 Well, I'm going to read to you today from Genesis 45, 1 through 8. It is a fascinating piece of Scripture that drops us into Joseph's life. I have, probably like you do, different heroes in Scripture, Joseph's certainly one for me, David would be another, Moses would be another. Sometimes when you walk with God and read your Bible, and sometimes you find a similarity in someone else's journey in Scripture, that's so close to what you're going through, it's like they lived their life before you did. And they become almost like mentors and guides for you in life. And Joseph's life has become like that to me in some ways. And this part of Joseph's life is very significant. Let's just read it together, because as we read it, you probably locate the context and the period of history in his life. And if not, I'll give you a little bit of context after we've read this. Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out, have everyone leave my presence. So there was no one with Joseph when he made himself known to his brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him, and Pharaoh's household heard about it. Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph, is my father still living. But his brothers were not able to answer him because they were terrified at his presence. Then Joseph said to his brothers, come close to me. When they did, he said, I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt. Now do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now, there has been a famine in the land. And for the next five, there will be no plowing or reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to save lives by a great deliverance, so that it was not you who sent me here but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, Lord of his entire household, ruler of all Egypt. This is fascinating to me, because this is the first time in over 20 years as you track Joseph's life that we ever hear what he thinks about his life. Looking back from when he was 17, as you know, when he was 17, his brothers sold him into slavery. First, we're going to kill him. One of his brothers intervened to not kill him, to settle for beating him up, throwing him into a pit in the ground. And then they changed their minds instead of leaving him there to rot and die. They saw a passing group of slave traders, and so he was really trafficked in modern-day language into Egypt. There in slavery, he is bought, purchased by a man called Potiphar, who was in the service of Pharaoh. Potiphar was high up in Egyptian military. He works in Potiphar's house, does a brilliant job, and then one day something terrible happens when Potiphar's wife makes a move on him, and he runs away, but she accuses him of raping her. Her husband believes her. He finishes up in prison, where he languishes probably for the next 10 years. When he gets released from prison, as you know, because he interpreted Pharaoh's dream when no one else could. And he explains to Pharaoh the implications of the dream, that we're going to have seven years of plenty and seven years of famine. Then beyond interpreting the dream, he explained an idea he had that Pharaoh loved, which was this 14-year economic plan. He said, in the years of plenty, let's store up and let's warehouse food. In the seven years of famine, we are going to go into the export business, and we're going to be very, very wealthy, because we will have had the sense to store up in plenty, and we'll have enough left for us and other nations in the seven years of lack. A brilliant economic plan. It was so brilliant, and Pharaoh loved this young kid so much that he promoted him to be the prime minister, we would call it now, of Egypt. Pharaoh still the man, but second to Pharaoh is Joseph. The Bible tells us, Pharaoh loved this kid so much that he not only promoted him to prime minister, but he covered him in jewels and bling. He looked like a gangster rapper when Pharaoh finished with him. He had gold chains and silver and precious jewels in his arm pieces and bracelets, and I don't know what Pharaoh gave him, but then on top of that he gave him a beautiful woman to be his bride, and then on top of that he gave him a beautiful chariot, and 50 men that ran before the chariot saying, Make way, make way, Joseph, the man is coming through. Wow, what a transition that is. What a move of fortunes from being in jail all your life for something you didn't do to now being in charge of Egypt. And I want you to know what got him in charge of Egypt was not interpreting a dream. The reason Pharaoh put him in charge of Egypt and made him prime minister is not because he interpreted a dream, though that didn't hurt, but because he had the character of a prime minister. And he found that in the midst of the worst adversity where you would not look for the caliber of someone to be a leader of any dimension. When we now see him in Genesis 45, he's probably in his early to mid 40s, by the way, an interesting and significant stage of life for any of us, that mid life area. It's 20 plus years since he's seen his brothers who betrayed him and sold him into slavery, and they have seen him a couple of times prior to this because now in the famine, his family are coming to find food in Egypt. He didn't know that that would happen, but he recognizes them as they come to buy food. He doesn't reveal himself to them. They don't recognize him because 20 years in Egypt are now many years as prime minister. He walks and talks like an Egyptian. I won't demonstrate what that looks like because I don't know, but the point is he would have been so unrecognizable to his brothers that they would have seen him, but not have thought at all because they probably just thought Joseph is long dead. So they would not have recognized him at all in anything. And so he didn't reveal himself to them, but he knew them. But there came a point in me just ready when he couldn't bear any more to not reveal to them who he was. And when he opens his mouth to speak to them, it's the first time in all that time that we actually get an insight to what he made of his life. I want to talk to you today in these last moments I've got with you of something I've come to understand, but I didn't have a language for it. You know, sometimes there's some things going on in your life or in other people's lives or in the world, and it's frustrating to you because you know there's something about it that others say that doesn't satisfy you, but there's something about it you want to identify. One of the biggest frustrations in life is not having the language to articulate something we are going through because language gives order. When you give language to something, it gives you a sense of understanding of cause and effect. It gives you some tracking of a beginning, a middle and an ending. And as a communicator, and those of us that communicate in here, and that's a big part of what you do in your calling or your vocation, will understand very much what I just said about I believe one of the responsibilities for us as preachers and public speakers, one of our roles, one of our responsibilities is to give language to people who are going through stuff in their life that they have no language for. When a preacher, when a leader goes through stuff, it's different to how other people go through stuff because when a leader goes through stuff, we collect things on our way through wondering whether or not this will be useful to someone later. We're not really sure why we bent down to pick it up or while whilst we were down, we picked it up with us when we moved on, we're not really sure what to do with it because we don't know its usefulness is just to us but we are aware that maybe there's something in this that's helpful to someone else and then maybe months or years later, as in the case of Joseph, we're able to speak in a way that makes sense of what really was a complete mess in his life from 17 to mid-40s, it was a disastrous experience for him in many ways, far more negative than positives when you put it year on year in his life. But I want to speak to you about finding meaning in your life versus forging meaning in your life. I've come to believe at this stage of my life, both my age and my stage of development and my stage in ministry and leadership and helping people, that I believe that far more than we realize, we forge meaning in our life, much more than we find meaning in our life. This becomes important because depending on what you make things mean in your life determines your identity. So if you come up with a wrong meaning about something that happened in your life or in people connected to you in your life or in your community or in this nation or in the world, whatever meanings we come up with, they become our narrative. That meaning becomes our testimony and our story. That meaning becomes our version of events. And around that, almost subconsciously, we develop an identity attached to that definition we gave to things and that identity then begins to determine who we do life with next. Now, this is important because I believe in destiny and we teach a lot in the church about destiny and I think that's important to do that in a world where people don't know why they're here and don't know why they're born and what's the point of my life and especially if people were born in a tragic circumstance and maybe don't know who their parents are or were not loved or wanted as a child and the signal was sent to them that they don't count and they're a mistake and they're an accident and they're unloved and therefore I think it's really important that certainly in God's house, we speak to people about destiny, that you are not a mistake, that you were planned from before you were born. I think destiny is a big thing to talk about but I've come to understand that destiny and meaning are two separate things. Destiny is decided by God, but meaning is decided by you. So if you come up with a faulty meaning of something in your life, if that meaning is fundamentally flawed, it can derail you into an identity you should never have had and that wrong identity can sidetrack you and take you off into a wrong orbit in that plan God had for your life. Now there is no forensic way to find your destiny. We're all kind of figuring out as we walk with God and there are different versions of how you walk in the will of God and there are different theologies about divine guidance. I've come to believe that the way for me best to sum up how God guides us and how God gets things done in the earth through the church and through people is that God is drawn to movement. I think that's my condensed version after, you know, 40 plus years as a Christian, 33 years in full-time ministry in the same church pastoring. I recently transitioned the leadership to the next generation as has Pastor Ellari here. We've Pastor Jonathan and Ange in the team but I've come to believe that God is drawn to movement and that you figure out your destiny not by parking up asking God to show you is it A or B but you figure out your destiny by just keeping moving and you'll find in life often it's not A or B where the blessing is the blessings on you so you can choose A or B and still be blessed because sometimes the will of God is multiple choice and guess what, you get to choose but I think we've intensified the will of God and made it a tightrope so we don't move without divine guidance and we're not really sure when we get that whether it's God or not and so unless we get, you know, a prophecy and a word of knowledge and a visitation from an angel and an angel's river dancing on the duvet which, you know, happens for some of you quite often then we don't really feel secure to step out but he is a man in motion he is a man getting on with his life he is a man dealing with what's thrown at him as some of you are doing today some of you are experiencing stuff you have no control over you have no control over what happened to you you don't have any control over what the doctor diagnosed in your life or someone in your family of an illness that now you're battling with and praying about and it consumes every waking moment for you right now you have no control over that redundancy or the bankruptcy or other things in our lives that are tragic is let alone things like Katrina or Tsunamis or an airline pilot deliberately crushing a plane into the ground what possible meaning do we give to these things what sense do we make of these things and our inability to make sense of them often becomes a huge frustration to us and you know what I started off in Christian life with a theology that said bad things don't happen to good people and we are God's people you know we're the good guys on the planet so certainly we are immune from bad things happening to us but you know what I couldn't find it in the bible I've looked and I've looked and I've looked because if I could find that and preach that I'd be the man yet I have a church of millions that built around that message the problem is it wouldn't last long because when bad things start happening to them I'd be doing all my counseling while explaining away what it really meant is what it really meant is but the longer you live the more you realize that in the 9-11s and in the Katrina's and in the tragedies in our world many many many thousands and thousands of good people were hurt and killed and lost their lives school shootings whatever it may be with a random bullet just went to school doing the same thing as your kids would do in any given day and they didn't come home that day because some nutcase let loose on them with a gun and they're in the wrong time the wrong place life is filled with tragedies of this nature and we have to I think we have to try to forge to forge meaning of what takes place in our life because whatever we forge determines our identity which determines what comes next so to come back from what comes next and step back from identity and start with forging meaning is what I'm asking you to think about today now this doesn't all happen at once some of you are trying to figure out right now what's going on but what doesn't help while we're trying to forge our meanings in life like Joseph clearly when he's in prison we don't hear from him on this but clearly whilst he's in prison for a crime he didn't commit all those lonely sleepless nights he must have had all the rage he must have processed of the betrayal of his brothers of the betrayal of his boss Potiphar who clearly loved him but believed his wife over him the wrongly accused of a crime he didn't commit all of the pain and the agony of that going on in him I don't know how he dealt with all that but I know by the time he's in his mid-40s I get a glimpse into his life and I'm looking at this man that is giving us now an insight to his last 20 years and I'm very challenged and very humbled by the way he viewed his life because the truth is this if you can find a meaning the very definition of finding something is that it exists to be found so any meaning you find is already being used by someone else any meaning that is lying around to be picked up and bolted on to something in your life is really probably someone else's version of what that thing means now that doesn't mean that what they found doesn't have wisdom for your life we can all learn from each other but there's some stuff that we go through that's so unique to us the pain of it the way it affects us the complications of it are just not like anyone else has gone through others have suffered in the same way perhaps as you have or I have but everyone suffers so forensically different to anyone else that's why we can't tell anyone how to grieve you know as a pastor I realized early on that those that repented with tears were no more saved than those that didn't but as a pastor I put too much stock by emotion and those that were the ones that wept their way to Jesus and those that were shouting amen praise the Lord every week sometimes it did not bear any resemblance to what was inside the can and so I had to uncouple from promoting people or believing in people or giving my time to people that shouted the loudest because I realized sometimes the quietest ones the ones that never tell me they love me the ones that never say to me pastor I'm loyal to you I'm committed to you I'll never leave you I figured out the people that told me that a lot are the ones that left if they're telling you I'll leave you I'll love you I'll never leave you and count on me they're about to leave but the ones that don't broadcast that the ones that don't feel the need to convince you the ones that just quietly stick with you and they're there through good weather and bad weather good times and bad times these are the people that we want to do life and track with and this meaning that Joseph is forging is not something he found when I first tried to sell a house my wife and I when we first got married in fact I think it was our third house and we put it on the market to sell and it didn't sell for six months and I was we were both new believers ish and none of our family are Christians 98% of our country by the way do not attend church and a quite anti-church so we are professional full-on paid up full members heathens in our country most of us so we had no reference point for what to do in a situation where you might want to know the will of God not that I wanted to know the will of God I was just going to sell a house but but but the but the meanings committee people came to see me and so Paul have you prayed about selling your house and I said no well maybe you should really be seeking God about whether you should be trying to sell your house right now other houses are selling in the neighborhood and they're heathens houses so if they can sell their house as sinners and you're not selling yours as a child of God you know maybe God's telling you now's not the time and I'm thinking is it a bad testimony that my house isn't selling am I shaming the kingdom of God that my do I lack faith am I out of the timing you see what I got this will of God tightrope thing from so I'm paranoid about oh and I'm talking my wife I'm saying you know what they said to me today she's saying what oh I don't know well a year in a year and we can't sell our house now we've got the prophecy crowd coming now they've come with a word from God for us and now they've been praying and I remember one couple sitting down and saying to us hey we've really been praying and we want to ask you before we tell you what God said to us we want to ask you have you been really seeking God about why your house isn't selling and is this the right time and I was so fed up of all these people that couldn't stand untidiness in other people's lives and felt they had to come and tidy up our lives when we were not asking so this guy said to me have you really sought God for why your house isn't selling and I said yes he said good tell me tell me please tell me what is it that you feel that God is said to you I said the Lord told me very clearly the reason I have not solved my house for over a year is because no one's bought it yet I know I felt very uncomfortable I think they felt I was just being rude and arrogant as this young upstart believer but I figured out hey that's the end of it do we honestly need to attach some mystical conspiracy theory to why the house isn't selling listen you've got enough stuff in life that is mysterious without making selling a house mysterious but my point is whilst I'm trying to forge meaning while you're trying to forge meaning about something in your life beware the meaning cops that hijack your forging with an off the shelf found meaning that they want to bolt onto your life and you'll know it doesn't fit because it doesn't rest well with you it doesn't bring peace to you it doesn't help you figure stuff out in your head to be able to find an identity that's productive for the future so you'll know the meaning they're offering is not helpful but you know and I want to appeal to you guys today and I don't know you guys so I'm not picking on anyone I really don't know any of you here and that's an advantage sometimes when you're a visiting uncle but maybe some of you are part of that meanings committee and we love you but we'd like you to stop is that okay we'd like you just to step away from those of us that are trying to forge a meaning and you know what drives us sometimes is that desire to have everything just neat and tidy and we do not live in a neat and tidy world you know that is enough order in the universe that is enough order and reliability of how things work in the cosmos for it to function and for us to rely on night following day and us to rely on the seasons coming in their turn and us to rely on seed time and harvest etc etc there's enough stuff that's orderly but God it seems to me has left just enough randomness in the universe for us to have to figure out and forge meaning about stuff that happens that we had a theology perhaps that said that'll never happen to me you know I've heard preachers preach that sickness is a result of sin and I don't I've never felt comfortable with that and I know that lifestyles I don't mean that I don't mean that I know lifestyles can make you unwell you know you eat what you shouldn't and eat more than you should and and don't exercise and so on and so on all of that I understand all that but I mean this this connection between someone having cancer and it must be sin have a preacher say that until they get cancer and then they've got a kind of well well the implications of that are to those that heard me say that that it's sin in my life and you create a drama and a conspiracy theory that doesn't help people grow and I think what we've got to do is create space for people to forge meaning I was reading recently of a woman now in her 50s she was raped in a teenage years and as a result of that rape she had a child now in her 50s she was asked by an interviewer in a magazine do you think often about the man that raped you she said well I used to think of him with anger and great pity with anger and frustration she said now I think of him with pity but she didn't mean pity because of his depraved condition for to do that to her so the interviewer said well what do you mean by pity she said I think of him now with pity because he does not know that he has a beautiful daughter and he doesn't know he has two amazing grandchildren he doesn't know that I know that so she said it turns out I'm the one that's blessed that that that meaning don't clap hand or tongue that save it over there in the big finish that that meaning that she expressed in the interview that's not off the shelf you can't find that lying around so clearly she had forged she had created she had made a meaning that gave her the identity now of a blessed person that caused her to have a word of hope and a story of hope to all others going through a similar thing but she had other options so did Joseph he could have had the option of seeing himself as a person betrayed by his brothers and then wrongly accused of a crime he didn't commit he could have he could have had anger and frustration and rage against God and against people and who would have blamed him that was an option for him but instead of seeing himself that way as a victim and everyone else as a villain against me instead he chose to see himself as part of some bigger idea that God had for his life and he placed himself in that picture as someone that was destined from a teenager to get to Egypt 20 years ahead of his family and 20 years in advance of a need he did not know was coming called famine he'd figured out to the point where he can say to his brothers you didn't do this to me you didn't send me to Egypt which is why they're cowering in fear when he said I am Joseph and now they know he has the power to take all their lives when when they saw it's Joseph they're cringing in fear because every day of their lives they must have been on their mind what they did to Joseph and if it wasn't on their mind it was on Jacob's mind his dad who every day asked them about his son he loved Joseph more than the others and perhaps that was part of the problem but he went into his old age we read later on grieving over Joseph not knowing he was still alive so these brothers are cowering and he said he wasn't you guys I figured out I forged a meaning through the betrayal and what's happened to me and my meaning is that God sent me you didn't send me you were just the instrument of getting me here please don't be hard on yourselves please don't give yourselves a hard time because this was meant you meant it for evil but God meant it for good and here I am in charge of Egypt wow you don't get that stuff off the shelf that's bespoke that's deliberately personally fashioned to make sense of to give meaning to his own life and that's what I'm urging each one of you to do today you know there was an incident in Luke 13 where Jesus speaks about a tower called the Tower of Siloam that collapsed and killed 18 people with the masonry that fell on them interesting little thing in Scripture anything like anything could happen today in any of our communities where people die in an accident and you know what Jesus did he said to the people hey don't think those 18 people that died when the tower fell on them don't think they were worse sinners than any of you what's he saying he's saying I know you have a belief system that says bad things happen to bad people so those 18 people must have deserved it and the ones that didn't get killed must for some reason be the ones that God favored instead of them he knew that that was their view on life that bad things only happened to bad people he knew that they didn't know that bad things happen to good people all the time and good things happen to bad people all the time and we don't like it that's why Jesus said the rain falls on good and bad people and we don't like it because we'd like God to separate us out and give us a separate deal to the rest of humanity so that we clearly are God's people but it's just not that simple and he uses the opportunity to say to them your thinking is wrong about this stuff all he did was say if I were you I'd think to yourself that could have been me so I'd better get right with God sooner than later then he left it alone that's all he did he didn't try to explain anything other than that he didn't cash in and take advantage of it he allowed the meaning to be forged to put them into a place of seeking God for themselves in case it could have been them the next time you know I just want to finish by saying that some of you are going through terrible things right now and some of your family that are on your mind as I'm speaking to you are on your mind now that are going through stuff and by the way those people on your mind right now that are going through stuff that this message makes you think about will you just make a little promise to yourself that before the days out you'll send them a text or call them or something whatever they are in the world and let them know you know I was in church today this guy was speaking about making meaning of your life I know you're going through a terrible thing I don't know what it means either but I want you to know I love you I'm praying for you I'm there for you how can I help you you know it'll cost you nothing to do that but it might be like an absolute miracle in the timing of it when it lands on their phone when they wake up today or when they turn their phone on today you don't know what's going on can I encourage you to do that today just all over this community and across the world where you are family that are going through stuff just let them know they're on your heart and mind especially today you know one of the things that people say to themselves when I say this to you is what if I forge a wrong meaning you know forging meaning doesn't make what was wrong right but it can make what was wrong precious that's what forging meaning did for Joseph Joseph made a slight error in fact a fundamental error that would have cost him the clarity of identity he had because Joseph had two sons in Egypt the first one was called Manasseh the second one called Ephraim Manasseh means God has delivered me from my troubles and my past and Ephraim means God has blessed me and made me fruitful first born second born there's a beautiful story later in Genesis 48 where Jacob now comes and meets his grandchildren for the first time Joseph's two boys and his eyes are fading Jacob's now 135 years of age and he comes to give the patriarchal blessing to the boys and of course the right hand was the was the blessing to the first born very significant blessing the right hand would bring the blessing to the first born to Manasseh and so Joseph puts Manasseh under his right hand of their granddad and he puts Ephraim under his left hand as the second born and just as he's leaning into pray for them Jacob does this and puts the right hand on Ephraim and the left hand on Manasseh and does this and Joseph thinks he's losing it he's a bit senile he doesn't know what he's doing so Joseph grabs his hands and tries to uncross them and say no no no no no dad Manasseh's here he's the first born and Jacob said I know leave me alone I know what Jacob's doing is Jacob is adjusting the narrative of his life because he had made a wrong calculation about how God worked through his life in his in his in his forging of meaning he believed that this is how God worked in his life he believed that God first delivered him Manasseh and then later on with his promotion in Egypt God then made him fruitful and Jacob on God through Jacob was saying you have done amazing you have done an amazing job forging meaning in your life but there's something that you have forged wrongly that you know that you're now passing on to the kids and this will affect their identity and what Jacob and what God's saying through Jacob is this when God works in your life fruitfulness and blessing always precedes deliverance it was not it was not God's deliverance that got Joseph out of jail it was Joseph's fruitfulness in jail that got him out of jail because the jailer so loved this kid that it says the jailer slept in came late to work had weekends off and left the inmate in charge of the jail because he was better with the prisoners the the the prison was quieter and more peaceful when Joseph was there because he genuinely loved these fellow inmates though he was the only one there that had been falsely accused that's why he had the character of a prime minister and so so his fruitfulness his skill his amazing heart for people and all that fruitfulness that came out of that that allowed even the world to step back and say you better than me at this and leave him in charge of the jail something unheard of it's that fruitfulness that brought him to a place that could eventually be called deliverance and so Joseph's tracking of his life was God had to deliver me before God could bless me and some of you are like that today you think until my life gets better until I pay off my debts until I get my life sorted out until this happens or that happens or that happens then God will make me fruitful I want you to know that God expects you to be fruitful and has empowered you to be fruitful right where you are before it gets any better at all if you put your life on hold until deliverance comes and then when deliverance comes in whatever form you say that looks like then I'll be more committed I'll volunteer more I'll serve more I'll love more I'll reach more people you are you are wrongly defining and you are wrongly explaining your life as did Joseph so if you forge a flawed meaning I promise you God will send a Jacob to help you figure out the bits that you got wrong but God would rather you figure out as much as you can and then edit later the bits you got wrong then He would give you a meaning and throw something on you that you didn't forge because what you forge becomes your identity your identity becomes your story and your story and your identity becomes your tribe and who you do life with that's what's happening in this story here time's gone but I want you to really think about this today for you someone you know because Shuma you are in the midst of something terrible and my heart goes out to you but I know it can't be fixed by bringing you forward and laying a hand on you some stuff you just gotta figure out and you're not helping us by telling us what you think it means although we appreciate all the help and love and wisdom we can get from others come on every eye closed all across the room thank you Jesus yeah we love you Lord I thank you for these amazing people here today every single one of them those listening in the other campuses those on the internet those on live TV every single one of us going through stuff that no one fully knows about except you Lord you forensically are involved and know when we rise and when we sleep the meditations of our mind and heart every twist and turn of our life you are deeply deeply involved even when we can't see you and think you've abandoned us you are in the shadows of our lives that your fingerprints are over our lives when we think you know where to be seen I thank you for that reality that truth today and I pray that you would give us all courage and strength and tenacity to forge meaning out of what makes no sense to us at this time in our lives Lord give us the grace to step back from others that are in the midst of something messy and untidy give us the grace to hold our thoughts to hold our tongue let us not be quick to speak and try to explain things that no one's asking us to explain give us the grace to live with untidiness give us the grace to live with chaos and mess until it's time comes due to be made clear and explain give us the grace and the wisdom to walk in those gray seasons of our life for life is not black and white help us to find you the god of the gray in the twilight zones of our life to find you there and to forge a meaning that becomes our gift to those that will hear us after that time and those seasons in our life thank you Jesus we love you the god of all of our story and testimony and forging help us to listen so carefully holy spirit to your whispers the voices of people are often so loud and so many and so confusing teachers afresh to listen to that quiet still small voice that is saying what no one else is saying in the midst of the cacophony of noise that often confuses us hey these last seconds of this service let me just ask all across the room those watching if you've never given your life to Jesus Christ because you weren't ready or you had questions or you were confused or maybe you were hurting and in pain and angry and frustrated at God as I said but you're here today and you made it here today and you know if you're in church then you are clearly hanging around where God is you know today you didn't come to a restaurant or a furniture warehouse or a coffee shop you came to church so you you are deliberately putting yourself in the neighborhood of God and so I confidently can say to you if you've got this far can I help you take the next step can I help you just take that last step of saying yes to a God who said yes to you 2000 years ago God is not making his mind about you today please don't ever think that God settled his love for you before you were even born nothing you have done since then to now nothing you will do from now to the day you die will affect his love for you and so with that settled and his face towards you today all around you are people that once made this decision but today's your turn and I ask all across this room I can't see the online or the tv audience but all across this room while eyes are closed and heads are barred I wonder if that's you today you're saying God I give you my life today or I once prayed a prayer but I really didn't know what I was doing I needed to keep someone else happy did it keep my parents happy did it keep my friends happy but I wasn't ready but today I'm ready I want you to forge meaning of where your life has come to this point and I want you to let that meaning lead you into a God that has been on your case when you didn't even realize God was on your case and he's kept you alive and safe and brought you here today and I've come all the way from the UK to say to you today's your day and this is your time