Handling Pressure Like Jesus | Mark 3:7-19 | Pastor Ty Hayes

How do you handle pressure when life feels overwhelming? In this message from Mark 3:7–19, Pastor Ty Hayes looks at how Jesus responded to intense demands, constant crowds, and growing expectations. Discover how Jesus refused to be controlled by the crowd, prioritized time with the Father, and shared the load with others. If you're feeling stressed, stretched thin, or under pressure, this message offers a better way forward—Jesus' way.

Transcript

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Well, with that said, we're going to be in Mark chapter 3. We're reading verses 7 through 19 today. And I am particularly excited for this passage because I think my message today is really going to help some people. Man, I love when the Bible is helpful. Love when the Bible is helpful. Come on, how many guys have how many of you have ever been helped by the Bible by the Word of God? I know I had it. Shaped my life. Mark chapter 3, verse 7 says this. Excuse me. Jesus went out to the lake with his disciples, and a large crowd followed him. They came from all over Galilee, Judea, Jerusalem, Itemiah from the east of the Jordan River, and as far north as Tyr and Sedan. So catch this. People from everywhere are coming to hang out with Jesus. Everywhere. The news about his miracles had spread far and wide, and vast numbers of people came to see him. Jesus instructed his disciples to have a boat ready so the crowd would not crush him. He had healed many people that day, so all the sick people eagerly pushed forward to touch him. And whenever the possessed by evil spirits caught sight of him, the spirits would throw themselves on the ground in front of him, shrieking, You are the Son of God. But Jesus sternly commanded the spirits not to reveal who he was. Afterwards Jesus went up on a mountain and called out to the ones he wanted to go with him. And they came to him. Then he appointed the twelve of them and called them his apostles. They were to accompany him and would send, and he would send them out, giving them authority to cast out demons, giving them authority to preach and to cast out demons. These are the twelve he chose. Simon, who was named Peter, James and John, who Jesus nicknamed the Sons of Thunder. I love that. Come on, the Sons of Thunder. That's a cool name. Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, Thaddeus, Simon, and Judas Iscariot, who would later betray Jesus. Let's pray. God, as we dive into your word today, help us to stay focused on you. Help us to walk out of here different. God, my hope is always that each week we would experience the power of God, that we'd walk out of here more like Jesus, and that every one of the sermons preached in this church, no matter the campus, no matter the location, no matter the speaker, every message preached out of the Word of God in this church would be helpful to people. That God, it wouldn't be some religious exercise, it wouldn't be words overhead, but we would walk out of here different because the word of God shaped our life. We love you, we thank you today. Your name I pray. Amen. Have any of you ever felt pressure in your life before? Come on, I remember in my sophomore year of high school, I really liked this girl named Mary. And so just like you do when you like a girl, I try to figure out what she's into so I could be around her, so I can hang out with her. And come to find out she was really into theater and she was going to try out for the school play. Now that's good and well and all, but man, me and theater are like oil and water. We don't go together. I want to know part of it, but I wanted to be around her. So I remember she tried out for the school play. I got I she convinced me to it because I wanted to hang out with her to try out too. And so I'm going thinking, ah, I'll just watch her. Maybe I'll get a small part in the back or I can help with production or something. And they call me to read a line, and next thing I know, I have a speaking role within this play. Now, man, to say that I was less than excited would be an understatement. And so I remember every day after school, we would go over this play, we'd rehearse. Me and her weren't even in the same part of the play, so we didn't get to spend time together. And man, we're building up, building up, building up, and finally we get to uh the week of the show. We've done all the practicing and it's time for the show. And for some reason in my brain, I just forgotten that people are gonna come and watch us. And man, at this time I was in bands. Now I'm a preacher, but can I tell you, man, I was more nervous that day than I've probably ever been in my life. Like what? A speaking role and a play wearing costumes, like people seeing me wasn't what I was about. And so we get their opening night, and opening night actually goes pretty okay. I was nervous, but no one I knew was in the audience. It was fine. Second day was a different story, though. Second day, my mom shows up, my friends show up, they're over there giggling because they think it's so funny that I'm in this play, they think it's so silly that I'm in this play, and man, people go uh, my friends go kind of crazy about it. To make matters worse, this girl I liked got sick. They used her understudy, she didn't even show up uh for the rest of that week. So I'm in this play. The reason I even joined didn't show up, and we get to my part of the play, and man, I make eye contact with some friends and they're giggling, and I'm trying not to giggle, and it gets to the point where I'm supposed to say like the one line I have in the whole play, and I freeze up and I'm looking at the crowd, I'm looking at the my, you know, my co-stars, and they're looking at me, and I just forgot, and someone has to fill in, and the director comes up to me after, Are you good? It's like, yeah, man, I was just feeling the weight. My friends were there. Man, many of us, many of us have times in our life where we feel the pressure. I think all of us, if we're honest, we have struggled with feeling the pressure at some time in our life. Maybe you've been short on bills. Maybe your job's been really demanding. Maybe your family life has been pretty challenging at times. Maybe your personal uh emotions, health, whatever it is, but you found times in your life where you have felt like you're carrying the weight of the world. You felt pressured. Can I tell you, Jesus does a great job in this passage of modeling to us how to handle pressure? In fact, if you're taking notes, here's the big idea: pressure is inevitable, but being crushed by pressure is not. No matter what, we are all going to go through things in this life. But allowing those things not to crush us, press us down is something that Jesus can show us. Because, see, Jesus shows us how to handle the demands of life without losing our purpose or our peace. How many guys, that sounds good? To walk through hard things but not lose your purpose or your peace. Man, we love those things, purpose and peace. So if you're taking notes, write this down. I have three habits for you that you can use to handle the pressures of this life. Number one, Jesus refused to be controlled by the crowd. Catch this. The first thing that Jesus shows us is he refuses to be controlled by the crowd. See, Jesus had become wildly, wildly popular. People were coming from all over to see him, from Galilee, Judea, Jerusalem, Edemiah, across the Jordan River, Tiran Saddam. That means people from north, south, east, west, they all had heard about Jesus and were coming to see him. And it says the crowd got so large that Jesus kept a boat in the lake nearby just so the crowd couldn't crush him, it says. That man, he hadn't an escape plan. Let me ask you if you're being honest. How many of you guys have ever gone on a first date and you're a little nervous and you tell your friends or your parents, like, hey, call me or text me halfway through so if I need an escape route, I got it. Come on, be honest. You know what I'm talking about. Jesus had an escape route because the crowd had gotten so big that there was times that he had to bail out on a boat. See, everyone wanted something from Jesus. Some wanted healing, some wanted miracles, some wanted answers, and some just wanted to see the show. I relate a lot to this, and I think some of you parents can too, that anytime you ever try to get alone or get by yourself, your kids immediately come to follow you. I know for me and Rachel, anytime we're trying to have a private conversation or we're sitting to eat, or one of us is using the restroom or going outside or whatever it is, our daughter Thea is just right there. Hey, what are you doing? Where are you going? What's going on? She always wants to be right where we are, she always wants to find us. It feels like you get no time. That's what Jesus is feeling in this moment. That people just kept taking and taking and taking. And catch this the crowd was demanding his attention. They had needs, they needed miracles, they needed a touch, and Jesus loved doing these things because Jesus loves people just like you and I love people. But Jesus had to be careful, and he never allowed the crowds to dictate his mission and his purpose. See, the people, they wanted miracles. And how many of us would agree that miracles are a good thing? Come on, we love miracles. I love miracles. I love seeing people set free, seeing people healed, seeing God do amazing things. But man, these people wanted miracles and they didn't realize that these are good things, but they weren't the best things that Jesus wanted to do. It wasn't his ultimate mission. I remember I've read this book called Good to Great, and it's about business, and it's talking about how we as people don't experience much of the great of this life because we're always settling for the good. It means that many of us, we have all these opportunities in front of us, and we do good enough, they're good enough that we lose focus on the great things that are possible before us. Jesus says, Man, miracles are a good thing. I love miracles. But the great thing that he could be doing was preaching the kingdom of God. I love when our church feels felt needs. Man, I love when we help people pay their bills, we feed the hungry, we clothe the naked, we help the poor. I love doing all those things. Those are good things to do. But can I tell you, if we get too caught up in the good things we can do and we forget that our ultimate purpose is not just felt needs, but it's preaching the Bible so that people can know Jesus, so their lives can be transformed, then we can miss it. We can get so settled for the good things, the music and the and the and the fun and the donuts and all the things that we miss out on the great thing, which is the preaching of the Word of God. See, here's the principle you need to walk away with. Pressure increases when we allow everyone's priorities and opinions to affect how we live our lives. When we allow other people's demands to become our priorities, other people's problems to become our problems, other people's emergencies to be our emergencies, then we begin to miss it. See, one of the great leadership lessons Jesus teaches is that not every opportunity is your assignment. That not every open door should you walk through, but you have to be clear on who God's called you to be and what God's called you to do. Let me give you a very practical example. This last week I got invited to start teaching at a Bible college and teaching at a school of ministry. And man, school of ministry, Bible college, those are great things. Teaching in Bible colleges, teaching the Bible, great things. I turned it down. Why? Because it's a good thing, but it's not my great thing. Man, it's helpful, but it's not the purpose which God's called me, which is to pastor this church and to preach the word of God. Can I tell you that many of us we miss things because we don't recognize that we can't say yes to everything and still remain faithful to what God has given us? It's like somebody that, man, gets so caught up in helping all the kids around the whole community, which is again a great thing to do, but they begin to neglect their own kids. Man, it's like somebody that helps give money to everybody so they can pay their bills and then forgets to pay their own bills. If we get so caught up in all the opportunities, all the good things that can happen that we forget the great things, then we begin to miss it. So here's how this applies to you. Many of us aren't exhausted because we're doing wrong things. We're not exhausted because we're blown up in sin or running after bad things, but we're exhausted because we do everything. We do everything. We respond to every text and every call. We accept every invitation that comes our way, we embrace every expectation other people put on us, and we try to answer every demand that we feel life has given us. But can I tell you, Jesus loved people deeply? I hope we all agree on that. That Jesus loved people so deeply, deeply, more deeply than any of us probably have ever loved someone in our life. But he refused to let people control him. He loved them even to the point of death. He literally loved them to the point of his death, but he would not let them stray him and be controlled by him. He focused on what God is calling him to do. And here's what I want to tell you your calling is too important to let the crowd dictate your calendar. See, a ship is safest when water stays on the outside. When water is on the outside and it's floating along, it is fulfilling its purpose, it's doing what it's created to do. But the moment the water gets on the inside, the ship experiences trouble, it's way down, and ultimately it begins to sink to the bottom. Can I tell you the crowd around you, the people around you, the needs around you aren't the problem? The problem becomes when the pressure gets so dangerous that it goes from pressing on you to getting inside of you. And rather than seeing all the possibilities, you begin to feel the need to carry all the responsibilities. Rather than seeing where people need help and hearing people's advice and seeing what they're doing, you begin to put all those expectations inside of you. Can I tell you, Jesus loved people, but he refused to let the crowd dictate what he did and what God called him to do. Everyone say two. Come on, say two. You knew it was coming, too. So the first one is Jesus refused to be controlled by the crowd. The second one is Jesus withdrew to be with the Father. In Mark chapter 3, verse 13, it says, And he went up to the mountain and called to him those who he desired. Uh sorry, let me repeat that. And he went up to the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. In Luke 6, 12 it says, In these days he went out to the mountains to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God. See, the first thing that Jesus did after he felt overwhelmed was go up to the mountains and pray. In seasons in our life when we begin to feel like things are too difficult, the best thing we can do is go alone and be with the Father. See, Jesus got alone before he called the twelve. Jesus got alone before he made any major decisions, and Jesus got alone before he stepped into the next seasons of his life. Jesus prayed. And can I tell you, he didn't pray for five minutes. In fact, the verse in Luke I just read tells us that he prayed for the entire night. Real quick, I want to throw up here and highlight our prayer opportunities, our prayer team. See, both campuses have times when people come together and they pray, and we want to pray for your needs. And can I tell you, one of the easiest ways that you can help us to pray for you is not to text one of us, pastors, but to scan this QR code that's hopping up on the screen. Scan it, fill out the form, man. We would love to pray with you. Pastors can follow up with you. Our prayer team can continue to pray for you because one of the greatest things we need in our life is prayer. I feel like in this world we get so caught up in the busyness of life and doing all the good things that we forget about prayer. Can I tell you, man, it's great when one of us pastors pray for you, when Pastor Troy, myself, Pastor Kyle, Pastor Bambi, when we pray for you. But there's something different about when the whole prayer team, the whole church gathers to pray for you. Don't miss out. If you have needs in your family, needs for a job, needs for help in situations, you got some health issues, whatever it is, man, there's no thing too big or too small. Make sure you fill out one of those prayer cards. See, here's the principle what you do in private determines how you handle pressure in public. Can I tell you that there are pastors quitting at record levels? There are pastors quitting at record levels. And here's one of the things I believe is a culprit of that in today's culture. Is that pastors don't spend the time alone in prayer, alone with God, alone in the Word. And so, man, when the when when things get difficult, they can't handle it because their private life is not strong in the Lord. In fact, it kind of irks me a little bit, and I get a little frustrated when every pastor conference I go to always starts off with, hey pastors, we love you. Don't quit, don't quit. I know things are hard, don't quit, don't quit, don't quit. And can I tell you, I think one of the reasons why pastors are so easily susceptible to wanting to quit and do quit is because they don't spend the adequate enough time with God in prayer. That they wear this mask that they gather all together. And man, can I tell you, pastors don't have it all together, but we know Jesus, we want to be close with Jesus. And if you want to do big things for the Lord, you've got to have a big prayer life. You've got to be big in the Word. See, Jesus understood that the man's of life, doing the ministry of life, the responsibilities and influence of life could never replace intimacy. Me preaching this message to you right now can't replace my devotional time with the Lord. Me praying for you on Sunday or on our first Wednesdays or whatever it is cannot replace the time I spend in prayer with the Lord. Your coming to church here today is amazing, but it cannot replace the time you should be spending in the Word and in prayer every single day. So here's how this applies. See, when the pressure rises, our tendency is to work harder. You guys know what I'm talking about, that when we feel that weight, when we feel like we're like Atlas carrying the weight of the world, man, our tendency is, man, when things get tough, I'm gonna get tougher. But Jesus teaches us something different. That when life gets hard, it's not about trying harder, but when life gets hard, Jesus tells us to pray harder. And here's what's silly we often sacrifice the very thing that we need the most. That we skip over prayer because life gets tough and busy, and yet prayer is that thing that gives us the strength that we need when life gets busy. Can I tell you? If Jesus needed time with the Father, if Jesus needed time in prayer, if Jesus needed time in the Word, what makes you think you don't? If Jesus himself needed time in prayer, what makes you think that you don't? What makes us think that we can survive without it? Man, I love technology, I love our phones. Our phones are capable of so many things. Man, our phones have more technology in it now than what sent man on the moon. Our phones can do incredible things. Here becomes the issue. When we use our phone too much and our phone battery dies, how many guys know even though that phone is capable of amazing things, if the battery's dead, it ain't doing much of nothing. And you can sit there and you can press on the screen harder and you can whip it around or scream at it or shake it or do whatever you want, but man, it ain't gonna work harder. And sitting there and trying to get it to try harder isn't gonna work. It's only when you reconnect it to that power source that it springs back to life and it's able to do all the things it was created to do. And I tell you that analogy to highlight this one more time. That when life gets difficult, we seem to hit ourselves and try to get us going and work harder and try harder and do all the things. But when our battery, when our spiritual life is dead and dying, man, trying harder isn't gonna get us the results that we want. It's only when we reconnect ourselves back to the Holy Spirit, back into prayer, back into reading the Bible, that man, do we really see life transformed? Adon this last week was talking to a bunch of us staff, and he said something that I thought was pretty funny at the time, but I was thinking about it now, and it just blew my mind. He said, Man, some of these people, they may have Jesus, but you can tell they don't got the Holy Spirit. Now I thought it was funny because he was talking about people that don't raise their hands enough in worship, and come on, you know you need to. But it really highlighted something to me. That man, we can we can go to church, we can do the basics, but there's something different about when we spend that time in prayer, spend that time in the Bible, when we really connect and get filled, baptized with that Holy Spirit, experience God's power that sets us to a different level. All right, number three, last one, everyone say, Praise God, amen. We're wrapping up here. See, it says, Jesus shared the load with others. So he rejects the pressure of the crowd, he doesn't let them influence him. He prays and spends time with the Father, and now he is sharing the load with others. See, Jesus responds to pressure by building a team. The Bible says that he began to appoint the twelve. He anointed them to preach and to cast out demons and to heal. See, Jesus is literally the only person in existence that could have done everything himself. Jesus is God. Jesus is God incarnate, God in the flesh. Jesus could do anything and everything he wanted to. He's the one person that says, when he says, I don't need help, he actually means it. But Jesus himself, rather than doing everything himself, instead, he chose to develop others. Man, it's easy sometimes for pastors or ministry leaders to think I gotta be the superman out of it all, and I have all the powers and all the things. But the Bible teaches that we are supposed to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry. We're not called, let me get nerdy on you for a second, we're not called to be the Superman that does it all. We're called to be that Avengers team where we men, we've got everybody on the team doing something different for the glory of God. Here's what I love too is that when Jesus called people to help him, he wasn't calling the spiritual elite, he wasn't calling the the greats of greats, he was calling ordinary people. He called a fisherman, he called tax collectors. He called a religious zealot. He called ordinary people. And through these ordinary people, people like me, like you, man, they began to change the world. Can I tell you one of the reasons why I love Pastor Troy, your campus pastor? Come on, how many of you guys love Pastor Troy? Put your hands together. Come on, you know you love him. He's amazing. One of the reasons I love Pastor Troy is that I can't be everywhere all at once. And man, I love that through technology I can come and I can preach the word to you. Man, I love that I can still have a voice in your life. But how many of you guys know that I can't be everywhere all the time? And I can't be at all of our services and all of our things. And I'm thankful for Pastor Troy that he gets to be the pastor there at the Fort Hall campus that loves you, that hugs you, that prays for you, that answers your calls, that does all the things. Why? Because I can't be everything and I can't do everything. It's only when we build a team that we can get more done together. It's only when we got to the point where we step back and we trust God and share the load with others that God really begins to do something special. It's why I know for the Fort Hall campus's days are the brightest straight ahead. Why? Because Pastor Troy's at the helm. And Pastor Troy giving you his full focus, his full time, is gonna do more than I ever could by myself. Man, I'm so thankful for him. How many of you guys are thankful for him? Come on. See, here's the principle you need to take away. What God wants to do through you will eventually require people around you. See, let me say that again because I love that. What God wants to do through you eventually will require people around you. And many leaders they burn out, many people they burn out because they're trying to do too much, and they're trying to take what God intended for them to share, to carry the responsibility together. They try to do it all by themselves. So here's the application. So you are not called to be the hero. You are called to equip and raise up heroes, parents. Your legacy will not be the bank account you leave, the things that you own, the legacy, your legacy will be the kids and grandkids you leave behind. Men, when you're at work, one of the greatest things you could do is not just the job that you're doing, but raising up uh your fellow employees to do the job alongside you to become a trainer. Can I tell you the greatest things that we will leave behind are the people that we equip and we raise up. That's why the Bible talks a lot about older men and older women raising up the next generation. It's why I love our power kids ministry. It's why I love our opportunity to serve. Why? Because we are called as a church as a whole, not just the pastors, but as a church as a whole, to raise the next generation of church leaders, of champions, of missionaries, of pastors together so that we as a church can change Idaho. See, we're not called to be the heroes, we're called to equip the heroes. And some people, they're sadly drowning because they refuse to ask others for help. Some of us are exhausted because we refuse to give things away. When our responsibility grows, and our responsibility can only grow when we don't carry everything on our shoulders, but we begin to share the load with others. There's this man named Moses, one of the most powerful prophets in the entire Bible, frees the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, takes them into the desert, and they're standing there, and Moses, being a good guy, a loving leader, a loving man, wants to help everybody. There's hundreds of thousands, not millions, of Israelites, and he's solving literally every problem for everybody, big or small. He's meeting with everybody constantly, and his father-in-law comes to visit him. And just like all of us, you know, when our father-in-law or father comes to visit, we like to show off. We like to seem important. And so Moses is showing Jethro, look at all the problems I'm solving, look at all the people that need me that can help me. And his father-in-law begins to pull him aside and say, Hey, I'm a little worried about you. You're not doing things the best. And Moses looking like, what do you mean? I'm doing everything. And Jethro begins to call him out and says, Hey, this is not good for you. In fact, you need to split things up into people that oversee, you know, groups of a dozen, groups of a hundred, a thousand, and so on and so on. And you really only take the biggest and the baddest needs. And so Moses, through his father-in-law, learns to create more leaders, raise up more people, leave more of a legacy, not only so that he can have a breath and really focus in on what actually needs his attention, but also so other people can be equipped, so more leaders can grow and so that their people can continue to multiply. See, what one man couldn't carry became manageable because it was distributed among many. So as we get ready to conclude today, let me just say this that Jesus experienced pressure all the time, just like me and you. Jesus experienced pressure because the critics hated him, because the crowds needed him, and because the demons opposed him all the time. But remind ourselves, how did Jesus remain faithful, remain healthy, remain effective in his purpose? Those three things we talked about, the three habits. He refused to be controlled, he withdrew into prayer with the Father, and he shared the load with others. Can I tell you pressure is not proof that you're failing? It's not. Pressure is not proof that you're failing. In fact, what it actually means is that you have something meaningful to hold on to, something meaningful to carry, a weight, a responsibility that actually and really matters. So can I tell you the question isn't whether uh pressure will come because we're all going to experience pressure, but the question is, will that pressure drive us away from God or will it drive us to handle our issues the way that Jesus did? Will we allow pressure to push us further away? Will we allow it to cause us to give up on our faith? Or will we allow it to push us to be more like Jesus? When I first became the pastor of this church, man, I did everything. I'm a young guy and I wanted to be a good leader and I wanted to show people that I care. So I would, you know, service would be at 10:30 and I'd show up at 6 and I would do everything. I'd help with the worship. I'd turn on the sun, I'd turn the lights, I'd make the coffee, set up the bathrooms, like do uh sweep the floors, whatever it, whatever it took, I would do it. I had my hand in it. And I remember a couple months in, there was this one one Sunday where people kind of pulled me aside and they're like, hey man, this coffee tastes terrible. Like, like not just church coffee bad. We all know church coffee isn't the greatest, but they're like, no, this actually tastes like terrible. And so I told them, I was like, well, sorry, I've been making the coffee, I'm not really sure how to do it. And uh we went back and I was showing them how I made it, and they made fun of me because I was using the same coffee pouch, the same coffee filter over and over and over and over again. They're like, no wonder it's terrible, it's watered down. And they're like, man, you're doing too much. And so in that moment I realized, man, I'm not a coffee connoisseur, I'm not a coffee maker. And we had some loveling people in the church that stood up and offered, like, hey, we can we can handle the coffee on Sunday morning. And at first that was hard for me because I felt like I was failing, because man, if I'm if I'm not doing it and they're having to do it, I must be doing something wrong. But over time I began to be reminded and recognized that my job is not to do all the things, my job is to help raise people up. Who love serving the Lord, who love serving the church, who love serving our people who walk in purpose, who walk in peace, who make a difference. Can I tell you, when you do something like make the coffee, turn on a TV, vacuum the floor, help with the kids, set up chairs, whatever it is that you do? Just know that you doing that, man, makes an impact in the kingdom of God. Because I can't do what I'm called to do unless you're doing what you're called to do. And we all share a purpose together, and that's to allow people in Idaho to experience the power of God. So let me end by asking you this question. What is one pressure in your life that Jesus is inviting you to handle differently? What is one pressure in your life that Jesus is inviting you to handle differently? I want to pray for two groups of people. In fact, if you could bow your head and close your eyes, I want to pray for two groups of people today. The first group I want to pray for are those that maybe don't follow Jesus yet, that'd like to, and the second group is maybe those that do follow Jesus, but the pressures of life are getting to them, and they need help. If you're part of that first group that doesn't follow Jesus, but wants to love Jesus, wants to follow him, I want to give you that opportunity today. I'm gonna count to three. On the count of three, all I want you to do is slip up your hand, and we as a church are gonna pray a prayer with you. And the Bible says that if we confess with our mouth and believe in our hearts, that we are saved. And so what that means is if you pray that prayer and you actually mean it, you believe it, then man, you are saved. You're following Jesus. On the count of three. One, this is the most important decision of your life. More important than where you live, more important than where you work, more important than who you're married to. Your relationship with God is everything. Two. You might be thinking, well, I need to think about this. I'm gonna wait. Can I tell you, don't wait. Follow Jesus today. This is the best decision you can ever make with your life. Three, if that's you and you want to begin to follow Jesus, would you just slip your hand up in the air right now? Church, can you just repeat this prayer after me? Say, dear Jesus, thank you for loving me, for saving me. Make me bold, make me powerful, make me loving. Help me to follow you all the days of my life. In your name we pray. Amen.

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Amen.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

Maybe you're part of that second group and you're here, but the pressures of life are beating down on you, and you feel like you're carrying the weight of the world, and the voices are influencing you this way and that way. You've lost sight of spending time with God alone, and man, you're just not doing a very good job of sharing the load with others. Can I just encourage you in this moment to be bold, bold enough to ask God for help, bold enough to take a chance and change your ways, to handle things more like Jesus. So if that's you and you want an opportunity, you want to be prayed for so that you can be bold and you can ask God to help you to ignore the voices and focus on what He's called you to do. You want help to be reminded that you need to spend time in prayer in the Bible so when things hit that what's actually on the inside can stay on the outside. Or maybe you need help identifying who can help you, who you can raise up, that next generation that you can share the load with. If any of those things apply to you and you want to be bold and you want to be solid in your prayer, your peace, and your purpose, would you slip up your hand? I want to pray for you. God, right now I thank you for who you are. I pray as we, God, pray and ask for boldness. I pray as we ask, as we pray, as we seek you, that God, you would hear our prayers. That God, you would help us to make what seems like not such a big, but a really big shift in our life. Where we're not controlled by the influences of others or the influences of what's around us, but God, we can really focus on who you've called us to be. God, I pray that we would make attentive time in prayer and in the Bible. In fact, I pray that you'd begin to even wake people up early, that they that they would wake up so early that they had time before they go to work, that you'd keep people up late, you'd wake them up in the middle of the night, you'd you'd make them uneasy until they began to pray or until they began to read their Bibles. That God, you do whatever it takes to instill that habit within us, God, because we want to be close to you. We want to be like Jesus. We want to have a relationship with you. We want to know your word. We want to love you. God, I pray that you would help us identify those that we need to raise up. That God, I think of the quote that many hands make light work. That God, there are people right now in seats that need to be called into purpose. God, there's future generations, future leaders. There are power kids downstairs that need us to raise them up and equip them so that they can experience your purpose and your power. God, help us to be good stewards of those you've placed in our hands. Help us to live a legacy that's not built on stuff, not built on things, but built on the people that we raised up. Then we could look back at our life and be proud of who followed us because we had a hand in it. God, we thank you. We love you. It is in your name we pray. And everyone said, Amen.