Thanks for listening to the His Hands Church podcast. If you're using the His Hands Church mobile app, please turn off the auto lock on your phone's general settings so that you can listen to the message uninterrupted. And thank you for being part of what God is doing at His Hands. Alright. Well, good morning. As we were singing that song, uh the part where it says through the dark of night just stuck out to me. And I have a I have a son who I talk about a lot because I love him. But we just moved into a new house recently, and uh we spent a lot of our time hanging out upstairs, and the kitchen where all his snacks are is downstairs. And so at night he'll say, I want a snack, and I'm trying to teach him independence because he's four, it's time to learn. He's almost four. But uh but he'll go to the stairs and then he'll look down and it's dark. And so every single time he does that, you know, it's a long hallway from our room that we're all hanging out into the stairs, and he gets to the stairs, and then he just turns around and runs back because he needs he needs someone to walk down with him. And uh, and it's funny, sometimes as a parent, you're like, oh, come on, you we we gotta get you to not be afraid of the dark, but then it's amazing when we think about God and how uh every single time we hit something in our lives that's whatever that dark is for us, that we can run right back to him and he'll walk through it with us every time. That's just amazing to me. Um let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much for uh for being uh for being our lover, for loving us. And we are passionate about you, Jesus, but we know that our passion for you does not even begin to touch the passion you have for us. And I pray this morning that you would speak through your word, through your words, Jesus, speak right into our lives, Holy Spirit, and show us what it is that you have for us this morning and in our lives every single day. And we pray this in your name. Amen. I got a few really short announcements. Uh next Sunday is gonna be a fantastic Sunday, not that today's not. You didn't pick the wrong one, but next Sunday will be. Uh Ken Kington's gonna be back with us. He hasn't been here for a while, so it's always exciting. Ken's everybody's favorite. Yeah. If uh if if if you've never been here when Ken's here, he's uh he's part of our family. By by trade, he's a professional comedian, if that is a trade. Um but but he's a he's an incredible teacher and he loves God. And I've gotten to know Ken over the last couple years, and he's an amazing guy. And so I know whatever whatever he's gonna share next week, it'll still be in the series that we're in, but I know that it'll be uh it'll be really, really exciting. Um I want to say a thank you to everyone who's given financially. There's four columns in the back of the room you can give there or online at hishandschurch.com. And as always, just know that A, it's needed, and B, God is using it. He is using it to do incredible things, and it couldn't happen without you. So thank you so much. Uh this morning, after we're done in here, there will be some people to help you sign up for some things at the Connect Desk in the main lobby. We're really trying to get some help on our nursery and our our his kids teams. Nursery is, you know, kindergarten and under his kids is first through fifth grade. Every Sunday, we have 250 plus kids in those ages. And the people that help out with those groups, they're the ones that get to be the first ones to introduce them to Jesus. And that is an honor and a privilege, and we need some help. So if you can help with that, it's a one Sunday per month commitment, and I promise you will get more out of it than you are giving away. And so just head over to the Connect Desk and someone will help you with that. Uh, another thing for all of us that are in small groups, uh, we wanted to let you know that the discussion questions that we've been having for the small groups based on the messages, those are available online now. So on Sunday afternoons, you'll be able to go to hishandschurch.com. You'll see groups and discussion questions, and you can have all those as well as all the verses that we're using and whatnot uh to prepare for your group time if you if you want to. So there's that. Well, over the last few weeks, we have been talking about the strange things that Jesus said. Last week, Ben sort of joked that it's a little odd and a little presumptuous for us to be the ones saying that what Jesus said is strange. As if when it comes to communication, it's it's he that has the communication problem, not us that have the listening and understanding problems. Obviously, that's not the truth. We're the ones with we're the ones with the issues, but Jesus is God. He is. And so when he speaks and he teaches us, so many of the things that that God is and does are just completely counter-cultural, counterintuitive. They're just so different than the way we normally think and see this world that we can't help but see it as strange. And so every week we've kind of tackled a different thing. Bill started us off a few weeks ago by looking at the verse where Jesus says, Hey, if you have a small amount of faith, you can move a mountain. That's a pretty big thing to say. Last week, uh Ben talked about hating your parents, something that comes naturally in life sometimes, but something that Jesus said, Hey, if you want to follow me, your love for me, for God, should be so great that any other love you have in this world, love for your family, love for your spouse, your own children, your own life, it should be like hatred in comparison. When you read that, that's a tough thing to sort of digest. There are a lot of choices we could go through with the difficult things that Jesus said. This morning, we're gonna look at a passage in Mark chapter 8. It's Mark 8, it's verses 34 and 35. It says, Then he called the crowd to him, along with his disciples, and said, Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. So we've got move a mountain, hate your parents, lose your life. Lose your life actually to save it. Now, I don't know about you, that sounds a little bit like a contradiction to me. What does Jesus mean by losing your life to save it? Well, the context of this verse, we saw it at the very beginning, it began with whoever wants to be my disciple. Jesus called a crowd to him. And so what we have here is Jesus recruiting followers. Now, you may have never been recruited for a Division I sports team or something like that, but all of us in this room, all of us know what it's like to be recruited. Companies spend millions of dollars every single year to recruit us as their customers. That's what my degree actually is in is marketing. And I spent about a year working at a marketing company before coming here. Um man, the way that Jesus markets, so to speak, recruits, I hate to use those words, and we'll see that that's not how Jesus is, but the way that he recruits, he breaks a lot of rules. He has a very unorthodox approach. And you can't deny that he was a great recruiter, the results speak for themselves, and the fact that we're all here this morning shows that he knew what he was doing, but he just didn't go about it the way that you're supposed to do it. He breaks some key rules. So, for example, he begins, right, by saying, for whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. Losing life. We'll leave that up for just a little bit. Before he said that, he said, you know, you need to take up your cross and follow me. Now, the audience that Jesus is talking to knows exactly what take up your cross and follow me means. In his day, crucifixion was an execution that the government used, it was public, and when you got crucified for whatever your crime might be, you often carried your own cross or a portion of that cross to where you were being crucified. So everyone he's talking to has likely seen someone on their way to die. They knew what that meant. And just in case they're wondering if Jesus is using this as just an analogy or some type of metaphor, no, no, he clears it up here. He says, Whoever loses their life for me. So he is talking about death. And it's a it's a strange tool in recruiting to mention the worst possible outcome that people can imagine first. Generally, when you're recruiting, you you lead with the benefits and you save the worst for last. Pay attention the next time you see a commercial on television advertising a prescription medication. Okay? And they're all pretty much the same. And it's it's amazing, it's amazing how many of them A have a list of side effects that are increasingly becoming more strange, and B how many of those include death. But it always goes the same. It says side effects may include da-da-da-da-da, and in some cases death. And that is always at the end. It's right after diarrhea, most of the times. It just is. Those are, you know, you want to avoid the D's as much as possible. Those two things. But you you would never see one of those commercials lead with death. Ever. That wouldn't make any sense. You can imagine turning on the television and seeing this commercial come on, it says, This pill might kill you. And if it doesn't kill you, here's a long list of other things it might do to you. And then it shows you the footage of the couple playing frisbee on the beach with their grandchildren and their golden retriever. It wouldn't work. No one would buy that. I mean, let's be honest, none of us in this room would call that 1-800 number. No one would do it, and yet Jesus, recruiting followers, says, hey, follow me and die. Sometimes you want to look at Jesus and say, it's so basic. This is marketing 101. I don't remember much of what I learned in college. I know I didn't learn that. You don't lead with the side effects, you don't lead with the fine print. But Jesus does. And it's a refreshing thing for us because Jesus doesn't sell us. He's not marketing. Jesus is being up front, he's being honest. And there's something amazing about that because it's so completely different in the way this world works. Usually the the worst things that could happen, they want to put that in the smallest font, legal. But Jesus leads with it. And then he has kind of the audacity to repeat it here and say, and by the way, don't just be willing to lose your life, but lose your life for me. In other words, give me everything. Now, this is another major rule in recruiting that Jesus is breaking. You never ask for the most intense or the biggest commitment up front. You always start small when you ask for commitments, right? Like, for example, when you got a cell phone, you didn't sign up for a lifetime contract. You're gonna have a lifetime contract eventually. But you didn't sign up for it. No, you signed up for a year and there's fine print in there that says if you upgrade your phone, then you know you have to do another two years. And if you're like me, my children have contracts with Sprint, it's just the way that it is. I've I've made that happen. But I didn't start like that. When we look at when we look at advertising, uh, no annual contract, that's a very good selling point for us. When we see something like all sales are final, we don't like that. I want as much time to return what I bought as possible. I want as little commitment as possible. Whenever you get a card in the mail from a charitable organization asking for money, there's always options, right? And the first one is something like five dollars. And then there's a line for a little bit more, and then more, and then there's a spot that says other, and you can put whatever amount you want in there, but imagine if you got that card and the one thing it had on there was just everything I have. That's the one option. You don't do it that way, even when we ask for help from friends. You know, a situation that we need some help in, we always ask, or we try to anyway, the smallest commitment possible. Hey, I just need your help for a few hours, even if we're hoping for more. But that's not what Jesus does. It's audacious. He asks for everything. We are conditioned in our culture to ask for the minimum or to expect people to ask the minimum out of us. It's almost like we would expect Jesus to say, Hey, you know, commit to me and begin by committing one day a week. And let's see how that goes. And if you like that one day a week and it's working out for you, you're enjoying it, we'll we'll move it up, and then eventually, if you really enjoy it, you want to go all in, we'll talk about that. But no, right up front, he asks for everything, and we are just conditioned not to expect that. It shocks us when someone asks for a lot. When I was in junior high, uh, my family and I went to Red Lobster. Anyone like Red Lobster? I like Red Lobster. Cheddar biscuits, that's the only thing. Um, that's all you need at Red Lobster, cheddar biscuits. We went to Red Lobster, and uh, it was my my brother, my mom and dad, and myself. I'm about six years older than my little brother, so I was seventh or eighth grade, he was about six years old, and I'll never forget this one particular time eating out. Uh it comes time to order, and my mom and dad order what they got. I ordered something that costs like nine or ten bucks. You know, I was I was smart enough in middle school to know that if I wanted steak and lobster, I didn't order steak and lobster, not when dad was paying for it. And then my brother comes and he looks at our waitress and says, I'd like lobster fest. Now, if you don't go to Red Lobster, Lobster Fest is this seasonal promotion that they have, and it's it's great, it's it's got a lot of lobster in it, and it's expensive. You're actually supposed to share it most times, and they have a kid's menu, but no, no, my six-year-old little brother orders a 40 plus dollar entree. And I'm sitting there like, oh man, he is gonna get it. My dad is gonna, I would never do that. And my dad looks at him and laughs and says, Oh, you can have it. And I was ticked off. Because I could have had steak and lobster, but no, no, my brother got lobster fest. He did not share it, and to this day, I can't go to Red Lobster without thinking about that. I just can't do it. You know, there was this audacity to him asking for a lot. And Jesus asks us for nothing short of everything. There's no middle ground, there's no stages of commitment. He says, up front, I want everything. I want you to commit your entire life to me. Jesus recruited people and he got people to follow him. He he didn't bribe them, he didn't sell them, he challenged them. That was his go-to approach, was to challenge people. And those challenges often had some similarities. Usually, Jesus would challenge them for an exchange. He'd say, Hey, I want you to trade what it is in this world that you value for something in a life to come. In other words, he was saying, I want you to pull up your stake in this world, and I want you to place your stake in my kingdom. And I'm gonna be honest with you, you might endure some hardship, but my kingdom is eternal, and this world will fade away. So put your life, all of it, every bit of it, in my kingdom. It was a challenge. We see this, for example, when Jesus recruits his disciples. Andrew and Peter were two brothers that were fishermen, and they've just had the biggest catch of their lives, and this is what Jesus says to them Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people. And they they immediately left their nets and followed him. So they've had this incredible catch, and Jesus says, Drop your nets. Drop it, and I'll teach you how to get people into God's kingdom instead of how to get fish into a boat. And they followed him. There was a challenge and an exchange. They took the challenge, not everyone did. There's a man in Mark chapter 10 who was a very wealthy young man. He had lived his life the right way, he'd followed all the rules, but despite that, he had a sense that something wasn't right. He needed more. And so he goes to Jesus and he says, What can I do to ensure that I have eternal life? And we're gonna see the same challenge, the same exchange. Says looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him. There is still one thing you haven't done, he told him. Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me. At this the man's face fell and he went away sad, for he had many possessions. We see the exact same challenge, we see the exact same exchange, right? Sell your possessions, drop your net, have treasure in heaven, fish for people, do something of eternal value. And then Jesus says the exact same words that he said to Andrew and to Peter, he says, Come, follow me. And it's an incredibly sad realization when you when you understand that Jesus is asking this man to be a disciple. Because his his call to this man is no different than the call he gives to Peter and to Andrew. It's the same words, it's the same structure. He is literally saying to this man, Come and be one of my closest friends, walk with me, let me teach you. But the man didn't take the bait, he didn't do it. And it's sad because we don't know his name. But if he had said yes, if he had followed Jesus, who knows? You know, we might not only know his name, we may have read stories about him in the book of Acts. There may be a Bible, a chapter in the Bible, or a book of the Bible rather, that he wrote. But we don't know any of that, and it's a sad thing because he had this amazing opportunity, but he left, and he left for one reason. He was holding on to what he had. He was unwilling to let go of the things in this world that made him comfortable. And Jesus says in Mark chapter 8, whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me in the gospel will save it. And in this statement, this kind of strange contradiction, there's a concept that Jesus teaches us. And had this rich young man understood this concept, he may have made a different decision. A couple years ago, I came home and my wife was crying. Uh, I immediately went upstairs to see what it was, you know, mainly to make sure I hadn't done anything. And she was in my my son's bedroom and she's crying, and I look at her and say, honey, what's wrong? And she turns around and she's taking clothes out of his drawer. He's about six, seven months old at the time. She holds up these clothes and she says, These don't fit him anymore. I'm much less emotionally developed than my wife, and so I didn't understand. I was I literally remember being confused, going, like, it's we we want him to grow, right? This is a good thing. If he was still the same size as when we got him, there that's that's bad. You don't want that. I don't understand. And she's like, No, you don't understand. A phase of his life is it's already over. No, he's never gonna be a newborn again, he's never gonna fit into these clothes. And it's funny because I haven't even had those emotions yet until just recently. Nathan kind of mentioned this, but uh, we had a baby a few weeks ago, she's three weeks old, and I mean she's amazing, but what's blown me away more than anything else, you guys act as if that's something that most of us have not done. We had a baby. Come on, clap for yourselves, it's good. So, Nathan's having one soon. Katie is actually, Nathan's, he's gonna be there. Um so we brought Lily home, and immediately, I mean, the moment that I looked at Lily and then I looked at Liam, he seemed so much bigger to me than he had ever seen before. And it was like a month ago, he looked like this tiny little boy to me, this child, and now compared to her, I realize how fast he's growing and how fast it's going. You start doing the math, and you're like, four years? Man, there's not that many more sections of four years until I make him leave. There's not that many more. And there's something about that realization that makes me want to hold on. Makes me want to hold on as hard as I can. I want to save it. I want to save this part of life because I love it, I enjoy it, and I'm comfortable with it. And Jesus says, whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. When he tells us this, he's letting us into this incredible concept, and it's so true, you can't save it. You can't. You can't save life. Savings is it's a good thing to save money. But it's a little bit of a misnomer. You don't really save money. You put it aside to spend later. You might spend it on something enjoyable, you might spend it on an emergency, you might leave it for your children, and they will definitely spend it. But you don't save the money, it is going to get spent, right? Time is the same way. We we hear all the time this will save you time. You don't save time. There's never gonna be a day that death comes knocking at the door and you're like, wait, hold on, I have savings. Let me see how much I've got. I've got at least two years in my emergency fund. No, it doesn't work like that. All of us will spend all of our time. It's just a question on what we spend it on. And our life is the same way. We can't save life, we spend life. It's just a matter of what we spend it on, and Jesus has the boldness to say, spend it on me. And spend it all on me. There is a certain audacity to that, and I love it, because this world has a tendency to kind of water Jesus down, and it wants to make Jesus someone that you can kind of take middle ground on. And you can say, Hey, I think Jesus is awesome. I think he's a great man, I think he's a great teacher, he's a very moral man, obviously, a great example to follow. I just don't believe that he's God and that he's the Son of God and the Savior and all those kinds of things. It doesn't work like that. Because Jesus says, die for me. Give me everything. Your whole life, if necessary, for my kingdom. And a great man would not tell people to do that if it was a lie. With Jesus, it's an all or nothing thing. He asks us for everything. That's the ask, and it's a big ask. But he promises that through giving our life to him, through pouring all of our life and spending all of our life on him, we save it. There's a story of a man late in the fourth century. His name's Telemachus. And he was a man that was a monk that decided to go away from all of life, to completely seclude himself in a desert, and to spend his life praying and fasting to grow closer to God. Well, he was in the desert for a long time, and eventually he had this realization. God spoke to him and said, You need to leave the desert. The desert is no place for a Christian because there's no one to love and no one to serve in the desert but yourself. And so he got up and he went to the least solitary place that he knew, and that was Rome. This is still during the height of the Roman Empire. But unlike the Roman Empire when Jesus was a part of it, it has officially become a Christian nation at this point. The official religion of Rome is Christianity. So Telemachus goes to Rome, this Christian city, and he's appalled at what he discovers that so many of the old things from Rome had stayed. And one of those things was the gladiatorial games. He saw those, he saw people killing each other for sport, and it appalled him. And one day, Telemachus went to the arena where there were 80,000 plus people in attendance. And when the games began, he jumped a barrier and he went into the middle of the arena and stood between two gladiators. The crowd started to boo, telling the gladiators to push him aside, and they did. They pushed him to the ground, but Telemachus got back up. And he stood between him again. And the crowd roared even louder, and they started to yell for the gladiators to kill him. And they did. And the moment that that happened, the crowd fell silent. There was this realization of what had just happened. Their eyes were open. They knew that this was a man of God. He dressed like a monk. They knew all those things, and they realized that this man had just died willingly, and it was at their command. And that day, the game stopped abruptly. They just, everyone went home, no one was in the mood anymore. And amazingly, they never opened again. Now, over the 700 years that the games were part of Rome's culture, it's estimated that 700,000 to 1 million people died in those arenas. And one man spending everything he had for God's kingdom ended it. And he gave everything. He didn't lose his life, he spent his life. When we spend everything that we have on God's kingdom, it makes this world look a lot more like the kingdom of God. And we're blessed right now to live at a time and in a nation when we are not likely to be faced with death just because we believe in Jesus. It's not like that everywhere. And we're blessed to have that here. And there have been a lot of people that have given their lives so that we do have that freedom. But we still have the call on our lives that Jesus put to every single day spend what we have for his kingdom. What does that look like in our lives? What does that look like at work? You go to work and you work as if you're working for Jesus Himself. The Bible says, do everything as if you're doing it for the Lord. And you start serving other people at your job and helping other people at your job. Not to secure your job or to have a higher paycheck, but because you want to love them like Jesus does, that grows God's kingdom. That's spending your time at work for his kingdom. And as a side effect, you're probably going to get noticed because you won't have a lot of competition. Not a lot of people do that. But that grows his kingdom. His kingdom doesn't grow just in here. In fact, it's mostly out there. I work here, I work at a church. So 90% of the conversations I have are with people that are already passionate about Jesus. And I know it's not like that where we all work. And that's where people first come to experience who God is. They see us at our jobs with our coworkers, giving everything we've got for his kingdom, not just for the kingdom of this world. It's like that in our marriages. We have the opportunity to serve our spouses as if we're serving Jesus Himself. We have the ability to be Jesus, to wash the feet, so to speak, of our of our spouses. And I fall short of that so many times, and usually it's when I have this mental switch where I stop focusing on serving and I start to think about whether or not I'm being served enough. I actually did that yesterday. We were doing a bunch of errands yesterday. I'd stayed up the whole night and fed Lily every time she was she was hungry with a bottle. And so I got up with her several times and uh then I went on an errand. I went all the way to Marietta, to the Walmart in Marietta to pick up a thing we got on Craigslist for Lily, and it was by the big chicken, and that's always exciting. And then I came back and did a bunch of more things for the family. Late in the day, I've done all these errands, all this stuff, and I did it with a pretty good attitude. You know, I wanted to help my wife and give her some rest. And I'm about to sit down and watch a basketball game on TV. And she's like, Oh, I forgot one errand. We need to run to the grocery store. And I was like, Are you serious? And she's like, Well, you don't have to go. And I was like, No, I'll go. I'll go, and I'll be in a terrible mood the whole time. And I didn't say that, but that's what I did. And so, you know, we're at the grocery store, and I just had this scowl on my face. And in those moments, see, I wasn't, I wasn't caring at all about serving Megan. I was literally thinking, Well, I did this and I did this and I did this. And now you're asking this, what have you done? That's terrible. I called her this morning to apologize. But but for me, it's it's when I think about being served and not serving. And if we approach our spouses and our marriages with a heart to serve, regardless of whether or not that gets reciprocated, that is spending your life for God's kingdom in your marriage, with your children, investing time into their spiritual growth, reminding them how much you love them, and every time you remind them how much you love them, remember to remind them that God loves them even more. That Jesus loves them even more than they do. Or you do. That's giving everything you have for God's kingdom. And here's the great thing. When Jesus says, give everything to me, he's already given everything to us. Right? He didn't hold back at all. And it's not like we're the ones on the receiving end of the benefits of that. Because I would trade all of God for all of me in a heartbeat. We can't outgive God. We just can't do it. There's a verse that says, you know, right after Jesus is saying this about losing your life and saving it, what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? What you gain by giving everything to Jesus is much more than what you gave up. And it's not just the life to come, it's in our life right now. Uh Peter said, We've left our homes to follow you. Yes, Jesus replied, and I assure you that everyone who has given up house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will be repaid many times over in this life, and we'll have eternal life in the world to come. So God is going to give back. He does that in every part of our lives, our finances. I mean, you don't have to talk to many people that have trusted God with their finances to hear stories of how God has come through and blessed them in ways they could never have imagined. You know, things like serving, talk about, you know, helping in our kids' areas. And I know when we ask for things like that, it's it's hard because you think about giving up time in here. I shared this a little bit last week, but uh I did three years, not a stint, it wasn't a jail sentence. I did three years in his kids. I almost said I did a three-year stint. I realized that's not that's not accurate. Um but I spent three years in his kids every Sunday morning. The only time I ever came in here was to talk and never had the chance to just come and worship. And for a while I felt like I was I was missing something, like I had given something up, and I would sit and think, Oh, I haven't been able to worship God in X number of weeks or a year. And God changed my perspective one day. And it's like he said to me, You think you loving those kids isn't worshiping me? Praying with those kids to accept Jesus for the first time in their lives? That's not worship. And that happens all the time, by the way. Scott Case is one of our his kids teachers, and he texts me last Sunday and said that four kids gave their life for the first time to Jesus last Sunday morning. That happens all the time, right? So, so when we give to something like that, give our time, I can promise you from experience that what you receive from that, you'll be more tired on Sundays when you leave. I can promise you that. But you will also, man, you will also have the joy that comes from seeing you know kids' faces light up the first time, the first time they hear those stories about Jesus. You know, we've all heard the stories before, a lot of us. And so Jesus walked on water, you're like, okay, this is message number 30 that I've heard on this since I was a kid. The first time a kid hears that, oh man, you should see their faces. He did what? It's so refreshing when you realize that. I'll stop saying that, but if you want to sign up for those teams, please know that you're not, what you're getting in return, I promise, is more than what you're giving up. Here's here's the the final thing this morning. And this is where it gets really personal and really cool for all of us. When Jesus asks for everything, it's it's demanding. He's demanding a lot. But I want you to see it from another perspective too. Jesus asks for all of you. Because Jesus desires all of you. I don't even want all of me. I feel guilty that my wife has to live with all of me. And in all seriousness, if I was Jesus, I would be much more selective. You know, I would. I would I would take, yeah, I'll have a little, give me that and that, but the rest you can keep. But that's not Jesus. He's not oblivious to our faults, he's not oblivious to our issues, whatever those are. He looks at us, sees us better than we see ourselves, and he says, I want it all. I want all of it. And it's not like he even tried to get a bargain for us anyway. He gave everything, his entire life, to purchase all of us. So when Jesus says, Give me everything, he's saying, I want everything. I love everything. I want to heal everything, I want to teach you everything, I want to walk with you through everything. That's the deal. And if you're here this morning and you've never accepted that, you've never realized that for the first time in your life, someone wants everything, loves everything. Man, I encourage you. Just implore you to give him everything. Give him what he wants. He's God, he could take it if he wanted to. But he wants us to give it. For some of us, we we've committed to Jesus, but man, there is a temptation in life to start taking parts back, right? Like, I've given you everything. But can I hold on to this for a little while? We can trust him with everything. When he said, whoever loses their life for me will save it. He was telling us the truth. He's saying, Give me everything because honestly, I'm the only one you can trust with everything. Put your stake, your claim, your hope, everything on me because I'm the only one strong enough to hold it. And that's the only way to have it in the end. That's the only way to save it. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much for uh oh Jesus, thank you for giving us everything of you. You don't hold anything back. You gave it all, you gave it all on the cross. You gave us every bit of your passion, your energy, and your life. And so you definitely have the right, Jesus, to ask for the same. And Father, I just pray that for all of us in this room, every single one of us, you would fill us with a desire to hand everything to you, to trust you, to walk with you, to experience the life that you have for us. And Jesus, we just pray all of this in your name. Amen.