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Emerging Voices | Jaycie Stern

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Jaycie Stern, the current kids director at Radiant Portage, shared her personal journey of faith and ministry during an "Emerging Voices" presentation. Originally from Fort Collins, Colorado, where she studied psychology and Christian counseling, Jaci moved to Michigan with her husband Parker shortly after their wedding to join the church community. She highlighted the supportive environment created by the pastors at Radiant Portage and other locations, which has allowed young leaders like herself to grow in their gifts and ministry. Her talk centered on the biblical story of the woman at the well from John 4, using it as a framework to explore how encounters with Jesus should lead to profound life transformation rather than just temporary behavioral changes. Stern illustrated that while an encounter with Christ is powerful, it requires a conscious choice to respond and live out its fruits. She identified three common barriers that prevent people from fully embracing this transformation: fear, apathy, and pride. Fear often keeps individuals comfortable in their sins despite feeling convicted during worship; apathy numbs the heart over time, causing the initial fire of an encounter to fade into indifference; and pride leads people to accept only those aspects of God's call that do not require uncomfortable changes or sacrifices. Using her own experience leading a missions trip to Panama, she recounted how she had to overcome her pride by allowing less experienced team members to take leadership roles, resulting in greater impact than she could have achieved alone. According to Stern, the natural response to overcoming these barriers involves three key fruits of encounter: revelation, repentance, and response. Revelation refers to a deepened understanding of one's identity in Christ, while repentance is symbolized by the woman at the well leaving her heavy water jar behind, representing the laying down of burdens and old self-concepts. The final fruit, response, involves actively sharing one's testimony with others, just as the Samaritan woman did by inviting her entire town to meet Jesus. Stern emphasized that true transformation happens not merely when one attends church but when they choose to say "yes" to God's invitation to live differently every day, extending that love and truth to coworkers, friends, and family. The session concluded with Stern leading a prayer for salvation for those who felt led to respond to the gospel message, followed by a second invitation for believers to move beyond Sunday-only faith into a lifestyle of continuous transformation. She encouraged attendees to confront their own areas of fear, apathy, or pride and to step into a new season of obedience and love. For those who responded positively, church leaders offered follow-up prayer and guidance on next steps, while also inviting new believers to join the Tuesday morning prayer meetings downtown. Ultimately, Stern's message was one of hope and invitation, reminding everyone that God's love is the foundation for a life fully transformed by an ongoing encounter with Jesus.
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All right, Radiant Portage. Normally, we would be tuning in to our service uh our our teaching out of Richland, but today we have a special honor of hearing from someone right here in our Portage location. Um, and every year around this time, we have uh began a tradition of something that we call Emerging Voices Sunday. And it's an opportunity to bring in some of the leaders that God has blessed us with, some of the young leaders who are growing in their gift, growing in their ministry. And today we have the honor of hearing from someone right here. I would love for you to stand to your feet and help me welcome Miss Ji Stern to the stage. Come on. Miss Jaci and her husband Parker moved here about a year and a half ago. Uh Parker of course is our middle school director and most recently Jaci has become our kids director. We we thought it would be a nice combo, right? Inside job. uh so from kids to middle school but Miss JC is coming in leading so well and one of the things I want to highlight over their life is that they have quickly become a son and a daughter of this house they've given their their time their energy their talents and even Miss Ji being up here today is an acknowledgement of the gift of God on her life and the call of God and so as we hear from what the Lord has put on her heart today I want to take a moment and pray for her would you extend your hand out and let's pray for Miss Jaci. Lord, we thank you so much for JC Stern. We thank you that you have saved her, redeemed her, and you have al also filled her with your spirit. You have empowered her for the work of the ministry. You've empowered her uh by your spirit. And we thank you that you've put a word on her heart. We bless her today and we ask that she would be at peace and she would be full of the the the word of the Lord today as she speaks. her mouth would speak forward only that which you have spoken to her. And we humbly receive from her today. And it's in Jesus's mighty name we pray. Amen. >> Amen. Good morning, Radiant Church. It is such a gift to be with you all this morning. As Pastor Becky said, my name is Jaci Stern and I'm the kids director here at our Portage location. I actually stepped into this position back in June. Um, and one of my first weeks was kids camp. So, you could imagine the onboarding process that kids camp was. It was an immediate now I need to know everything. So, it was so sweet and so fun. I got to meet a few of you guys there. Um, and for those of you I haven't met, I would love a chance to meet you. Especially those of you who your kids are a part of our kids ministry. I think it's so important to be partnering with our parents um as we are discipling your kids. But thank you so much for having me this morning. Before we jump in, I want to give you guys a little bit of background on my me myself. Um my husband and I both grew up in Fort Collins, Colorado. If anybody is aware of where that is in Fort Collins or in Colorado, it's very north kind of by the Wyoming border. but grew up there and then I went to college at Oral Roberts University where I studied psychology and Christian counseling. I think through that process the Lord really highlighted my care and my love for disciplehip um not only in my own generation but in the generation um below me as well. My husband and I, we got married as Pastor Becky said about a year and a half ago. Uh we actually got married January 6. It was the best day of my life for sure. Um, but right after we got married, we went on our honeymoon in Maui, Hawaii, which was such a blast. If anybody's engaged, I can't recommend Maui enough. Um, we went to Maui and then Parker and I came back to Colorado and in less than 24 hours, we had packed up a U-Haul and we are moving to Kalamazoo, Michigan to be with you all here. So, it is a gift and an honor to be in this house with you. I also want to take a second to honor the pastors here at Radiant. Um, not only the pastors here at Portage, Pastor Aubrey, Pastor Bucky, Pastor Preston, Pastor Richard, but also our Central and Richland pastors. They have created such a safe space for young people to be developed like me. Um, they have not only cared for my ministerial development, but they've also cared for Parker and I's personal development as well. So, I would love to just take a second to honor them. Let's put our hands together. Thank you guys. If you've been with us for the past few months, we have been in our encounters series. And today I get to share with you the story of the woman at the well. So would you all turn with me in your Bibles to John 4? That's where we'll be camping out today. And before I read, I want to give us a little bit of scriptural context because I fully believe it's important to have context to the scripture that you're reading. At the beginning of John 4, Jesus is leaving Judea to travel to Galilee. And he's doing this because the Pharisees have found out that he and the disciples are making more disciples and baptizing them. So the Pharisees are getting upset at this fact. At this point, Jesus is in Judea. And as you see, Samaria is right in between Judea and Galilee. Now, normally, a Jewish person would be taking the route that would go through the Jordan Valley so that they wouldn't have to go through Samaria, but Jesus, as he does in many other cases in the in the scripture, he decides to go through and go and do something countercultural in Samaria. Jesus is not only going to walk through Samaria, which is se which is a 70-mi trek, but he is going to stop in the town of Sakar at a well. And this well is called the well of Jacob. And this is where we pick up actually in verse 7. And I'll be reading verses 7 through30. So let's buckle in together because it's a good amount of scripture. Verse 7 says, "A woman from Samaria came to draw water, and Jesus said to her,"Give me a drink. For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samar a woman from Samaria? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans?" Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock." Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water." Jesus said to her, "Go call your husband and come here." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true." The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet." I just want to stop here for a second. I think it is so funny that Jesus is like reading her mail right now and she's like, "You must be a prophet." It's like a very obvious, "Yeah, let's put a word to that." So, just thought that's funny. And then we pick up in verse 20. It says, "Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship." Jesus said to her,"Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshippers will worship the father in spirit and truth. For the father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ, and when he comes, he will tell us all these things. Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he." Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, "What do you seek?" Or, "Why are you talking to her?" So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, "Come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?" They went out of the town and were coming to him. This morning, I believe the Lord is inviting us to ask ourselves a question. What might change if we allowed our encounters with Jesus to fully transform the way we live? Now, this question might feel difficult to understand or even to swallow when I ask this. Some of us might have immediately felt shame. Maybe you felt condemnation. Or maybe maybe some of you are thinking to yourselves, "Oh, yeah, of course. I I've I've done all these things. I I now come to church. I actually I definitely my life has changed." And I want to assure you that there's definitely first fruits in the change that you come to church, that you have stopped doing all of the sinful things that you've done. But I also want to invite us to go one layer deeper than that. I want it not just to be what behaviors you have stopped because of your encounter with Jesus, but what behaviors have you added because of your encounter with the living God. Back in high school, I did a few extracurriculars in sports and one of those being CrossFit. Does anybody in this room know what CrossFit is? Show of hands. Okay, it's less than last service, believe it or not. Um, so CrossFit is actually a crazy way to work out. They call it a sport. It basically combines Olympic lifting, hit workouts, anything you can imagine, gymnastics, sometimes they throw a triathlon or two in there. They American Ninja Warrior obstacle courses. And actually, CrossFit is a place or a sport where there's something called the CrossFit Games. And the CrossFit Games happens once a year. And it's where people from all over the world who compete in CrossFit come together um to see who can be named the fittest on Earth is literally the title for it. The fittest on earth. So, a few of these years actually, my brother competed in the CrossFit Games. And so, me and my family got to go and watch him compete. One was in Madison, Wisconsin, and one was somewhere in California. I can't remember. I think I have a picture, too, of it to prove that it did happen, that I'm not just making this story up to you. But during the same time that my brother and the rest of my family is super into CrossFit, I have this hero in the CrossFit world. and her name is Lauren Fischer. She was named one of the fittest women on earth. And whenever I watched her videos or watched her compete, I was just in awe of the way that she carried herself, how she trained, how she ate. She was just like elite workout human being, elite human being. And while we were at the CrossFit Games one of these years, I actually got to meet Lauren Fischer. I think I was like middle school or right before middle school at this time. And my world was absolutely rocked in that moment. I was like, "What is happening? This woman is my height, but she's like two times the size of me. She is ripped. It's insane." And in that moment, I got to talk with her for a little bit and take a picture. But after that moment, I decided that I was going to live like Lauren Fischer. So, I would wake up like 6:00 a.m. I would train for an hour or two. I would go to school. I would go to basketball or soccer practice and then I'd go back to the gym and I'd train again. I cannot recommend that pattern of living. Probably not very healthy. Definitely not a good thing. But I was so in awe of who she is and what she had become that I was like, I want to do anything to be like her. Now I think in the same way that when I encountered Lauren Fiser I changed my behaviors. I think the same thing happens when we encounter Christ. A natural response of encountering Jesus is that we should be transformed in his presence. Now, there's many examples of encounters with Jesus communicated through this scripture, including the story of the woman at the well. And in these stories, there's great transformation and even life change for them. But what would have happened if they decided to not live in the fruit of their encounter with Christ? Let's think for example of Moses. Moses comes to this burning bush where the Lord is manifesting himself in a bush that is not being consumed by fire but is on fire. And he asks Moses to take off his slippers and shoes and to come into the circle and this holy place. And Christ calls him in that moment to be a conduit of the spirit to call out the people who were in slavery in in Egypt. This was the Israelite people. Now in this moment, Moses does say for a second. He says, "Lord, I am not good at speaking." It is often thought that Moses probably had a stuttering problem. But actually, Moses decides in that moment to say yes to Jesus despite that. But what if Moses had said no and he had actually turned away from the Lord and he'd actually gone back to what he was doing at his camp and continued in the way he was living. Let's think about Paul the story of the road to Damascus where he encounters the living God through a light. He encounters the word spoken to him and Saul in that moment actually says, "What would you have me do next, Lord?" But what if he had never asked the Lord that? Let's think about the whole New Testament, like over half of the scriptures. What about the disciples? They encountered Jesus and they lived with him for many years. Think about the whole book of Acts. What about specifically Acts two and Peter? What about Peter, the man who had denied Christ three times? And in Acts two, we actually see the next thing he does is he preaches a sermon not only to the rest of the disciples, but he preaches a sermon to all of Jerusalem. And 3,000 people that day come to the Lord. What if he had lived in the shame and regret of his decision to deny Christ and not done that? This all boils down to the reality that an encounter with Jesus presents an invitation. An encounter does not automatically produce transformation. There is still a response required. Taking action on your encounter with Jesus isn't something reserved just for the people in the Bible. It's for you here and now. In these moments of encounter, each of these people were confronted with a choice to follow Jesus and be transformed by him fully or to hold back from the fullness of what Christ had for them. I believe that there might be three things that today we experience that might hold us back from living in the fruit of our encounter with Christ. But in opposition to that, I also believe that there's three things that can naturally occur if we choose to say yes in that moment of encounter with Jesus. I think a first thing that might hold us back is fear. I think that one night we can come to a service, we can come to a Wednesday night, we can come to a Sunday morning and we can encounter the living God through worship, through the teaching, and we can be at an altar and we can sob and we say, "Lord, you've encountered me. I'm transformed. This is wild. So cool." And then the next day, we go to our coworker who we've been living in sin with. or at school, we go to our friend who we've been gossiping with and that person tries to stir that up again in you and and in that moment you have a choice. But I think I think sometimes we choose to live in the fear of what somebody else might think of us and we just decide to become comfortable. We say, "Oh, it's okay that I'm gossiping. Oh, it's okay if I do a little bit of substance use. Like, that's it'll be fine. and I'll just ask God for forgiveness later. But I actually think that's not the promise that God has for us. I think of the woman at the well. I think of her story and how easy it would have been for her to be afraid. This woman has had five husbands. Now, we don't know her story fully, but maybe some of them she lost to sickness. She lost to death. But maybe some of them she was unfaithful to as well. And she's living in a town where people can will criticize her and call her something. And she's she's cast out of what normal society would be. And I think of her moment with Jesus and how Jesus calls it out in her. And he says, "Yes, you've had five husbands." But in that moment, she's not defensive. She's not afraid. She acknowledges it and after that that transformation actually leads her to run back to a village to tell them about her encounter with God. I think the second thing that might hold us back is apathy. And I actually think this might be the scariest one to me. And I think it's because we might not even realize it's happening. Maybe you haven't consciously decided that you don't care what Jesus wants or you don't want to live in your encounter with Christ. But maybe life has simply made you numb. Maybe you've been hurt. Maybe you've filled every space possible with noise, a schedule, a hangout, anything to fill the void. And in those moments, I think those Wednesday nights encount Wednesday Wednesday night encounters actually become distant. You have that encounter and the day after you're like, "Wow, I'm on fire for God." And then the next day you forget about it a little bit. And so you do something that maybe you're not supposed to, but then you're like, "No, I encountered God. I'm transformed." But then week after week, that encounter grows dim and you forget about it. I think about the woman at the well in this situation, too. How she had been living in the same pattern of sin for so long with the man that she was with. She could have easily looked at Jesus after this moment. And she could have gone right back to that man and said, "I don't care. I'm doing whatever I want. Jesus isn't worth it to me." I think the third thing that might hold us back actually is pride. And that one I'm going to let sink in for a second. Not because I think pride is the worst possible thing, but I think it's something that every single one of us experience. Me included. I think pride is the hardest to swallow because it's what we struggle with the most in our moments of encounter with God. Pride says Jesus can transform me as long as he doesn't ask me to do anything that's uncomfortable. I'm going to repeat that again. Pride says Jesus can transform me as long as he doesn't ask me to do anything that's uncomfortable. Pride lets me come into a room. lets me sing a song, listen to a sermon, check a box, and leave everything I had in this room. I think that we become so comfortable with those moments that we start actually thinking more about self and we we don't even realize we're doing it, but we're we're thinking about ourselves. were thinking about on a Sunday morning, you walk into church and you're like, "Okay, what's God going to do for me?" Maybe you actually are coming into a worship moment and you are like, I I don't know what's going to happen. I'm here for the Lord, but actually the Lord is asking you maybe to take a step further and to open your hands and worship. Maybe he's asking you to sing, but the fear of what somebody else might think and the pride of your own identity and the way that you think you look to others is holding you back from your worship to God. When I read in Revelation, I see elders falling down at the feet of Jesus with their crowns, laying them at his feet and saying, "Holy and worthy are you, Lord. And I think we're confronted with the question, what am I protecting that I believe is too dignified to lay down at the feet of Jesus. I think of the story of the woman at the well. I think about how in this moment some of the people who are the most hurt are the ones who actually carry maybe the most pride. I think that's a part of my story. But I think she also could have come to her encounter with Jesus with her jug of water and she could have been like,"I don't need you. I'm doing okay. Actually, I don't really want to change how I'm living. I don't really want to go tell others about this. So, I'm just I'm just going to do what I'm doing." In college, I got to lead a group of students that were my same age on a trip to Panama City, Panama. And it was a missions trip. And the whole goal of this trip was to share the gospel with kids through the means of basketball. Now, I had played basketball in high school, and so I was so excited to be leading this trip when I found out about it. But ORU Missions actually does this thing where you sign up for a missions trip, but you get assigned where you're going. So, you don't get a choice about where you're going. You just get to say yes to God and see what he does. And so in that night that people are coming in to figure out where am I going to go on this trip, I had a group of 11 people that found out they were going to Panama on my team with me and my co-leader. And as we get into group time, because we'd have group time basically every week before the trip, we'd go on the trip. We went into group time and come to find out basically none of them had played basketball before and basically none of them well I'm not even basically none of them spoke Spanish. None of them were bilingual and we were going to Panama where the main language that is spoken is Spanish. And so I start having a moment as a leader where I'm like what is going to happen God? What are you going to do? And I started to kind of feel this pride in my heart of like, okay, I've played basketball before. I know a little bit of Spanish. I think I'll be able to lead and it's going to be fine and it's going to be great. But I felt heavy conviction from the Lord where he asked me to just lay all of that at his feet and to allow him to work through others in my group. And so there's this one in particular person that was very much not athletic and very much did not learn Spanish before our trip. And I was like, I don't know if I want to put them in leadership. This feels tough. But I felt from the Lord to give him a space to lead. And so I gave him space to lead. And actually, he was one of the most impactful people on our trip, both to our contacts and to the kids that he was ministering to. He connected with them in a way that none of the rest of us could. And it has me thinking, what would have happened if I had let my pride come in between these kids and these contacts and the Lord and their experience with God? Now, I think that there's reality to pride and it's it's tough to swallow and tough to understand, but I think I want all of us to just be sitting and meditating and thinking because I think pride is not just for a few of us, but it's for all of us to be thinking about in this moment. Now, just as we covered three things that might be holding us back, I think there's three things that are fruits of encounter when we choose to actually say yes to Jesus after our encounters. I think the first fruit is revelation. I think this revelation is a revelation of identity of self and of Christ. In John 4:25 and 26, we see it say, "The woman said to him,"I know that Messiah is coming. He who is called Christ, and when he comes, he will tell us these things." And in 26, it says, "Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he." One of my favorite quotes by a man named David Benner says, "Christian spirituality involves a transformation of the self that occurs only when God and self are both deeply known." I'm going to read it one more time. Christian spirituality involves a transformation of the self that occurs only when God and self are both deeply known. I think in this moment that not only is God saying, "I'm the Messiah." and revealing himself to her, but I think she's actually getting a revelation of who she is in Christ, too. And we see this in this next point. This next point is repentance. This is the space where the woman at the well leaves her jug at the feet of Jesus. And we see this in John 4:28 where it says, "So 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 ever did." Can this be Christ? I want to paint a picture for what this water jar would have looked like um that she was carrying in those times. This water jar would have weighed 20 to 25 pounds and this woman would have had to carry it on her shoulder or her head. Now, we don't fully know the distance that she would have had to walk. But if she lived in the town of Sakar, it would have been at least half a mile. And if she lived in the town of Samaria, it would have been 6 to 30 miles that she would have had to walk every day. Every day, she was carrying the weight of this water and the weight of the choices that she made. And not only was she carrying it in the normal time, in the early morning that when people would have normally gotten water, but she's carrying it in the middle of the day in the heat. And she's doing this so she doesn't have to run into anybody else. We actually see in this moment the first thing that this woman does after her encounter with Jesus is she leaves this water jar at his feet. She leaves it at the well. I think that's an invitation for us. I think we're asked to leave our burdens, to leave the things that we're believing about our identity at his feet. It's an beautiful invitation from a God who loves you and sees you. Now, I think the third thing that's a natural response and a natural thing that will happen is actually response. This is going out to tell others about Jesus. In John 4:29, it says, "Come see a man who told me all that I ever did." Can this be the Christ? And she's saying this to the people in Samaria, the same people who would have been ridiculing her, the same people who would have called her things, the same people who were giving her an identity of shame. She goes back and she says, "Come, come see the Messiah. I know who he is. Come experience him for yourself." And we actually see later on in this same chapter that it says not only did they know Christ by the testimony of her encounter, but they came to know Christ because of their own encounter with him. That's an invitation for us to lead others into encounter with Christ based on the testimony of our own encounter. Is there one of these spots that you feel like you might have stopped? I think the one that I often stop at or get comfortable with is the third one, the response. I often get comfortable in leaving my burdens and I'm like, "Oh yeah, like I can repent to God and then everything's fine." But sometimes I miss that third step where I testify of my encounter with Jesus to others. And so in this moment, I want to take a second to testify of my encounter with Jesus. I grew up in a Christian household, but around middle school, high school, I started falling away from the Lord. I started choosing drugs. I started choosing overuse of alcohol. I started sleeping around. I started doing all of the things that I knew I wasn't supposed to do. And my heart wasn't in a bad space. My heart wasn't that I wanted to intentionally defy Christ. My heart was just broken. I was trying to fill a hole with anything I could find. But then the Lord met me. My junior year of high school, I got invited to a youth group three different times. And it was like a few days after me and this person that I had been with for a few years broke up. And I was like, "Oh, sure. I guess I'll go." But during that service, through the worship, through the preaching of the word, the Lord gave me a new identity. The preaching of the word was actually a sermon called Uno reverse where he talked about how Jesus uses people in the Bible at their lowest moments and calls them into repentance and then into action for his kingdom. And I thought to myself in that moment, if these people in the Bible can be given new identity, I think I can too. I think I can too. And so I said, "Lord, if if this is real, if this is you, everything is at your feet. This is yours. My life is yours." And my life was changed that night. I was changed because of an encounter in the presence of God. And not just because of an encounter that I went to, because I had done this in the past. Not just because of an encounter that I had showed up to. And I've been like, "That was really cool. God met me. New identity. don't think I'm supposed to be doing all these things that I'm doing, but it was because I actually chose to say yes that day. I chose to respond. Now, I want to bring us back to the original question. What might change if I allowed my encounters with Jesus to fully transform the way that I live? I'd love for you all to stand with me. And I think there's a few different kinds of people in this room. I think there's some of us here actually who have never had an encounter with Jesus where we've decided to give our lives fully over to him. And there is no shame and there's no condemnation in that. Especially if you've showed up to other services and you've just not made that decision. That's okay. But I want to give you an invitation again today. There is a God who sent his son to die on a cross. And the whole point of him doing that was love. That's it. It's that simple. So, I'd love for everybody to close your eyes. And if you feel like the Lord is maybe stirring something inside of you, I'd invite you to raise your hand on the count of three. 1 2 3. Thank you for raising your hand. So beautiful. So beautiful. What a time as the body of Christ it is to get to welcome others into the family. I just want to pray with you those who have raised your hand the salvation prayer. So if you'd repeat after me would be wonderful. Lord, thank you so much for who you are. Thank you that you've sent your son to die on a cross. Lord, thank you for the love that you've shown me through the sacrifice of Jesus. I believe that he died on a cross to save my sins and that because of that I am now reconciled to Christ. Lord, I love you. I give my whole life to you. It's in your name we pray. Amen. I just want to take a moment as the body of Christ to celebrate those who said yes to Jesus. This is such a big deal. Thank you. Now, for those of you who said yes to the Lord for the first time or the first time in a long time, I want to invite you actually after this next uh moment that I walk into to come up and be prayed for by one of our prayer partners or by our pastors or leaders. They'll give you a Bible and they'll also just give you next steps after this encounter that you've had with Christ. Now, I think there's a second invitation that I want to lead us in. I think there's many of us in this room, as we saw, that believe in God and that show up to church on Sundays. But I think there's some of us, that's where we stop. That our faith is only for a Sunday morning and it's not for the rest of the week. And I want to invite you in this moment, in this moment to just put your hands in front of you. If you feel like you're being convicted of maybe the pride, the fear, the apathy, and you want to step in to a new season with the Lord where you say yes. So if everybody close your eyes and put your hands in front of you, I'll pray for us. Lord, thank you for this moment. Thank you for the way that you're speaking and moving in this congregation and in our hearts. Lord, I just pray over each person with their hands in front of them. Father, would you bring them into new a new season of yes with you, Lord? That it wouldn't be just something that they are experiencing on this Sunday morning, but it'd be something that tomorrow they actually go share with a coworker, Lord. that tomorrow they would live into the transformation that is offered through the blood of Christ. I pray over each person in this room that maybe has felt shame or condemnation through this message. I pray instead, Lord, that you would show them and invite them that it's actually just love. It's out of love that they get to do this, that they have an opportunity to share your love with others. Father, we love you. We trust you. It's in your name we pray. Amen. >> Amen. Amen. Yes. Thank you so much, Miss JC. Thank you for your vulnerability and the testimony of what God has done in your life. I hope that was encouraging for you. And I want to remind you, even if you're a parent in the room, you have kids in our kids ministry to connect with Miss JC. Um we've got our prayer partners that have come up forward. If you raised your hand for that salvation moment, I would ask for you to step out and come forward. These prayer partners, even uh my wife and I, Miss JC and Parker up here, we'd love to pray with you, help you walk out your relationship with the Lord. I want to remind you that every Tuesday at 7:00 a.m. downtown at our prayer uh room, we have uh our Portage prayer meeting uh that's led by Mr. Dawn and some of our other leaders here in Portage. We'd love for you to come and join us for that. And that's at 7:00 a.m. downtown on Tuesdays. Uh, also we'll see you back here next Sunday. So, please go be blessed this day and we'll see you next week.