance. You want to talk about a partnership with God. 1 Peter 2 says, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you might proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Listen to this, once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you did not receive mercy, but you have received mercy. God's called us back into the garden. He's called us back into the cultivated place under his authority with the boundaries of his word, walking in intimacy with him and in a unified community. And you know what that environment is called? It's called the church of Jesus Christ. Let me tell you why the church is so significant. The church of Jesus Christ is significant not because of the buildings that we dwell in. It's because Jesus is building a church made with living stones. No perfect stones. We're not bricks that all look the same. We're living stones. We've all got some edges that have been shaved off of us. We've all got some abnormalities. We've all got some odd shaped little things. But a stone house is built by finding where every rock fits in together. And God is building a living habitation for his presence to dwell. You know what? God has not turned his back on earth. There is coming a day when Jesus is coming back and he's gonna make all things right. Heaven and earth are gonna come together. The last chapter of this book says, I saw the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven and it came like a bride prepared for its bridegroom and heaven and earth were united together. When you and I gather in the church as the church, the spirit of God fills this place. We are a prophetic picture to a broken and a lost world of what God intends to do with this whole planet. We are a prophetic signpost, a prophetic people. And it starts with each of us. It starts with each of us coming to terms. I was created to flourish in purpose. And I can't do it without God. And I can't do it without submitting myself to God's way, truth and life, which is Jesus. As soon as we surrender, we undo the effects of what happened in the garden. We find our identity. I'm in Christ. We receive authority. I'm anointed by the Holy Spirit. We realize we're called to bear fruit for the kingdom. And we reestablish lines of intimacy with the Father. That's when life begins to get good. I want everybody if you'd stand up with me please. Now somebody told me Michael Phelps is a Christian that he gave his heart to the Lord. I celebrate that. Because now not only is he gonna have gold medals from the Olympics, but he's gonna receive a crown of everlasting life on the day when Jesus, the one who created him, sees him face to face. And you know what? I want that for every single one of us. There are no exceptional Christians. There's only an exceptional God. And the reason why we're not exceptions is because every single one of us we're created to thrive, be fruitful, and to know the Lord. And this is the environment. Of worship, of his word, of his people together that we were created to thrive in. I want you to buy your heads with me if you would all over this place. Portage as well, online as well. I didn't do this in the other services, but I just, I feel really strongly that this is the direction the Lord wants to take. Because if you're here and you say, you know what, I've not put my roots fully down into Jesus. I'm still wrestling with these issues, but today I've realized that God's design for me, his desire for me is always that I would live victoriously, that I would flourish, that I'd be strong and steadfast in Jesus. You may be a Christian, you may have never become a Christian, it doesn't matter, but today you're saying, I wanna put my life in God's hands in a real demonstrable way. Today I wanna be somebody that at the end of my life, I bear fruit for the kingdom of God. I've lived a flourishing life. If that's you, and you're not flourishing right now, but you say, I wanna flourish. I want you to just wherever you're at, just raise your hand and say, I need, I need God's help that I can flourish. I need God's help, his hands all over the place. You can put your hands down. Second thing I wanna ask is this, if you're here and you'd say, I've never surrendered my life to God like you're talking about. I've never made Jesus Christ the Lord of my life. And I've been stumbling, I've experienced fear, failure, futility. Today I wanna make Jesus Christ the Lord of my life for real, I've not been a Christian. Today I realize I need Jesus in my life. I want God to forgive my sins, I wanna be restored into a right relationship with God. I wanna know heaven's my home. Pray for me today, I wanna surrender to Jesus Christ. Pray for me, I want you to just raise your hand. Today is your day to receive new life. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm scanning the room. This is just as concrete as it gets. You need to give your life to Jesus. You need him to save you and to forgive you and rescue you from your sin and your brokenness. If that's you, raise your hand right now. Do not wait another second, this is your moment. Thank you, thank you. I see hands all over the room. You can put your hands down. I want my prayer team if they would move into place, step into place right now. I want everyone in this room, we're gonna say a prayer. And here's why, the Bible says if we believe in our heart on the Lord Jesus Christ and we confess with our mouth that God has raised him from the dead, we will be saved. So today we're gonna confess him. All of us, some of us for the hundredth time, some of us for the first time. We're gonna say it out loud together. Here we go, say it with me. Say, heavenly Father, I come in Jesus' name and I confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. He's the way, the truth, and the life. Come into my heart today. Forgive me, cleanse me, and break the chains that the enemies had over me. Set me free today. I submit to you, Father. I believe in Jesus. And as of today, I am a new creation. I'm destined to flourish. I'm created to bear fruit. I will make a difference as I follow Jesus. Thank you for loving me and saving me in Jesus' name. Amen. He just prayed that prayer. Welcome to the family of God.