Overcoming the Curse of Comparing

Hello, and welcome to the Salt Church Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. We are starting a new series today called Overcomer. I'm excited about this new series. And if you like this week, you definitely need to come back next week because I'm going to be talking about apathy.

Apathy. And apathy is one of those big things that we deal with today. And I think people are going to be really changed. Your heart's going to be inspired by that message next week. So I want you to grab a friend, come out next week, and be a part of that.

But this week, I'm going to talk about the curse of comparison. Some of you need to be overcomers today, amen? And God says by the power, the Bible says by the power of Christ, we can overcome, right? So we're going to go through some things here today and through the next few weeks. And we're going to talk about ways that we can be empowered and we can be overcomers.

So we're going to talk about the curse of comparison. And as I was thinking about this series, I watched a movie a few months ago. It just kind of popped up on my Netflix and it looked interesting. And it's called Brad's Status. And Brad is played by Ben Stiller.

And he's this middle-aged, older middle-aged guy. It's kind of coming to life. And it's one of those reflective kind of mopey movies in a way. And I kind of like those movies because I like the psyche of people, how they think and how they act and how they work in their minds. And my wife picks on me all the time and says, why don't you pick these depressing movies?

I said, well, because people kind of go through these things, you know? And I just want to learn about them. And I'm really interested in how people process because, you know, all of us process things in different ways. And on Brad's status, he's this man that's coming to age and his kids getting ready to go to school. And he's going to, he's taking them to campus, to the campus he's going to be attending.

And he's walking around and he becomes very contemplative about his life. He's like, you know, I remember when I was in college. And he started thinking about his friends that were in college together with him. And how much they dreamed and how much they had this inspiration to change the world. And then he looked back on his life and he felt like he hadn't accomplished much.

And he started looking at his friends. He has one friend that's a career politician that's really popular and wrote a book recently. He has another friend that was an IT guy, started an IT company, sold the company, became a billionaire. And now he's moved to Hawaii and he's just kind of living in retirement at, you know, 45 years old. And then he had another friend who is an investor and is riding around on his private jet, has a perfect family.

And he's just looking at his life and he's comparing them to their lives. He says, they were super successful. And look at me. And I'm just a regular old average Joe with an average house, living in an average suburban neighborhood, with an average wife and average kid. Well, his kid was going to Harvard.

And that was a big deal. And he had the most wonderful wife you could ever think of. I was like, wow. She was played by Holly Hunter. And she was just really, literally like this fantastic wife.

We're like, wow. You know, but he couldn't see it because he was comparing himself to all the things around him as he was reflecting on his life. But at the end of the movie, it comes to this place where he realizes that he was only looking at the highlight reels of these people's lives. Because underneath, there was a lot more going on. His investor friend was in trouble because he was crooked with money.

His politician friend was just a jerk in general. I mean, career politician, you know. Just kidding, politicians out there. And his other friend was kind of never got married, had a family. And although he was really wealthy and had a girlfriend, you know, every month, a different girlfriend every month, was not happy himself.

And he looked at his life. And he began to reflect on his life once again and realized, wow, I really do have it good. I have it good. And a lot of us are the same way. In the world, we tend to compare ourselves.

It's a curse. We have the curse of comparison. We're always comparing ourselves to other people. And the fastest way to ruin something special, if you have something special in your life, something that God has blessed you with, the fastest way to ruin it is to compare it with something else, right? We start comparing, and we think about it.

A brand new house. You get a brand new house, and you're excited about your house. And then your friend buys a house that's a little bit better than yours, has a little bit bigger yard than yours, has a nicer deck. Man, I wish I had that nice deck back there. Maybe there's a pool back there.

Man, I wish I had gotten a pool. Maybe it's closer to the ocean, you know. I wish I was a little closer to the ocean. We compare ourselves to everybody else, and we forget what we have, and we ruin the special things that God has blessed us with. And the truth is, someone will always have something better than you.

Do you hear me there? Y'all are kind of quiet this morning. Somebody will always have something better than you. Someone will always be a little more successful than you and a little further along than you. Do you hear me?

No matter where you are in life, no matter what you've done, no matter where you're going, you always have someone that is a little further along than you. And you can easily compare yourself to them, or you can say, you know, I'm blessed. I can look at my life. I can compare it to them. The easiest way to ruin something special is to compare it with something else.

So, if you're following your notes, where comparison begins, contentment ends. We cannot be content when we compare ourselves to others. There's never been an easier time in history than comparison, to deal with comparison. We battle it all the time. I did a series called Hashtag Struggles.

It was a Life.Church series that I did a few years ago. Actually, back when we were in the brewery, it was amazing. I mean, we had some breakthroughs. People were learning so much.

We had a lot of social media going around because it was a social media series. And we talked about the things that we struggle with when we go through life, and we connected them to social media. And one of these things was comparison. And never has there been a time in history where comparison is so easily accessed, right? We just go on social media the click of a phone, the click of a button, on a computer.

We can look at people's lives, and we compare ourselves, right? We look at the highlight reels of their lives. We see, wow, their family moments, the time they went on the date. I mean, you can easily compare your life with their life. Maybe you're on there and you see some friends get together, and the first thing you say is, why didn't they invite me, you know?

I'm as close to them as anybody else. Why didn't they invite me? Or why are they going on their third vacation in the last five months, you know? I mean, I can't even go on one vacation. You begin to compare yourself.

I'm just as smart. I'm just as, you know, gifted as them. And they seem to be able to do a lot more than me. Or you're looking at that romantic dinner with the lobster and the candles, and they're talking about how wonderful their life is and how wonderful their date is. And, well, my husband or my wife doesn't even care about those things, you know?

And we begin to compare ourselves. And we often compare, and I love how Steve Furtick says this, the pastor of Elevation Church. He says, we often compare the highlight reels of people's lives without knowing the behind the scenes, right? We don't know the behind the scenes. We look at the highlight reels, this special occasion, that special occasion, that special occasion.

Man, they've got a good life. But they don't know what, we don't always know what's going on underneath. And they're often hidden. So that's why comparison is so dangerous. And Paul deals with this in 2 Corinthians.

In fact, he's having... A real hard talk with the church, and I love Paul's talks with the church, you know, he's so gracious, but he's so powerful, and he's talking to the church, and he says, he lets them know about this thing about comparison, because he sees them comparing themselves with each other, and he says this in 2 Corinthians 10-12, but they are only comparing themselves with each other, using themselves as the standard of measurement. They were using themselves, they were using the people around them as a standard of measurement, because they were looking at the highlight rules of people's lives, right? How ignorant. That's what he says in Scripture.

How ignorant. Say, here's why. Here's why. Comparing. Here's why people compare.

Why they set their standards based on the people around them. Comparing makes you feel either better than or less than, and neither honors God. You either feel superior or inferior. Let's just deal with the inferior piece. Maybe you saw a picture or a post or on social media or you read something, a blog or whatever about your friend, and, and you know, she's got, she got served breakfast in bed and her husband's taking care of her hand.

and foot, and he's taking care of the kids, and you can't even get out of bed, and your husband's not even around when you wake up, and you hate your kids, right? You're like, well, can't my life be like that? So you're making yourself less them, or she's so supportive of her husband. Look at her championing her husband, and encouraging her husband, and doing that. My wife, she never does that, and we look at those, or he's 15 years younger than me, making twice what I make, probably three times what I make, and he's already been on 10 trips to wherever, and I'm still struggling just to pay the bills every month.

Why in the world am I here? Why is he there? And we compare ourselves, and we make ourselves less than God intended us to be. Or we want to go the opposite direction. We post our stuff.

We say, yeah, I'm inferior, you know. I'm better than, because if you were like me, and you worked really hard, and you built your life this way, you know, I need to start a workshop on how to be successful, because, you know, I'm so blessed, and you're, you're around this, you got this junkie car going on, and, and you know why you're like that? Because you haven't done it my way, you know, and we begin to compare ourselves to make us feel better about ourselves, and that often happens. We are either superior or inferior, better than or less than is why we compare ourselves. Pastor Andy Stanley of North Point Church shared a message called the land of Ur, the land of Ur.

I love this message, because the idea is there's no win in comparison. When we compare, there is no win, because we always want to be richer, Ur. We want to be cooler, cooler. We want to be prettier. We want to be stronger.

We want to be skinnier. We want to be wealthier. We want to be, and you add that, the Ur. But I would go as far to say we want to be Est. We not only want to be Ur, we want to be Est.

We want to be the prettiest. We want to be the most successful, successfulest, if you want to say it like that. We want to be, we want to be the Est. We do the Ur's, and we do the Est, and we live in the land of Ur, and we live in the land of Est, and no, none of them get us anywhere. I remember back, my dad's a pastor, and many years ago, we were pastoring a church, and I remember this guy.

He was an elder in the church, and I was, he was always like competing with my dad. Like, my dad wasn't really in the competition, but he just kind of got drug in. Anything my dad would do, he would try to do a little more, and it got so silly. I was in this, this Christian Boy Scouts called Royal Rangers. I don't know how many of you know Royal Rangers, but I grew up in Royal Rangers, and I was a little boy, and I remember us going camping, and they were doing all these activities, you know, and this guy was always trying to do a little better than my dad.

You know, my dad would climb the pole, and he said, well, I could do that. I can climb a pole, and he'd go just a little bit higher, you know, and he was always in competition, and you know, it's just funny how some people are like that. They always want to do a little more, and, and we live in the land of Ur and the land of Est. It's a funny thing about scripture. When we look at, at the story of John and Peter, and looking at the Bible in our scripture today, and kind of honing in on that, it's interesting, the dynamic of John and Peter, because a lot of people don't see it, but some scholars would suggest that Peter and John didn't like each other.

They, they were kind of in competition. The reason why, in my opinion, and, and from what I've read, I bet John was a little annoying. A little annoying. Why do I think that? Because John wrote about himself in the third person, and that's annoying, you know, and, and not only did he write about himself in the third person, he said, I'm the one whom Jesus loved.

I'm the one who Jesus loved, you know, I mean, that just, to me, that's annoying, you know, and, and I'm sure that among the disciples, it was, it was rather annoying to hear John talk, you know, I don't know what John's chemistry was with the other disciples, but I bet that was going on, and I don't think Peter, Peter was, was too thrilled about John, and John was probably not too thrilled about Peter, and let me show you why I think that, because John three times says, he, if you go to the book of John, and, and, and chapter 20, that John actually communicates, writes down, that he actually beat Peter in a foot race, okay? He beat Peter in a foot race. So, if you go to John 20, and this is, just to give you some context, this was the morning, it was early in the morning, Mary visited the tomb, the tomb was empty, this was after Christ had resurrected, they didn't find him in the tomb, and here comes, so Mary, and Mary shares it with the disciples, and this is where we pick up, so Mary came running to Simon Peter and the other disciples, and this is written by John, and here's what he says, the one who Jesus loved, and said, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him. So, Peter and the other disciples started for the tomb, and both were running, Peter and John, right? But the other disciple, third person, annoying, okay?

And the other disciple outran Peter. So, he had to put that in scripture. He outran Peter and reached the tomb first, right? And then Peter came along behind him. Let me just stress that one more time.

Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. And finally, the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, okay, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. So, you see, there's something going on here, right? I mean, I don't know if it's, is it just me? Am I reading in it, into it?

But there was, there was something going on here, and I think it's kind of funny. It's hilarious. Aren't you glad you came to church today? You got to hear something kind of funny here in the Bible. And as you, as we go into the scripture and down the paragraphs, we come to Jesus being reinstated by Peter.

And if you're not familiar with what happened to Peter during the resurrection, before resurrection, excuse me, before the crucifixion, before the crucifixion took place, Peter was prophesied to, Jesus prophesied that Peter would deny him three times. And of course, Peter did deny him three times. He was standing out the temple court. He was listening in as, as they were prosecuting Jesus, as they were questioning him. And a little girl comes up and says, hey, you're the one, you know, that was with Jesus, aren't you?

And he says, absolutely not. That's not me. And then another, yeah, that's you. No, no, it's not me. And, and, and again, he did it.

And then the rooster crowed and he, and, and he denied Christ, just as the prophet said three times, three times he denied him before. The rooster crowed, and Peter is horrified. Peter is embarrassed, and here Jesus is after the resurrection. He meets with Peter, and he's sitting with Peter, and he's talking to him, and he has this encounter with Peter. And Jesus says this, Peter, do you love me?

He says, of course I do, Lord. He says, let them feed my sheep, feed my lamb. Well, do you love me, Peter? He asks him again. He says, yes, Lord, I love you.

Well, then feed my sheep. And then he asks him a third time, do you love me? And I think it's interesting that he asks him three times. The three times he denied him, the three times he asked him this question, the three, do you feed my sheep? Feed my sheep.

Do you love me? And he changes that last love term, agape love. He says, do you really, really, really love me? And he says, feed my sheep, feed my sheep. And then he prophesied to Peter, that he would be martyred for following him.

And here's the first thing Peter does when he hears that. In verse 20, it says, Peter turned around and saw behind them the disciple who Jesus loved. And Peter asked Jesus, well, what about him, Lord? What about him? And then Jesus replied this way, if I want him to remain alive until I return, what is it to you?

What is that to you? As for you, follow me. As for you, follow me. Stay in your line, Peter. Don't think about or be concerned with what he's doing.

Don't compare yourself to him. Stay in line with me. Do you love me? You need to follow me. Now, I hated this verse when I was a kid because my mom would use it over and over again, especially when my sister and I would compare things or argue.

What about her? She's not cleaning her room well. Well, I'm sorry, Peter. And what about John? So this verse kind of takes me back to that time.

It's not the best scripture for me. But for us all, this is just really something that we should really take into thought. Here's the deal. You can't faithfully follow Jesus if you're always comparing yourself to someone else. We can never be used by Jesus, by God.

God has designed us specifically for a purpose, for a reason, in a certain way. And we cannot be fully used by God. We cannot be fully surrendered to Jesus if we continue to compare ourselves to someone else. What other people are doing, what other ministries are doing, what other people in your job field are doing, what other families are doing, whatever. You need to stay in your line.

You need to stay straight on your path. You need to be honoring God in your race, your calling. You can never be all that you can be if you continue to compare yourself to someone else. Why are they more blessed? Why do they get more attention?

Why do they have all these things? Why do they do it? Why not me, God? Stop comparing. Jesus says, feed my sheep.

Feed my sheep. That's it, Peter. Just feed my sheep. Stay in your lane. We need to stay in our lanes.

Now, why do we do this? Why do we constantly compare? Why does this happen? It should, it sounds like something that should, it shouldn't be a big deal. Let's just not compare ourselves to others.

Let's just be who we were supposed to be. But by nature, we are sinful beings. This is, this is what it comes down to. By nature, we are sinful beings, and we are always looking for a way to satisfy our own longings, our own self, our own needs. And we look for an external win to fulfill an internal longing.

We look for an external win. We're always looking for some type of external win, some kind of thing to fill our insecurity, to fill our hurt, that God-shaped void that is in our heart that only He can fill, only God can fill, and God wants to fill. We go to anything and everything else, seeking everything else in life, and it doesn't give us a win. Because we always go for the external. Because we, by nature, are sinful people.

Not enough er's, and there's not enough s's in this world that win in your life. You can seek, you can, you can, you can go to the far ends of the earth. You can chase the, the biggest wave, climb the biggest mountain, and whatever that ist or er is, and you will not be content. You will not be satisfied in this life until you lean in to who God made you to be. What God made you to be.

Not enough money, not enough followers on Facebook, not enough attention, not enough likes, not enough popularity, not enough success, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing will ever fulfill that void. And if you look to the outside, and I'm sorry, many of you here have, have had tremendous paths you had to walk down. Maybe you've had, you have insecurities because a father wasn't there for you, or a mother wasn't there for you, or, or somebody had forsaken you, or, or betrayed you when you were younger. Maybe a boss hasn't treated you well. Maybe a business partner hasn't treated you well.

Maybe you just have, maybe you have a spouse, an ex-spouse that just, just has, has really, really harmed you, hurt you physically, mentally, emotionally, whatever that might be. You, maybe that's, that's where you're at, but there's never an external answer. There's always an internal answer. That internal answer is waiting for you. And the, the internal need can never be, you'll be satisfied, you'll be miss, you'll be miserable, you'll be dissatisfied, you'll be chasing discontentment the rest of your life if you're trying to go for the external.

You need an internal source, an internal source. So the question we have to ask ourselves, the, the main question, the main gist, who or what is going to define my worth? Who or what is going to define my worth? Ask that self, ask yourself that. Ask yourself, who or what is going to define my worth?

And if you are a Jesus follower, and your answer is anything besides Jesus, then you will never win. You will never win. You will always be running a race. You cannot win. Trying to please them.

I'm trying to please them. I want, I want them to, to recognize me. I want them to see me. Who is them? Who knows who them is?

It's just them. It's them. We want to please them. Instead of pleasing our God, pleasing our Savior, we want to please them. You will never win.

You will never win. We just came out of a series called The Cloud, where we looked at Hebrews 12, and we looked at people who, of faith, who went before us. And you can go back on our website and listen to that series. We talked about some, some giants in the faith and, and how they walked, their walk. But I want to go back to that main scripture, because I think this really gets home to where we need to go on this.

And it says, therefore, in Hebrews 12, therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, all those people we talked about in our last series, although they've went before us and showed us the way. So we're surrounded by them. Let us throw off everything that hinders in the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. The race marked out for us. What does that suggest?

That he's given all of us an individual race. Now think about a race for a minute. Think about a track. Think about the line you're in. And if you're wandering and zigzagging across the track, what are you doing?

You're messing up the whole race. It's unfair. It's all over the place. You've got to stay on your track. You've got to stay in your line.

God has called you to be in your line. Don't compare yourself to the guy beside you. You just run that race. And where are you running? Fixing our eyes on Jesus.

That's right. Our goal is Jesus, right? All of you football fans, it's football season, right? Hey, y'all are excited about that. I'm not really a big football fan, sorry.

But I know you guys are. Y'all love football, right? But when you're watching the game, and you're watching the runner run down, I mean, he's just not. He's aiming for something, right? He's got that ball in hand, and those people are trying to take him down, but he's got that goal in mind.

That goal to get across the line. We have a goal. Our goal is Jesus. And when we're running that race, we're shedding the sin. We're shedding the shame.

We're overcoming. We're more than conquerors. We're pushing through because we have a prize. Eternal prize. Not a temporal prize.

The world gives us temporal prizes. They come and go. They fade away. If you're running for those, you will never win. But run so that you win a race, the real race.

Fixing your eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. He perfects us. It's our race, our lane. Keep our eyes on the prize. Now, how do we do that?

We run, but we look to the person beside us that's in their lane, and we celebrate them. We don't compare ourselves to them, so we look better than them, or we're under them, but we celebrate. You know, that's the greatest way to defeat the attitude of comparison, the curse of comparison, the trap of comparison, is we begin to celebrate. We need to celebrate others. So, the next time you're comparing yourself to others, you know, instead of saying, oh, my goodness, how do they have a bigger house than me, and this and that, saying, wow, I'm glad that they have, man, they've been blessed, and just congratulate them.

It's a great way to kill the curse of comparison. Kill the curse of comparison. 1 Corinthians 9, 24, 26 says this in NLT. It says, So, run to win, because all athletes are disciplined in their training. Nobody goes into a sporting event.

No professional, anyway, goes into a sporting event and isn't trained up. I don't know. How many of you have watched The Office? Y'all were big Office fans when it was on TV, and there was that one episode where they were doing a race, a relay race. The whole office was doing, and Michael Scott decided he was going to eat a bowl of pasta before the race, because it was going to give him the ability to run the race.

He hadn't trained. He hadn't done anything, and here he is, you know, ready to go, and not even a few steps into the race, he's on the sidelines throwing up, because he's not prepared, and he's not disciplined. And a lot of us are like Michael Scott. We're running the race, and we're not disciplined, and we're not trained up. So, comparison gets us every time, because we're not focused.

And they do it, as Scripture says, and they do it to win a prize that will fade away. Because, you know, the people in this earth, the earthly things, the earthly rewards, we do it for prizes that fade away. But we do it for an eternal prize. We do it for an eternal prize. So, you know, we get fit.

We get strength. We go to God. We plug into the church. We grow together. We grow spiritually.

We get strong. We do it. Why? We don't do it just to do it, because we have an eternal prize. We have an eternal focus.

And this is the most important part of this particular passage, verse 26. So, I run with purpose in every step. We run with purpose. As believers, as followers of Christ, we run with purpose in every step. We run with purpose in every step.

Define what's important in your life. This is what it comes down to. You need to define what's important in your life, and stay clear of what's not. And stay focused, and stay in line, and stay on your track, and on the right team. It's easy to compare in ministry.

Just kind of share my struggles, you know, hashtag struggles, as I talked about earlier. And ministry is always one of those things where, you know, you're just, as pastors, we have such a heart for being a pastor. We want to see many people change. We know the transforming power of God. We've been called to ministry.

And it's easy for us pastors to compare. Compare our ministries, and compare our lives. And we have a lot of opportunities to do a lot of things. And sometimes we have to say no to things, and sometimes we say yes to things. And sometimes people challenge us, why aren't you doing this?

Why aren't you doing that? But sometimes it's really hard, because we look at other ministries, well, maybe I should be doing that. And we're looking over our back, and maybe I should be doing that, you know? And it's really tough to stay the race. But really, we have to stay focused.

And one thing that I've been challenged with, and over the last few months, there's three things I want to stay focused. As a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ, called to a community, and called to this church, and called to this area, I'm staying focused in my race, and I've determined this. My race, first of all, is to build church, build the church, build this church. Because why? Because I believe that the church is the hope of the world.

The local church is the hope of the world. The best way for transformation to take place in people's life is for them to be plugged into the local church. There's no other source. Jesus commissioned the church. He organized the church.

He set the church. Upon this rock, I build my church. He found the church. He is the father of the church. He is the pastor, lead pastor of the church.

And he found the church. So I believe that the church should be growing. The church should be healthy. The church should be strengthened. The reason I preach, the reason I teach, is to strengthen the body, to equip the saints, so that they can be strong and courageous and go out and change the world.

The second thing is to build leaders. And this is hard because as pastors, we just want to pastor. We just want to love people. But I understand that God has given us the platform of leadership. And we want to build leaders that build leaders.

And we want to focus on that. So he's given me the heart to build the church, to build leaders, and to practice integrity. To practice integrity. That the integrity that you see on Sunday morning, the integrity you see when we're in the church, when we're in small groups, is the same person that's behind the walls at home. That's when he's with his family, when he's with his children, the practice integrity.

Let Jesus determine your win. That's what you need to do. Get with Jesus. And ask him to give you a direct path. To be focused.

To be focused. Choose your win. Choose your win. If you have a business, do it with integrity. Who cares if you're the biggest business, if you're the most successful business?

Practice integrity. Do what's right. If you're a father, be a good father. Even if you're a single father or you're a single mother, be the best single mother you can possibly be. Do things the right way.

Have a heart of God. Raise your kids the right way. Run your race. And when everyone is impure, if you're single, when everybody else is impure, and everybody else is doing their thing, you know, you stay pure. You stay on the right path.

You stay on the right line. Stay true to what God's called you to be. Because God has a perfect plan for you. Run your race. The point here is, and the closing point is, that Jesus has already won.

Jesus has already won it. So the race you're winning, there's already victory in it. He's just asking you to run it. He's just asking you to run it. He's just asking you to run it.

He's just asking you to run it. The trophy's there for you to run towards. Run like it's already won. Run like the victory has already happened. Keep your eyes focused.

Stay in your lane fulfilling your calling. Nobody can beat me at me. And nobody can beat you at being you. Be who God's called you to be. You may not win an earthly crown.

You may not receive any type of earthly achievement. You might not have any type of earthly trophy. But you will have a heavenly crown. That is winning your race. That is winning your race.

If you'll bow your heads and close your eyes. When it comes to God, we tend to compare ourselves to others. We either say, I'm really bad, compared to those people, you know, or we say, I'm not good enough. And neither, as I said before, neither are God-honoring. But the truth is, God gave his life for you.

God gave his life for me no matter how bad we are or how proud we are. He doesn't care where you've done, what you're doing, what you're going to do. See, none of that matters right now at this very moment that the Spirit is working. Because all he cares about is having a relationship with you. With all heads bowed and all eyes closed and no one looking around because we want to honor this moment that God has given us.

And if that's you today, if you've never made a decision for Jesus, if you're ready to make a commitment to him, you're ready to be all in, to run your lane, to run your race. You've been running a lot of races in life and nothing has given you any kind of reward that is everlasting. But there is a reward awaiting you that is everlasting. If you're ready to turn your life to God, do that today. I don't want to embarrass you.

I'm not going to call you to the front. But if that's you, I just want to pray with you. If you just gently raise your hand and say, I'm in, Pastor. I'm ready. I'm ready to make a decision for Jesus.

Because it's, are you ready? You'll pray this with me. Pray this prayer with me. Father, I believe that you are the Son of God. As you died on the cross for my sin, I give my life.

I give my heart over to you. I surrender my life to you. I no longer am going to run this race on my own. I'm no longer going to pursue the prizes of this world. But I'm going to pursue the one and only prize that I could ever hope to have.

And that's eternity with you, Lord Jesus. So today I make that decision. Come into my life. Come into my heart. Change me from the inside out.

In Jesus' name.