Go

Well, good morning everybody. It is February 1st. Can you believe that? I can’t. I think we lost a few days because everybody is hibernating with all of the cold weather and the snow and the ice. And here we are in 2026, and I want to remind you about a couple of things. This last week, as I was pulling up to the offices here at our north campus, many of you saw the same thing I did.

If you’re watching online, maybe you haven’t been to our North campus where we broadcast this for our church services. And I noticed something I thought was a great kind of analogy for us to wrestle with. So, 2026—this is the 20th year that Gateway has been at this location. So 20 years this year. Some of you were here. Yeah, give it up for those who helped with that. A lot of you—have you been here that long where you helped get into this building and establish ourselves here for 20 years? But here we are, 2026, and we’re finally getting a sidewalk. So if you’ve been driving to the campus, you’ve noticed all the work for the sidewalk.

And I was talking to one of our executive pastors, Charles Dinger, who helped build this building and build this facility, and he said, “Wouldn’t it have been easier to have a sidewalk when we first moved in?” I mean, come on. And it wasn’t our issue—the city is making it happen, so they’re paying for it. Isn’t that a good thing? The city’s paying for it. We’re not paying for it. And so it’s awesome to see. And I do think it is a good analogy, especially for those of us who are at different parts of our faith.

So here we are as a church, an established church in this area for 20 years, and we’re just now getting a sidewalk. And so for those of us who are exploring faith, new to faith, new to following Jesus in the way of Jesus, I’m encouraging you to do the very things we teach you to do, because what you’re doing early on in your faith is putting in the infrastructure of what it means to follow the way of Jesus. And it doesn’t take as long—it takes a few weeks of putting the sidewalk in. Guess what? 20 years later, it’s going to take them six months to put a sidewalk in. First of all, welcome to bureaucracy. Second of all, it’s because we already have an infrastructure in place. There’s already a lot of traffic. There are already people coming in and out of the church.

And yet some of us have been following Jesus 20 years, 30 years, and we haven’t necessarily put in the infrastructure, the framework to truly follow Jesus. Many of us put in frameworks that our denominations or our sect, or how we grew up or our culture or ethnicity told us were really important. And what we’re trying to do as a church is saying, yes, those things might be important and they may not be contrary to what God wants. But what does Jesus say from the original words? What was his framework? So if you’re new to faith, as you build this framework, you’re doing the right thing. And if you are not new to faith and you’re having to reevaluate some things, it is worth undoing certain things to rebuild the framework in the way God intended us to.

As we gather, we grow, we give, and we go. And so we’re emphasizing this. In Matthew 28, when Jesus looks at his disciples after teaching for days after his resurrection, he says this: “Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.'”

This is the command. This is the true mission of what we call the capital C Church across the world. This is our mission—to go and make disciples of all nations. These are the marching orders, if you will. And yet the people who are following Jesus hear this, they begin to go and live this out, and we begin to see the fruit of what they begin to do. And that builds for us an understanding. Those who were with Jesus, who spent time with Jesus, are now following his words. They’re obeying what he said. What did they do? And that becomes a framework for those of us who are disciples 2000 years later.

But the first disciples, this is what they did. Acts chapter two: “They devoted themselves to teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. And everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. And all the believers were together and had everything in common, and they sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.” I mean, they were the originators of the journey of generosity. They weren’t even on a journey—they just did it. They sold everything they had, and they lived communally. “And every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts, and they broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

This reminds me of this lady in our neighborhood. Her name is Sister Diaz, because I grew up in India and I’m Asian, where you call everybody brother and sister. Anybody else do that? I’d be like, “Brother so-and-so, Sister so-and-so.” And I was a kid and I was like, “That’s not my sister.” And mom’s like, “That’s what we say.” “But she’s not my sister!” But her name is Sister Diaz, and I grew to love Sister Diaz. And I’ve told stories about her before. She now has dementia and doesn’t remember these stories. But I remember as a kid in our neighborhood, we had certain ladies, especially in our community, that you would go by their house and there was always a meal being cooked. You know what I’m talking about? You go to the house and there were always fresh tortillas, always. And she would put mantequilla—I mean butter. She would take the tortilla and she was like, “Mijo, are you hungry?”

Whether I was hungry or not, I would take a fresh tortilla. Come on, say amen, somebody. Like, come on, who doesn’t want a fresh tortilla? “Are you hungry?” And I could smell the tortilla, and she would put it on top of a napkin and she’d put a little cube—remember the cubes of butter?—cube of butter. And she’d fold it up just right, because if not, it leaks everywhere, right, and stains your clothes. And she’d hand it to you. And that thing—I don’t know why she’d give me a napkin, it was gone in five seconds.

So she lived according to a culture of always being ready to welcome the stranger into your home, always being ready to share a meal with somebody. That isn’t just cultural, it’s scriptural. These people ate meals together. They lived out what it means to gather with one another, to grow in Christ, to give of themselves, and to go.

And I know this can be difficult because some people wrestle with what does this mean for the local church. Because sometimes in our context we live in communities that have a high value for church, or we live in communities that have a low value of church. We have a workplace that has a high value for Christianity or following Jesus or the church. We have workplaces that have low value and look down on the church. We have schools that have a high value of church. We have schools that have a low value. And we all live in these contexts and these different contexts.

And yet I want you to take a deep breath on something. Okay, so on the count of three, take a deep breath. One, two, three—in. Hold it, hold it, hold it. Slowly let it out. God is not asking you to be a salesman for Jesus.

He’s asking you to represent Jesus well. There’s a big difference. Because we might hear things like, “Oh, I know, I know, I’m supposed to go and tell people about Jesus,” or you hear the verse, “Therefore, go and make disciples,” and you’re like, “Gosh, now I’ve got to do a sales pitch.” God is not wanting you to do a sales pitch. Okay? “Here’s Jesus, and I’m going to read all these books, and I get to know everything, and I kind of know the history.” And guess what? Those are good things to know, to grow, to understand the history of our faith. But that’s not what God is actually inviting you to. He’s inviting you and I to go and to represent him well.

We’re actually not called to go and argue others into the kingdom.

We’re called to compel others by the way we live our lives, by the way we advocate, by the way we love, by the way we do the things that we do. And we might see that in different ways. But I do know that God is asking us—those of us who are sent, those he says “go” to—the life of someone sent is someone who is fruitful and who multiplies.

You ever talked to somebody at your local high school and they’re trying to tell you what to do? Maybe you’re a 15, 16-year-old in the room and somebody in your class is like, “Oh yeah, you should do it this way and this way and this way.” And you’re like, “But you don’t even do that.” You’ve been in a workplace and somebody has a bright idea for a project and you’re like, “You don’t even know what you’re talking about.” You know, the person who tries to tell you—you decide to start working out, or how about this one: somebody starts working out for a week and now they’re ready to start training everybody else on how to work out. Yeah, everybody’s like, “Yeah…”

I mean, my daughter Zoe—my daughter Zoe, she’s amazing, and she hasn’t—she has not done this to herself, I promise. She’s not a self-promoter. My daughter Zoe, in eighth grade, did a lot of research about microplastics, right, for a science class. So now she’s in high school, she’s a freshman, and they started talking about microplastics in her biology class. And all her friends looked at her and said, “Talk to Zoe. She knows everything about microplastics.” So she’s 15. Everybody now—she did a lot of research, hours and hours of research. She preaches at home about microplastics. She gets on to us about microplastics. But now the teacher is talking about it, and her friends are like, “Well, she knows more than all of us.” So she’s kind of like the expert of the 15-year-olds.

But how many of us get a little bit of knowledge and we think we’re called to be an expert on it?

And some of us have to really be reminded when it comes to Jesus: we’re not trying to be an expert of Jesus. We’re trying to be a full follower of Jesus.

Yes, we can grow in knowledge and grow in understanding, but God is calling us to be fruitful and to multiply. Don’t forget, in week one we talked about the imagery. For those of us who are followers of Jesus, we are not machines. We are not systems. We’re not a church that’s a building. We are individual trees, and our tree is planted by the waters, and our roots grow deep. We are called to be trees. Can you imagine being a tree that actually has no fruit? That’s not the imagery. The imagery is that we are trees planted by the river of God. And no matter the seasons to come, no matter what comes at us, we know that we can be fruitful because we have been called to be fruitful and to multiply.

And that’s something we actually see throughout Scripture, from the very beginning of Scripture to the very end. We’re called to grow, to multiply. Genesis chapter one, Adam and Eve: “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.'”

And some people have taken that verse as, “Well, see, God put us here to subdue the earth. Who cares about the earth? Who cares? Like, we’re just here to kill everything we see. We’re just here to do whatever we want to do.” That’s actually not true, because God called us to steward the earth. And yes, we can eat of the earth and we can eat of those animals, but we’re also supposed to be fruitful with the earth, which means caring for it.

See this tension? And yet we see that throughout Scripture. After the flood, Noah’s family now had to repopulate the earth. Abraham was called to have plenty, to grow his family. We see this over and over. Libby and I even saw this. When we first got married, we were babies. Libby was 19, I was 22. We were really young. And yet our first ministry was with people our age, people in their 20s, people in their 30s. And so we spent a lot of years with all these people at our house who were in their 20s and 30s. And so people would stay over when they broke up with their boyfriend, and somebody would call because they were drunk and we got to go pick them up at a bar.

And we were in the middle of life with people in their 20s and 30s. And then we had our own kids, and they became babysitters and they became older brothers and sisters. And so now my son’s 25, Carlos, and my daughter Bella is 22. They have brothers and sisters across the country who were in their 20s and 30s when they were babies, and they were part of their lives.

So when we say “go,” we begin to be fruitful. Now these are people in our life. These are people who we’ve spent our life with, being fruitful and multiplying ourselves into them. And guess what Libby and I get to do today? After service today we’re having a lunch for people in their 20s and 30s, and we get to hang out with them and have food. There’s a food truck out there, and if you signed up, we’re so glad you’re going to be there. If you haven’t—20s and 30s—go! It’s a free lunch. You’re in the age where you should take everything free you can get. Join us for lunch an hour after service. And guess what? The person doing the food in the food truck is somebody in our church from the 20s and 30s.

This community that we’re called to be fruitful in, to multiply in. Are we modeling for that? Those of us in our 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s and yes, we have people in their 80s. Are we being fruitful and multiplying? And then we see this in the New Testament. Matthew chapter five: “In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

We are called to do good in the earth, and yet not so that we can get the glory, not so we can virtue signal to others—”See, this is how you’re supposed to do it.” No, it’s so God is glorified. And then you don’t have to be weird about it, by the way. Do you ever give somebody a compliment and they’re so weird? Yeah, I’m talking about—”Hey, you did a good job at that.” “Oh, it was not me. I mean, I want to be a humble servant of the Lord Most High, and he has called me to be his vessel, and I work to be a clean vessel so that everything I do can come through me and outflow to you, and that you would be blessed by what I did.”

You know, you could just say thank you.

Right? Because in doing that and living life, people will then eventually say, “Tell me how you did that. Tell me how that happened.” And that’s when you begin to reflect the goodness of whatever we do back to God the Father. It wasn’t because of your goodness or your virtue, but because of who he is to you.

We see this theme, and God is intentional through His Son Jesus to model this for us, as he raised disciples for three years, as he taught them after his resurrection for 40 days to be fruitful and to multiply. And you’re like, “Well, how many times are you going to say ‘fruitful and multiply’ today?” I don’t know, stop counting, because it’s going to be a lot. Because that’s what we’re called to do. And I know it can challenge us.

But faithful living is about a life that points people to Jesus. Are you pointing people to Jesus? And I know our context is different for every single one of us, from neighbors we live near, to jobs we have, to education and languages we speak. I love it, I love it. And yet do we reflect this and live the command to go?

I’m going to say what I’m going to say, and I’m not making a political statement—which means some will be like, “Oh, it’s a political statement.” No, I want you to know about your brothers and sisters here at Gateway. Do you know that we are walking with a lot of people who are trying to figure out their immigration status in this country, and almost all of them are here legally, and most all of them are working through these things? And can I tell you, I met with somebody this morning—this powerful couple. I won’t say what country they’re from.

I learned a lesson from this couple who’s going through a lot right now through their immigration process. This couple looked at me with so much joy on their face and said, “We don’t know if we’ll live here or not. We don’t know what part of the world we’re going to be in or be allowed to live in. But we’re going to follow the rules of the land. But before the rules of the land, we’re going to follow where God leads. Would you just pray that we would be obedient to where God allows us to be?”

Do we live like that?

They’re like, “God’s calling us to be fruitful and multiply. And if it’s not in this country, it’ll be in some other country.” I’m sitting there as their pastor saying, “Carlos, you should probably take a page out of their book on how you live your life.”

Am I willing to go and be obedient and say yes to the thing that God calls me to, no matter what my context is, no matter what my job status is, no matter what the culture says or the church says or so-and-so says? And I’m really proud of some of these families. So here’s what I want to do, because we have a lot of them at every one of our campuses. Gateway Church, can we just honor some of our people who are trying their hardest to raise their families and do what’s right by saying we’re going to be praying for you in this season because you’re our brother and you’re our sister in Christ? Follow the rules of the land. Do what you’ve got to do, but we’re praying for you, believing with you.

And if you are one of those families who are struggling with that, just know you’re not alone. And we’re going to always encourage you to do what’s right and to walk with you. But I want you to know your allegiance to God matters more than anything else. And that goes for those of us who are American citizens and those who are from other countries. Our citizenship is in the kingdom of God. And if you agree with that, can you give it up? For all of our friends and family who are working through the process of what it means to be in this country.

Thanks for letting me say that and do that. It really does—we have a lot of people to pray for in our church, in our community.

Okay, so when we see Jesus doing this, he’s modeling—Luke chapter nine, where he has 12 disciples and he’s sending them out. He’s teaching them. And they go out—he’s teaching them, “Go on an internship,” right? You go to class, you learn, and you go practically learn how to live this out. And so you see that in Luke nine. But in Luke ten we see a shift. We see Jesus going from the 12 to the 72. And so we see Jesus modeling for us from one chapter to the next that he was fruitful and he multiplied. And in Luke chapter ten, he begins to send out 72 to go out and do the work.

So here’s what we read in Luke chapter ten: “After this the Lord appointed 72 others—others outside of the disciples—and he sent them ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where He Himself was about to go. And he told them, ‘The harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Therefore pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest.'”

So he’s preparing them, and the first thing he really wants them to know is this: a fruitful life starts with a praying life. A fruitful life starts with a praying life. He’s saying, “Pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into the harvest.” He said there’s a lot of work to do. There’s a lot for us to address in your community. There’s a lot that God wants to use you to reflect Jesus and to reflect the kingdom of God. The work is plentiful. The people are plentiful. But those who reflect the way of Christ, those who are following Jesus fully—we need more workers like that. Can you pray that as you go, that God would raise up more to go?

I’m reminded before services—the last few weeks we’ve been doing pre-service prayer, and to see how many people are here early and praying and praying for people. And I got to pray for some people before service, and I saw a couple new people who probably don’t even know I’m the pastor. Like, “Oh, that’s the guy who prayed for me,” yeah, because we’re praying together, right? We’re seeing it every time. And then after each service, there’s a time of prayer and worship and just saturating our hearts and aligning our hearts. Why? Because we cannot be fruitful in him if we are not fruitful in our relationship with him. So we pray.

And prayer looks different for every person. There’s so many ways to move forward in prayer, but here’s our posture as we pray: we bring our needs, our heart, our alignment, our petition to God. And God begins to download to us his desires.

This reminds me of a friend of mine—I’ve shared this story a few years ago—a friend of mine, David Martinez, who’s in Houston, Texas. He dropped out of school, didn’t go to college, and he worked on the shipping docks in Houston. And he was working with a bunch of people who were educated, a bunch of engineers. And he started kind of making his way, trying to do his thing. And before you know it, he told me a story that he was having dreams, and God was showing him images in his dreams that were about engineering. He’s not an engineer. So what he started doing is in the middle of the night, he would just wake up and draw the thing that God was showing him. And then he would go to work and show the engineers, and the engineers were like, “Where’d you get this idea?” And he’s like, “God.”

And if you’re an engineer, you know that’s probably not a great answer. “God?” Yeah. But it just happened over and over again. Eventually—let me say what happened to David Martinez. He had four patents, and they use his cranes from Houston to build some of the skyscrapers in Dubai.

This untrained, unlearned person through a life of prayer submitted to God had a download from God that changed his life forever. See, prayer has so many effective things that change us. Prayer partners with us. Why? Because we lack the power in our own strength. Prayer allows the Holy Spirit to partner with us in everything that we’re doing. Why? Because the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few, and God wants to use you and use me. And as we go, we pray and we live this fruitful life. But fruitfulness cannot happen apart from God.

John 15:4: “Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.” It’s connectedness. It’s abiding. It’s saying I need to stay connected to the vine that is Christ. And we do that in prayer.

And if you’ve watched the last few weeks—if you haven’t, I encourage you to go back—because we’re not talking about gathering and growing and giving and going and talking about it as a, “Here’s a great series.” No, it’s the way that we are posturing ourselves as a church moving forward. And before we get to the question of what does it mean for our church and what does it mean for groups and what does it mean for kids and what does it mean for students, and we get lost in it, we’re presenting it and saying, “What does it mean for us? What does it mean for you as a person to gather, to connect with God, to connect with others, to grow, to know him more, to give of ourselves, to see less of me, more of you, and to go, to represent him in the earth?”

And each one of these every week, the top point has been: you gather in prayer, you grow in prayer, you give in prayer, you go in prayer. It is foundational because it’s the invitation—not our invitation to God, it’s our accepting the invitation from God to join him.

There’s no question if God wants to be with us. The question is, will we join him in that?

And we do that because then we know we have everything we need. Do you know you have everything you need? When you have a life in prayer submitted to God, you have everything you need. You have everything you need to go and make a difference, to represent God in the earth. And I’m going to say something really frankly to you: we are not called to make fans of Jesus. We’re not called to tell our friends, “Hey, well, aren’t you just different?” I mean, sometimes we say those things and those aren’t bad things to say, but we’re not called to make people fans of Jesus. There are already a lot of fans of Jesus. Did you know that most people on the earth, when they hear the teachings of Jesus, are like, “Oh, I kind of like that. I like how Jesus said this, and I like how Jesus said this, and I like how Jesus did this.” And it’s a way of being. “Yeah, Jesus is great.” You know, we’re not called to build fans of Jesus. We are called to compel people to be followers of Jesus.

But are we following first? How are we doing it? And sometimes we don’t do it because sometimes we don’t recognize that we have everything we need at our disposal.

We have a man who’s come into our church, and he’s had a really rough life, and he doesn’t know anything about the Bible. So he’s got this brand new Bible. And so he came to me and he was like, “Hey, Pastor Carlos, I have this Bible and it’s a mess.” I said, “What do you mean?” “I’ve got markings all over, and I’ve got papers that are marking things that I’m reading that I don’t understand. It’s kind of messy. It’s not organized.”

I’m like, “I would rather you have a messy Bible than a clean Bible you never interact with,” right? He goes, “I don’t understand this chapter. What’s happening?” I said, “What do you mean you don’t understand?” “Well, yesterday I was in my room and I just felt like this thing told me to read this chapter called Luke chapter ten, and then you got up on stage and started teaching about Luke chapter ten. And now I’m weirded out.”

Because obviously God’s trying to get my attention. And so you know what I did? Jesus in the lobby between services—we opened the Bible, sat together, and I kind of—we read it together. And he was like, “Oh, this is why God’s showing me this.” And I got to just teach a new believer in Jesus how God’s Word can mark our lives. And yet some of us have a dozen Bibles that don’t mark one day of our life. We have everything we need at our disposal if we engage with it.

So if we fast forward to verse ten of Luke, it says this: “And when you enter any town,” as Jesus continued to give instructions, “and they don’t welcome you, go out into the streets and say, ‘We wipe off even the dust of your town that clings to our feet as a witness against you. And know this for certain: the kingdom of God has come near.’ And I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.”

Here’s how people have interpreted that scripture: “Oh, I’m telling you about Jesus. You don’t believe? Sucks to be you. Go to hell.”

And they’ll say, “Well, that’s what Luke chapter ten says—dust it off. I don’t even want the dust from that town.”

Ever have a mom who did this? “I don’t even want the dust from that town.”

“I’m coming in the name of Jesus, and you don’t want to hear about Jesus? I’m going to dust off the dirt. You don’t even deserve it.”

See, “Jesus, they didn’t want to hear it.” That’s not what Jesus is actually saying. You know what Jesus is actually saying? He’s saying dust it off to guard your own heart because you have more work to do.

And sometimes some of us have tried to share the gospel and it’s been rejected, so we stop sharing it because we’re fearful of rejection. But when you’re called to go, it’s not one time—it’s for a lifetime. So Jesus is saying, “Yeah, dust off the shoes and you say, ‘I’m releasing you to your own decisions that you desire to make.'” That’s the posture. Some of us love to walk around with signs: “God hates you. Go to hell.”

And if you don’t carry the signs, sometimes that’s how we act and it’s written on our forehead. That’s not the posture. The posture is the good news of Jesus. And when you get rejected, just wipe it off, you move on, and you leave them to God. Because we have work to do. We have people to love.

Verse 13: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!” By the way, Chorazin and Bethsaida—as you read, some of you are like, “I don’t even know what that means.” These are two towns, two cities. These two towns are two of the towns that Jesus did most of his miracles in. He says, “Woe to you who saw me in person actually do the miracles. Woe to you! For if the miracles that were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon”—two other towns—”they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.” He said, “These other towns, if they had seen me do this, they would have believed. But you’ve seen me do these miracles, and you still reject me. You know that I’m good. You know that I’m true. You know that I’m right, and yet you reject me. But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you.

“And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will go down to Hades.” Whoa! Jesus says, “You’re going to hell.” He said it. “Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”

What is he saying with this last part? He’s saying this: those of us who have more, those of us who have a deeper understanding, those of us who have seen the goodness of God, those of us who’ve seen Jesus work in amazing ways—we are held to a different standard. Did you know that?

We are expected to go. We’re expected to live like Christ because we know the work of Christ. And then we have brothers and sisters who don’t know, who are just learning. They’re held to a different standard, even by the same God. But no matter where you are, when we go, you can expect acceptance and rejection. There are going to be some people who say yes and some who say no. But whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me. Our job is just to speak the truth and to live it out.

You know, when I’m out in the community—I have kids, we’re out in places, my son has my football team and I’m hanging with the guys, the dads, and they know I’m a pastor. And some of them could care less that I’m a pastor.

So this is really refreshing. And sometimes they’ll share stories and say things, and I’m like, “I probably shouldn’t be hearing this right now.”

Just like you, we live this life in community with others. Some people accept it, some people reject it, but they’re not rejecting you. They’re rejecting Jesus. And here’s the thing you need to know about this: your identity is not in the results. It is in the one who sent you. Your identity is not in the results. It’s in the one who sent you.

And you need to know that. As a pastor, I get asked a lot of questions like, “So how big is your church? And what’s your growth rate this last year? How big is your church budget?” I get asked these questions. Believe it or not, it’s usually not by people in our church. It’s people like in other churches or the community. And inside—you ever had that moment, somebody’s asking you a question and you kind of just internally vomit? Like, you roll your eyes like, “I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

For years I’ve hated this: “How big is your church? How big is your church? How big is your church? How many campuses do you have?” And I’m like, “Oh…”

“What does it matter to you?” But after a conference a couple weeks ago, this pastor was having the same feelings I was having. He was teaching because he was like, “I hate it when people ask me how big my church is.” I perked up. “Oh my God, he brought me to this conference just for this statement. What is he going to say?”

He says, “I’m not here to build a big church. I’m here to build big people in the kingdom of God. And big people are fruitful and multiply, and they cause big things to happen, not for our sake, but for the kingdom of heaven.” And I wanted to stand up in my chair. I may have said an amen out loud. One or two of them.

I was like, “I can’t wait to steal that.” We’re not called to be a big church, even though we are. We’re called to help you be big in the kingdom of God. And when you are truly big in the Kingdom of God, it’s not because you’re loud, and it’s not because you’re old or because you’re young or because of the size of your group. You’re big in the kingdom of God because you know how to gather with people. You know how to grow in Christ. You are giving of yourself, and you go and make a difference. That is how we become big for the kingdom of God.

All this, all this is because he is worth it. Jesus is worth it. He says this: “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”

Do you know you and I get to experience Jesus that people for hundreds of years never got to experience? You are blessed. I am blessed. Blessed are you who get to hear this. Blessed are you who get to see this. For many prophets and kings wanted to see it and they didn’t get to see it. You get to see it, you get to experience it, and you get to go proclaim it and tell other people about it by the way you live your life and the words you share. You are blessed. I am blessed. We are called to go, are called to go to every highway, every byway, every nook and cranny, every neighborhood, every people group. And it’s all represented within the people of this church and other churches like us.

We represent a few hundred neighborhoods. We represent a few dozen ethnicities and people groups and languages. How powerful would it be for a church to step into its destiny when the individual people of that church step into theirs? Not so you are glorified or our church community is glorified or the pastor is glorified, but so he is proclaimed in all of his goodness and all of his glory. And that’s the invitation we get. The God of the universe is asking us to be in it with him.

So I’m going to ask you this message—just close your eyes, bow your heads if you’re comfortable doing that. Because as we move forward with the rest of our service, I want you to understand something. Some of us who are exploring faith, or maybe we’ve deconstructed faith, haven’t been to church for a long time, but we know there’s something about kind of searching for the truth of who God is. Some of us are in this place where we’ve never acknowledged our need and our belief in who Jesus is. And I really believe that there are people across all of our campuses who are in a place right now where you need to acknowledge—you want to acknowledge—this Jesus you’ve been exploring and asking questions about. Whether you’re online or in the room, this Jesus of the way, this is the Jesus I’ve been looking for. This is the Jesus my heart comes alive with. And I’m willing to acknowledge today that I’m in need of Jesus.

Jesus came to the earth. He was the first one to go. He was the first one to go. He was the first one who said yes. And he came to the earth and he lived a sinless life. And he went to a cross for you and for me. And he rose again in power. And that same power that rose from the grave, he says that same power is for you, for us, 2000 years later. That’s the invitation.

Some of us today just need to have that moment where we say, “Yes, this is the Jesus I want. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what it looks like. I might need some help, but this is the yes I’ve been waiting for.”

And if that’s you today, I’m the only one looking around right now. If you’d say, “Yeah, that’s me. This is the Jesus I want to believe in, and this is the Jesus I want to follow. I want to stop living my way, and I want to follow the way, his way,” and if that’s you, would you just raise your hand where you’re at?

Yeah, I see—yeah, right there. Yeah, I see you. See you. Yeah. Just keep it up. Yeah. That’s awesome. Awesome. Thank you, Jesus, for that.