Embracing Faith: Baptism, Conviction, and God's Word

"We're not in a hurry this morning. Close your eyes. Just sit in his presence or stand in his presence. Kneel in his presence. Life is so busy. We think we got to do something. We have so many things. We have so many things on our schedule for the day, for the week. So much noise around us that tries to take up our time and our interest. And sometimes we just don't allow ourselves just to sit in his presence. Just to rest for a minute. And the presence of the Lord." [00:44:38] (50 seconds)


"There's so much power in his presence. So many lessons, so many sermons that can be preached just about things that can happen in the presence of the Lord. Let him search your heart. Let the Holy Spirit show you things. That perhaps you need to repent of. Things you need to change. Areas in your life that you need to improve upon. Allow him to heal the hurts of the past week or the past month, year, years. Hurts from your youth. Hurts from your childhood. Hurts from your relationships, from jobs, friendships." [00:45:31] (50 seconds)


"Conviction is about restoration and healing. Condemnation is about rejection and pain. And you know, here's the thing of this, that if we're being confronted with spiritual issues in our life, feeling guilty is normal. And I have to say this, and I want to explain it because some people might have got the wrong thought. Guilt isn't condemnation. Guilt's just the realization that what you're doing is wrong, all right? It's what happens next that determines whether it's conviction or condemnation." [01:00:30] (28 seconds)


"Conviction is going to be life empowering. It's going to draw you into relationship. With Jesus, it's going to be something that you take that guilt feeling of recognizing you've done wrong, and it's going to pull you into a way that you can repent from that and go forward. Amen? I didn't put it up there, but I've said it every week that God's more concerned about what you do next than what you did, okay? That's conviction about changing your life." [01:01:16] (24 seconds)


"Death is not the end. Death is not the end. And man, I've preached this so many times. I've preached it so many times. I've preached it so many different ways. And I just, but I felt like I had to say it again. Death is not the end. It's a transition. We look at death as an ending. It's not, it's just a doorway into the next part. And I'm not going to read you all the scriptures. I don't have time for it. But we look at death as being this thing that it's a finality. And it's not, it's a beginning." [01:17:21] (30 seconds)


"We look at death as being something that's going to, that's so sad and it's sad for us, but it's not sad for them. Because the Bible tells us that, that if they are a child of God, if they've accepted Jesus, that they're going to a place where there is no sorrow. There is no fear. There is no tears. There is no pain. There is no sickness. There is no death. Sounds pretty good to me." [01:17:48] (23 seconds)


"Death is not the end. We can go on and on. The apostle Paul talks about how, if we only had a benefit of faith for this life, we'd be of all men most pitiable. Or only for that life. It's for both. Which one do you say? For the life to come. Or for this life? For this life too. It's for both. We serve God now. And we worship him this morning. And in eternity, we'll get to worship him again." [01:18:11] (26 seconds)


"If you're here today and you've struggled with the concept of God, you've struggled with the concept of the afterlife that the Bible tells us about, I want to challenge you. I want to challenge you and encourage you. Death is not the end. There's a study within Christianity. It's been around a long time. It's a field of study in theology. And Christianity specifically does a lot of it. It's gained popularity. It's called Christian apologetics." [01:18:45] (25 seconds)


"The moral argument for the existence of God states that if objective moral values and duties exist, then there must be a transcendent source, God, that grounds them. Without God, there's no morals. And I don't know if you've, I don't know if you ever thought about this and just looked at it. There are certain things that are universally wrong, right? There are certain things that universally, I don't care. I don't care what city you're in, what state you're in, what country you're in. I don't care what part of the world you're in. There are certain things that are wrong. It doesn't matter about belief system. Every belief system would agree that it's wrong." [01:22:58] (47 seconds)