 God sent an angel to visit Mary and the angel said, Mary, you have nothing to fear for God has a surprise for you and his name will be Jesus. Come on everybody, can we get it up for Jesus? Come on. Listen, it ain't your birthday, it's his birthday. And we hope everybody's ready for a fantastic Christmas that is coming up. We're very, very excited about our Christmas Eve online special. How many of you remember growing up and watching Christmas specials on television with your family, like the Bob Hope Christmas special? Anybody remember the, if you're under 30, you're like, who's Bob Hope? Yeah, well, I remember the Donnie and Marie Christmas special, anybody remember that? Nope, but I remember as a little kid that was really, really a cool thing. So what we decided to do this year was we knew last year we had 10,000 people that came through our Christmas Eve services and we're like, ah, we're not gonna be able to do that this year. But how can we really craft something that's gonna help impact people in a really, really special way with their homes, with their families, with extended family that's joining them. And so basically what we did was we created our very own radiant church Christmas special. And it is beautiful, it's so well done. I recorded the message for it this last Wednesday. And I wanna just encourage you, this is not just for you, although it is for you, but it's also a really wonderful introduction to the gospel and to church for those of you who have friends and relatives who may be with you or may not be able to see you this year and are really going through some challenging things. And so they may not be able to make the pilgrimage to family Christmas, but you could watch it with them online and participate in that. So I think it's gonna be really, really good and encouraging. And so Merry Christmas to all of you. And we wanna say hello to Portage and those of you who are joining us online this weekend. We love all of you and everybody, if you have your Bibles, open them with me to Luke chapter one, Luke chapter one. This is part two of Merry's miracle. And we're looking at Christmas through the lens of Merry. Merry, this young woman who becomes the mother of Jesus, our savior. Last week, we looked at how the angel came. Gabriel came, spoke to her, called her highly favored of the Lord. And we looked at what comes with favor. And today what I wanna do is I wanna talk to you about carrying your promise. Because Merry had to not only receive the word, the message, literally the word of God, Jesus, who is the eternal word of God. She received that word along with the message and the invitation to partner with what God was doing. And her response, you might remember from last week was found in verse 38. She said, behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word. But now Merry goes on this journey of actually carrying the word to full term, carrying the promise to its full term. And look with me here beginning in verse number 39. It says in those days, Merry arose and he went with haste into the hill country to a town in Judah. And she entered the house of Zachariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Merry, the baby leaped in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And she exclaimed with a loud cry, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ear, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And we obviously know that the baby was John the Baptist. Verse 45, and blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. Today I just wanna encourage you right now. I don't know if you write your Bibles or not. If you're looking at your Bible on a mobile device, go ahead and just press down, highlight this, underline it, share it, do whatever you gotta do. But if you got an old school Bible like I got right now, take a pen and underline that verse. If you don't have a pen, steal it from your neighbor. And just underline it where it says, and blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. That's a powerful verse. And then verse number 46, and then Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant for behold from now on all generations will call me blessed for he who is mighty has done great things for me. And holy is his name and his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm and he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate and he has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers to Abraham and to his offspring forever. And then the last verse, verse number 56, and Mary remained with her for about three months and then returned home. So this is the continuation of Mary's story. The angel Gabriel comes and announces that she is going to give birth to the Messiah, the savior of the world. How is this gonna happen? God says, I'm going to do it by the power of the Holy Spirit. And you're gonna give birth to him but he's going to become the savior of the world. And she can't figure it out just like you and I could in no way figure out how this was going to happen but her response was let it be to me, according to your word. She said yes to the invitation of God to partner in what he was going to do that was nothing short of miraculous. That's what miracles are, right? Miracles are things that you can't figure out in the natural. They defy explanation. They defy even the ability to logically process it out but that's what God does. God does miracles in our lives. You may have had a miracle in your life that you can look back on and say there was absolutely no way that it should have gone that way but somehow God intervened. You may not have a miracle on the level of Mary where it's like, you know, there's no way I should have been able to give birth but yet I did, maybe you do have that kind of a story. But here's what I know is I know that on the other side of every promise that God gives us is the need for his miraculous provision to bring that miracle to pass. Every promise that God has given to us, the Bible says in 2 Corinthians that all of the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ Jesus. So Jesus is the fulfillment. He is the embodiment of all of God's promises. He's the yes, he's the amen of all of God's promises but for every promise that God has given to you in his word, the only way that those promises come to pass is by his miraculous power. What do you mean, pastor Lee? Well, think about salvation. The only way you can be saved which is a promise of God whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, right? Right? Thank you. I got like three amen. You guys have been shopping all day, I can tell. Been eating sugar cookies and you're on a sugar low. It's all right. The promise is whoever calls upon a name of the Lord shall be saved. That's the promise but no one comes into the Father unless the Spirit draws him. That's the miracle. You see, anybody can be saved. How come everybody isn't saved? Well, we have to partner with what God has promised but it requires the Holy Spirit performing the work on the inside of us and it doesn't stop there. You see, Jesus didn't give us a book and say, here, figure it out. He gave us promises that were so incredible that they would require his divine intervention in our lives so that our lives really by the end of our lives should become a just conflagration of miracle after miracle after miracle after miracle that when we look back on our lives and say, that shouldn't have happened, that shouldn't have happened, should have never met this person, should have never ended up there, should have never had a way but there was a way. I should have never lived this long but I lived this long. I should have never led this person to the Lord and it's just a breadcrumb trail of miracles that point directly at Jesus. You see, Mary had to say yes to the promises of God but she also had to carry this promise to its full term. She had literally had to carry it. The angel of the Lord announced the word but she had to receive the word literally, Jesus, the word of God but then she had to carry the word. How long did she have to carry it? Nine months. She carried Jesus to full term. Have you ever thought about that? That Jesus was a baby and he grew and he developed and he matured on the inside of his mother's womb. Jesus had an umbilical cord. Jesus had a blood type. Jesus was born and then when he was born he still had to grow and he had to develop. I mean, if you don't sit around and think about this stuff it'll melt your mind when you start thinking about the miracle of how the word, according to John one, became flesh but I'll tell you one part of the miracle. The first part of the miracle was that Mary had to believe the promise but then she had to carry the promise. So let me define for you what I believe is a accurate definition of the word promise because we throw that around a lot. You know, the promises of God are yesterday went. What do you mean by a promise? Here's what I mean by a promise. A promise is the word of God that he is working in you and working in your life right now to perform. That's the promise of God. The promise of God is the word obviously out of scripture but it's the word that he is highlighting and the theme that he is accomplishing in your life right now. The Holy Spirit is working it because we've got a whole lot of word right here but the thing that we need to pay attention to is what is the Holy Spirit highlighting out of here in here right now in my life. That is the promise of God and the promises of God when the Holy Spirit highlights things in our life typically are things that we look at and go, you know, I've tried over and over to bring change to that area of my life. I've tried to believe God for that before but what is required for the promise to come to pass is not us knowing about the promise, it's the Holy Spirit working that promise on the inside of us and then what we have to do just like Mary is we have to carry that promise. We have to carry it to full term. We have to allow that promise on the inside of us to develop and to grow and to mature and to begin to take on flesh and to multiply and then carry it all the way to full term where it is delivered because that's what Mary did. Mary started with a promise and the Holy Spirit overshadowed her and then she had to carry it. I wonder what promises, what word is the Holy Spirit highlighting in you today in the season that we're in? What is he working right now on the inside of you that he is calling you to carry full term so that it can be fully delivered in your life? We need to begin to think like this and ask ourselves these questions on a regular basis. God, what are you doing in me? What are you highlighting in me? Are you highlighting fear that you're trying to eradicate fear or you're trying to uproot some things that are deeply embedded on the inside of me from years and years and years of believing lies about who I am, about what other people expect or see in me? God, what are you working in me? Are you working a dream? Are you working faith on the inside of me right now? Whatever it is that God is speaking and highlighting in your life, here's the promise that whatever he's highlighting, he's also orchestrating. Whatever he's highlighting in your life, you're not alone in seeing it come to pass. The Holy Spirit is the one that he's the only one who can orchestrate it. And that's what Mary did. Mary had to carry this and there were three really stages to her carrying the promise. And I believe that these three stages are significant and important for all of us on a daily basis, whatever season you are in, these are the things that we have got to do with the promise if we're gonna see it come to pass. Number one is this. We've got to protect our promise at all, at all stakes. With everything that we have, we have to protect the promise. Listen to what Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter one, verse 14. This is the new living translation. He says, through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us, carefully guard the precious truth that has been entrusted to you. Guard that which has been entrusted to you. We have to, number one, protect the promise. How did Mary do this? Well, Mary recognizes that she's pregnant and she knows the pressure that's gonna come against her because of the promise. She knows what, how Joseph's gonna respond. She knows how the, you know, her parents are probably gonna respond. You know, we don't hear anything in scripture about her parents, but parents in this room imagine how you would respond. Neighbors, how many know? Everybody wants to know the T on what's going on about Mary, you know, the little Mary girl lives down the street on Nazareth Boulevard. Well, you didn't hear it from me, but I'll let you know so that you can pray with her family about this, but it looks like. I know that doesn't happen. The Facebook, you know, exploded with, you know, subtext and passive aggressive posts about her. She knew how people were gonna respond. So how does she respond? She immediately goes to the hill country of Judea where her relative Elizabeth is and she goes to stay with her. Why did she pick Elizabeth? Well, number one, she had already heard that she who had been called barren for years and born the stigma of not being able to have a child is now pregnant. In other words, she knew that Elizabeth was also carrying a miracle. And you know who you need to be around when you are carrying a promise from God that is way beyond you, that is over your pay grade, that you don't have the capacity to bring to pass? What you don't wanna do is get into an environment with people who are skeptical, cynical, practical. You don't wanna get into an environment where people are gonna tell you, just settle down. You're being fanatical. You just need to relax. Don't become a crazy person. No, you need to get around with somebody who knows what it is to carry a miracle. Elizabeth had been carrying a miracle for three months. She who had been called barren who had spent decades of her life being mocked and ridiculed saying they must have done something wrong or God wouldn't be judging them like this. She had thick skin. She was priestly, Zachariah or her husband was a priest. So she knew how to access the presence of God and she was living up in the hill country. And Mary said, I've gotta protect what's on the inside of me. I gotta get around somebody who's a little bit further than I am down the road, holding on to a word, seeing it become a promise. I gotta get into a high place, not into a low place. And I need to surround myself with some people with a priestly anointing. She had to protect the word, protect the promise of God. But a lot of times what we do is we share prematurely our promise with people that instead of them responding in faith, they're gonna respond to you out of their own envy, jealousy or their failures. Well, I mean, that's nice and all, but you just need to, I once upon a time, I used to have some dreams too. No, you don't need that, you gotta protect this. That's what she did. She protected the promise of God. Elizabeth, when she sees Mary coming, her promise responded to Mary's promise. John the Baptist on the inside of her, you know he's a wild one because even when he's three months in gestation in his mother's womb, he's already jumping up and down when he gets into the presence of Jesus. And it says Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit. I mean, so here comes Mary walking down a rocky little trail, all of a sudden she's about three months, she's got her little belly, I don't know how, I was probably in her 60s walking around and she's up in the hill country, it's steep and she sees Mary all of a sudden, the baby starts jumping up and down and she says, whoa, the Holy Spirit, she just got goosey, goosey all over her and she felt the anointing of the Lord. And it's like her promise responded to Mary's promise. Her deep cried out to Mary's deep. And there was a collision of promises. And what happens when there's a collision of promises between two people? The Bible describes it as iron sharpening iron. Iron sharpening iron. She spent three months with Elizabeth. Why? She wanted to ensure that the promise was growing and developing and more than even just the child that she was carrying, she needed to get her heart prepared to give birth to Jesus. So we got a number one, we got to protect our promise. Number two, we got to process our promise. We have to process our promise. That's one of the reasons why Mary went to find Elizabeth because nobody else could understand what she was going through except Elizabeth and she needed to process it. She needed to meditate on it. She needed to think about it because a promise, when God gives you a promise or he is working a word deep on the inside of you, he's working something in your character, he's working something connected to your calling, it's not going to be instantaneous. It's going to require a process. I want you to think about this. From before the foundations of the world, Jesus was the Lamb slain. So in the purposes of God, Jesus always has been the Son of God, the one who would willingly lay down his life for the sins of the world. Nothing changed, but when he stepped into history, he had to walk it out in hours, days, weeks, months and years. The promise that God has over your life is eternal, but the process takes time. And one of the reasons a lot of people don't see the promise that they sense that God is speaking to them or they don't see maturity take place in the way that they had hoped it was, is because we lose heart and we lose heart in the process. Or we don't process it right because we get discouraged and we get disappointed that it doesn't happen in a minute. We like instant, but can I just tell you that the promises of God are not like instant rice. You don't pop them in the microwave for 30 seconds and there you go. It's not instant, it takes time. There is process to all supernatural progress. And that's what Mary understood. I need to go and process this. I've gotta meditate on this. I have to really soak this in and I've gotta let the word, listen, the word go through its natural process. So Jesus inside of her, who is the word made flesh, goes from three months, if you've seen the pictures of what infants in the mother's womb look like at three months and then at four months and then at six months and then at eight months. They grow and they develop. Life begins at conception, but the full contours and the shaping of the word takes months. And even after Jesus was born, the Bible says that he still had to grow in wisdom, favor, and stature with both God and men. There was a process to his conception. There was a process to his adolescence. There was a process to his ministry. Jesus had to go through a process in order to fulfill the purpose of God for his life. How in the world do we think it's gonna happen in a minute? You know what, I feel like God's called me to a massive platform to be an evangelist to the whole world. It's like, great, where are you serving at church? Well, I'm not called to serve, I'm called to be an evangelist. Oh yeah, well guess what? Your process begins right here in Sunday school, being an evangelist to three-year-olds. Because if you can't preach to a three-year-old, you can't preach to an unsaved person. You're gonna have a hard time in India. Well, you know what, I'm called to be a millionaire. Yeah, well, start with being faithful at minimum wage. Show up on time. Well, I'm called to be an entrepreneur. Great, then who are you working for? Don't show up on time, be there 10 minutes early. Don't punch out right when you're done. Be the last one to leave. Show up when you say you're gonna show up. Work when you say, all you bosses right now, you're welcome. Send me fudge for Christmas, because I'm helping you right here. Because God will never trust you with your own business until you've been faithful in somebody else's business. God's not gonna trust you with millions if he can't trust you with tens of thousands. Well, someday when I'm a billionaire, then I'm gonna tide. No, you won't tide then because the stakes are higher. You gotta start right now. It's the process. The Bible says, in fact, Jesus said this about process in Mark 4, 28. He said, the earth yields crops by itself. Listen to this, first the blade, then the head, and after that, the full grain in the head. And if you read it in context, Jesus is talking about the word of God, how it develops in our lives. Mary carried the word, protected the word, and had to process the word. You know, when God begins to highlight things to you, the first thing that we're called to do is meditate on that. And to chew on it. You know, Psalm chapter one, it's one of my favorite Psalms. We pray it a lot if you follow along with us when we pray at, you know, morning prayer. It says, blessed is the man who delights himself in the law of God for in it, he meditates day and night. And that says, he's like a tree planted by rivers of living water, brings forth his fruit in season, his leaf does not wither. That word meditate, it's also in Joshua chapter one where it says meditate in this word of the law, day and night, and then you will have good success. Do you know what the Hebrew word for meditate means? It is a word picture that's relating to how a cow chews grass. So have you ever watched a cow chew grass? It is a slow process. It's like, it's not like how Pastor John eats. I mean, he literally opens up. It's like a trap door. And I mean, you can just slide it in there. And I think he like chews like one out of every three bites. He just, it goes in there. But I'm not talking like that. I'm talking about a cow will just chew on it and chew on. And I don't, I can't remember how many stomachs a cow has. I think it's like four or five stomachs. But here's what a cow does. A cow will chew slow the grass. They call it chewing the cud. They swallow the grass. And then he burps it up again. And he chews it some more. And then he swallows it. And he ain't know what he does. He burps it up again. Let's chew on it some more. And he'll do that all day long. But by the time he's done it three, four, five times, there's absolutely no nutritional value that has not been removed from that grass. He's taken everything out of it. So here's what we do with the word of God. We like take it, we consume the word of God like Pastor John eats. It was like, whoa, I should know it. I can't think about, whoa. And what we need to do is put it into our spirit. We need to let it just get down into us. And then we're walking along throughout the day and out of our spirit, I should just go, whoa. Oh yeah. I'm gonna think about that a little bit more. Mm. Mm, that's so good. And then you run into somebody and it's like, you want some? No, it's good. Because it's only for me, it ain't for you. This is what, this is what God's processing in me. And I'm gonna chew on it a little bit more until there's nothing left in it. And then I get it digested and it gets in me. We've got to process, that's what meditate means. You'll never forget that by the way. This is what it means to meditate. It's like slow chewing, it's like, what does it mean that God is the God who can do exceedingly, abundantly above all that I ever ask or think? What does that mean when Jesus says take heed, watch and pray? That's what he's speaking to me right now. What does it mean that God wants me to be the head only and not beneath, we need to meditate. We need process. Mary took three months with a mentor to process before she was ready to go home for the last six months before she would give birth. But we're too quick to digest what God is speaking to us and say, give me something new. Or give me something else. Or I don't need a mentor. I don't need anybody to teach me. No, we need to protect the promise. We've got to process the promise. Listen to Isaiah 55, 11. God says, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and it shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. This is process. Number three is we've got to prophesy the promise. We need to prophesy the promise. What does that mean? It means we got to speak the promise before it ever becomes a reality. We've got to speak with life and faith and conviction. I'm not talking about empty, I'm not talking about walking around going, oh, my Mercedes is mine. I name it, claim it. I've already framed it. I'm not talking about that. That's cheap. That's faithless words. I'm talking about letting the promises get so down deep on the inside of you that you begin to speak in agreement about the things that God has already declared that he's doing and he's working in you. It just begins to bleed out of you and you're actually beginning to process it. You're prophesying it. Look at what Mary did. This is beautiful. Verse number 46. And Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my savior, for he has looked on the humble servant, the humblest state of his servant, for behold, from now on, here's her prophecy. From now on, all generations will call me blessed. These weren't empty words. What was she saying? She's saying that I'm in the middle of a crisis. I'm processing what to do, what it means to partner with God in his promises. I know that people are talking about me. I know a lot of people don't understand. Nobody right now is calling me blessed generation to generation, but she's looking forward in time and she's prophesying. God is so faithful. Here's what I know. There's coming a day where I'm gonna be called blessed and she prophesies it. We said earlier on talking about magnifying, magnifying the Lord, magnifying Christ. That's what she starts with. My soul magnifies the Lord. This is the first Christmas carol that was ever written. It was written by Jesus' mother. It's called Mary's Magnificat, or Mary's Magnification. Something happens when we magnify the Lord. Psalm, I think it's Psalm 34. It says, oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together. What does it mean to magnify the Lord? Well, when you magnify something, you put a lens on it and you zoom in your focus to be able to see it in more detail and in more clarity. And you're cropped out everything else so that you can focus on this one thing. And as you begin to magnify or make it bigger in your focus and in your sight, you begin to see details that were always there but they just weren't visible until you magnified them. That's what Mary does. Mary magnifies, she says, I'm gonna magnify the Lord. And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. She's basically saying that my trial is short but my reward is gonna be long. Notice who she says, she says, my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior. She's like, look, I know who I'm carrying. This is God, this is my Savior. She's prophesying it even when she's carrying it in its emphasy. She says, look, God has looked on me and I'm not a victim in this case. I am the object of God's blessing. And I know that what's gonna happen is, I'm gonna magnify the Lord with my Savior. What's gonna happen is, generations to come are not gonna call me cursed, they're not gonna call me abandoned, they're not gonna call me a train ride. They're gonna call me blessed. The antidote, listen, the antidote to fear of the future is prophesying God's word into your future, not allowing the enemy to prophesy your future because that's what fear is. Fear is a spirit other than the Holy Spirit that is trying to prophesy your future. When you think about what fear is, it's looking at tomorrow and the next day, wondering what's going to happen to you, but instead of God speaking promises into your future, it's actually fear that's trying to paint a picture for you of what could happen or probably will happen. And what it's getting you to do is will you magnify the problem? Magnify the problem, turn it up, focus in on it and that's what fear does. When you give more time to meditating on fear than the promise of God, you zoom in on it and go, yeah, that could happen and then this could happen and then that's gonna happen. And then I'm gonna lose this and this person's gonna say that and I'm never gonna have this. But that's not what Mary does. Mary says, my soul magnifies the Lord, magnifies the Lord. I remember what he has done in the past. I remember what he's done for the patriarchs in the past. I've seen God move. I've encountered God, I've heard his voice. I know his promises over my life. When Christ is magnified in us, by us, we position ourselves for Christ to be magnified through us. That's ultimately what he wants. He wants to be magnified through us. But first we make the decision to magnify him in us, which means we put our focus on the Lord. I love the magnificat. I love the idea of it. Look, God is bigger than the kings on the thrones. My God, my savior, he sees me. I'm not overlooked. I'm not left behind. I may be poor and I may be lowly in worldly eyes, but I have caught the gaze of my Father. And he loves me and he has positioned me that his promise, once it has come through me, is actually gonna boomerang for generations to come blessing upon blessing upon blessing to my name. And I've gotta protect this promise. I've gotta process this promise. And I'm gonna live my life prophesying promises. What would it look like if what comes out of our mouth was way more prophetic utterances about what God has promised that he's gonna do and a whole lot less of replaying what other people have done or what we think they should have done? What if instead of being an echo of the voice of the world, we became a prophetic voice of heaven over our lives? The word, here's what would happen, the promise that we're carrying, the word of God would take its full form inside of us and then Christ would be magnified through us. This is the goal. This is the promise. I want you to stand with me this moment here and just ask you if you would about your heads with me and ask this question as you do. Lord, what's the word? What's the promise that you're working in me? I want you, Jesus, to be magnified through my life. And I know that it's not without cost. I know that there's a process to get there, but I don't wanna just live my life acting as if Jesus has done all the interaction and all the renovation that he's ever gonna do in my life at the moment that he saved me. And I'm now on my own. Lord, I'm in partnership with you. I wanna respond to your Holy Spirit. I don't wanna read the word of God just for information, but when I read it, I want revelation, indicator of the Holy Spirit of what you're doing in me. And then I wanna say yes to that and I wanna protect that. I wanna process that. And Lord, I want it to be what I'm speaking and what I'm saying and what I'm meditating on. I want it to be what's coming out of my mouth, not in some false self-centered way, but in a way that glorifies you. Holy Spirit, what are you speaking over us? What are you saying over me? What's the word? Lord, give me ears to hear that word. Today, I believe even in the sound of my voice right now, both in this room and at Portage and online. One of the things that the Holy Spirit is doing is as he's walking up and down every aisle and every row and into every living room, there are so many of us that maybe have never taken the time to actually receive Jesus, the greatest gift ever given. You maybe believe Jesus and it's almost like you're on the outside of a house looking through the windows at other people on the inside, celebrating Jesus, but you've never come around the corner and stepped in yourself. You've never gone from being a spectator of Jesus to becoming a follower of Jesus. I want you to know whoever you are that the gift of Jesus, the savior of the world, who died for your sins, rose from the dead, that gift is for you. For you to say yes to. The Bible says whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Save from what? Save from your sin that's destroying you. Save from an eternity without God. Save from death and destruction. And saved to a living relationship with the God who knows you and loves you. You can be born again of his spirit. Today can be a brand new beginning for you. Your sins are forgiven, your heart is renewed and a promise of life everlasting is given to you. You say, how do I receive that gift? You just simply have to say yes. Say, Lord, I'm not gonna reject you any longer and I'm not gonna leave you like a gift under the tree that's unwrapped any longer today. I want you to come into my life, be my Lord and savior. I receive you the word of God into my life. Lord, forgive me, cleanse me, save me from myself. Save me from my sins, save me from hell. I surrender to you. If today you're listening to me and you know that you need to get your life right with God and you need to receive the gift of Jesus and be saved today, born again today or maybe you're listening and you know that that once upon a time you had a love and a relationship with God but you've wandered from that and you know you need to come back to that and you say, I know I need to get right with God. Wherever you are, whoever you are, I just want you to right now indicate that. Just raise your hand, just say, pray for me pastor Lee today. I need to get saved, I need to get right with God. Pray for me. Hold it up, I wanna pray for you. Thank you, thank you. Who else? You've not raised it, raise it right now. This is your day. Thank you. If you're watching online, we see you as well. I wanna lead everybody in prayer. I want everybody who's with us to just say this prayer out loud. The Bible says if we believe in our heart and we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord we will be saved. I want you to say this with me. Say, Heavenly Father, I come in Jesus' name and I receive you as my personal Lord and Savior. I'm sorry for living for myself. I'm sorry for my sins. Jesus, forgive me. Come into my heart. Wash it clean. Make me a new creation. From this day forward, I live for you. I turn my back on my past and I trust you with my future. And I thank you for loving me and saving me in Jesus' name. Amen, amen. Come on, can we just celebrate that decision today?