And I'm so grateful for our worship community. And as we're worshiping together, I felt like my heart was coming in alignment in a moment that it's really easy to go into ditches when we're experiencing what we're experiencing as a city. And I'm so grateful for worship leaders and musicians and singers that are willing to follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit and that we can actually look up. And sometimes we just need some music and some words to start lifting our chins to realize, where does my help come from?
Because we're very aware right now in this moment as a city that we need help. And as we are worshiping, I was reminded of the name that was given to Eve by God was the name Azer, which means warrior helper. So if you're a woman, then God has designed you to be not just a helper, not just a helpmate, but a warrior helper. And that word, Azer, is actually a Hebrew term for when there's a battle that there's an Azer that comes to aid.
And I want to just name that God gives himself that title. He gives the Holy Spirit the title of our help, our warrior helper. And sometimes when we're in battles, sometimes when we're in places where it's not a battle in the physical realm, though it does seem heightened right now in our city, there's actually a waging of war that's happening in the spiritual realms, right? That we are not fighting our battles with weapons of our warfare, that are carnal, but there's actually spiritual realms that are in our city.
And we don't fight as one that beats the air. We actually have Holy Spirit, our helper, that is our warrior helper, that Jesus promised he would send his spirit in John 14 and John 16. And as he's talking to his disciples, he's going, I want you to know it's going to be rough. I want you to know that it's going to be intense.
I want you to know that you're going to face trials of many kinds. But I'm giving you an azer, right? I'm giving you someone that is going to strengthen you in those hours of testing. And I believe that the Lord is speaking that over our city, that he's giving us himself in this hour, that it's not just something that he's this far off distant God.
He's the God that's close. He's like, I'm going to dwell in you. I'm going to come upon you. And you really need my help, right?
I don't know if you need God's help, but I know I do. OK? So I was so encouraged by our worship time together. You can turn into your Bible, Storomans 12.
What I want to do is read some statements at the start of this message. I want to speak to what's going on in our city right now. And I want to read some statements that are actually going to bring us to understand that no matter what type of echo chamber you've been in, that we can just kind of look at the facts right now and be reminded of where we're at. I remember when we were building this property, there's a guy named Michael.
And he was in his 60s. And he was a consultant that helped us through our building journey. And I remember we'd have a meeting every single week. And Michael would meet with some of our board members.
And he would, Don, you remember this, right? And he would repeat pretty much the same thing every single week and remind us of where we've come so far in the project. So he'd say, we closed on a property at 24-20 Cleveland Avenue. We were able to secure the property and put it down payment.
Then the city of Roseville approved us and gave us, and then we got all this stuff. And we already knew everything that he was saying, right? And he's already said that 20 times. Every single week, he says it, right?
But there was something that felt grounding as we were in the trenches of building this place, or remodeling it and really building, we remodeled. And we're in a bit of, we are in the trenches as a city. And I thought, man, I think maybe it's not grounding for you, but it's helpful for me to just name what is happening right now. And then from there, what I want to do is actually speak to how we are to respond as the people of God.
And some of us in the room, you're probably going, but could we just forget about it and just move on? Some of us have the privilege to even hope for that right now. And I just want to name that if you love God, if you're a follower of Jesus, then you care about what he cares about. And King Jesus really cares about what's happening in our city.
So if you're driving 45 minutes an hour away, I know there's people that drive an hour and a half to come to awakening services. And I just want you to know if you're in the room, it doesn't matter how far away you are from Minneapolis and St. Paul, you get to care about what God cares for. And if God is caring about what's going on in our city, then we submit to his heart as followers of Jesus.
And there's a lot of people in the room that don't have the privilege to be able to even consider for getting about it. And so as the people of God, we actually, as those that follow the sympathetic high priest and carry the empathy of Jesus and the compassion of God are going to be more consumed with how we can actually see what he's seen, rather than being selfish and thinking about how uncomfortable we might feel. I'm going to move on. There's more to come.
So I'm going to read these things. I want you to kind of, each time I start reading a statement, try to lock in and try to track with what I'm reading, so that we can all be on the same page and move forward together. Lord, we ask that you would give us your heart. We humble ourselves, and we say we need your help, and we ask for your grace.
We really need your wisdom and grace in this hour as your followers. In Jesus' name, amen. We know that there has been deeply concerning fraud that has been exposed in our state. And this has played a role in the initiation of what DHS is calling Operation Metro Surge.
We know that ICE, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has operated in the Twin Cities for decades, that they didn't just arrive in our city, but that in December, ICE began a large-scale, coordinated immigration enforcement operation across the Twin Cities Metro. We also know that a Supreme Court decision issued in September in Washington, DC, and now being implemented, has expanded how ICE, under DHS, may apply the standard of reasonable suspicion, and that this legal change is now shaping enforcement behavior on the ground in our city. Because of this decision, by the Supreme Court in September, ICE agents are using factors, such as skin color, language spoken, accent, workplace, occupation, neighborhood, and geographic location, to justify enforcement encounters. We know that in practice, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, neighborhood, and profession increases the likelihood of being stopped or questioned by ICE right now in the Twin Cities.
We know that these ICE enforcement actions are not only affecting undocumented immigrants, but also legal immigrants and US citizens. We know that ICE is not detaining only undocumented immigrants with criminal records, with about 30% of the detainees having criminal records and 70% having no criminal record. We know that ICE is detaining individuals who possess immigration paperwork, while at the same time, federal immigration programs and legal pathways previously recognized by DHS are being revoked or suspended, questioned, or declared illegitimate. We know that many people impacted by these changes attempted to follow legal immigration processes in good faith.
We know that many detained immigrants do not have immediate or adequate access to legal representation. Can I just pause and say this? I want us to understand that this list is something that I have compiled, but I also want to acknowledge there's things that I'm going to miss, okay? So I want to just clear the air, that there's going to be people in the room that say, well, why didn't you talk about this, or why didn't you say this?
And there's going to be other people in the room, they're going to say, why didn't you say that, or why didn't you acknowledge that? And I want you to know that there's, even at the start of this, we've got a couple more that I want to read through, but even at the start of this message, I just want to acknowledge a couple weeks from now, a couple months from now, a couple years from now, I'm going to look back at what I said in this message and go, why didn't I say that? Or why didn't I remember that passage and talk about that in this moment? And I want you to know, I'm trying to be faithful to steward this moment and actually submit to the Holy Spirit, but I am totally missing it in a lot of different moments.
And so you've got to give me grace because I'm not perfect, I'm in process. And I prefer to have you speak to the moment, but that's how it is, that's what I got to do, right? And so I know that you probably do a better job in this moment, but I want to acknowledge that there are things that are going to get dropped in these moments, but man, I want to carry God's heart. And we want to be faithful sons and daughters of God.
So I just wanted to pause and just acknowledge, I'm going to get to the end of this list and you're going to be like, man, what the heck? He totally missed this, I have this information, he must not know about it, he must be in an echo chamber, that's different than my echo chamber. Probably so, okay. We know that members of our everyday community have shared firsthand accounts of ICE agents surrounding them as they exited their workplaces or as they were running errands and that in these encounters, our brothers and sisters in our community have reported to attempting to de-escalate situations while ICE officers were escalating the interaction.
And that if these brothers and sisters had not operated in the Holy Spirit in that moment, things would have gone completely different, but because they were submitted to the peace of the Holy Spirit in a storm moment, they were able to de-escalate the situation. These are US citizens that are people of color in our community. We know that some members of immigrant communities have expressed relief at the removal of individuals who were harming or intimidating their neighborhoods. We know that the enforcement actions by ICE and protest activity are both contributing to escalating tension in the city and that not all ICE agents are escalating situations.
And we also know that there's at least 100 plus ICE agents on the ground that consider themselves followers of Jesus. We know that city and state officials in Minnesota are at odds with federal officials and authorities on this topic of immigration enforcement. We also know that broader social movements are being merged like social justice movements on top of emerging with this immigration topic right now in our city and it's increasing polarization. And we know that fear and anger on a daily basis and division are increasing across our city.
We also know that our call is to love our neighbor. And we talked about this last week that our call as believers is to love our neighbors. And our neighbors is everybody. But if we can't get there and we're like, I can't call them my neighbor, then we can call them our enemy.
And then Jesus has the same command to love our enemies. Right? So we are without excuse. We're gonna love them either way, whoever who they is, whoever they is.
And it doesn't matter if the day is somebody that we see as a person of injustice. I mean, I'm just thinking of all of the believers in Gaza that we've been praying for for years of the underground church and how they have this beautiful witness of loving amidst difficulty and suffering. That they're actually loving. I'm hearing stories of underground church going, we want to go from Gaza.
We want to move into Jerusalem so that we can love Jews unto salvation. I'm hearing stories of, I mean, we're talking about the people of God that are actually going, we are on land that is contested land. And there's powers at be, and we are caught in the middle of it, but in the middle of it, we're gonna love through it. And there's going to be a witness of King Jesus with compassion and mercy and grace that's actually gonna pierce through, like light piercing through darkness.
There is a witness of the local church in cities, in this moment, whether they're underground or not, that is actually the salt that maintains truth and character and stability in these moments. We know based on Romans 13, that biblical government is to actually bear the sword and discipline the wrongdoer. And we know that that's good because it creates a flourishing society when the government plays that role. We also know that governments are not perfect and laws are not perfect and how those laws get expressed is not perfect, and people get hurt in those moments, okay?
We know that there's people in our community and we talked about in announcements that there's thousands of people that were fed this week through our hands and feet in this community. Thousands of people that receive groceries, thousands of mouths fed because of this community in our city, being the hands of feet of Jesus. It's beautiful, love it. We know that the Latino church that we're connected with in the city, there was a meeting on Thursday where there's Latino pastors coming together, talking about what they're experiencing in this time, and that the grace and the kindness of Jesus is exuding out of the Latino church right now, and that they are leaders of mercy and grace.
And I'm telling you what, mercy is going to triumph over judgment in our city. And we actually get to follow behind all of the immigrant churches in the Twin Cities and actually learn from them and follow in their wake, okay? So we actually get to follow the witness of the Latino church in this hour as we serve her, yeah? Jesus is shining bright through sons and daughters that are aligned to the Holy Spirit, like behind the Holy Spirit, okay?
So I want us to turn to Romans 12. As many of you are already there, I felt like the Lord, and I'm wanting this to be more of a quick message, but I felt like the Lord, I got a picture of Him as Father God kind of taking us around His arm, like a fatherly hand on our shoulder. Just fatherly embrace, and He kind of looked at us, and He said, hey, remember who you are, remember who you are, and remember how our family responds in times like this. I just felt this affirming, and it felt like good discipline.
It felt like, oh man, yeah, hit me with it, dad. Like call me higher, call me into my identity. We are sons and daughters, you're right, Father. Tell me how to respond, Father.
And that's what I felt exuding from us as a people, as we responded to His fatherly guidance in this hour. So I want to read from Romans 12, in verse nine, it says this, let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, and hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. You know what I want to be said of me in this hour?
Is that I don't have a hard heart, but that I've got brotherly affection for people that look different than me and are having a different experience in this time. There's one million people of color in the Twin Cities and about two million white people in the Twin Cities. And there's some people of color in our city that are going, I'm not having a lot of traffic, in between my ears as I'm going about my everyday life. But a lot of out of the one million people of color in our city are actually having to think twice as they're leaving their homes, their apartments, wherever they live, right now in this moment because of the Supreme Court decision that happened in September, and what we're seeing in our city, that there's racial profiling that's taking place.
And ICE is using that to actually not just go after targeted people that they have warrants for arrest, but they're actually blanketing our city. And what's happening is people of color in our city are getting racially profiled, and because of the color of their skin or what neighborhood they're in, or what they're driving, or what their job is, they are having to navigate and process out, do I need to take my passport with me everywhere I go, even though I will not be internationally traveling today. And I personally am not having to think twice when I leave my house. And what I want to have sink in is I want a soft heart, and I want to acknowledge that this is a moment in our country that hasn't happened in a very long time.
In the 1930s, Chinese in California had to be carrying around papers, and if they were caught without papers, they were put into work camps for a year and then deported. Another time in history where this was happening where you had to carry your papers with you was when slavery was part of our culture as Americans. And in the 1700s and in the 1800s, if you were a slave, you had to have, or you were a freed slave, you had to have your freedom papers that you carried around with you, or you would be arrested as a runaway slave, or you had to have papers from your owner to say that you were running errands for your owner, or you'd be arrested. I want to just name for us as a community, the injustice of I have to leave my house and wonder, am I going to be detained, or am I going to be surrounded by ICE agents because of the way that I look?
This is a moment in American history, happening in our city, and it is not to be looked at flippantly. And God is going, how is my church? How is my bride made up of a bunch of Gentiles going to respond in this hour? And I see us coming under the father's arm and going, we want to be filled with brotherly.
We want to, later in this passage, it says mourn with those who mourn. We want to weep with those who weep. We want to have sympathy, like our sympathetic high priest, outdo one another in showing honor. Don't be slothful in zeal, but be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.
Remember a couple weeks ago where I talked about how Jesus is saying, I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty, you gave me something to drink. I was naked and you clothed me. And the people of God are going, when did we feed you?
When did we give you drink? When did we clothe you? And he's going, if you did it for the least of these, you did it for me. And I said, the king is in the city, waiting to be served, right?
The king is in the city behind closed doors, and they haven't been to the grocery store in weeks. Will you feed him? And I want us to continue. It's so popular to do it for the first two weeks.
Badges, goods, servants, good job. Where it becomes unpopular is when there's less media around and the church is still serving, still loving, still getting down, washing feet, serve the Lord. I want to be a reliable servant. Oh man, can you imagine guys, just pause.
There's going to be a day where we're going to stand before the man that has eyes like a flame of fire. And I want him to say about this season, I want him to look at us in the eyes. I want him to look at us right in the face and go, do you remember it? Quarter one of 2026, well done, good and faithful servants.
Oh, I want him to say that. I want him to say that to our people in this community. I'm not preaching to anybody else. I'm not preaching to pastors in the Twin Cities.
I'm not preaching to any other church in the Twin Cities. I'm preaching to all of us. I'm preaching to me and to you, the people that are in this room. God's caring for the big sea church.
I'm talking about us, talking about you. You're saying next to people that you know, what if that, the tribe that you're with, you guys were kind of like a group standing before him. He's like, you guys all reliable servants when your city was going through it, good job. All right, contribute to the needs of the saints.
Seek to show hospitality. Man, this preaches right now, right? I don't even, I don't have anything to say. Just like read it and what we're gonna do it.
Yeah? Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse them. Oh my goodness, do you know what's happening in our city right now?
A bunch of cursing. What's happening right now is cursing and hatred and bitterness and unforgiveness and violence and anger. When I've been present at protest, do you know what is like exuding from the world? Anger, hatred and bitterness.
That is to be expected and I'm not judging it because people that don't know Jesus, of course, would move in that direction when there's injustice. That is like carnal that's normal for humans. But we as the people of God are different. I can't imagine Jesus in the protest chanting some of the things that are being chanted.
And if he's not gonna chant it, I'm not gonna chant it because I'm gonna be aligned with him. And so in Hebrews 12, it says, don't let, I'm just gonna read it really quick. I wanna, if you want to, you can turn to Hebrews 12. He says in verse 15, see to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God.
Okay, so you got it, if you want grace, you got to be humble. So help each other walk out humility. Help each other get to the place of humility in this time. And that no root of bitterness, he's talking to community, he's not talking to individuals, he's going, I want you as communities, as the people of God.
I want you to try to work to have no root of bitterness that springs up and causes trouble and buy it. Many become defiled. Our city is getting defiled by bitterness every single day. But we are the people of God.
And we are going to stop, we are gonna stop seeds of bitterness that are trying to be sown in this moment, in our hearts and in our community. Okay, so this is not the moment where you find out that somebody thinks differently than you. And you take the bait of bitterness and you go, well, they think different than me. They voted different than me.
And I can't be in unity, I can't be in relationship. I can't call them a brother in Christ if they think something different than me. I'm going to have bitterness towards them because of what they believe or think. And what I'm telling you is this, it is not the time to start figuring out who should I be offended by that is in the body of Christ.
It is the time to go, I'm gonna forgive you, I'm going to not have a root of bitterness in me because I am not going to participate in actually bringing defilement to the body of Christ in this hour. I'm actually gonna pursue unity rather than bitterness. I'm actually gonna pursue peace and make peace and have hard conversations rather than stuffing what I'm feeling, getting resentful, and then having it defile people's, people groups, communities. I've seen it over and over and over again in the church.
Somebody gets bitter. You guys, someone gets bitter. They start talking about their bitterness and all the reasons why they're bitter. They start defiling their friend.
Their friend starts watching the same Instagram videos that they're watching so that they can be bitter together. And then all of a sudden they've built cases and built moats around what they think and believe. And all of a sudden the hardness of heart sets in and they've been defiled by bitterness. And I'm just wanting, I'm like sounding the alarm.
Be careful, be aware. The devil is knocking. He's crouching at your door. People of God, don't take the bait.
Don't take the bait of bitterness in our city. Don't do it. And if there's somebody that you wanna be bitter towards, you bring that people group, you bring them before the Lord and go, Lord, this people group, I'm offended. I'm feeling like there's bitterness in me towards them.
Help me love them. Live in harmony with one another. I rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another and do not be arrogant or haughty but associate with the lowly.
What I'm seeing in the evangelical church, I won't talk about the evangelical church. I'll just talk about us. Some of us, your knee-jerk reaction, when you see things happening in our city, is to actually associate with party lines or associate with people in power, associate with those that have a higher standing in our society, just naming. And the associating that we are doing is actually where we enter into justifying things.
And I wanna just look at the word. I'm even reminded of James Two. Do you know what in James Two? Where there's partiality that's happening.
And so in James Two, James is giving a warning going, you are actually associating yourselves with people of high standing in your community, but all of those that are poor, they're not even getting food. But those that are wealthy are getting seats of honor and you're showing partiality. And I wanna call us into this Romans 12 moment that this is how we get to carry ourselves. I wanna be known more for associating with the lowly because that's who Jesus was and that's how he demonstrated his heart.
All throughout his ministry, he was associating with the lowly. And I wanna encourage us all to do that, okay? Uh-oh, look at verse 16 at the end of it. My, my, my.
Oh, no. Why did he put that in there? Never, sometimes. Come on, Paul, sometimes be wise in your own sight.
Now he says, never be the know it all. Never be wise in your own sight. I'm just thinking about Revelation three where Jesus is writing to the church of Laodicea. And he says, you really think that you're good.
You think you can see clearly, but you're blind. And you gotta come to me because you need to buy eyesalves from me. Cause you're not seeing clearly. You are thinking that you're wise in your own sight, but your arrogance and your pride is actually deceiving you.
And he's going, I want you to know that you are struggling with self-awareness right now. Have you ever, oh man, have you ever been in a relationship with someone that's like totally not self-aware? I'm working on self-awareness more. Not cause I want to be self-consumed, but I want to just be aware of how I come across sometimes.
Right? And Jesus is just wanting us to know, hey, sometimes we're having trouble being self-aware. And that we think we see clearly, but he's going, don't never be wise in your own sight. You need I self.
You need to see differently in this moment. If you're getting hard of heart, it's because you don't have God's vision to see what he's seen. Jesus has not seated us with him in heavenly places on the judgment seat. He's seated us in heavenly places on his throne so that we get his heart and we see things not according to the world, not according to the flesh, but we see things according to the spirit and we actually receive his kindness, we receive his love, and then we multiply that through our lives.
We are to see things the way that he sees things. I want to hear what he's saying. Give me ears to hear. Give me eyes to see what you see.
I don't want to assume that I know. I want to assume I need help. Can we have that posture? Oh Lord, help me.
You should be praying prayers like that. Lord, would you help me? I don't know how. Can we just, I want us to kind of like, how low can you go?
That's like, how low can you go? I don't know. That's how you get into the kingdom and that's how we actually, we, that's how you enter in. No, and it's not by my works, right?
You go low into the kingdom. He's the one that saved me. I got nothing to offer to this covenant, right? How do you get sanctified?
How do you grow from glory to glory in your relationship with God? You just keep on going lower. You get, you keep on getting more humble. Because the more you get grace, the more you realize you need more of it.
All right. We're almost done with this passage. This is so good. Never be wise in your own sight.
Repay no one evil for evil. Wow, our city needs that. We need that. But give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.
If possible, so as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all, beloved, never avenge yourselves. But leave it to the wrath of God. For it is written, vengeance is mine, and I will repay says the Lord to the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed them. Okay, I love the idea of feeding the poor.
I love the idea of feeding people that are in need, but now you're saying feeding enemies. I love the idea of feeding people at my small group, but I don't know what I think about feeding illegal immigrants. I love the idea of feeding my kids and my spouse and my family, but I'm not sure what I think about feeding ice agents. They're hungry, feed them.
If they're thirsty, give them something to drink. For by so doing, you will keep burning coals on his head. There's a whole message I preached on that sometime in the past, so you can listen to that. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
The Lord is inviting us as his people into this witness in our city right now. I'll just say this. This is like, we've got two minutes and then we're gonna engage with all these people. This is just my last thing I wanna say.
I want you to know that your coworkers and your neighbors, the people that you have relationship with right now in this season, that for the next five to 10 years, how you conduct yourselves will carry more weight right now in this season than most other seasons. How you carry yourself in humility and in character and being a son or daughter of God that demonstrates Romans 12 attributes, Hebrews 12, Hebrews 13 attributes, 1 Corinthians 13 type of love. I want you to know that right now, there's actually doors open to hearts. I'm not talking about just like for salvation, I'm just talking about the soil of our city has been broken up right now.
The follow ground is actually being plowed and broken up by difficulty and turmoil. And I want you to know that this is a time for seeding seeds of the kingdom of heaven and mercy is to triumph over judgment. Mercy is to be the witness of the church and it is not to be bitterness that will defy many. It is not to be those that have answers.
It is to be the people of God that actually serve, that are reliable servants, that are going low, that don't think they know, that don't feel like they know what to say, that aren't the people that have wisdom in their own eyes, but they've been purchasing eyes out from heaven. God is calling you to be someone that is known for your mercy and love and not your opinion right now. I want you to know your opinions are not the witness of Jesus in this hour. Your perspective is not the witness of the church in this hour, the witness of the church in this hour is mercy, compassion, sympathy, empathy.
And then also going, I'm seeing injustice and I've tension with this and naming that. I really think that the Father is gonna look back at the season and I think that we are gonna rise into the destiny that He's speaking over us as a people. I really think as I'm looking at so many different people, they're coming from different storylines and different places in our city and different backgrounds and I'm just like, I feel the delight of God over you. He's looking at you and he's like, they're so hungry.
They're hungry for righteousness to be expressed in our city. They're hungry for justice to be displayed. They're gonna be my hands and feet of truth and servanthood, righteous living. It's not gonna be flashy, doesn't need to be flashy.
Don't post anything. Just underneath the current, in hidden ways, serve. In hidden ways, carry his heart. Never, intentionally, don't be seen.
Intentionally, don't draw attention to yourself. You just go really low and love everyone through it. You are a person that will triumph with mercy. There's an overarching, like, listen, there's all of, oh, just almost fell down.
There's, listen, there is like spiritual warfare and there's like powers and principalities. There's all of these things swirling in the heavenly realm. But I'm telling you, the unstoppable witness of the church of Jesus actually tears down strongholds in the spirit realm as we go low and align ourselves with the one that washes feet because he knows who he is and what he's been given and where he's going. That we are the people of God following the footsteps of a king, a ruler of a government that is not of this world and what he's doing is when he's getting detained, he's healing soldiers' ears.
We serve a king that is hanging on a tree, looking at Roman soldiers and Jews that are wagging their heads at him and he's going, father, forgive them. They know not what they do. This is a kingdom that is not of this world and we have a king that is not of this world and we are aliens to this world. We are of a different land.
We are a different people. We carry ourselves differently. I want you to know that you are different. You are a different people.
This is not your home. You are made for heaven and heavenly people, heavenly citizens act this way. This is a family thing. When you're in the family of God, this is how we roll.
This is how we carry ourselves. This is how we act. There's a great cloud of witnesses and they're all going. Yeah, Hebrews 12.
Hebrews 13, throw in there 11. Yeah, 1 Corinthians 13 type of love, keeping no record of wrong. Love is patient, love is kind. Yeah, be slow to speak, quick to listen, slow to become angry.
You're on the right track, keep on going. Thank you Lord. What I want to do is I just want to respond by asking the Holy Spirit for some marching orders. Yeah, because he's going to give all of us as individuals different things of how we can apply this in our everyday life and we're just going to ask him, we're his little sheep, we know his voice, right?
And so we're going to be like little children, ask the Holy Spirit questions. He wants to speak to us and we're going to be listening and we're all practicing. If you're going like, man, I'm trying to listen to God, I'm not getting anything, no problem, that's totally normal. We're all just working the muscle of hearing God speak to us, okay?
If you've surrendered your life to Jesus, that means the Holy Spirit has come inside of you and the Holy Spirit can speak through your conscience where he can actually speak words to your conscience. Sometimes it's through ideas, sometimes it's through pictures. And so when we ask him questions, we actually have faith that he's going to speak to us. Now, if you hear something, as you're asking the Lord questions and it's not lining up with God's character or it's not lining up with scripture, then you can just toss it out.
Like, oh, that was a cheeseburger. I don't know what that was. That was my soul. Maybe it was the enemy's voice, but I'm just going to toss it.
So if it's not lining up with the character of God, as we see in scripture, if it's not lining up with the scriptures, then you just toss it. And you go, but I want to keep on listening. I want to keep on growing in my relationship with God, okay? Yeah, so we're going to ask him questions.
Are you guys ready? Thank you Lord. What I'm going to do is I'm going to ask a question that's going to be a prompt. And as I read it, then you in the room, you get to whisper it yourself to God, okay?
So I'm not asking the question for you. You're actually going to ask, it's going to be your voice that's asking the Lord. Does that make sense? Give me a thumbs up.
We're locked in. All right. Lord, we're so grateful for being a God that speaks to us. We love you.
We thank you. We need a good shepherd. We are little sheep that know your voice. We thank you Lord.
All right, this is the first question. Lord, what do I need to know? What do I need to know right now? You just whisper that.
What do I need to know? If you're not getting anything, that's totally okay. You can just ask the Holy Spirit again, just reengage your heart. Lord, what do I need to know?
You can pull out your journal or your phone so you can write out what you feel like the Holy Spirit is saying to you. Holy Spirit, what do I need to know? All right, next question. What do you want me to do?
You just whisper that to the Lord. What do you want me to do, Lord? Is there anything you want me to do? Maybe he highlighted something from Romans 12 that we were just looking at that he wants you to step into.
The next question is, what do you want me not to do? What do you want me not to do? What do you want me not to do at work? It's similar to the last one, but it's different.
What do you want me to stop doing? What would you like me to stop doing? I'm your reliable servant. What do you want me to stop doing?
When you're done, would you stand with me? I'm gonna commission us out. If you're on Altar Ministry, you can come up to the front. There's people up front after the service.
I'd love to pray with you if you wanna receive prayer after the service. I wanna commission you out. So if you want to, and you're willing, you can put out your hands in front of you. Lord, we receive you and we as your people have open hands and we give you all of our opinions.
And Lord, we say that these hands that you've given us are hands that are meant to serve. Lord, we thank you that the feet that you've given us are ready with the gospel of peace and our city needs peace. So Lord, we thank you for the good news that is on our feet. We thank you that there's beautiful feet coming to Minneapolis and St.
Paul in the metro area because your children that are about their father's business are walking and moving throughout our city. So I commission out these sons and daughters of God. And Lord, I thank you that there is a faithful witness of King Jesus in our city. And I just affirm that this is who you are.
This is who you are sons and daughters of God. These are the moments where the church rises into a rightful place in cities. I send you out in Jesus name. Everybody say amen.