- Hey. Welcome, everybody, to life group.
I wanna tell you, thank you for gathering with other people
and I also wanna acknowledge
that we got brand new life groups
that are opening this week.
Thank you to those of you who are leading
and congratulations to those of you
who decided to join and, who knows,
the people that are around you
could become some of your very best friends
and the people that support you and that you support
and help strengthen your faith in Christ.
Here's what we're gonna do.
We're gonna gather over the next four weeks
and you'll keep gathering
but for the next four weeks,
we're gonna talk about the message series 'I'm In'.
I'm gonna give you some questions each week
and then you can stop this video
and you can discuss the questions.
Let's loop back and look at what we talked about
in week number one of I'm In.
We talked about I'm Invited.
I'm invited to God's family
and we looked at the very powerful story
about the sinful woman who felt compelled
to go and fall at the feet of Jesus and to worship Him.
The question that might've been interesting to you,
it was to me, is,
why do you think she went to the feet of Jesus?
And what we discovered is,
it's very, very likely that she heard the sermon
that Jesus preached when He said,
"Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden
"and I will give you rest."
It's very likely that she received an invitation
to come to Jesus.
What I know about you is,
if you are a follower of Christ,
you had some moment.
It might've been in college,
it might've been as a kid,
it could've been multiple moments over time
where suddenly you realize, oh my gosh,
Jesus is the Son of God and I wanna follow Him.
It's one of my favorite things to hear stories about.
How people came to faith,
how they were invited,
or how their life was transformed by Jesus.
I'd love it if you take a moment
just to press pause and to go around the room
and talk about briefly
how it is that you came to be a follower of Christ.
If you're not yet a follower of Christ,
you can talk about where you are in your spiritual journey.
Everybody's welcome around the table.
But if you are, or wherever you are,
let's talk about that journey.
How is it that you're invited
or is it how you decided to become a follower of Christ?
Well, I'm not a mind reader
and I'm not looking into the window of wherever you are
but my spiritual spidey senses tell me
that you probably talked a long time
on answering that first question
because I know many of you had some amazing stories.
So, this next question is going to be relatively short.
I want you to leave time for the third one
because the third one's really, really important.
But the second question,
I want you to think about is this.
When you came to faith in Christ,
your life was obviously different.
If you had to choose one word to describe
how your life was different,
what would that one word be?
You came to faith in Christ
and now your life is different.
What did you experience?
What did you feel?
If you asked me to pick one word,
I was in college and I was under the weight of a lot of sin
and a lot of guilt,
and when I called out on the name of Jesus,
it was like, all of the heaviness just lifted away
and I immediately felt this peace.
The one word I would say is just peace.
The fear, the doubt, the agony of my sin
and now the joy of being forgiven is like,
oh my gosh, I felt peace.
If you could choose just one word, and only one word.
Don't think about it, just pick one that comes to mind.
What one word would describe what you experienced
after you found faith in Christ.
Well, again, I'm really thankful
that you guys have gathered together today
to talk about God's word and to build each other up in faith
but let's remember this.
Our greatest calling isn't just to meet with other believers
but we're still called to be the light of the world.
Jesus didn't come for those who are found.
He came for those who are lost.
He didn't come for the righteous.
He came for the sinners.
He didn't come for the healthy.
He came for the sick.
And we looked at the story in the message,
the parable that Jesus told about a guy
who's gonna throw a party
and the host invited some people to come but nobody came.
And so, Jesus said this.
He said, "Hey, you guys go out and compel people to come.
"I want my party, I want my kingdom to be full of people."
What I know about, probably almost all of you,
is that you have someone in your life
that's not a follower of Christ.
In fact, you probably have a lot of people in your life
that aren't followers of Christ.
But I'd love for you to do is take a moment
and talk about maybe the one person
that you really are praying most for
to come to faith in Christ.
You may be respectful.
You don't have to give a lot of details
if it's not appropriate.
Let's talk about the one person
that you're inviting to come to Christ.
You're praying for them to come to Christ
and then, at the end of our time together,
let's go ahead and just do that as a group.
Pray for those we know and love
that don't yet know Christ.
Who is the number one person that you're praying
and believing for the work of God
to work in them, to draw them to faith in Christ.
And then, to wrap up life group,
let's join our hands.
Let's lift our prayers, let's believe in faith
that those people will come to Christ
and you may invite them to church this weekend
or Church Online, you never know.
When we looked at the name of Jesus,
a lot of great things happened.
(uplifting music)