So I get this text last night that the the last food truck has said we can't do it. And it's so funny because I had the message prepared and uh and never before, I think this is the first in church history, I changed the message this morning because of food truck canceled. It's the first message ever inspired by the cancellation of a food truck. I was hanging out at my at my uh in-law's house. We have a lot of family in town this week, and so we were all there, and Sander texts me, and it was interesting because as soon as she said, hey, they just they can't find help. This this one specific teaching of Jesus just jumped into my mind. And to the point where I couldn't stop thinking about it, and I just I just knew, okay, Lord, this is what you want me to talk about. And so I'm gonna read it. Matthew chapter 9, verses 35 through 38. Jesus traveled through all the towns and villages of that area, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the good news about the kingdom. And he healed every kind of disease and illness, and when he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. He said to his disciples, the harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who's in charge of the harvest and ask him to send more workers into his field. The second I got that text saying, The hot truck, truck, the hot dog truck is down. The hot dog truck is down. They don't have enough help. It's just that phrase, the harvest is great, but the workers are few. Just started replaying in my mind over and over again. This is a teaching of Jesus that shows us a lot about who he is and how we can respond to him. It's a really powerful teaching. It's really important that we understand all that's that's in it. And it's funny, lately I've been I've been praying, well, I've been praying for longer than lately, but like lately I've been praying this very specific thing. And it happened by accident. I was I was actually in the prayer room a few weeks ago and I was praying out loud. I was by myself, and and I prayed, and you know, sometimes if you've ever had this experience, you're praying and you don't really know where you're going with it. The Lord's just sort of guiding you in your prayer. And what I prayed was actually really cheesy, and you'll see why in a second. But it was just what the Lord was leading me to pray. I said, Lord, help me see you more clearly, and help me love you more dearly. And the first thought that came to my mind was like, well, that was that was really cheesy, Justin. You know, because my prayers don't usually rhyme. But uh, but look, you know, at the end of the day, cheesy or not, if we can see Jesus more clearly and love Jesus more dearly, our life is in a really good place. The more clear our understanding of who Jesus is and what he cares about and who he values and how he sees the world, the more clear that becomes, the more we see what really matters and what doesn't. And the greater our love for Jesus grows, and the more we begin to partner with Jesus in the work, and I mean the work that he wants to do in this world, the better we respond to him, the better we love him. Like he's really good at loving us. Like I'm trying to get better at loving him. And so if you see him more clearly and you love him more dearly, you're in a good place. And I think this teaching, it helps us do that. And so, so inspired by food trucks needing some work, needing some help, we're gonna talk about this idea that the workers are few. I want to I want to look at three really simple but really important things that this teaches us about Jesus and about us. Number one, and this is gonna seem like a throwaway, this is gonna seem like an obvious one, especially at his hands. If you've been here for long, we focus on this a lot. Even if you've been watching at home for a while, you know that we talk about this a lot. Uh, number one, Jesus loves people. Jesus loves people. It's interesting, this teaching about the workers being few, the harvest being great. This is something Jesus taught on occasion. It's important when you read the teachings of Jesus that you don't realize that he just said these things one time and moved on. Like he would go from place to place and place, and he would often teach the same things over and over again. That's why the disciples knew them so well. They had heard these things like hundreds of times. Those of you who have parents, those of you who are younger, you can probably like start to finish your parents' sentences when they begin to give you the speech again, and you're like, you're doing that, and you're trying not to do it with your mouth, because then you'll be in trouble. Like, that's how the disciples could have been with Jesus, because he taught these things over and over again. And so one time in John chapter five, Jesus says this. You know the saying, four months between planting and harvest. But I say, wake up and look around, the fields are already ripe for harvest. The harvesters are paid good wages, and the fruit they harvest is people brought to eternal life. What joy awaits the planter and the harvester alike? You know the saying, one plants and another harvest, and it's true. I sent you to harvest where you didn't plant. Others had already done the work, and now you will get to gather the harvest. Where Jesus says this is just as important as what he says. Because it just so happens that at this moment in time, Jesus and his disciples are in a place called Samaria. And if you were a Jewish person, which Jesus and his disciples all were, you would have been taught from birth to extremely, passionately dislike the Samaritans. That's why when Jesus tells the classic story that even if you haven't grown up in church, you probably heard like the good Samaritan. That was meant to have shock value because a Jewish person would not have any concept of a good Samaritan. If you were a Samaritan, you were not good. And so early in his ministry, Jesus starts to make his way to Jerusalem. And the fastest way to Jerusalem was through Samaria, but no Jewish people would ever go, no Jewish person would ever go through Samaria. They would go the long way just to avoid it. But Jesus says, no, no, no, let's just go through Samaria. And the disciples were probably thinking, oh my goodness, what's he thinking? You know, but he's the master, we're the followers, we've got to do what he says, but we're just gonna go straight through. Nope. Jesus stops and he interacts with the people and he teaches them. In fact, it's a Samaritan woman who becomes the very first person to ever hear Jesus outright say, I am the Messiah. And he's with his disciples in Samaria, and he says, Hey, look at these fields. And it's interesting because the translation I read uses the word ripe. The fields are ripe for harvest. In the original language, in the Greek language, it's actually the word white. The fields are white with harvest. And they're like, what in the world does that mean? Well, the Samaritans, when they would go harvest, they wore white. That was part of their culture, their tradition. They wore white clothing. And so here are Jesus' disciples, and he's pointed to these fields, and what do they see? They see all these workers in the fields, and they're all wearing white, and Jesus says, I see a harvest. They would have been taught to see people that when the Son of Man came, when Jesus came, the Messiah that they had been promised, they would have seen people that he's gonna deal with them. The Pharisees, the religious leaders, they would have seen those people like chaff that was meant to be burned away. Not the harvest, not what you want to keep. But Jesus says, No, no, I see a harvest. I love those people. I love those people. I came for those people. You see, we have to understand that Jesus loves everyone. And that's easier to grab a hold of and get excited about at first, but the deeper and deeper you go, it gets a little bit more challenging. Number one, hear this Jesus loves you. Now, for some of you, you're like, yeah, and he oughta, you know, and uh pray about that if that's your response to that. But uh, but let's be honest, there's a lot of us that go, does he really? Like it's hard for some of us to believe that Jesus loves us because we know ourselves. And some of us maybe actually believe that, yeah, that his love, it's not for me. I'm too far gone. You don't know the things that I've done, you don't know the things that I think. If you if you knew the thoughts that ran through my mind, there's no way that the Lord would love me. And we say this very often, but it has to be repeated. This is such a part of our of our church's DNA, our culture. Jesus does not love you out of ignorance. Most people love you out of some degree of ignorance, right? They don't know the whole detail. They don't know all the story, right? They don't know everything. If they knew all the details about you, they might love you a little less. Let's be honest. I mean, we work really hard as people at keeping some things buried because we don't trust the people we're around to love us if they knew that about us. So they love us out of ignorance. Jesus does not love you out of ignorance. He knows everything and he loves you. You are not too far gone, you will never be too far gone. He loves you, he's died for you, he's given everything for you. And so don't believe for a second that the love of Jesus is somehow not for you, that you are somehow disqualified from his love because of anything that has ever happened in your life or will ever happen. And if you happen to be going through a season right now that's really difficult, if you feel like a failure, you are not exempt from the love of Jesus, not for one second. Don't believe that, it's not true. He loves you. He also loves everybody else. Now that becomes a problem too, because we don't love everybody else, right? And we might say, Oh, I love people. What we really mean is I love certain people. Or I love certain types of people. You know, we have these four words that guide us as a church. Uh, and I have this conversation with a lot of people. It's the words love, accept, agree, and endorse. What that means is we love everybody. We love everybody. We accept, like virtually everybody, even the only reason I say virtually is because I don't know if someone came in and they were like doing something really dangerous that could harm other people around them, we would say, hey, we love you, but you just can't be here right now until this gets settled, right? Like that's happened maybe twice in the history of our church, where literally something was happening in the moment that was so intense that we had to say, You, you've got to go and we'll reach out to you, but this is this is not good. That's that's like a caveat. We love everyone, we accept like everyone. We don't agree with everyone. And we we don't even endorse what everyone thinks or or does, but but how sad is it that we live in a culture that says, if you don't endorse me or agree with me, you don't love me? And I'll have people sometimes reach out to me and what they want is agreement. They'll say, hey, I just need to know with this church, I need to know that you agree with this. And I'll look at them and say, Well, I don't. If all you want is agreement, then you're you're you've got really low goals. Because love is better than agreement. Love is so much more powerful than agreement. And we can love each other even if we don't agree. Don't settle for agreement when you can have love and don't just love the people you agree with, because that's not hard. Like it's it's easy to love people that you agree with, right? It's easy to love people who believe the way you believe. It's easy to love people who vote the way you vote. It's easy to love people who see the world the way that you see the world. What's really hard is loving people who don't. But what we have to understand about this Jesus loves people thing is that it is complete. It is, there's there's no caveats to it. He loves everyone, and in some ways, that's kind of a problem we got to deal with because he loves people passionately. This means that the people that you believe are the problem with the world, the people you might look at and go, they're the reason that things aren't the way they should be. Yeah, maybe, but Jesus loves them a lot. Every bit as much as he loves you. Even the people, and this is where it gets really hard and really personal, even the people who have done things in your life that they've jacked you up a little bit. Jesus wasn't for what they did, he doesn't excuse what they did. In fact, that's why scripture says, never take vengeance, for vengeance is mine, says the Lord. The Lord will make everything right, but he still loves those people. That's a hard thing to reconcile, isn't it? Like God, how do you love the person who hurt me? You love the person who betrayed me, who lied about me, who harmed me, who abused me. You love that person, and I'm supposed to love that person. And the answer is yes. Now you may need to love them at a distance. But love, love has this way of completely and totally unbinding us from the burden of unforgiveness and bitterness and resentment. That just twists us up. It just makes us wither and die inside. And love, it takes all that away. When Jesus looks at the Samaritans, when he looks at these people, that the disciples would have been taught to loathe, to avoid. I mean, they literally would go out of their way, go out of their way to get to Jerusalem, which was like their capital, just so they didn't have to go through Samaria. They would inconvenience themselves to not have to be around those people. Jesus says, Hey, before I do anything else early in my ministry, see those people? I love them. And so we have to be a people, we have to be a church that loves everybody. I mean, picture the person who's the most opposite you you can possibly imagine. I mean, down to every viewpoint you have about the world and the team that you root for. I mean, I, you know, I'm a huge Duke basketball fan. There's North Carolina fans that go to this church, and I'm all right with that. You know? Scott, I know where you're sitting. I see you every Sunday. It's all right, man. It's all right. I'm praying for you. I pray for you all the time. God deliver Scott from his folly. You know? And Scott will tell me, hey, you know, look at the sky, it's Carolina blue, and I'm like, that's after the fall. Before, it's clearly it was Duke Blue. Everyone knows that. Pastors know that. That's just the broken world we live in. I'm teasing. But like, but honestly, all jokes aside, no, no, picture the person who's the most opposite of you you can imagine. And maybe it's a person that uh that pops up in your news feed because every time they post something on Facebook, you stop and look at it for a second and go, like, oh, you know? And then Facebook sees that you do that and they're like, oh, you might, you must like what they say. And so it just keeps popping up, and you're like, ah, right? Jesus loves that person. You know, it and I'll move on. Jesus probably didn't agree with that many people when he was on the earth. Because like, no one had it right. He knows God the Father completely, he knows everything. And I bet there were very few people that Jesus agreed with. There were very few people who could have said something to Jesus and him go, nailed it. I mean, everybody. He was like, Yeah, kinda, but you know, not, no. Even his own disciples who followed him, there's these stories where they're like, hey, Jesus, you want us to go do this? Like, there's this one time where these people reject him, they're like, Jesus, you want us to pray and call like fire down from heaven to burn them up? And he's like, No, I don't. Not at all. Jesus agreed with very few, but he loved everybody. What would our community be like? What would your life be like if you could love like that? Jesus loves people, he sees everyone as a harvest. Number two, this is a big one. Because this breaks some categories for you if you've been following Jesus for long. If not, this might be a really easy one. But Jesus needs help. Jesus needs help. Jesus saying, hey, the harvest is great, but the workers are few. This is the equivalent of God putting a help-wanted sign out front. And you know, it's it's one thing if food trucks and restaurants and businesses are understaffed. And they can't do what they're meant to do because there's not enough workers. And that's sad. And like even the food truck thing, like, I'm bum for us, but more bum for them. They were gonna have a great day. But that's one thing. If the kingdom of God is understaffed, and there's people who don't know Jesus just because other people won't step up and do some work. That's that's more tragic than anything that we can imagine. Jesus needs help. Now it's it's hard to think of Jesus as someone needing help, right? He's Jesus. And again, if you've grown up in church and you have this view of Jesus, like it needs help, but he but he does. In fact, there's many times in his story where he he asks for it. And there's other times where he couldn't even ask for it, but it was given. In fact, I was reminded of this a couple months ago. I had a moment with God. It was really powerful, really personal. I went on this uh five-day retreat. I talked about it. It was a silent retreat. Didn't make it. But uh, but I did good. I did good. I did really well for me. I think I had a two-day silent retreat. I'm there, I'm working my way up. But uh, but on this retreat, they had this path, this little path you could walk, a trail. And on the trail were these things called, you you, if you've grew up, some of you guys grew up Catholic or or Lutheran, maybe something like that. Uh something like that. Like it's a weird thing, sorry. We're all we're all weird. Um But there's this thing called the stations of the cross, and that's not something that was part of my tradition growing up, but but what they are is they're they're pictures of certain moments in the story of Jesus going to the cross and then the resurrection. And the idea is that you you stop at the different stations of the cross, you reflect on them, pray and say, Lord, what does this say about who you are, what you did, what you've done for me? And so I'm walking and I'm looking at all the stations of the cross, and you know, I mean, there's like his his on his on the cross, like he's dying. And that one was really cool, but it's not the one that stuck out to me. And it wasn't even the brutality of Jesus being beaten. That wasn't the one that stuck out to me. The one that actually stuck out to me, I have a picture of it. I took a picture of it while I was there, and so guys, you can put that up. Um, I'm walking on the path, and this this is the one that jumped out to me. And if you guys could zoom in on that a little bit, um this is a picture of a very specific moment when Jesus went to the cross. We read about it actually in uh Mark chapter 15. It says that the soldiers took Jesus into the courtyard of the governor's headquarters, called the Praetorium, and called out the entire regiment. This is after, by the way, that they have uh just brutally, brutally beaten him. They dressed him in a purple robe and they wove thorn branches into a crown and put it on his head. And then they saluted him and taunted, Hail, King of the Jews. And they struck him on the head with a reed stick, they spit on him, and they dropped to their knees in mock worship. And when they were finally tired of mocking him, they took off the purple robe and they put his own clothes on him again, and then they led him away to be crucified. A passer by named Simon, who is from Cyrene, was coming in from the courtside, from the countryside, rather, just then. And the soldiers forced him to carry Jesus' cross. Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus. And they brought Jesus to a place called Golgotha, which means place of the skull. They offered him wine drugged with myrrh, which is like a painkiller, but he refused it. And then the soldiers nailed him to the cross. And so that picture, if you guys don't mind putting that back up, the zoomed-in version of it, that picture is uh it's him lifting the cross, lifting the burden off of Jesus. And I'm standing there looking at it, and and I literally heard the Lord say, Justin, will you help me carry my burden? Because in that moment, Jesus He couldn't carry his own cross. He was he was so beat up. He was so, so beaten, so hurt. You gotta imagine how crazy of an idea this is. This is the Jesus who healed people, walked on water, performed miracles. This, by the way, is the Jesus that played a part in the creation of the world. So that that wood that that tree that became the cross that he's carrying, like, he helped make that. But he's so hurt, he's so exhausted he can't carry it. Jesus needed help. He needed someone to carry that burden. What we have to understand as Jesus' followers is that Jesus still carries a burden. Because he loves every single person on this earth. And he needs help. He needs help to bring those people in relationship with him. He needs help. He wants to use people. And I don't know if you guys are like me. If I was God, that would not have been my plan. Plan A would not be people. People should be like the fallback plan, right? Actually, you hear that a lot of times, even in language that people will have if they're Jesus followers and they're praying for miracles, where like maybe they're sick and and they pray that God just heals them. And they want it to be without doctors. Because in our minds, if it's done through a doctor, that's somehow less God, but it's weird because God always likes to use people. I mean, think about it in scripture. How often could God have just done something on his own, and yet what does he do? He raises up a person, he uses a person. I'm not saying God doesn't miraculously heal people, he does. I've seen it. He loves to use people. People are not plan B in his eyes, even if we think they should be. We often think, God, I want you to work and just bypass the people. And he's like, that's not what I do. I use people. And again, if I was Jesus, my plan A would not have been people, and it definitely would have been the people that Jesus picked. But that was his plan A, and here we are. 2,000 years later, and we're worshiping him along with billions of people. So maybe Jesus knows what he's doing. People are his plan A. He needs us. He's chosen us to be the way that he's gonna reach the world. Jesus needs help. He needs someone to help him carry that burden. The question is, will we will we answer the call? One final point. Jesus doesn't just need help, he needs your help. This is where it gets really cool. Jesus needs your help. Matthew chapter 5, Jesus writes, You are the light of the world. Like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father. One of the things that makes our faith really unique, and it's important that we know these things. This is important for us to have an intellectually developed faith. One of the things that makes our faith very unique is that our God believes. In us. Like it's one thing to believe in God, but it's another thing to believe in a God who believes in you. And I'm just gonna be honest: if you put all the founders of the major faiths up on a stage and ask them about their view of humanity, Jesus would stand out. He would stand out and it wouldn't even be close. Because Jesus believes in people. Jesus has a high view of humanity, and Jesus has a high, high view of you. When he says that you are the light of the world, he's talking about all of us. That that in our language would be a y'all. Like he's saying, y'all are the light of the world, right? In Georgia speak, it's a plural you. But I don't think the Jewish people had y'all that hadn't developed yet. I'm still waiting for everyone in the world to get y'all is actually a really helpful word. I didn't speak that word until I moved down here. We didn't have that word in Wisconsin. We said things like you all. Um but it's just not, it's less efficient. And so uh it's a y'all, but but it's personal too. And so I I want you to seriously think about this. Do you believe that you are the light of the world? Do you believe that you personally have been created by God and you are you are of such value, there is something so insanely important about you that you are actually meant and designed to be put on display by God so that people can look at you and the way that you live and say, there's something different, there's something powerful, I believe in God because of that person. It's hard for us to believe that about ourselves because we have a lower view of ourselves than God has of us. And that is clear throughout the entirety of Scripture because time and time again, if you read the stories of Scripture, God comes, He often sends an angel to someone, he says, Hey, I'm picking you, and the people always argue. They're like, Nope, wrong person. You have way overestimated me. It's Moses, right? Who am I? Like, I you can't send me, send somebody else. Read the story of Gideon. He's like, Nope, wrong person. Time and time again, God shows up, he says, I've picked you, and everyone's like, uh-uh, not why? Because we have a lower view of ourselves than God has of us. You need to hear this. Whatever you think about yourself, whatever your view of yourself. Unless you're like maybe a clinical narcissist who thinks the world revolves around you, right? And there are people like that. I'm actually scared because one of my kids one time said that they were struggling to make the sun come up. And I was like, do they actually believe that they make the sun come up? Because that's a whole different whatever. I'm like, Dad, I can't make the sun come up. It was like five in the morning. I was like, what? All right, pray about that. Um but reality is whatever you think about yourself, God thinks higher. Whatever you think you're capable of, God thinks you're capable of more. You are the light of the world. You are meant to live in such a way that it inspires people, that it causes people to have like a crisis where they have to sort of reconcile and wrestle with God because they see something in you that is undeniable. And this is where it becomes really personal. Like people are not just God's plan A for reaching the world. You are God's plan A for someone. You are someone's best chance to know Jesus. Right now, there is someone alive who does not know him, who has not experienced that joy and that hope that only Jesus can provide. You know, in the in the lobby, we have that light fixture that represents people knowing Jesus. And every time someone gets baptized, we turn another light on until it fills up, and then we start over. And I love that visual because the lights that aren't on, they're not broken. They're just not connected to power yet. There are people in your life that's that's what they're like. They're just waiting to be connected to their power source, and then they'll be able to do what those lights are meant to do, which is to shine, to live the life that they're meant to live. And and you are that person's best chance. That's a that's a huge privilege, but also a massive responsibility to think about. For some of you, it's it's the people you work with. It's the people you work with. You work with someone, and they need Jesus, and you know it, but it's awkward, right? It's awkward to talk about Jesus at work. Sometimes you might get in trouble. But you know, we had a guy get baptized a few months ago, and one of the things that the phrase pushed him over the edge just came to my mind, but that's probably not the right phrase for following Jesus. I don't know the the a better one. That's like a negative thing. What got him all the way was one of his co-workers, actually, someone who worked for him, gave him a Bible and just said, Hey, I got this for you, not because I think you're a bad person and your life needs to change, it's not that. But I just I think God has something for you, and I think you might find it in this. And then he got baptized by his employee at our church. And I you think that guy got a raise? I would imagine he got a raise, right? And look, if you're the guy who baptized your employee and you didn't give him a raise, you just need to pray about that because, like, look what he did for you. I mean, come on. You you think that you think that gentleman was nervous a little bit? I mean, giving your boss a Bible, let's just stop for a second and all think about our bosses, okay? And the idea of being like, here, I got this for you. That I mean, that could be read the entirely wrong way. You know what I mean? That's a nerve-wracking thing to do, but he but he did that. He shared his faith with his boss, and then he got to baptize his boss. That's awesome. And that is job security, let me tell you right now. Okay. You know, for some of you who are younger, it's someone you go to school with. You go to school with somebody and they don't know the Lord, and and you are their best chance. You're you're the reason. Like, like they're the reason, rather, the you sit where you sit in school. They're the reason you are where you are, because because God has worked that out. You are their best chance. And if you don't take that opportunity to share your faith, to pray for them, to just to talk to them, even if it's awkward. Hey, I'm you can just say that by the way. This is really awkward, but Jesus loves you. And I'm I'm just if that weird you out, I apologize. If you want to know more, talk to me, and then you just run away. Um, I don't know. But the point is, if you care enough to share that, you are their best chance. And if you don't, hopefully someone else will, but maybe not. You're their best shot. For some of you, it's it's your spouse. It's a pretty common thing that see it happen all the time. I've been here for a long time, where one spouse will come to church week in and week out, and the other spouse stays home because they're not there yet in their faith. And that's kind of a crisis, right? It's hard to, it's hard to be in a marriage where you are passionate about the Lord and your spouse is not, because you're supposed to be one and united and together, and that probably means you have priorities that are that are different. And there was actually a big problem in the early church. In fact, people would ask in the early church because everyone was a convert, no one was born a Christian, no one grew up in a Christian family. It was new. And so people would ask, like, well, if I become a Jesus follower, should I divorce my spouse? Because clearly we're we're going in different directions. And Paul, who was a leader in the early church, said, No, don't do that. You're their best chance. You're the reason they're gonna know the Lord. And I've seen this happen so many times, where one spouse will just keep coming and keep inviting their spouse over and over again, and eventually, you know, their spouse just, I don't know, gets tired of it, relents, realizes something, who whatever, and comes, and before too long that spouse is baptizing the other. And I will say this usually this is the woman who comes first. There have been a lot of men baptized at his hands by their wives. I'm just saying. Okay, and if you are that spouse, by the way, that that that you don't normally come, uh I wrote this before I knew you were here. All right, and look, the reality is if you see joy and passion and grace in the life of your spouse, it's because of Jesus. It's not made up, it's not a phase, it's real, and you can have it. So just give your life to him. For some of you, it's your own children, you're their best chance. It's it's like it's so hard, right, when you're a parent and you got kids, you don't want to push it on them. Like, how to be honest, show of hands real quick. How many of you guys had your parents push their faith on you in a way that was really unhealthy and not good? Anyone at all have your parents just beat you over the head with it? Wow, not that many of us. That's awesome. Some people have that experience, or at the very least, there's this fear that if I if I make it too big of a deal, it's gonna push them away. It's hard when it's family. I actually dealt with that with my with my brother in worship team. You guys can make your can make your way out. Um my older brother, he's eight years older than me, and uh I love him, but we've never been close because he's eight years older than me. And so when I was 12, he got married, and I haven't lived in the same city as he's lived in since I was 12 years old, and that was a long time ago. And so, you know, over the years I I know where my faith is, and I've just never been sure where he stands in his faith. And I know he believes in God, but I don't know what that means for him, and and so I would look for opportunities to share my faith, but many times I would I would whiff. In fact, I had a few softball moments where like it was like God was like, here, Justin, talk about me. And I just I was afraid to say it the wrong way and push him away. But in reality, I was really just afraid. And so one time it hit, and I had to deal with this one, and I've told this story before a few times, um, but I won't go into all the details. But I I love basketball. I I spent some time way back when writing articles for different websites, like for fun. And I'm a huge fan of the ACC, which is a conference, if you're not familiar with sports, it's a conference, it's local, Georgia Tech, they're in the ACC. Well, one year I'm writing these basketball articles, and uh, and I prayed that I would be able to go to the ACC tournament because it was here in Atlanta. It was a big deal to me. For some of you who are like, this is the dumbest story in the world, just picture whatever you love the most, whatever would be the most exciting thing that you could do. Like that was going to the ACC tournament for me. And it was in town, but it was really expensive, and so I prayed because a friend made me do it. They're like, pray about it. I'm like, I don't want to pray about it, pray about it. Felt like it was silly to pray about tickets to a game, but I did it. And I know God loves me, so I was like, all right, God, hook me up with tickets. And then I didn't think about it again. And then a few months later, I get a phone call from the guy that ran the website that I wrote for, and he said, Hey, CBS reached out to us and they want to use you to cover the ACC tournament, which means press row and access to the players and coaches, and you get to interview them, and you know, just if you can clear your schedule. And I was like, cleared, done. What an obvious answer to prayer, right? Hey God, could you hook me up with a few tickets? How about press passes and how about you get paid to do it? I feel like it's off. You know what that is? That's good. That's my wife talking in a microphone. She's baptizing someone in a minute. So that's what's happening. That's not God talking to us. Okay. Man, can you imagine if God had my wife's voice, how just awful that would be as a person? You're like, I knew it. I love it. I love it. So basketball tickets, huh? I got some. And you know, my brother called me when he heard about that, when he heard I was gonna be covering this tournament for CBS. He was like, wow. He called me up and said, How'd that happen? And here's what I said. I said, you know, man, I've just been writing these articles in my spare time and they've they've they've been really successful. And I've just been working really hard at it, and so I got a really cool opportunity through it. And I hung up the phone, feeling like a failure. Because what a chance for me to say, dude, I have a God who loves me. And I prayed and I asked him for something as silly as tickets to a basketball game. And look what he did. It's overkill, it's abundant because that's the way he loves us. And and brother, he loves you the same way. I didn't do that. I took credit for what God did. And I, man, I regretted that. I ended up reaching out to him afterwards and having a conversation and kind of clearing the air, but it just wasn't the same as if I would have taken that moment. My point is that God wants to use you, me, all of us, to reach somebody, and you are that person's best chance. At that moment in time, I was my brother's best chance to connect the dots to a God who loves him, like he maybe didn't understand, and I and I missed it. I don't want to miss those moments anymore. When God throws me a softball, I want to hit it. You are someone's plan A for knowing Jesus. Jesus loves that person, Jesus needs some help to bring people into his kingdom, and he needs you, and he has created you uniquely designed to reach that person. Who is that person? Who are those people? Will you love them enough to share your faith? Will you love them enough to invite them to church? Will you love them enough to invite them to a movie night? Will you love them enough to just look them in the eye one day and say, Listen, I want you to know this. I pray for you. I I know that the God who I believe in loves you, and I pray for you all the time. And if you ever need anything, I'm here for you. And more importantly, I know who you who you need. When you've got those friends, those people in your life, and their lives falling apart more than just going, Oh, I'm so sorry. You come alongside them and care enough to share your faith. Because God is real and he loves them, and he's asking for your help. There is a help-wanted sign posted on the front of the kingdom of heaven. That's what Jesus says. And the question is, will we step up and be people who say, I'm here to help? I'm here to help. You know, I think about our church, and we've never been a church that gets like obsesses about the number of people. I don't know how many people are here today. I don't know how many people were here last week. But I do look and say, Wow, God, you gave us a lot of room. Let's fill it. And I used to get frustrated because we have kind of a small parking lot for the size church we are, but you know what we're surrounded by? Giant parking lots, right? BJs, Lowe's, they don't need all that parking, not on Sunday morning. That's our parking. It is. And one day y'all are gonna be parking there. No, you night. It was like a nervous laugh. Oh no, no, you're gonna park at Lowe's, you're gonna walk across the street, you're gonna love it. You're gonna love it. You're gonna be so excited. Because his kingdom is meant to grow. And so I want to encourage you, I want to challenge us today. Will I be a worker for the Lord? He said, pray. The harvest is great, the workers are few. He needs help. Will I be someone who steps up and helps? Will I be someone who shares my faith? Don't give up with those people that you know and love. Don't quit. Don't quit on them, they're too important. God loves them too much. Those people that you disagree with and you can't stand, God loves them. Pray for them, talk to them, share your faith at every opportunity. There's a help-wanted sign, and and you're meant to respond to it. And you might walk in and you might have the same questions we all have when we get a new job, like, hey, what are the hours like? Oh, all the time. Constant. Really? Yeah. Any moment in time. God might wake you up in the middle of the night and you're supposed to pray for somebody. You're like, I just inconvenient. Yep. Well, what's the pay? Interesting. That's an interesting thing to be paid. Number one, you get to share in the glory of God. But then you also share in the suffering. Sometimes people hate you because you follow Jesus. Like, it's just it's just what it is. That's okay. I've had people hate me before. I've deserved it. So why I can be hated for that. And maybe this is a really bad sell. You might say, well, what are the where are there any perks? Any perks? Like some of us have had jobs with perks. I used to work at Blockbuster Video, got five free rentals a week. That was a huge perk. Cheap. I had the cheapest dates in high school. I'm like, hey, let's watch a movie. And pay a dime. No, in all honesty, all silliness aside, look, you answer this help wanted. You say, I'll be a worker, Lord, you get to be part of the greatest movement that has ever existed or will ever exist in the history of the world. There is no movement that has ever taken place that is as powerful and as important as the movement of Jesus. There is a reason, by the way, that authoritarian countries don't want the gospel. Because all of a sudden, if people start hearing that they're created by God and valued by God, that they are the children of God, they start believing that that's true, the value, the self-importance that begins to grow. That's dangerous. The movement of Jesus is the most powerful movement that has ever existed, so much so that when you look at almost any social movement that's ever happened in history, that's led to people being more free, more valued, that movement is almost always, and I mean it's strange how it's almost always led by passionate followers of Jesus Christ. The civil rights movement, passionate followers of Jesus Christ are who led that movement. Why? Because they saw things the way that God sees them. You look all over the world, the people doing the hardest work right now to free people from slavery, which still exists in the world, who are the people at the forefront of that? You happen to find that they're passionate followers of Jesus Christ. Because when you see him more clearly, you love him more dearly, you see the world the way he sees it, and you say, Yes, I will do the work. And I don't know about you guys, it's summer. I'm gonna have a lot of fun this summer, but I'm ready to do some work for the kingdom of God. Is anybody with me? So pray and ask him, what do you want me to do? Who do you want me to talk to? And I'll do it. Give him your yes completely and totally. And when you do that, here's the result. People are gonna know Jesus. And you're gonna get to share in moments like what we're about to share in right now, because we've got some people going all in with Jesus. And so, with that said, let's pray. And let's watch the result of what happens when the workers say yes. Jesus, thank you so much for this day. And uh Lord, I'm not grateful that the food truck's canceled, and I do pray, Lord, that you would provide them with staff so that they could they could do the work that they're supposed to do. But I'm grateful, Lord, for the reminder today. The reminder that you need help. You love the world, you love people, and you need our help, you need us, every single one of us, is somebody's best chance to know Jesus. And I pray, Lord, that you fill our hearts with so much love and purpose that we refuse to say no, that we refuse to be people who skip out on work. Because there is work to be done. Give us the courage, the boldness, the compassion, and honestly, God, the love to share our faith, to share you with everyone we get a chance to. And I pray, Lord, if specifically right now, that if there's if there's any of us that have specific people in mind, that we would trust that that is from you, and that we would make it our life's purpose to share our faith with that person. Because you love them so much. You're desperate to know them, Lord. We pray this in your name. Amen.