Summer In Rome - Part 6 | Dave Alexander

(upbeat music) - Hi, welcome to our podcast. To learn more about Liverpool One Church, join us live, give financially and to get involved, head to LiverpoolOneChurch.com. We believe God wants to do great things in and through your life today. Enjoy this message. - Well, hey Liverpool One Church, it's absolutely amazing to see everyone today. Why don't you guys go ahead and take your seats, make yourself comfortable. It's amazing to see you all at church. And let me say this, whether you're here in the room or joining us online, we wanna say that we're glad that you made it today. We're glad that you came. Well done you for getting up this morning and prioritizing the things of God and just saying today, I'm gonna make my sacrifice and I'm gonna make my way into the house of God. We love the fact that you're here. We hope that if you're here for the very first time that you've been made to feel so super welcome because to you, I wanna say we've built this whole place with you in mind. We prayed for you. We believed for you. We thought you were gonna be here today. We've been expecting you. So today is your first day in church. I wanna go on record as the first person you've heard speak to you and just say, you are so welcome here. We have waited just for you. And today you've come on a great Sunday because we're rounding up our current series of talks which we've simply called Summer in Rome. And we're finishing that whole series off today and it's my privilege that I get to bring the final message of this series to us today. You know we've spoken about all sorts of different things over the course of this series. We've spoken about things like expecting more from God, about following Jesus, hearing from God, about judging other people. So many things that affect every single day of our lives. So many choices that we all go through every single day of our lives. And I would say there's some real wisdom in this series. And if you've missed any weeks of it, I would definitely, definitely make a date and set side some time and go back across our YouTube channel and just catch you up on this series because there's been some real depth and wealth of wisdom in this series. In essence, what we've done is we've lived in the book of Romans and we've explored the life of Paul the Apostle and looked at what his message was. And when you actually drill down, his whole message was that regardless of where life has you, regardless of where you're found, regardless of anything that you think you may have done that's put distance between you and God, that God loves you, he likes you, he wants to live in relationship with you. And I just think that today, that's the very best news. Any of us could actually want to hear is that there is a God who is eternal, who is in heaven, who loves you and likes you and supports you and is desperate, desperate to be in relationship with you. But you know more than any words I've got written more than anything that God's deposited on my heart for you today, what we all need today is to hear from him. Because if we don't have a touch of heaven in this place today, then we're all wasting our time and we may as well close the doors now. So I want to pray at the outset and I want to invite the Holy Spirit, I want to invite God into every single word that's about to be spoken so that it lands in a place which is helpful to you. So let's pray. Heavenly Father, before we open your word, God, and before we go there, Lord, we've just sung, you have the power, you have the authority, God, everything we need comes from you. And God, today, we want to center ourselves, we want to calm ourselves, we want to put out of our mind the things that would seek to distract, the things of this world that would seek to take away from what you want to sow. God, I pray that you'll bless these words into all of our lives. God, would you speak? We're ready to listen. We're ready to receive. We open our hearts to you. Because if you speak, we will listen. And everyone said, Amen. Okay, so for those of you who maybe don't know, me, my name's Dave, and I'm married to a beautiful, beautiful woman called Vicki. I'm together, we have two miracle children, big up, big up the person who just whoop for my wife there. That's a friendly whoop right there. But we've got two miracle children, and I say they're miracles because we were told that it wouldn't be possible for us to have any children after years and years and years of trying, and that is a completely different story for another time. But now we have two. We have a boy and we have a girl, and they are both absolute miracles. Elsie is our first born, she was our daughter. We called her Elsie because she means God's promise. And she is a rule follower. She is beautiful inside and out. She's got this gorgeous spirit about her. And she's the one who likes to do everything right. She's the one who won the Headteachers Award just last term after her first year in school for being kind to other people. Like if you just wanted something for any one of your children, it would be that they would just get recognition for all those things being kind and helpful to others. And you can imagine that after having Elsie, who loves all things pink and sparkly and unicorns and all that kind of stuff, and we've ever pushed it down that line, it's just the way that it's gone with her. But you can imagine after having that kind of a child that we are there, and putting ourselves on the back after three, four years, just going, we have got parenting cracked. Like, I don't know what's going on with anybody else in the world, but seriously, we are great parents. And then we're thinking like parenting, check, we've like done that. Then four years later, we had a son who we called Alfie, who came to basically humble the two of us. And if I'm honest, having Elsie is effectively like, having a stag do, living in your house all of the time. He wants to get in everything, he wants to break everything, he wants to twist everything. And frequently, it's so much fun, but obviously it's challenging an equal measure. And frequently, Bikki and I are the ones who all the time have to say to Alfie, no Alfie, no, no, no, you don't do it like that, you do it like this. So you don't put your phone in the washing machine. Or, you know, when he's trying to do a certain thing, a certain way, and it's just not working out for him, and he's a boy gets frustrated, and he's just like, why won't this thing work? And it's like, no, no, no, no, you don't start the car like that, you do it like this. You hold the chainsaw at the other end. It's all that kind of stuff that we constantly have to be in his world, and we have to bring in correction, and we have to give him the right way to how to do some things. And the subject matter that I want to talk to you about today is very similar to that. We're today, we're going to be in the part of the book of Romans where Paul moves from the theological and the scriptural kind of deep writing and the deep instruction, where he moves into the more practical instruction. Who knows that I love a good practical message? I love something that I can actually take away in the week, and I can actually do it. That's the way I'm wired, so that tends to be the way that I speak. And what I want to do is I want to talk to us about this is the place where Paul says in the book of Romans, like, live like this, like, like, in life, do this. Like, don't do that, do this. I need it spelling out for me, because I'm not that intelligent, so I love it when someone in scripture just spells some stuff out for me and writes it down really plainly. So this whole section in my Bible has a title over it, and the title is called How to Behave, which I absolutely hate, because I don't like being told anything, let alone how to behave, but it's really, really great writing. And this is where Paul gives a list of values. He gives a list of things that we ought to live by, and he really doesn't leave too much room for negotiation on any of these things. Effectively, what he does is he gives a list of instructions to us, to followers of Jesus, as to how to live in a non-godly world. And that's what we're going to look at today. So today I want to talk about just one of these values. And I think that this particular value we're going to discuss today is probably one of the most absent values in society today. It's probably one of the things you see displayed the very least, but it's one of the most important in the Bible. In fact, the Bible is actually full of this topic, but I do want to say this, and I want to say this, right at the top of before we jump in. If you are here today or watching online, and you are a follower of Jesus, and you love him, we're called to live a different way. We're called to be set aside. We're not called to live the way everybody else lives. We can't be part of the culture around us that cancels people, unrips people, and pulls people down. We're called to live different. It's not the way that God calls us to live. So the value that I want I'm going to talk about today is honor. Today we're going to discuss and explore honor. This whole message could be summed up in just one verse of one scripture, and it's this. It's Romans 12, 10, which simply reads like this. Honor one another above yourselves. You see, he doesn't just tell us that we should honor each other. He even goes so far as to say how we should honor each other. He says you're supposed to do it above ourselves. And as follows, Jesus, we're called to honor everyone. Not just the people who we like, not just the people who are in the same group chat as us, not just other Christians, we're called to honor everyone. Another translation says, honor everyone and do it the way that you do to yourself. So it's leaving no room for negotiation. But when I read that, I think that this lack of honor that we experienced today, this lack of honor in our society is not just a 2025 problem. I don't think this is a new thing. As a matter of fact, I know that Jesus himself, when he walked the earth, he had the same issue going on. Jesus says this in Mark 6. Now, before we read this, I will just say, it's worthwhile remembering that Jesus is a miracle working, all powerful God. Like, when he walked the earth, he had the power to do whatever he wanted because he had his father in heaven. He's a supernatural being. And at the point in time, we're going to read this. We're told that Jesus left where he was and he returned to his childhood hometown of Nazareth. Obviously, not the place he was born. We all know that he was born in Bethlehem, but his childhood hometown was Nazareth. So he gets caught back to Nazareth, and that's where he grew up. Then we read in Mark 6, verse 2, we read this. The next Sabbath, he began teaching in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed. They said, where did he get all this wisdom and the power to perform such amazing miracles? But what happened? I mean, they literally went from, I like you, to then mocking Jesus in verse 3. They've literally gone from like, wow, look at this guy. This is incredible. This is unbelievable. They've literally gone straight from there to mocking him. And it says in verse 3, they scoffed, and then they said, no, no, no, he's just a carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon. They pick at the smallest of things, and they load who Jesus really was. In fact, it went on to say that they were deeply offended. I mean, they took offense just because he did some miracles. They took offense because of that. Like, doesn't that just show what the world was like back then? And now they pick at the smallest of things, and then they took offense. And I will say this is a side note. If you leave the house in the morning, looking for a fence somewhere, believe me. You're going to find what you're looking for. That's going to happen. But then it says, because they were offended, that they couldn't receive the good that he had to give them. And I'm telling you, every time you take offense at somebody else, you have an inability to receive what's good from that person. It completely shuts it down. And then they say they were not able to receive them. So notice how Jesus responds. In the middle of all this toxic, commenting culture, look at what Jesus says to them. A prophet is honored everywhere, accepting his own hometown, and among his relatives, and his own family. In other words, there are places where he gets honored, and there are places where he doesn't. Think of it this way. To honor is to place value on something. It's to value a particular thing. And it's to add weight to it. And it's not sucking up or brown, no, it's not that. To honor, it places value on the person or people that you're giving honor to. And it's all about a position of your own heart. It's nothing to do with them. It's all about you. But what we see is this world stripping everyone of their dignity, stripping everyone of their honor, stripping anyone of any value, and adding dignity to themselves rather than adding dignity to other people. And we ought to be different. We're called to live a different way. To dishonor simply means when you take something lightly, when you just don't value it the way that you should. Like if somebody did something for you, and you don't say thank you, that's dishonorable. That's dishonoring somebody else. Like when you're late for something that you should have been on time for, but you don't apologize, that's dishonor. Like when you're blunt or dismissive, or rude with your words to somebody else, that's dishonor. And this is not easy stuff to hear. Believe me, this is not easy stuff to say. I tried to get out of doing this message, but I had to do it because we'd never going to shy away from saying this stuff that's really important to all of us. And if we have an attitude where we don't any more value honoring other people, it becomes dishonorable in our own life. The second we don't value other people, and the second we don't value placing honor on someone else, we have a dishonoring spirit. And I would just say that here at Liverpool One Church, we are a church of honor. So we're going to work really hard at this because this is really important stuff, and it's the way we're called to live. I actually think it's reached a place where our world is not used to honor anymore. I don't think it knows how to react to it. I don't think it knows how to receive it. You know, most of you will probably know from stories that I've said or conversations that we've had that prior to working here at the church that I worked in a card dealership. And I remember that this one day, I was on the forecourt and I was making my way back inside the showroom. And I just became aware that as I approached the door, there was a young lady behind me, she was maybe 30-odd years old, roughly, and she was literally too such behind me coming in. So of course, as I approached the showroom, I opened the door and I just held the door open and I said, "After you." And she just looks at me and she just goes, "You don't think I can handle a door by myself?" Well, right there and then I had a choice. I could either do what I was thinking, you know, and say what I was thinking, but I held my tongue after all. I was an employee at the Christian at the time. So she was just saying, "I just smiled and nodded." And I said, "No, no, I'm sure you can handle it." But when I grew up, I was taught that if you approach the door at the same time as somebody else, you open the door and you hold it because it's polite and it's helpful. And she just looked and she kind of went, "Well, and we both walked in." And then she said, "Well, I guess chivalry isn't dead after all." And then she just went off to brighten up somebody else's day. She really was a treasure. But let me tell you, that's not chivalry, that's biblical. We're called to honor others above ourselves and holding a door for someone. It's just one of a thousand ways that you can just show someone, honor, you can say, "No, no, no, you go first." Yeah, we both got somewhere to be, but I'm going to value you over me and I'm going to hold this door and I'm going to let you go through. And I just don't think that the world is used to that kind of honor. We live in a culture that loves to rip people and tear people and pull them down and never, ever give any honor. But the issue with that is that God has called us to live a different way. And in the short time that we've got today, I want to do a couple of things. I want to look at two biblical truths about honor. And then I want to give you a challenge to do this week, which I think could totally transform and change your week. And then I'm going to try to model it in front of you. Okay, so we're going to try and cram all that into the next few minutes. But the first biblical truth is this, when it comes to honor, the first thing we need to do is give what they don't deserve. That's what we're going to do first. We're going to give what they don't deserve, because here's the thing. When we're talking about honoring people, you may go, "Okay, Dave, I hear you, but they don't do honorable things." And I go, "Okay, I get it." But honoring people begins with how God sees them, not how you see them. And one of the things that we can never do is see people how God does. He's got this unique ability to see them how we never can. We can't see them in the eyes and through the spirit of the one who loves them and created them and gave them purpose. We will never see people that way. We can't see people the way God does. He's got a unique ability to see people in both their brokenness and their dignity at the same time. He's got that going on. So God can look at all of us and see everything we did this week because He was watching how scary He was there and still see us in our dignity at the same time. That's how it works, because He can see us in our brokenness and our dignity together. And He's calling the church to do the same. And that's a big ask. So we know we are not perfect. We know we're broken humans, we know we're all broken just a little bit differently. We know that we've all got things going on in character quirks, but he's calling us to a higher standard of living. He's calling us to raise the bar as the church of Jesus because there has to be a difference between us and people who just don't know Jesus and don't know about him. There has to be a difference. And so it means that when you leave this place today, you don't just go back into the world that you're living and just go, "Well Dave, I get it, but you don't know what they did." And you're right. I don't know what they did. And it doesn't matter because we're not doing it for them. What we're trying to do is we're going to try so hard to see people whoever they are as God does. Let me show it to you in Romans 8 verse 29 and it says this, three words, those God predestined. Now it's a bit of a big word, but predestination basically means God already has a destiny for you. He already has a plan for you. Before you ever went there, before you ever arrived on earth, before you ever were born, God has a purpose and a plan and a destiny all worked out for every single day of your life. I do this with my kids. Every time they do something, before they succeed at it, I see them doing it well. Before they ever become anything in life, I'm speaking it over them. I'm saying, God's got a plan for your life. God's got a purpose on your life. You've got things that you're going to do that are going to fast the past, anything that I've ever done, stand on my shoulders and go further than I ever did, but God's got a plan for you. I'm going to do everything I can to see you succeed, but he's got a plan and a purpose and it's all worked out, all mapped out for your life. And all you need to do is follow him. That's all you need to do and he will guide and shape and move your path. Even though I will just say side note, when we asked our daughter, Elsi, who was three at the time, what she wanted to be when she grew up and she told us that she either wanted to be an astronaut or a fruit bat. Like, we all know that one of those things is going to take a lot more work than the other one and I'm just going to let you figure out which is which, but God's predestined every single one of us. He's predestined us all. He has a purpose for every single one of us. And that's why when he sees you, even though you may not be living out your calling, even though you may not be living out the God plan for your life, it's still there. He still sees you, was called. He still sees you as destined, even though you may not be doing it, it's always still going to be there. Can I just say to everyone here, and everyone watching online who may be thinking, you would not be saying that if you knew what I'd done. You would not be saying any this to me and this doesn't apply to me if you knew what I'd done. Can I just say, God knows what you've done. He sees everything that's ever happened to you. He sees everything you've ever been through. He knows of all of the intricate details of every single one of our lives, but he doesn't look at you based on what you've done. He sees you based on who you can become. That's how your heavenly Father looks at you and that's the same for every single one of us. God sees who we can become. So we need to live like that because that's how God calls us to live. 1 Peter 2 verse 13 says this, "Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake because it dish on us, God, when you don't. Submit yourself for the Lord's sake. We call to submit ourselves to everyone in authority over us whether we agree with them or not. Now, submitting doesn't mean you have to agree. It just means that regardless of whether or not they deserve it, we choose honor. It's a decision in our hearts." And by the way, Peter would have written that passage of Scripture when Rome had a really evil, nasty, horrible emperor called Nero who he would have been under. That's when he would have written this whole passage about submitting. We've spoken about Nero before, but just to give you an idea of how sick and crazy Nero was, he would have Christians dressed up in fresh animal skins and then put into cages with wild dogs, and he'd just drink wine while the dogs just mulled and tore the people apart. And these were people just like us who had friends and family who loved us, these were ordinary people. Nero would have Christians dipped in hot wax and then tied by their hands to trees and he'd throw parties while they burned Christians, just using them as human candles to light the night sky. Nero was absolutely tapped like he was mad. So he loved seeing blood so much and Peter comes along and says, "Even him, every authority among men, whether to king to the supreme authority, verse 14, ought to gov'nness who was sent by him to punish those who do wrong and commend those who do right for its who's will, God's will." It's God's will. So what do we do? We choose honor. I'm gonna honor you. I'm gonna fear God and I'm gonna honor you, but they don't deserve it, but I don't like what he does, but I don't like what she says. But whatever, we choose honor, our response has to be one of honor and this is a discipline we need to build into our lives. And why? Because God calls us to. But why would he do that? You may ask. You may very well ask. Why would he do that? Why would he ask us to do that? Because that's the hope of reaching people. That's the hope of reaching people who are far from God. That just might be the expression of God they need to hear to move them from where they are into a relationship with Jesus and they see something different on you and on your life and on the way that you honor people. They just may need to experience that level of God's love. What else is gonna break down the barriers and the walls inside their life? What else is gonna draw them into a relationship with him? Could it be that that's what he's calling us to do? Just remember this, that oftentimes when you give honor to someone, they often become more honorable. It's kind of a bit of a juxtaposition. The more you give someone honor, they assume the role of what you're speaking over them. So we don't wait for them to deserve it. We give it anyway. Second thing, number two, we give honor because it benefits us too. There's a double benefit. Not only honoring, it's not just for the people on the other end of it, but it's also for us as well. It's also, it also does something inside us too. Every time I give it, it obviously blesses the person who I'm trying to give it to, but I guarantee you it does something on the inside of me too. It allows God to work in my life as well. But if we jump back into Mark six just for a second and pick up the same story where Jesus is speaking to them, where he says verse four, "A prophet is not without honor accepted in his own hometown among his own relatives and his own home." But what when it says next in verse five, it says he could not do any miracles there, except lay hands on a few sick people and heal them. So Jesus, the king of the whole universe, the son of God had his power weakened because of the attitudes of the people who were listening. It doesn't say he would not do any miracles. It says he could not. So he actually had his power removed and I just wonder how many prayers we pray and he's there going, "Oh, I'd love to answer that." But you dishonored somebody with your words. You dishonored somebody with your language, with your attitudes. You didn't lay honor on them. I would love to answer that. I really would. I just wonder could it be are we weakening God of His power to work in our lives and give us the things that we're so desperate for, that He's so desperate to give us because of our lack of obedience in this area? Because the Bible tells us the way to live. It says live giving honor. Honor your father and your mother and you may say, "Well, I don't have a good one." Doesn't matter, we're not doing it for them. We're doing it for you. It'll do your heart good. And that's the first commandment that has a promise attached to it. What's the promise? That it'll bless them loads? No. That they'll really love it? No. The promise is this, that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life here on the earth. Now, who does not want that? It's the first honor your father and your mother, but I don't have a good one. Doesn't matter. We aren't doing it for them. That it may go well with you and you may have long life on the earth. The more I value it, the more I'll get value from it. So let me ask you today, what are you valuing today? Who are you valuing today? So we don't wait for people to deserve it. We give honor because honor does something for you too. Now, here is your challenge for this week. This week, go like crazy with this challenge. And I bet you, you come back to church next Sunday and you say, I think I just had the best week of my life. Like this is absolutely great. What I want you to do, it goes right the way back to the very first scripture that I read. and it's Romans 1210. in a different translation, this is what it says. It says, "Outdo one another in showing honor." It doesn't just say, like, "Do this." It says, "Try to beat other people to it." It says, like, "Make it a competition." Try to outdo each other in showing honor. So if you go out for food this week, pay the bill. Like, and if someone else tries to get it, go to the front of the restaurant and say to them, "Don't let anybody else touch that thing, "that thing's on me, I've got that stick it in the drawer "and put it down to me." And if they already did that, like, if they already got there, 'cause we're all doing this together, then buy the restaurant. No, no, no, don't do that. Don't do that, a bad idea, bad move. But like, bless the waiter or the waitress, they could be working two or three jobs, like say something nice to them, give them a tip, do something, honor them, just honor them. How about today we text like five, 10 people and just say, "I love you. "Hey, I honor you." Like, I woke up this morning and I sent six texts, just to friends of mine, 'cause people who are close in my world, who I love and I honor, and I just said, "Why don't you turn them today? "I honor you. "I love you. "You've got no idea what you meant to my life. "Thank you." Just, it takes seconds. And it blesses them, but it allows God to do something in me too. This is what I'm talking about. I'm just talking about giving honor. And now I wanna show you how to do it. This first picture, I wanna honor the woman in this first picture. That's my wife. I'm a promise myself, I'd get through this, but doesn't look like that's gonna be possible. So I might need to help me out. A little, um, Vicki, your strength and your love for me and our family humble me. You are the best part of our marriage, 100%. The way you raise and love our two children is an inspiration to me. And the three of you are my absolute world. And today, I honor you. (audience applauding) I've gotta get through more. I've gotta get through more. This next picture was taken in 2010, where my dad had been diagnosed with cancer. And he opted not to have chemotherapy because by the time a cancer was found, Kima wouldn't have done any good anyway. It was very aggressive from the orphan. This is one of my favorite pictures of my dad because it was taken less than a month before he went to be with the Lord. And my dad was my best friend. I'm a biggest supporter. And he was brave right at the end. And you might be able to see it inside of his coat. There's a plastic tube. That's mechanically pumping morphine through him to keep the pain at bay. Even though they couldn't get rid of what was going on, he'd stash them. Can you control my pain? And they said, yeah. And he was brave and he was fierce and he loved garden. Right the way to the end, he was my biggest best friend. And he taught me what it was to have a good work ethic. And to love Jesus and to stand up for what was good and what was right. And I love my dad and today I honour him. You'll all probably recognise on most of you, well, my next picture. This is my mum. She, the older one, by the way. She will be here at one of our three services today at least. She turned 83 weeks ago. And I would say this, if any of you young ladies want to know what it is to live a life devoted to Jesus and to live a whole life for an audience of one and on a God with every single day of your existence, you could do a lot worse than go and have a chat with her because she's taught me all the way through my life about the goodness and the faithfulness of God. And today I honour her. This is where we get exciting. Let's bring up the next picture. You'll all recognise these two. Roughly 20 years ago, I walked into a church as a very unwilling attendee. I was taken there against my will by someone who duped me into going to church. And I didn't want to be anywhere near a church and Luke and Emma were the first two people that I met. And from that day, they have played so many different roles in my life. Right across the years, they've gone from being best friends to being mentors, to being department leaders, to being my worship leaders. That's right, for those of you who didn't know your pastors are both incredible worship leaders. And now they're my pastors. And I guarantee you they're the same on and off this platform. They're the same in the office block as they are in their own home. And they lead me and they mentor me and they pour into me constantly. And I'm better because of the two of them. And today I honour our pastors, Luke and Emma. Now, my last picture, you may not recognise everyone on this one, but if you serve on a team here at church, then there's a good chance you'll see yourself on this one. Because I honour all of our volunteers in the life of church. We love you. I honour you. Your constant sacrifice, your early mornings, your late nights, your unsung things, the things that you do in secret, that no one else knows about, all from an audience of one, just to see the house of God thrive and live. I honour every single volunteer you are invaluable. This place is better because of you. You don't just serve, you make a difference. You don't just turn up, you build the kingdom. This church is stronger because of every single one of you. And today I honour you wherever you serve. And you know who else I honour? I've got a photograph for this one. I wish it did. I honour everybody here today and everybody watching at home online, who's far from God. That's who I honour. Because we always wanted to build a church where people who are far from God could come and sit and say, "I don't feel like these people want anything from me. I don't feel like these people are judging me. I don't feel like these people are here looking to transform me and change me and mold me. I want to say you're so welcome here. We're so glad that you've come. And if you are far from God today, then I honour you as well." Church, I'm asking us all to do the same. I'm asking every single one of us to leave this place today and love and value and place honour on people out there in our city, in your world, in your uni, in your workplace. Today I honour God because God changed my life. He gave his son for me. That's the ultimate sacrifice. That's how much he loved me. And that's how much he loves you too. I can't imagine that kind of love. I can't bother that kind of love. Why would he let his son die for me? Well, he had to, so that I could live. Jesus had to die, so that I could live. Otherwise, we'd all be crushed under the weight of everything we've done wrong. There's no greater love than that. So, we're going to leave this place and we're going to honour others and we're going to give them what they don't deserve. We're going to try like crazy. And this week, we're going to work like mad knowing that it's going to benefit us too and we're going to try and out honour other people. And while we do that, we're going to see what it does in them. And we're going to watch what it does in us too. Times gone, I'd love for you to stand up. We're going to pray and then the band are going to come and we're going to sing some more. So let's pray. You know, you may be here today and you may be thinking, "All this is great." But I don't know Jesus. I'm one of those people at the end of what you've just said and I don't have a relationship with him. Well, we've already honoured you today and you are totally amazing that you're here. You're totally welcome to be here, whether you believe in him or whether you don't, whether you follow him or whether you don't. But I would love it. If anything today has made you think, "Do you know what, actually, I can see the value in this way of life, I can see the value of making this choice that I'm going to pray one super short prayer and then the band are going to come, they're going to sing and we're going to finish off for today. But I'm urging you, don't let this opportunity go by. You're here, we're here and you can make this choice right now and you can start the very best days of your life. So I'm going to pray a super short prayer. Every eye closed, every head bowed. If this is you and you want to make that step, then pray this prayer in your heart after me. Heavenly Father, I come to you today and God, I want to say, I'm sorry for the things I've done that have caused distance between you and me. God, I want you to come and fill the void in my life. I want you to come and make your home in my heart. God, I want to live for you now. I want to live with you forever in heaven. I pray that you'll forgive me. I pray that you'll strengthen me. I pray that you'll help me on this new road that I'm about to start and I ask it all in the precious, most mighty name of your son, Jesus and everyone. A Liverpool one should said, Amen. Let's worship. To get connected or stay more connected to the life of Liverpool One Church and learn how you can join us live, visit LiverpoolOneChurch.com. Thanks again for joining us and we hope to see you again soon.