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The River ChurchSermons

REACH, GATHER, GROW

Reach - Romans Road

Jayson Combs · Sunday, 7 September 2025 · Romans 3:10-18; 3:23; 6:23; 5:8; 10:9-10; 10:13 · 39:45 · 5,734 words

Romans S20 · 3:10-18; 3:23; 6:23; 5:8; 10:9-10; 10:13 Waterford

There is no public page for this message yet — the transcript below is the whole of it.

The pastor teaches that the church’s mission is to reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ, a love rooted in knowing Christ’s love for us. He points to Paul’s example of deep personal anguish for his people and to the Holy Spirit’s power that enables believers to love beyond natural limits. The message encourages listeners to pray for a growing love, give their time, and serve others as a witness. It also presents the Romans Road as a simple tool to share salvation.

What this sermon is about

Ranked by keyness against every other sermon in the corpus. Each one is a word this sermon actually said — nothing here was written by a model.

love 78 reach 23 christ 57 accursed 6 people 48 pray 28 jordan 4 dad 10 barnabas 3 theology 6 grow 14 kentucky 3

Topics

The Holy Spirit 6 Prayer 5 Salvation 5 The Gospel 3 The Flesh 1 Sin 1 Israel 1

Scripture referenced 23

Verified against the transcript. A reference the recording does not support is never listed here.

Romans 9 1:22 Romans 9 1:47 Romans 9 2:27 Romans 9 6:33 Romans 9 8:19 Acts 9:23 10:05 Acts 14 10:57 Acts 17 11:46 Acts 17 12:02 Acts 17:3 12:02 Acts 17:5 12:19 Romans 8 17:07 Romans 9 22:01 Romans 10:1 26:57 Romans 1:8 29:58 Romans 1:10 30:17 John 4 31:31 John 4 32:15 John 4:28 32:25 Romans 1:16 34:21 Romans 3:23 34:41 Romans 6:23 34:47 Romans 10:9 35:04

Transcript

Every word, as spoken, with the second it was said. Each word links to its own entry in the index.

Pre-service announcement — 9 lines, 0:39. Excluded from every count and search on this site, kept here so nothing is hidden.

Hey, everyone. My name is Lorena, and thanks for checking out this message today.

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Thanks again for joining us, and we hope you are blessed by today's message.

Morning, everybody. Welcome to the 11 o'clock gathering.

So if you're new to the 11 o'clock gathering, it's all of you.

You're all new to the 11 o'clock gathering.

We want to welcome you. Glad that you are here.

We had our 9 o'clock gathering. It was massive, so really, really good things.

But it did what we wanted it to do.

There's a seat next to you, which is wonderful.

And there's a parking spot out there.

And it just gives us the ability to keep growing.

And it can also help you to go, you know what?

I'm going to stay home today just to give somebody else a parking spot.

You don't have to do that.

We got your parking spot. We want you to be here.

And so glad you have joined us.

If you have your Bible, it will be in Romans chapter 9 to start.

We have spent the last 19 weeks studying the first eight chapters of Romans.

We've taken 19 weeks to walk through.

This very deep, wonderful book.

And for those of you who are, you know, you're the focus people.

You love this long study.

And now we're coming to chapter 9, 10, 11 Romans.

So we're going to transition.

And chapters 9, 10, and 11 are probably maybe the most debated couple chapters in the Bible.

They're difficult.

We're going to work through them.

And so some of you out there.

Some of you out there who are easily distracted, right?

You're going, hey, pastor, we keep churning through these.

Maybe can we take a little break, a little breather?

Some of you need that.

I don't know who's like that.

All right.

So we, for the next couple of weeks, are just going to look at Romans at a little bit different angle.

We're going to get to chapter 9, really study chapters 9 through 11 at the end of September.

But for the next couple of weeks, we're going to look at Romans.

We're going to bounce around in Romans.

And we're going to look at the purpose.

We're going to look at the purpose.

We're going to look at the purpose of the church.

We're going to look at what is it that we're doing?

Why are we here?

Why do we gather?

Why do we have events?

Why do we sing?

What is this that we're doing?

And the pastors at the river, we all think it's really important to come back to this teaching about the church.

Knowing why we do this.

And what are we doing so that we can stay obedient to the Lord and be the church that he wants us to be.

So let's pray.

And we'll dive in the scripture and study.

Lord God, I just pray for help this morning.

Lord, I pray that you'll use this morning for your honor and glory.

I pray you would lead my words.

Lord, may we listen to the Holy Spirit.

We pray for your help and ask this in Jesus' name.

So Romans chapter number 9.

Now, if you've been around the church, the river church, or you've walked in the lobby, there's some plaques out there.

They say reach, gather, and grow.

And if you've been around here, you've heard me say these words, reach, gather, and grow.

And we want you to know it's not about the plaque.

It's not about a program.

It's really this personal calling to be the church.

And so reach, gather, grow is really who we are as a church.

And my hope as a pastor, if somebody comes up to you and asks you, what's the river church about?

You wouldn't go, uh, Jesus.

Like, it's about Jesus.

But it's more.

That you would be able to say, see, the river church is wrapped around the gospel of Jesus Christ in everything that we do.

But we're called as a church to reach people with the gospel of Jesus.

We gather together to praise Jesus, to praise our Father, to praise the Lord.

And then we grow in God's word, to grow to know who he is, to know his love and what he's called us and how he's called us to live.

So every program at the river, as we as a staff, we get together and we talk about planning out the year and what that looks like and why we're doing this.

And what, you know, do we have a trunk or tree or we have a.

We have an oil change or we, we send money to missions or we have a Juana's or we have youth group.

All of these things we do.

We do a kid's quiet week.

All of these things.

We come back to this question all the time.

Why are we doing this?

And if it doesn't have a bullseye of reaching, gathering and growing, we step back and go, is this just something we do?

Or is this something we're called to do?

And we come to the purpose of we want to do, to be what the church has called us to be.

Now, I do want you to understand.

If you've been.

If you've been around, you've heard me say this before.

We, we pastors at the river church didn't come up with something clever.

We weren't like, Hey guys, this reach, gather, grow thing.

This thing's really going to take off, right?

Like it's what the Bible says, right?

We go to the word.

This is what the Bible says that we're called to be a light to this world, to gather together with the saints, to stir one another up to love and good works and to grow with the growth from the Lord in, in his word and what he's called us to be.

So this isn't a clever thing that we've come up.

With this is what the church is called to be.

And this morning, we're going to focus on reach.

What does it mean to be a church that has a desire that has a want that has a love for people to tell them about the gospel of Jesus Christ, to reach out and to share the good news of Jesus?

Why do we, why, why do we want to do that?

Because we want people to be saved.

Want people to know the Lord.

We want people to know Christ and, and what really happens when you come to a relationship with the Lord.

So in Romans chapter nine,

Now, some of you say, wait a minute, pastor, you told us we're going to go differently.

And now you took us right to Romans nine.

Well, I just want to show you the first couple of verses.

We're going to look at this and we're going to look at some other places in Romans.

So we've just studied the first eight chapters and I hope it sparked a little fire in you.

It sparked a little excitement in you.

It sparked a little love in you.

It sparked a little where you have learned a little bit more about what it means, what the love of God looks like, what salvation is, how Christ has come and given, offered salvation to the world.

To mankind that's rejected him.

As we walk through these eight chapters, we've learned about this wonderful truth of salvation.

One pastor says it this way, though.

He said he has just presented Paul eight chapters of divine truths that are thrilling to those who believe, but devastating to all unbelievers, particularly to unbelieving Jews.

If you know the background of Paul who wrote Romans through the Holy Spirit, that Paul is a Jew.

He was a Pharisee.

He was trained up in the Jewish ways.

He knows the law, but then was taken even farther.

And so the Pharisees that made up their own rules, they've extended God's word.

They took things from the Bible and changed them.

And so Paul, before he came to know the Lord, was a devout Pharisee.

And now that he's come to know the Lord, he preaches Christ.

And so to the Jews, what Paul says is offensive.

So in chapter nine, he begins this.

He says,

I am speaking the truth in Christ.

I am not lying.

My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit.

The reason he has to answer that way is why?

If you say, hey, listen, I'm not lying.

It's probably because somebody is calling you a liar.

Paul says this.

He says that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.

For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers.

My kinsmen, according to the flesh, they are Israelites.

And I have to be honest, as I've read this in the past, I've really struggled to understand it.

Because what Paul is saying, he's saying, if I could, if I could wish this, if it could be that I could be accursed,

separated from Christ for eternity, if it could be put on me so that others,

so that the Jewish people would come to know Christ, I would do it.

as I've read that, I've had to step back and go, what?

I mean, I understand loving people.

I understand caring about people.

But you are saying, if I could be accursed, if the curse could be placed upon me.

Now, even knowing Paul's story.

See, Paul comes to know the Lord.

The Jewish people don't like this.

So in the book of Acts, it walks through the missionary journeys of Paul.

So I want to show you a couple of these and what happened.

Like in Acts chapter 9, verse 23.

It says,

Paul and Barnabas.

I said Barabbas at the nine o'clock gathering.

They won't let me get away with that, but Barnabas, right?

And drove them out among their district.

Chapter 14, the Jews followed him from Antioch and Iconium.

And having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul, dragged him out of the city, supposing he was dead.

But when his disciples gathered about him, he rose up, entered the city.

On the next day, he went on.

I've always read that and be like, what?

You got back up and went back in the city?

I wouldn't do that.

They just stoned you.

Many people think that he was stoned that only by the miraculous work of the Lord that he was alive.

But the Bible gives us this glimpse that Paul was stoned by the Jews.

He gets back up and goes back into the city.

Keep reading Acts chapter 17.

He goes to Thessalonica.

The Bible tells us that he went into the synagogue for like three weeks.

On the Sabbath, he'd do this over and over again.

This was his custom to go preach to the Jews.

In Acts 17, it tells us what he preaches in verse 3.

This Jesus, whom I can proclaim to you, is the Christ.

The Bible says in Thessalonica, some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas.

Verse 5, but the Jews were jealous and taking some wicked men of the rabble.

They formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason.

Which I think is a very good example.

Seeking to bring them out of the crowd.

Paul, in this amazing, heavy passage, says,

I love them so much.

I would give up my life for them.

Did you read all the things he's gone through?

Did you read?

These are the people of stone who camped out to try to kill him.

Who've done everything they can.

And yet Paul is not writing this going,

I need to give the theology of salvation and that's it.

No, he has deep,

tender, wonderful love for the Jews.

It's not just preaching the theology of salvation.

To reach people is going to be covered with love.

This was Paul.

He loved them, even though they didn't love him.

He so wanted them to know Christ.

He wasn't just, hey, I want to start an argument with you,

and I'm going to be smarter with you.

Let me walk you through the theology of salvation.

Some of you think that's what reach is.

I'm going to just walk people through theology.

I'm going to see them on social media,

and I'm just going to drop theology on them.

Listen, if you have theology without the love of Christ,

you're really going to struggle to reach people.

Paul shows us there was this amazing love that he had.

When commentary said Israel's failure as a whole to embrace the gospel

was for Paul not merely a theological issue demanding an explanation,

but it was something that caused him great personal anguish.

Here's the deal.

If you look at that and look at the love that he had,

it sounds crazy.

Because I look at that and go, how do you love them?

Yep, I know you're doing everything you can.

You're pouring it out, but you see what's happening.

How can you have that love?

Well, how Paul had that love is it first starts with knowing the love of Christ.

That this love sounds crazy without the love of Christ.

If you don't know the Lord, I get it.

If I were you, I'd look at it and go, this sounds crazy.

Why would you forgive people?

You're caring for them and they're doing all this at some point.

Just be done.

You don't need to love them.

But if you know the love of Christ and it's personal and it's tender,

it changes how you love.

It changes how you care.

I had a lady meet in my office this week, just broken and family struggle

and hurt and pain, grandma and granddaughter.

And it is just a clash.

And she's like, I don't know what to do.

I don't know what to do.

I do this and working through all the hurt and the struggle.

And I had to take her back to the cross.

I had to take her to the place where to know Christ loved us so much.

It's not because we were good that Christ loved us.

It's not because we had it all figured out and we just did right to Christ.

No, we did wrong to Christ.

Yet he loves us.

See, in Paul, when he's talking about if I could, I would be accursed.

Where does this kind of love come from?

It comes from the love of Christ who was accursed for us.

The Bible clearly says that Jesus,

Jesus came and he was placed on the cross, right?

He was accursed for us because of our sin.

This is the love of Christ.

And this is how we're called to love.

But it's sure hard to get there, isn't it?

Hard to love people.

People aren't always nice.

People are ruthless.

Paul knew that.

But here's the deal.

Paul was filled with the Holy Spirit.

We, for the last five weeks, have been studying Romans chapter eight.

What have we been studying?

We've been studying the power of the Holy Spirit.

I don't know about for you.

But for me, this has been an amazing study for me.

It has brought me to a place of being so much more thankful for the Holy Spirit

and the work of the Holy Spirit.

It's brought me to a place knowing that I need the power of the Holy Spirit

to walk in the ways that Christ has me to walk.

And so as we've studied eight, we've seen the power of the Holy Spirit.

The chapter, it tells us that the Holy Spirit frees us from sin.

It enables us to fulfill God's law.

It changes who we are.

It changes our nature.

It gives us victory.

It gives us victory over sin and death.

The Holy Spirit, He confirms our adoption as God's children.

The Holy Spirit, He intercedes in prayer for us.

He is our help.

They have found in at least the American church world, we've abused what the Holy Spirit does.

We've taken the Holy Spirit and says the Holy Spirit does all of these things and these things,

yet those things aren't not in Scripture.

Scripture is clear.

It says what the Holy Spirit does.

It gives us the power to put to death sin.

It gives us the power to put to death sin.

It gives us the power that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us.

And now here Paul is saying, the people who have persecuted me, I so love.

How?

By the power of the Holy Spirit.

Why?

Because the fruit of the Spirit.

The Bible says if we're filled with the Spirit, what's the fruit of the Spirit?

What's the first one?

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience.

The Bible says that the fruit of the Spirit is love.

This isn't a natural love to love people like this.

It is a supernatural love.

It is only with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit may we have the ability, the power to love people like Christ wants us to love them.

This is a supernatural power that comes from the Holy Spirit.

Paul shows us how personal it is.

See, I want you to hear this morning that when we talk about the purpose of the church, when we say reach,

I want you to hear this.

Reach is not a power.

It's a program.

Reach is personal.

Reach is not about, okay, the church sets up these.

No, reach is about us who have come to know Christ to care enough about our neighbor to love them with the gospel.

Care enough about the people we work with to have a desire that they would know Christ.

Think about the last couple months and talking with some of you.

Some of you have come to know Christ and I've had personal conversations with you.

And you've come to know Christ in the last couple months and it's been hard on you.

You feel like, oh, I don't know.

I feel like an outcast.

Yeah, Paul did.

Paul comes to know Christ.

He's the hero.

And now, I read this.

I thought this was interesting.

Now people say he's the Judas of Judaism.

Paul was so in and now he's saying, no, Christ is the way.

So now he is an outcast.

He is hated.

Talked to a man just recently.

He's come to know the Lord and now his marriage.

It's hard because he doesn't do the same things he used to do.

Some of you, you've come to know Christ and now family who are religious, but they don't know Christ.

Now there's conflict.

Paul knows this, has lived it.

Here we see the power of the Holy Spirit to still continue to love.

Some of you have been outcasts and the truth is when you have this love of Christ, it's heavy.

Right?

Because love, we talk about love in our culture.

Love, there's joy and there's delight.

But we know when we love people, there is also heaviness.

You love that person.

You hate to see the disaster that's going on.

So Romans 9, Paul gives us,

One book said this passage,

This love that Paul carried is not an easy love.

But it's a love given by the Holy Spirit.

That if we know the Lord and we are about reaching people with the gospel,

it brings us to a place to ask the Lord,

Lord, help me to love people better.

Because all these things in me, they don't want to love.

Maybe you don't have those things.

I have these things.

I want people to get what they deserve.

I don't want me to get what I deserve, but I want other people.

The other people, they're the bad drivers.

I've never done anything wrong on the road.

They're the ones that cheat and steal, not me.

And so there's all these things inside of me to go, that's why I'm not going to love them.

When if I have a heart to reach people, I ask the Lord to break down those things.

Listen, my dad taught me this.

He was just a great example of that.

My dad went to heaven a couple of years ago, but he had this passion to reach people with the gospel of Jesus.

He was a great example of that.

He came to know Christ later on in his life and went through addiction, and the Lord saved him and just rescued him from this.

And there was just this desire that people would know Christ.

I remember being little, and I remember he would do things, and I'd go like, what do you do?

Why would you do that, dad?

The next door neighbor, he was a drunk, wouldn't take care of his house or his lawn, and dad would go over there and start mowing his lawn.

I remember multiple times just mowing his lawn.

Like, what do you, why would you do that?

Now I know why he did it.

He was hoping to care.

He was hoping to care for this man to get a chance to share Jesus with him.

Talked to my mom not so long ago, and we talked about a story.

When my dad was eight, his father was killed in a coal mine accident, and so they moved to Michigan.

So my grandmother, she met this guy.

He was a murderer, literally a murderer, and he was supposed to be in prison but got out on a technicality.

So he married my grandmother and wasn't a good dude.

Probably a lot of the struggle that my dad had with addiction, he was a part of that.

I don't even know the story.

I don't even know the stories of abuse.

I'm sure I haven't even gone, you know, haven't even, don't want to know.

And so my grandmother and that man, they got a divorce, and he moved to Kentucky, and my dad came to know the Lord.

My mom told the story that dad just one day said, I got to go to Kentucky.

I got to go tell him about Jesus.

And so dad drives to Kentucky to tell him about Christ.

What are you doing?

There was such a love for Christ and what Christ had done in his life.

He so wanted people to know that.

There's been times where my nieces have.

I've brought boys over.

So my niece brings Jordan over, and all of a sudden, my dad and Jordan are gone.

Jordan came to know the Lord.

Now we're years later.

Jordan's growing in the Lord.

We have a love for Christ that leads us to have reach that's personal.

Paul did.

I believe it's what the Bible calls us to.

So I just want to show you real quick what that practically looks like.

I'll get it together up here.

All right.

What that looks like.

See, Paul, because he had this love, it led him to pray.

For people to come to know Christ.

So look at Romans 10, 1.

Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.

We can say we have love for people.

Or we can go, man, I really feel like I love them.

But it's going to move us to action, right?

Love is a verb.

It moves us to action.

If we are called to reach, if we're going to have that heart, it leads us to pray.

Who are you praying for right now?

Pray for.

For me, most of my coworkers know the Lord.

Pastor Roy, Pastor Mitchell, Pastor Phil.

So for me, I work to find places that I can know people who don't know the Lord.

To step outside of that.

And that's not always easy.

I know you look at me as a pastor.

Yeah, it's easy for you to share the gospel.

You're never timid or anything like that.

No, no.

My natural man is very timid.

My natural man is very worried about what people are going to say.

But I know if I'll grow with the Lord.

With the love of Christ, I'm going to move past those fears.

And it first starts with praying for people.

On Friday morning, I was working on my sermon here and got done and went to lunch.

So there's nobody here to go to lunch with.

Roy was sick, as you can hear his voice.

He's sick.

And so I just went to lunch by myself and went up to a little fast food restaurant at the corner of Andersville and Dixie.

And so I was just going to go there, get food to eat and go.

And I walked in there and there was a young man.

He was eating by himself.

He was eating by himself.

His family goes here.

And I was eating by myself.

So I looked at him and go, hey, can I sit by you?

And we just got to pull up and we got to have lunch together.

And it was great.

I loved it.

We had wonderful conversation.

But here's what I know about that man.

That his family loves him and prays for him and prays for him and prays for him.

He's in a place of struggling right now and working through some things.

And I know his family is praying.

And so I look at that and go, man, did that just happen?

Just kind of crazy.

Pastor, he was there.

Perfect timing.

Isn't that crazy?

No, it's not crazy.

People praying and seeking the Lord.

See, love's going to lead us to pray.

And then love's going to lead us to a new path.

Romans 1, 8, and 9.

Paul says, first, I thank my God, Jesus Christ, for all of you.

Because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.

For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son,

that without ceasing I mention you.

He's praying again.

Verse 10, always in my prayers, asking that somehow

by God's will, I may now at last succeed in coming to you.

We see all through Paul's life, this desire to go to places to share the gospel.

It cost him a lot.

He went through lots of difficult things.

But that love not only led him to pray, it led him to a path to do some difficult things.

Listen, there's so many times I have my path and my plan for the day.

I got everything set out.

I don't have time to veer off and do something else.

When if we love the Lord, we come into it going,

Lord, how can I, this day, be your day, not my day?

May you veer me to see someone, to care for someone.

It may lead you to help someone.

Listen, helping someone in this world, it changes things.

Why?

Because we don't have time to help each other now.

They got a cell phone.

They'll be fine.

None of you have ever thought that before, have you?

I love the story in John chapter 4.

I don't have time to go into great detail.

But Jesus, with the disciples, the disciples leave Jesus and he's at a well.

A Samaritan woman comes and he begins to talk to her.

This was not allowed in Jewish culture.

For a Jewish man to speak to a Samaritan was no good.

And now to speak to a woman who is a Samaritan.

Jesus cares for her.

Jesus reveals to her who he is.

In John chapter 4, the most beautiful thing, she hears about Christ.

In John 4 verse 28, it says,

So the woman who came to the well to get water, like that was the purpose of the day.

The woman left her water jar and went away into the town and said to the people,

Come, see a man who told me all that I've ever done.

Can this be the Christ?

And I love this because it says the woman whose goal for the day, go get water.

And when she met Christ, things changed.

The water pot that was so important at the beginning of the day was left behind

because there was something else that was more important.

And if you keep reading the story, you'll find that many came to Christ because of her testimony.

If you love for Christ, it will lead us to a love for people.

It will lead us to pray.

It will lead us to a different plan.

And lastly, it will lead us to preach.

Now, this isn't telling you to get a megaphone and to be a jerk face to people.

This is telling you that we study Romans.

And as a church, what's important to know is that you know what it means to be saved.

And how to be saved.

And you grow in going, I'm learning how to share that with somebody.

Romans is so wonderful.

We put on your seat this little card.

There's something called Romans Road.

It just walks you through the salvation of the Lord.

Now, this isn't trying to get somebody to repeat a prayer to you.

Don't get confused with that.

It is trying to show somebody the truth of salvation.

And so to know how to do that's really important.

Romans 1.16,

For I am not ashamed of the gospel.

For it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

See, we need to understand it's important to pray.

It's important to give our time.

But it is also important that we are able to tell people about the gospel.

And to start them in a place of Romans 3.23,

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Takes us to Romans 6.23 that says,

The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And that God commended his love toward us that while we were yet,

sinners, while we rejected him, Christ died.

And it leads us to Romans 10.9,

If you'll confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus Christ and believe God raised him from the dead,

you will be saved.

Now, understand, sometimes you're going to walk into a situation

and the Holy Spirit's going to show up and that person's going to accept Christ

and it's going to be like a hallelujah moment.

And sometimes it's going to take you months and months and months of caring and loving

and reading the Bible together and answering questions and then,

not understanding and to work, we take him to the truth.

At our Waterford location, you know, we celebrate with staff when we have those reach opportunities

when people come to know Christ.

A couple weeks ago, Justin, our student director,

he went to a parent meeting at Waterford Mott High School for football.

So he goes to this parent meeting and it's where they go,

Hey, we have all of these home games.

We need parents to take care of snack shack and tickets and all of that stuff.

And so the person heading that up there was up there and go,

Okay, I need volunteers.

I need volunteers.

And shockingly, nobody raised their hand.

And so Justin, our student director, stood up and said,

Hey, and I love, he's so raw.

It's the most wonderful thing ever.

Stood up and go, Hey, my name is Justin.

I'm the student director at Waterford at the River Church.

And I'm here to meet your students and to tell them about the gospel of Jesus.

And he said, one guy in the background said, Amen.

So, and he said, Hey, we'll take three of the four games.

We'll supply all the leaders.

We'll take care of it.

And they said,

You will?

Shortly after that, the coach of the football team came up to him and said,

Hey, he said, I used to coach at a Catholic school and the priest would come in and pray.

And he goes, I'm not Catholic.

And would you be willing to come before every game?

And I can't make it mandatory, but would you be able to come and you pray for us?

And then you'd tell the kids about Jesus.

Justin, would you want to do that?

And that's exciting.

Why?

Because the kids at Waterford Mott, the greatest thing for them is to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

So I'm going to ask you.

As I said, what does love do?

Will you pray for that?

Because can I tell you, the evil one definitely doesn't want that to happen, right?

You're on enemy grounds there.

You get to step in a place to tell kids about Jesus.

So let's pray for it.

Let's pray the Lord to protect that and to use that, that we can go and tell people about the love of Christ.

And then we can go serve and show them about the love of Christ so that they may meet Jesus and know true salvation.

Church, church is about reaching.

And if you know Christ,

may we pray for the Lord to grow our love for people.

May we be diligent in praying,

be willing to give up our time,

willing to know the plan of salvation because the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.

Let's stand together.

Lord God, thanks for this morning.

Thanks for your church.

May we grow to be the church you've called us to be.

Share the good news of Jesus Christ.

We love you and we praise you.

And we pray this in the name of our Savior,

our Lord, our God, Jesus Christ.