August 27, 2023

Am I biased?

Blindspots | Week 1

Can we give the Lord one more big hand clap? Go ahead and have a seat. I just want to, real quickly, say was Dr. Gage not pretty cool last week? He's probably watching right now. So, love you, Warren. You're a great guy. Warren's been a huge mentor to me, so I'm glad that you got to hear him. He's just a profound, profound thinker, wonderful, wonderful human being, and we're very lucky as a church to have him as a board member. So, that being said, I think all of us have been in a car, at some point, and we needed to get over to another lane, or maybe we had gone a little bit further than we had thought and we need to get over a couple lanes to get to the exit ramp, or maybe we just needed to pull over at one thing. What you normally do when you're driving — and you know this — is you look in your rear-view mirror, you look in your side mirror…

Okay. Somebody’s back there playing on the computer.

Minecraft is not allowed. I'm just kidding. I'm playing. They do a great job. If you could go back in the tech room, they’ve got everything going on. It’s crazy.

But you look in your rear-view mirror, you look in your side mirror, and then you do that double-take over here because you’ve got the B pillar here, or if you're in a different car — because what you don't want to do is pull over on anybody. We've all done that. We've been there. We've looked in the mirror, we've looked in the side mirror, we've looked out the window a couple of times, we've done all those things, and then, as we started to turn, we heard the horn.

Have you ever done that one? Maybe you were the one on the horn. The bottom line is we've all experienced that, and we know, at that point, it's like, “I didn't mean to pull over in front of you. That’s last thing I wanted to do.”

If you're lucky, we only get the horn. Right? Because you've all had it, and maybe you've been it. You can't stop with the horn. You have to pull up next to them, roll down the window, and then give a course in sign language. Right? Have you been there? The reason that we didn't see them is because they were in a blind spot. Car manufacturers know this, so they've developed blind spot monitors on cars. They've even developed steering wheels that vibrate. In fact, some cars have LED screens that will show you the cars next to you and to your side. The whole reason for that is to just keep you from running over into a car because every car has a blind spot to some degree, some worse than others.

Now, I say that to just get us to wade into this new series that we're starting about blind spots. I say that because all of us know we’ve been in a car, and we didn't see something or whatever because there was a blind spot. But in our own lives — not just in cars, but in our own lives, all of us have blind spots. You may not think that you do. You may wish that you didn't. You may hope that I don't call out the one blind spot that you're maybe working on right now, which I'm not going to try to do, or give you a hard time, but we all have blind spots. There are two areas in human life that we really have blind spots. The first area is sort of an easier way to look at it. I call these blind spots the easy ones. The ones that we go, “Yeah, those are pretty easy to see.”

Have you ever noticed this? Have you noticed that it's a lot easier to spot a blind spot in someone else? Jesus said that, right? You see the speck in their eye, but you don't see the telephone pole in yours. Do you know what I'm talking about? You're like, “Hey, you’ve got a blind spot. I see it.”

So, these are the ones that we just sort of know, and maybe we're guilty of it sometimes or whatever, but they're sort of the easy ones. Like someone who just can't ask for help. They don't see it. They're Type A driven, and they get into a group, especially at a church, everybody wants to be a part, and they're like 50 feet down the way, running, and everybody else is like, “What are we supposed to do?”

They’re the leader, and you want to go up to them and go, “Hey, you know, could ask for help.”

They don't really see it, but it's there. Or how about this one? How about being unaware of personal space? Have you ever met any of these people? Lovingly referred to as space invaders. Have you ever met them? When they get up to you, you know what they had for dinner the night before. You know what I'm talking about, right? Just as a PSA here, about two to three feet is good when you're talking to somebody one-on-one. Do you know what I'm talking about? You know what I'm saying. Right? I'm not trying to give anybody a hard time. I'm just trying to be a pastor and share. And if there's a huddle of people that are talking, that's not the time to walk into the huddle. Ten or fifteen feet away. Wait until the huddle breaks up, and then you can go. But sometimes people don't see it. They just don't see that they're doing that, and that's a blind spot.

Or someone who can't have a difficult conversation. We've met them. They just can't for whatever reason. They like people, or they want people to like them, and they just have a hard time. Those are easy. We know. We go, “Yeah,” and we all have some of those personality deficiencies. We have some blind spots, that we probably don't see, that people have maybe stoked into us, or maybe we don't know, and maybe we need to know.

But then there's another one that’s really tough, and psychologists have figured this one out. This one's a little bit tougher. This is the one that really plagues most of us in some form or fashion, and we just don't know about it. It’s called a blind spot bias. A blind spot bias is where people are unaware of their own biases. So, when information comes in, they don't realize that they're biased in the way they're taking this information. In the way they see it and the way they feel it, they don't see that. It goes on to say here, in fact, that most people believe they're actually more objective and less biased than they really are. That's a challenge. Right? And listen to this. This is what's crazy. Your brain and my brain can actually process 11 million things a second. The most powerful brains — which are not mine because I was born in Kentucky. The most powerful brains can sometimes get into that 30 or 40 a second, being able to deal with some stuff. Most of us, two or three. Are you with me? Okay. Do you know what I'm saying?

So, what happens is our brains, when stuff comes in, because of the way our brain works, file stuff based on the way we see the world, based on our experiences, based on the way we like certain things, the biases that we may have, or the leanings that we may have. So, it takes in information, and what we normally store are the things that we feel the most comfortable with, which is why we hang out with the people that we're most comfortable with, which is why we watch the stations that we're the most comfortable with, because what we have is that our brains are wired to have a little bias. It can't handle all that information.

Now, you know this, and I know that. You know this for sure. If we went back just 30 years ago to get the information that we can get today, you'd have to work at it. You'd have to go downtown — Cynthiana, Kentucky when I was a kid — and you'd have to put a quarter into this thing that you would pull open, and there would be a newspaper in there. I know some of you are like, “What?”

That was the real world, folks. In my lifetime, that was the real world. Or if you needed to go do something, you had to go to the library. Today, you can open up your phone and the world is at your fingertips. What’s happening is we have an overload of information. So, our brains are constantly being hit with all of these things, and what our brains do — and we don't realize that they do it, because this is what they do. And psychologists know this. People know this who study this. Our brains can only handle a certain amount of things. So, what our brains do is they fuse the information, stores it in a place, and then what happens is, with every bit of information that comes in, our brain will reject certain things and store certain things. What that does is it leads us to have a bias that we don't see, that we can't see, and that all of us have to some degree or another.

So, when that comes to Christianity, that's tough because if we are living out a bias rather than what God would want us to do, then what happens is we're not always giving off exactly what God would want us to give off. And where it really gets complicated is when we put God into the bias, God becomes the supporter of our bias, and then that's the Christianity that we sort of tell everybody about. We can see in our world today that it's sort of tough.

So, here's what I want you to hear. The further the polarization gets — and we live in a very polarized world — the greater our convictions become, the deeper and wider the trenches of the war are dug, and the more righteousness and godliness are tied to being on the right and winning side, it becomes almost impossible for you and me, as Christians, to see our blind spots. So, as your pastor, I want you to hear this. You don't have to agree with me. It's fine. I mean, I am doing the best that I can to care for souls, but I want you to hear this. American Christianity is at a crossroads because it's almost inoculated itself against introspection.

“They're wrong and I'm right.”

That’s a scary place to be, folks, because it's all over the Bible that the people of God would get messed up a little bit and do it wrong, and we want to be aware of it. We want to be aware. What happens is what we become as Christians is Mr. Either or Mr. Or.

“You either believe this or you believe this. Which team are you on? It's either this or that. Which one?”

What we do is — and I've said this a lot of times. People will come up and say, “So, Pastor Chip, what do you believe about this?”

They get mad at me, but this is what I say: “Are you asking me because you want to know my position so that you can figure out if I'm on your team or not, or do you want me to tell you what I believe because you're really interested in hearing my take on something?”

Do you hear the difference there? Because I'll tell you whose team I'm on. I'm on team Jesus. That's the team I'm on. I'm willing to go to the wall for that, for team Jesus. So, let me just give you something biblical because we're going to go through a lot. Honestly, from this point forward, the only thing I'm going to do is read Bible verses to you. Seriously. I'm going to read a bunch of Bible verses to you because what I don't want you to do is go, “You know,” — because they’ve got their side.

“What's he getting ready to say?”

All this stuff. Just chill out. Chill out. Team Jesus. I love the Church, I love you, and I'm here to care for souls. I'm trying to do the best that I can to meander a very difficult situation so that we can keep preaching Jesus, Gospel-centered, and make sure we're doing all the right things. That’s my job as a pastor, to keep us going in the right thing. To keep the main thing the main thing. Okay? So, listen to me. I just want you to hear this. When you think about blind spots, when you think about Christianity, and when you think about doing things that we need to do, Paul, to a very young Timothy, says, “I charge you…”

That’s strong. He didn’t say, “Eh, you know, I’ve got a suggestion, Timothy.”

He said, “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus,”

That's pretty strong. The dude just said, “In front of God and Jesus.”

“…who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom…”

“Thinking about the Lord's return, Timothy.”

What do you think Paul would say? Make sure you feed the poor. That'd be a good one, right? That's good. Visit people in the hospital. That's good. Pray. Great. All those things are good. What's interesting is he says, “When you're thinking about the Lord's coming, Him showing back up, Timothy, I charge you to preach the Word. That's what you do, Timothy. You preach the Word.”

He says, “And you do it in and out of season. You reprove, you rebuke, and you exhort.”

Some of you are going, “That’s right. You rebuke them.”

Hold on now.

“…with complete patience and teaching.”

Calm down.

“It’s about time he got into it. We’re going to rebuke some people.”

No. With complete patience and teaching. Listen to what he says.

“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching,”

Isn’t that interesting? You have to endure it. It's not easy. It's an endurance to have to listen to what God says because it's different from what we're used to. It doesn't feel natural, sometimes. It doesn't look like that's what should go on. He says, “They’re not going to endure it. They're going to have itching years, and they will accumulate…”

This is not written to unbelievers. This is an epistle written to a church. So, don’t go, “Yeah, I’ve met people out there.”

No. This is written to you and me.

“…they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own [blind spots] passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”

That's sobering. Jesus envisions this picture of Him at the church at Laodicea, and He says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”

Well, this is sobering. He's actually outside of the church, and they're having church inside the church. He’s saying, “I'm not actually in there with you.”

Of course, He's in there with you because He’s everywhere, but He’s making a point.

“I'm actually on the outside. I mean, you all are doing stuff in there, and I’m writing to you all because you’re Christians, but if you'd let me come in, I'd hang out, I'd eat with you, and you with me, and we’d have a relationship. But I'm standing on the outside of the church, knocking.”

That's like, whoa. I read that as a pastor and I'm like, “Whew, man.”

Maybe you don't read it the way I do because maybe you're not a pastor, but I read that, and go, “Man, that is serious.”

Or about this? Matthew 24. Most people in America, whether right or wrong — there's debate — would say this is the end time passage. There are people that would say it's talking more about the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D. That's another discussion for another time. But most people would agree that at some level, whether how you interpret that passage, it's dealing with stuff, in a cyclical way, about what it sort of looks like before Jesus comes back. And we always go, “Oh, it's the passage about wars and rumors of war, and pestilences and earthquakes.”

No. He says that's the beginning. Like, we don't even pay attention to the text. That's the beginning.

He says this: “And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another.”

Do you know how many people in church, in the last several years, have betrayed their own brothers and sisters in Christ, and have hated their own brothers and sisters in Christ because they were either Mr. Either or Mr. Or? This is the stuff. People always go, “We want you to teach the truth.”

This is the truth here that I'm telling you. We want to hear the truth that we want to hear, but I'm telling you the truth that you need to hear.

“And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray.”

That's the way it is. So, here's why I want to have a conversation about a blind spot, because we’re going to go into a series here, and we're going to talk about a lot of blind spots. Some of y'all are going to get frustrated at me, probably, and everything else. Sometimes you're not going to like what I have to say.

I'm just telling you we're living in a time where it really is incumbent on all of us to take our Christianity seriously because it’s getting pulled and yanked in every direction, and everybody's vying for a piece. We want to be a church that keeps Jesus first, we preach the Gospel, and we do great and wonderful things in this community because we want people to come to Jesus.

So, I want to talk about this. I want to talk about recognizing and embracing the priority of the Word of God in our lives because what’s happening in America is that the Word of God is being used for people's own consumption. On one side, the Bible's being denigrated, and they're going, “It’s really not the Word of God. I mean, it’s okay, but it's got some passages in here that I don't really like, or maybe we've learned more in science or whatever.”

But then what you're doing is using the Word of God to sort of make it say what you want it to say. On the other side: “The Word of God is the Word of God is the Word of God.”

But then we cherry-pick the very few things because of the issues that we put over the Word of God, and we try to find the Word of God to feed through those issues so we can go tell everybody about the issues that we want to do. So, we're using the Word of God, actually, for our own consumption on this side, too. What we needed to understand is that the Word of God is not there for us to choose what we want it to do. The Word of God is there to read you and me so that we can be conformed to the image of Christ.

I know I'm preaching good right now, but I don't think you all are with me a little bit. Okay? So, what I'm going to do is this: We're going to go through Psalm 19. The whole Psalm. You go, “Chip, you just read a bunch of passages.”

Yeah. The whole psalm. Listen, you should love me. Some of you all — I don't mean this in a bad way, but some of you all probably didn't read your Bible all week. I'm giving you a devotion for free. Like, seriously, you should be saying, “Chip is the man. Go through all the texts, man. Man, you come to church, and you make it up for the week.”

You know? So, we're going to go through Psalm 19, then I’ve got a couple of points, and then we're going to sing this wonderful song at the end. But Psalm 19 is written by David, and it's to the choirmaster. It's a psalm that's to be sung, and it's broken into three specific areas. One is looking up, one is looking into the Word of God, and then the other one is allowing it to read you and me. It's powerful. It's beautiful. Listen to what David says.

He says, “The heavens declare the glory of God,”

The heavens declare. They declare God's glory. They don't tell you about how to pray, they don't tell you about sin, they don't tell you how to have church, but they declare His glory. In other words, you look up, and you go, “Man, there is some design here. There must have been a designer.”

You may say, “I don't believe that.”

That's fine. You don't have to believe that.

I'm telling you, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.”

God's speaking through all of creation.

He says, “Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.”

We get up in the day, we see all these things, butterflies, the wind hits us, and we're like, “Oh, man. This is incredible.”

He’s like, “It’s telling you something.”

When you look at the created world at night — if we didn't have night, we wouldn't know the stars exist. We wouldn't see that. Oh my goodness. He's saying, “Listen, the heavens tell you about God, and they're talking to you.”

He says, “Well, actually, there isn't speech. You're not really hearing it, and there are not really words. The voice is not heard like you normally do, but make no mistake, their voice goes throughout all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”

God is seen in His creation, and if you don't want to see Him, you can suppress it, but He is there. You look, you see a car, and you go, “That car didn't just happen. Somebody had to make that car.”

You look around, and you go, “Man, this is pretty incredible. There must have been…”

People all throughout the ages have gone, “I don't know. I don't think this just happened. I don't know. That’s pretty crazy that we're just right where we need to be.”

Then he takes on the sun because in the Ancient Near East people would worship the sun.

He says, “In them he has set a tent for the sun,”

He’s even in control of the sun. Like, everything He’s done is to show you. Did you know that? Do you know that God is teaching you something? You go to bed every night, right? It's nighttime. Some of y'all are more party animals and you go to bed in the morning. That's not normal, but I know some of y'all do it. But you go to bed at night, it's dark, and then you get up in the morning, and it's light. You go to bed at night, it's dark, you wake up, and it's light. In the way the whole world is created, God is preparing you, each and every day, for resurrection because HIs thumbprint is in the world.

It says, “…[the tent] comes out like a bridegroom…”

Like a bridegroom going to get his bride on their marriage do, or like a strong man runs when they say, “Go!” at the race. The sun comes out, you see it, and you're like, “Whoa. This is incredible.”

“Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.”

He's like, “The heavens declare the glory of the Lord.”

But the heavens can only tell you and me enough. They can't tell us everything we need to know about God. Then He turns to the Word of God.

He says, “The law of the Lord is perfect,”

You go, “I don’t know if the Bible is…”

No. It's perfect.

“…reviving the soul.”

I love this. He tells you about the Word of God, then he gives you an adjective about it, and then he tells you the benefit. You want to know what happens when you read the Word of God? It revives your soul. If you feel a little downtrodden, if you feel a little overwhelmed with the world, put your nose in the Word of the Lord, and let Him revive your soul.

Not only that, but, “The testimony of the Lord is…”

Sometimes right? No.

“…sure, making wise the simple.”

It helps you to see what God wants for your life.

“The precepts of the Lord are…”

Sometimes right? No.

“…right, rejoicing the heart.”

Who doesn't need some joy in their heart. Put your nose in the Word of God and let Him talk to you. People all the time go, “Chip, how do you know when God's talking to you?”

I'm like, “He gave you 66 books. Why are you looking behind the tree? Why are you taking a piece of paper, throwing it in the trash can, going, ‘God, if it goes in, I know that You want me to marry this person?’”

That's not the way you do it. He's communicated to you and me just about everything we need to know.

“The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.”

Allowing our eyes to see.

“The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned.”

They’re not warning you to give you a hard time. He's warning you to keep you from problems and from evil.

“In keeping them there is great reward.”

Then he looks in. He says, “God, who can see their blind spots? How are we able to do that?”

“Who can discern their errors?”

“God, we need Your help. That's why we need to know. We need to know You’re there. We see it in the world. We see that You created, and now we go to Your Word. Help us, Lord.”

He says, “Declare me innocent from my hidden faults.”

“I know I’ve got them. And Lord, on top of that, keep me from sinning, because I did it. The presumptuous sins, the ones I knew I did willfully. Let them not have dominion over me! Then I'll be blameless, and innocent of great transgression because, Lord, when I look up and see Your glory, when I spend time in Your Word, what I want most in my life is that the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart would be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

That, right there, is what the world needs from His Church, people who are genuinely wanting to have a life where the words of their mouth and the meditation of their hearts are acceptable in the Lord's sight. Because if you’re living like this, people will want what you have. So, Psalm 19. Only two points. I want you to hear me. I want you to hear my heart. I'm going to read a chunk of Scripture. It’s quite a bit. I'm not going to make very much commentary. Some of you will not like what I read, I promise. Don't get mad at me. I didn't write it. You can still love me. You can get mad at Paul. He wrote it. I'm just kidding. Okay? But listen to me when I talk about the Word of God. Hear me and hear me well. A culture that rejects the truth of God will end up in shambles. Hear me. Hear me. I want you to read it. Paul takes Psalm 19, and he riffs on it in Romans 1 when he explains how humanity has gone awry. And rather, at the end, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation and my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.”

They’re rejoicing in sin and applauding others who do it. Listen to Paul.

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.”

They know better. We know better. It has to be suppressed. It has to be pushed down. The wrath of God here is not fire bolts, and the wrath of God, in this passage, is said three times: He gives them up. What God does when you or I decide to walk away from Him is He lets us go. And as we go, it gets worse. As we go, it gets worse, and that is the wrath of God in this passage. It just gets worse the more we slide, the more we suppress the truth.

“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.”

How's He shown it? The heavens declare the glory of God.

He says, “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”

In other words, nobody can say they didn't know there was a God. You go, “I don't like that. I don't like that?”

There's plenty in the Bible that I don't sometimes like, but I think the Bible is the Word of God, so I'm going to go with Paul here. Here’s what he says, and it's an unsettling thing.

He says, “So they are without excuse.”

People ask me all the time, “Well, Chip, what about the person over there?”

Paul would say they’re without excuse. They've got enough knowledge. You go, “I don't like that.”

Well, you don't have to like anything. I'm just telling you that Paul would say they're without excuse. Why? Because the heavens declare the glory of the Lord. You have to suppress it. You have to push it down.

He says, “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking,”

That’s why Paul's going to tell you in Romans 12, “Therefore, I beseech you, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as living sacrifice. What do you do? Don't be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

He already knows what he's going to write in Romans 12 here. He's trying to say, “There’s an antidote to this. Don't walk away from God. Don't walk away from His truth. Don't pervert it. Don't twist it. Don't make it sound what you want. Trust what He said. He knows.”

“…and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God…”

What he does is he what walks us down. He says, “From men to birds to animals to creeping things. You’re going the wrong direction. You’re looking here, but you should be looking up.”

“Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.”

What's the due penalty? They continue to walk away from God.

“And since they didn't see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness.”

Boy, this sounds like the headlines today, does it not?

“They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God,”

Do you know what we do with these passages? We rearrange them in a way that we pick the sin that we don't do and highlight that rather than dealing with it. Gossip and hating God are in the same sentence. We like to pick and choose which ones. Because when you walk away from God — James says it. How can you rip people who were created in God's image with the same tongue that you’re blessing God with? You can't. And we're learning to hate. We're learning to hate people and feel like we're righteous.

“…insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil,”

Like, we’re making stuff up.

“…disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.”

Listen.

“Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”

That's what happens when you walk away from God's Word. That's why, here at Grace, we're not compromising. I'm not compromising. I'm not changing the fact that I believe the Bible is the Word of God. Somebody called me up, like, “Chip, are you going to…”

All I can say is that as long as I'm the pastor here — one day I'm going to die, and I don't know what happens after I die, but as long as I'm the pastor, we are going to preach and teach the Word of God. We're going to read passages, chunks, we're not going to colorcoat it, we’re not going to white it out, or whatever.”

I know it's sometimes unsettling, but here's the question I’ve got for you. I usually put “we” or “our” because I don't want anybody to think I'm preaching at you. I'm not. I just want to personalize it for all of us. What areas in my mind are not held captive to the Word of God? What areas? I don't know what those areas may be, but maybe there are a few up here that you go, “Yeah. You know, I probably could not be going that way, away from God, about what He says here.”

Or maybe you don't even know what He says. Get in a group. Let us help you study. We want to help you with that. I mean, this is my biggest point. This is something that I've been trying to do for 13 years. Our generation needs to have a reformation regarding the Word of God. We need to be people, again, that know what God's Word says. We need to know these stories. We need to know the words. We need to know what Ephesians says, and what Philippian says. We need to be people that are grounded. This is what we need to be.

We need to go “More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.”

We need to be people that want to know what God says so that we can live it out, because there is a lost and dying world out there that needs the Church to walk in the fullness and the power of the Holy Spirit and be people that win souls. The heavens declare the glory of the Lord. His law is perfect.

The singers are going to come. We're going to sing a song. It's powerful. Don't leave. Stay. Sing it. Listen to it. Let it build faith. Let it speak to you. I, with all of my heart at this point in my life, just want to make sure that Sarasota has a place where no matter what you've done, no matter where you've been, no matter what your life looks like you can come in here and you can find Jesus. And we will do the best to equip you to become all that God has called you to be so that you can go back out as a different and changed person and tell people about the One that changed your life.

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