Who's In Our Seats? (Part 2)

Today we're continuing the series. As Stephanie said, who's in our seats? And today we're stepping into part two, which is Next steps for New believers. Next step for new Believers. But I think what you'll find today is that we all have a next step.

And whether you're a new believer, a longtime believer, where you're not a believer at all, you're gonna learn that we all have a next step in the faith. And so we're gonna start by looking at this graphic again that Ted put up last week. As we're going through this series, looking at these different stages here, the community and the crowd is what we talked about last week. Rolling out the red carpet, creating an experience that is welcoming to. To people that have never been to church before or may have not been to church in a long time, creating that environment and that hospitality.

And today we're moving into the congregation, and then from there, the next couple of weeks, we're going to cover the committed and the core. Now, I know some of you have a competitive nature, like I do. Anybody? Okay? So where if someone says to you, we're just playing for fun, we're not keeping score.

You may not be keeping score, but I am. And I'm gonna win, just so you know. Right. And if that's you, then one of the best ways someone can motivate you is to say, I don't think you're gonna be able to do this. Right.

That's like a challenge. Okay, game on. Here we go. Right. And so for the competitive minded or those that are accomplishment or achievement based, I think we have to be very careful with what we're looking at in this graphic, because if you're competitive, what do you see?

You see a bullseye, Right. And how can I progress through this? How can I get the perfect score here? Right. How can I conquer this?

This is not a task to be conquered. Ted mentioned it last week that this is not gaining greater, like, privilege. Right. This is descending into greatness. And what we're talking about here and taking next steps is that you'll find that it requires greater humble servanthood as you take these next steps in the faith and with our church.

And so we want to encourage that as we are looking today at next steps for new believers. And so this is not privilege. It's not an accomplishment. And so we want to talk Today, though, again, we're looking at steps into the congregation, the community and the crowd. We've welcomed you here.

We want you to become a part of the congregation. The very first step in moving into the congregation, moving into the church, is something called salvation. Salvation. Now, this word salvation comes from the word save, right? So it implies that you're being saved from something.

So what is it that you're being saved from in salvation? I'm going to give you four truths that sum this up. Number one, there is a God. There is one God. Number two, our God is the one true God.

We covered this in all creation sings, right? The general and the special revelation that any reasonable person can look around and realize that there must be a God. Then we have special revelation through scripture and the person of Jesus Christ that tells us that he is the one true God. Those are the first two truths. There is a God.

Our God is the one true God. Three, we are unholy from sin, which separates us from God. A holy God cannot have unity with unholy people. And then four, Jesus is the holiness that God requires for us to have unity back with Him. We bring the perfection of his holiness, which saves us from isolation from God.

Isolation which keeps us from experiencing full joy from him on our time on earth. And also that isolation that would keep us from experiencing eternity with him in heaven. That is what we're saved from when we talk about salvation. So how do you receive salvation? Romans 10:9 says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

That is step one. Receiving the holiness of Christ, bringing it to the Father so that you are not isolated from God, so that you are in unity with Him. And that takes the first step into the congregation. You become part of the family of God. What does that look like?

Galatians 3:26 says, so in Christ Jesus. You are all children of God. How? Through faith. Faith alone.

In Christ alone. Now, after we've received salvation, we've placed faith in Christ. We believe that there is a next step that should take place for you, and that's an expression of your faith. And that is through baptism, through believer's baptism. We practice water submersion baptism for a reason.

And I'll explain that in just a moment. But what baptism is, it's a symbol, and it's a ceremony that we celebrate together. It's a symbol of someone's salvation. The death, burial and resurrection of Christ, which we participate in with him. Galatians 2:20 says, I have been crucified with Christ.

That's the burial. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. That's the resurrection that we experience, raised in newness of life in Christ. And that's the importance of baptism. It's important for two reasons.

One, Jesus exemplified it. And we read in Matthew the account of Jesus being baptized. And John the Baptist said, no, you should be baptizing me. And Jesus said, no, this is important for me to be baptized. He exemplified it.

It's important for us to do, to express our salvation. Number two, Jesus commanded it in Matthew 28, he commanded us to baptize new believers in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and our baptism. Sundays are pretty awesome. I love watching baptism. And we've got a picture of some here that, that you can't help but notice something.

Again, this is a symbol, right? An expression. And have you ever seen someone come out of the water being baptized with a frown on their face? No. And how symbolic is that?

I've been crucified with Christ. I'm no longer isolated from the Father. I'm no longer isolated from God. I can experience full joy in him through Christ. And as they come up out of the water, the smiles on the faces, what an awesome celebration that we get to have together.

If you are a follower of Jesus and you've not been baptized, we encourage you to do that again. Maybe you were saved a long time ago, have never been baptized before, you can sign up for it. We're doing it in two weeks, August 31st. So you can go online or on the app, the Church center app, sign up to be baptized. We would love to celebrate that with you the week before that.

If you have a young person, a child that's asking about baptism again, step one is salvation. Step two is baptism. Baptism is for those who have been saved. And we want to walk through that with you in our Start Here class with your young folks, kids that may be wanting to be baptized. And so we encourage you to follow in that for your next step.

Now a question for discussion. Does God require perfection? Does he require perfection from you? And the answer actually is yes. A little shocking maybe, and maybe you haven't heard that before.

God requires perfection. But remember, we are broken by sin and we can't be in unity with him because of our brokenness. But we get to bring the perfection of Christ. He requires that. He requires the perfection that we can bring in Christ to have unity with him for our salvation.

But that's the salvation part, right? And so we can kind of rest in that sometimes saying, well, all I need to do is bring Jesus to the Father and that's all there is to my faith. But it's important for us to understand there is more to Christianity than belief and confession. Sometimes we just stop there. I get saved, I get baptized, I tell everybody I'm a follower of Jesus, I have new life in Christ, I am forgiven for my sins, and we just stop there.

And so that perfection that Christ brings is important for two reasons. One is that we can be saved through it. But two is it's important for what we call sanctification. Sanctification is us growing in our faith, striving to become more like Christ. And so it gives us a goal.

The perfection of Christ gives us a goal to strive for. Now it's an unattainable goal. None of us will ever have the perfection of Christ, but it's what we should be striving for in the way that we live. Max Lucado compared it to telling everyone on earth to try to jump to the moon. An impossible task.

No one can jump to the moon, right? If we lined everybody up that's on campus today, and we all jumped as high as we could, some would jump higher than others. Many would jump higher than me with my aging knees, but I would still jump higher than some others. But the fact is, basically all of us would accomplish the same task of jumping to the moon as each other. And so if you are mature in your faith, if you, if you are aged in your faith, and you may be thinking, well, I'm doing pretty well with this, we realize that there's always a next step because the ultimate goal is Christlike perfection.

Always taking the next step, always growing in our faith in that sanctification. And so something we have seen and even experienced is maybe a watered down version of Christianity. All I need is Jesus. All I need is to place faith in him and have the joy that I can receive through my salvation. And that's it.

You can't read the entire Bible. You can't read the whole of Scripture and understand that that's all there is to our faith. There's so much more than that. Now let's turn the page a little bit and let's talk about the local church. The local church.

I'm speaking specifically about a local body of church. Woodland Hills Family Church is a local church. There are many other churches in our community. There are a local body of believers that are the local church. It's the actual congregation that we're stepping into when we take these next steps, so called the assembling of the saints.

Right. And sometimes we make a distinction between something called the big C church and the little C church. The big C church being the collective group of believers, all who are children of God who have placed faith in Christ and have been saved. And that's the big C church. And the problem with that distinction is sometimes we take that big C and little C and put them in that context.

This little C must not be as important because it's a little C and it's not near as important as the big C church. And here's where the emphasis is. And we're going to see that that's a wrong interpretation. You can't read again, in the same way you can't read scripture and say all there is is salvation. You can't read all of scripture and say the big C is all that matters.

As long as we're saved is all that matters. You'll notice if you haven't before nine of Paul's New Testament letters that he wrote that are included in the candidate of Scripture. Nine of his New Testament letters were written to a local church. Three more of his letters were written to a leader of a particular local church. 12 of the 27 books of the New Testament were written to the local church.

Does God think that the local church is important? Almost 45% of the new Testament is addressing the local church. And as we talk about the importance of the church, I think it's very important that we address what could be an elephant in the room for many. And that's the fact that you may have been hurt by the church. I think more accurate would be that you've been hurt by some people in a church and that has created bitterness in you towards the church, the institution of the church, and even towards God.

And we acknowledge that. We don't discount that. We pray for your healing in that. And we want you to hear that. We're not saying that's not important.

That's not a big deal. That didn't happen, or you need to be quiet about it because that's not the case. We acknowledge it. We pray for you. And maybe you haven't been hurt by the church or someone in the church.

Maybe you just had a bad church experience. There is a church that you were in before that was a bad experience for you. And bad experiences can come in many ways. Maybe finances were mishandled in a church and you knew about it and it bothered you and you tried to address it and nothing changed. Maybe even illegal things were happening with the finances in the church.

Maybe you witnessed or were part of receiving abuse from authority within a church. Maybe you had a bad experience because you were in a legalistic church that was very cold and told you the things that you must do and must not do, and that's where your salvation rested. Maybe you had a bad experience because a church you were a part of focused so much on non essentials. What you look like, what you talk like, how you act, right, putting on the right face. Maybe a very legalistic church gave you a bad experience.

Maybe you were part of a church that focused on behavior modification. You need to say the words, I believe Jesus now, you need to do this, you need to do this, and you need to do this, and you need to stop doing this, this and this. And it was all about behavior modification. Not so much about that smile on your face when you come out of the water. Because the joy you receive when you receive Christ and the behavior modification is the bad dog church.

Like Renee Schlepfer mentioned earlier this summer, you need to stop doing this because you're a bad dog, right? So maybe that was a bad experience you had in church. And for those that have suffered hurt from church, those that have had bad church experiences, we want to express to you, we need for you to understand, we, the church, are not Jesus. We are his bride. We the church are not God.

We are his children. And so our plea to you is don't be down on or abandon God or his institution, the church, because some of his children acted like fools. That's our plea to you. Any of you that have kids, were you like me before you had kids and you thought you knew everything there was to know about parenting? I was having lunch with Shay Robbins a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about that issue.

And Shay said, quote, I cringe at the fact that I gave parenting advice. Back then, my wife and I, Carrie, we were married, didn't have kids yet. We had two Labrador retrievers, and our dogs were very well behaved. And so we thought, this parenting thing is going to be easy. And then we had kids, and we found out pretty quickly that kids are different from Labradors.

But at the time, we thought we knew everything there was to know. And people have followed the book on parenting. Some have done everything that scripture commands about raising kids and the way that they should go and looked into other experts teaching about childhood development and how best to raise kids and done everything right. And yet Those children, that child, or those children sometimes are completely, clearly, completely outside of God's will for their life. And the reason is because human beings, interestingly, are far more likely to express their free will and exercise their free will than Labradors, right?

And Greg Koekl says about free will that God gives us, it's a wonderful and a horrible thing. It's wonderful because, number one, we can choose grace, we can choose God, we can choose his will, we can choose to follow him and seek Him. But his free will also gives each of us equal opportunity to make a fool of ourselves. And so, again, if you've been hurt by the church, had a bad church experience, don't be down on God, don't be down on his institution because some of his children chose to act foolish. That's our plea to you.

We recognize that there is hurt. We recognize the bad experiences. You. But don't be down on him. Don't be down on his institution.

His institution that, by the way, Jesus said, the gates of hell will not prevail against and I don't know about you, but I want to be a part of that team. I want to be a part of that institution. We've seen governments, we've seen business, we've seen many things that have come and gone. But about the church, the gates of hell will not prevail against it. I want to be a part of that.

And how do you be a part of that? Jared Coulter says our young adults and youth pastor, he says, we want you to. We don't want you to just like and subscribe to our young people. We're not just another influencer to follow. That's not what we want for you.

We want you to be a part of this institution against which the gates of hell will not prevail. We are one body with many parts. First Corinthians 12:12 says, Just as a body, though, one has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. The importance of this passage is exemplified in the church. This shows us how important the church is, because without the church, Christians are a bunch of just dismembered body parts flailing around, which is really weird and gross, frankly.

But this is the importance of the church coming together as one body, many parts, fulfilling the purposes that God has for us individually and in our church, carrying out his will. And this, the context of this passage, by the way, is Paul writing to the church at Corinth, one of the letters to a specific local church. That is the context of this passage now, how do you step into this congregation? We've talked about how you're a part of the Big Sea Church, the collective body of believers. You receive salvation.

But we're talking about the local church. And here at Woodland Hills, we have something called Starting Point. Starting Point is part of our next steps that we encourage you. If you've been here for a while, been here a long time, been here a short time, you want to make this your local church and your church family. This is our membership class where you can come learn more about the church, learn more about the leadership, learn more about the ministries, about our emphasis, kind of how we operate, the truths, our sources of truth, the things that we believe and all of those things.

But Starting Point is where you do that, and we encourage you to do that. It's September 16th. Is the next date coming up? We want you to sign up for that. You need to sign up for that.

If you missed that one. We have them all throughout the year, regularly. But we encourage you to participate in Starting Point, where you'll come. You'll learn more about our local church. I've said it already.

The five purposes. The purposes that we fulfill are worship, fellowship, discipleship, evangelism and ministry. You see those purposes where woven throughout on a Sunday, woven throughout the ministries of Woodland Hills and everything that we do. And if you come to Starting Point, you'll hear this passage. We talk about it a lot.

Acts 2:42, 47, which is a scriptural blueprint for how the local church should operate. And let's read through that. They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, so discipleship and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread. They ate together and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.

That's ministry. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. They took an offering and they were generous. That's ministry.

Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together. Here they are eating again. Clearly they like to eat. I like this church with glad and sincere hearts praising God, worship and enjoying the favor of all the people.

And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. That's evangelism. So we see the five purposes and this kind of template. The blueprint for how God desires for his institution to operate and how he desires for his institution to function. And that's what we are looking for.

That's what we want for you. Stepping in to Be a member of our congregation, our local church. And now let's turn the page and talk a little bit more focused on an individual as a new believer. And I said it earlier, just because we're talking about new believers, we're talking about next steps. So some of these next steps may not be just for new believers, but for someone who's been a believer for a long time.

But you are under the understanding that the Christian faith, all I need is to be saved, and then everything's good. But there are always next steps that we can be taking. Always figuring out how we can better try to jump to the moon. Right? New believers should learn and practice what we call spiritual disciplines.

And not just new believers, but all believers should learn and practice the spiritual disciplines. I want to talk about what spiritual disciplines are and what they are not. What they are are training practices for Christian living. There are things that we can do in our sanctification as we're trying to grow in our Christlike character. Things that we can do, practically speaking, to grow in being Christlike and living Christlike.

They are not behavior modification. They are not a list of things that you must do if you are a Christian, because we are telling you you must do these things. You may have been told this before. This could be a part of a. Maybe a legalistic or a behavior modification model that you've experienced in the past, but that's not the case.

They are training for Christian living is what these spiritual disciplines are. Does it bother any of you that we call it the practice of medicine?

Doctors are practicing medicine. Are you okay with that, or does it bother you? Right. There was a case not long ago. I was in the operating room in the holding area getting ready to go back to surgery with a patient, and there's a set of paperwork we have to finish first.

And I'm doing that paperwork and talking to the patient. And he said, out of curiosity, Doc, how many of these have you done? And I said, that's actually a very good question and a valid one. And I said, actually, after yours and then two more, I'll have three.

I'll see you back there.

Obviously, I was kidding. But what we do know is that there is no perfect physician. There's no perfect physician. Despite what medical dramas would tell you, there's no Dr. House that can take these obscure symptoms from some strange diagnosis and suddenly figure it out every time it's not the case. Doctors are always learning as they're delivering care.

The point there is that as we are trying to strive for Christlike living. There are things that we can do that we can learn more about Christlike living. And as we are doing it, you cannot separate the two in the same way. A Christian is learning more about the thing while they're doing the thing. Followers of Jesus should be learning more about the thing while we're doing the thing, which is following Jesus.

That's why we call ourselves followers of Jesus. You can't separate the two. I was talking to a CPA after the first gathering who was telling me conversations he had with people as well. You could fill in the blank with any profession. Teachers.

We're going to be dropping our kids off with some new teachers. Maybe we have some new teachers here and you can walk into that classroom and see the big eyed, fresh graduate new teacher, right? And know this teacher has some things to learn. But they are learning while they're doing. Every profession is.

There's no perfect at their profession. So it is with our faith. And that is the purpose of the spiritual disciplines. If you want a list of ways that you should be living, I'm gonna point you to the Sermon on the Mount. We did the greatest sermon ever earlier this spring.

Matthew chapters five and six. Jesus telling us how we should live, how we address people, how we work, how we treat money, how we treat mental health, how we handle difficulties. All of those things is how we live. That's a better list of how we should be living. The spiritual disciplines are training for how we should be living.

So I'm gonna give you a quick list here. There's seven of them. I'm gonna go through them pretty quickly. The reason I'm going through them quickly is because at this point they are just a list. You could look at any one of these spiritual disciplines and see that at some point in the recent past, we've probably done an entire series on each spiritual discipline.

And so here's that list. First is Bible intake and learning. Second Timothy 3, 16:17 says, All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for what? Training. The word discipline means training, training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Bible intake and learning. Learning more about Scripture, Learning more about the Word of God. Prayer. Prayer is us communicating to God. God communicates to us through Scripture and through the Holy Spirit.

We communicate to God through prayer. Romans 12:12 says, Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. In other words, no matter the circumstances, we should be praying, expressing to God. Worship is acknowledging who God is and what he has done for us. Worship is not just music, but music is one of the ways that we worship.

But we see that that worship is more of a mindset and a heart set. As John Piper said, the real duty of worship is not the outward duty to say or do the liturgy. It is the inward duty, the command. Delight yourself in the Lord. That is what worship is.

Of course, he was quoting Psalm 37. 4. Serving is the next spiritual discipline. This is meeting the needs of others. Matthew 20:28 said, the son of man came not to be served, but to serve.

Remember, we talked earlier about humble servanthood, striving to be more like Christ. That is the goal. The Son of Man, Christ himself, did not come to be served, but he came to meet the needs of others. Here at Woodland Hills, we specifically address that through the ministry of what's called Sweet Spot. Next week we will have a booth here which is available for you to visit with those folks.

Or you can go to the class September 21st. Every follower of Christ at the time of their salvation receives at least one spiritual gift. According to scripture, there is a long list of them. The purpose of those spiritual gifts is for the building up of, guess what? The body of Christ, the church, to come along and serve God's purposes through the church.

And so Sweet Spot helps you to figure out what your spiritual discipline is. There are some of us that just need to serve, even though we don't know what a spiritual gift is, because frankly, sometimes we just need people helping in places that may not be your gifting. We encourage you to do that as well as find out what your spiritual gift is and serve in that way. We're gonna talk about that more next week, but that's serving. Next spiritual discipline is giving.

2nd Corinthians 9:7 says, each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion. For God loves the a cheerful giver. That's why we cheer when we take an offering, because we don't do it out of compulsion. If you do it out of compulsion, then frankly you're doing it wrong. It should be out of the joy of your heart and what God has given you, what God has provided you.

Evangelism is the next one. Mark 16:15 says, he said to them, this is Jesus. Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Evangelism can be as simple as what Lane taught us a few weeks ago, which is just telling your story, being ready to tell your story, being ready to Give a reason for the hope that is in you, a reason that you come out of the water smiling. Solitude.

Don Whitney, in his book Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, gives us four reasons that solitude are important. Number one, it helps us practice our faith. As we read in Psalm 46:10, it says, Be still and know that I am God. Being still is easier in solitude. Getting away from others, removing distractions, which helps us to see, seek the will of God to better hear his voice through scripture and the Holy Spirit.

It also can provide physical and spiritual restoration and most important, solitude. In practicing solitude, we are following Jesus's example. We get many examples in Scripture about Jesus getting away from others and alone with the Father. And those are the spiritual disciplines. These are the things that we do to train for the Christian life, for Christlike living as we're living our Christian life now.

How can I implement the spiritual disciplines into my life? Well, I lately have been trying to pay attention to signs that I'm getting older, okay? And they are many. I mentioned my knees earlier. I can't jump as high as I used to.

I've got a trick knee now. That's really fun. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, right? That's one sign my vision is getting worse. I'm wearing contact.

Sometimes I wear glasses, but I'm talking about subtle signs. Like sometimes I haven't yet. But some people have looked for their glasses for five minutes while they're sitting on top of their head, right? There are other signs, like talking on the phone, right? And you say, yeah, you know what?

I think that'll work for me. I just need to check my calendar. I've got it here somewhere.

You know what? When I find my phone, I'm going to check my calendar. That's another sign I haven't done that yet. Yet. Some of you have, haven't you?

One of the ways that I can tell that I'm getting older is I am having a growing affinity for routine. Can I get an amen from the senior adults routine? Right, Young people, the quickest way you can upset someone over 65 is disrupt their routine. Disrupt. Right?

Watch this. Next week, everybody. You have to sit in a different seat here. You heard the groans from those that love their routine. A lot of us love routine.

Young moms, you love routine, don't you? Because we're about to get back into the routine of school, right? And routine just seems to make things easier and flow better. One of the reasons that people, as we get older, love routines is because we've seen the benefit that routine can give us. When we get in routines, we establish habits.

And again, the older adults have seen that the routines and the habits of, like, say, maybe save a little bit of money from each week's paycheck or each month's paycheck. Over time, that becomes a lot of money, or I need to learn a new skill or about a new topic, and I learn a little bit or practice a little bit each day. And over time, I get really good at it. You see what routines and habits can do. And so it is with the spiritual disciplines spirit.

That's how we can implement spiritual disciplines into our lives. And so I want to give you two routines that you can establish that will help you in implementing the spiritual disciplines into your lives. The first one is church attendance. Again, we are not a legalistic church. We're not a behavioral modification church.

We're not going to tell you you need to do this and don't hear from us that you need to be at church every week. But we believe that being at church every week, we get it. There are vacations, there are things that come up and things that happen that keep you from attending every single week and being a part. But that habit can be very helpful for establishing spiritual disciplines. And again, we're not gonna shake our fist at anyone about church attendance.

And as Stephanie Watson, that was up here earlier, talking about moving up and our children's ministry, she says, we don't want something from you. We want something for you. We want you to come and be a part of this local body. The gates of hell will not prevail against it. We want you to be a part of that.

Because when you come on a Sunday, think about that list of spiritual disciplines. Worship. We worship together, acknowledging who God is and what he's done for us. We happen to do it with music and many other ways as well. Bible intake.

You've heard the word of God this morning. Scripture into your mind and into your heart. Prayer. We have a prayer team. You participate in prayer together here on a regular basis.

Giving. We have opportunity to take an offering, which we do joyfully serving. We encourage everyone to do what's called sit, Sit one and serve one. So as you go to sweet spot and you learn where you can be a part of this local body, you come to one of the gatherings and you serve in another. It's a way that we can build one another up.

Opportunity for serving evangelism. Invite friends and family to come to church with you, telling others your story. And you see all of These spiritual disciplines work into the one routine. If you can just say, Sunday morning is when we go to church. I'm going to participate in the spiritual disciplines at least once a week.

But we believe that once a week is not enough for practicing the spiritual disciplines and growing in your faith and training for Christlike living as you are living the Christian life. Because the other one is something in Christian terms we call a devotional or quiet time. This is getting alone with the Father. Remember the solitude. We practice solitude just like Jesus did.

We get away from people, away from distractions again, young mothers, young parents. This can be very difficult, but it doesn't make it less important to get away, spend time with the Father, pray our private prayers. Matter of fact, the outline for how we should pray is to get alone and pray. We're Bible intake. We're studying Scripture, putting the word of God in our minds and on our hearts.

And that's another habit that you can put into place, another routine that you can put in place, help you grow in spiritual disciplines, not for the sake of the disciplines themselves that you check the boxes, but so that I put myself in an environment and a routine that grows me more in my faith as I'm striving for that Christlike perfection. So the first step to the congregation of Salvation, placing faith in Christ. All who have placed faith in Christ should be baptized. And if you were saved long ago, saved recently, we encourage you to participate in that because frankly, we want something from you. We want to get to enjoy that with you because we love seeing those smiling faces coming up out of the water, expressing the joy that you have in Christ from your salvation membership.

We would love for you to join us at a starting point, learn more about the church and become a member and then serve. Attending a sweet spot, talking to the sweet spot ministry team, finding out how you can serve and establishing those routines of church attendance and of a daily devotional time so that you can grow more in your Christlike living. Let's pray together. Father, we love you and we're grateful for this local church, this body of believers. We're thankful most of all for your son, Christ, the perfection and the holiness that we can bring to you so that we can have unity with you.

I pray for this church, that you continue to keep it healthy. And if growth is part of the health, we're grateful for it. And we pray for those that are not yet with us, that are going to be the lives that would be changed. We're thankful for the joy that we have, the smile on our face as we come up out of the water of salvation, Lord, that we know you and that we have you are perfection. But also, Lord, we acknowledge that we see that perfection and know that we have something to strive for as we train for our living to be more like your son, Christ.

We love you and we give you praise in Christ's name. And everyone agreed and said amen.