Are We Having Fun Yet?

Hey family, thanks for joining us for another message, another teaching here at Revere. We are excited that you've joined us. And for those that are part of our online community, we want to let you know that you're not just a viewer, you are a participant. And for our family, we want to invite you into a vision that God has given us, and that is to build a house where we can worship Him. There is a link in the fold below, and we're inviting you. Trust God with your finances and let's see what God can do when we are generous and we generously give back to God when He is so graciously given to us. And by doing so, you're not just invited to build a house, we want to invite you to come to the house, see what God is doing here. We hope that you enjoy this message, your life is impacted, and you fall in love with the good word of God. God bless you. Welcome to Revere. It is a good day to be in the house of God for the whistleblower. I'm here for it. Yeah. Do me a favor. Before you take a seat, will you introduce yourself to three people? I'd let them know your name. Say, I'm glad that you're here at church today. Welcome to Revere. If you are in the chat box, I want you to put in what city you are watching from because you are part of our Revere family. Well, welcome to Revere Church. Happy Sunday. Fun day. Absolutely. I hope that if it is your first time that you feel welcomed. I hope that you were greeted upon entry. You were told that we have a cup of coffee for you. And if you need a Bible, we have a free Bible for you.

Because we believe in the transformational word of God and also Jehovah Java. So you can stay caffeinated as you're reading the word of God. But we love to have a good time here at Revere. If it's your first time, my name is Bianca Juarez and I'm one of the pastors here. And I am privileged to be part of this community. One of my roles here is to cast vision and to be a culture carrier, to make sure that our values align and stay aligned as we build this community. When we launched our church on January 12th of this year, I wanted to set out and be very clear about who we are as a community. And my invitation for those that were here on that day was, hey, will you stay with us? Will you rock with us? Will you roll with us for eight weeks? Because over the next eight weeks, we're gonna be discussing who we are as a community. And then you get to decide on whether or not you want to be part of this community. And if you are part of this house, I'm inviting you to make this house a home. That you double down. That this isn't just a country club where you are accommodated and told that you're special like a snowflake, but that you are equipped with the tools to go out and live a life empowered by his spirit. And in order for you to decide on whether or not these values aligned with your values, we've been taking a look every week at the last seven weeks, but the values of this house. We started off on what is revere? Why do we reverence the Lord? Then we opened up and we started speaking about that we as a people, we honor. We honor up. We honor down. We honor around.

And we know who we're empowered by. The next week, we spoke that we are empowered by the mighty power of the Holy Spirit. Then we discovered that here in this community, here at Revere, we are faith filled. That faith is our not so secret sauce. We also discussed that we are people who live generously and serve radically. And this week, I'm very excited to leave us with our very last value. Now, I have to admit, I have been in church my whole life, and I have never heard of a church who has this as a primary value of the house. So let me give some theology so that no one judges me. Up on the screen, by the way, I'm gonna be giving a lot of verses today. So usually, I camp out in one passage, and I teach out of that line by line, word by word, verse by verse. But today's gonna be different. So pull out your notebooks and your pens. And on the screen is Nehemiah 8.10, because I need to make sure that we have some theology that we're gonna root ourselves in. Nehemiah 8.10 says this. Do not grieve. Don't be sad. Here's a tissue for your issue. Don't cry. Dry your eyes. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your what? Strength. Is your strength. Here, we are gonna be a community of joy and fun and laughter. And if serving Jesus doesn't bring you joy, you've been doing it wrong, okay?

You've been doing it wrong. The joy of the Lord is your strength. And here, we wanna add some fun. We wanna add some humor. We wanna add some laughter. We believe here in this community that going to the gym makes your body strong, and laughter and humor makes your soul strong. And so as we dive through scripture, and as we end this series, I really want to assess the values of this house, and then you get to assess if this vibe is your tribe, if you're gonna rock with us. But today, our last value that we are gonna be discussing is fun is fun. Fun is fun. For the two fun people in here, great. Glad that you're here. Welcome. Now, let me give a little bit of backstory. I come from a very fun family. We are loud. We are chaotic. We're disorganized. It's hurting cats. My family, we're a lot of fun. But this stems really from my dad. We love to host parties and host dinners. We played music way too loud. And if we made fun of you, it really means that we like love you. We give nicknames. to everyone and they're never really nice,

but we say it in love, okay? I inherited this from my dad and I just, I have seen what laughter and humor and fun does to a family and we're a spiritual family. And in this family, we're gonna have fun, right Chris? We're gonna have some fun. So it comes from somebody who is leading this community. In fact, let me take you back to 2024. One of my favorite holidays is April 1st and here in America, North America, April 1st is April Fool's Day. And so one of my greatest hijinks was captured last year and I love April Fool's because it is the only holiday that you could act like a mess, you could say whatever you wanna say, you can lie through your teeth, you can lie like a dog and then just slap on a, April Fool's at the end of it. I am known in my family and friends as like pranking people on this day. Well, last year, if you remember, March 31st was Easter of 2024. Now we had five services as a community and we actually launched a sunrise Easter service. Jesus wasn't even awake at that time, but we were setting up for his resurrection, okay? Our team had worked diligently days, weeks, and even months preparing for the thousands of people that were gonna be here. Our team was so gloriously exhausted at the end of Easter

and I knew that we needed rest. And so weeks before I had told them, hey, the Monday after Easter, we're off. It's a Sabbath day, I want you to rest, just rest. Well, after serving all five services, we get home, everyone's knackered, we're exhausted. And then I looked at my calendar as I was preparing for the week and I realized, it's April 1st, so I concocted the best plan. I started gathering my assets and yes, my assets, my photos, and I knew what I was gonna do. I had to strategically operate the time at which they would probably get up and be in a moment of stupor, a holy hangover from Easter. And then everyone would read this update on this day and feel a way. So this is what I told our team. I hopped onto Base Camp, which is our communication tool that we use to communicate to our team and I sent them this. Hello, saints, please don't freak out. I truly know that God is in control. But we had a massive fire at church and we're praying about what to do next. I'm going to seek the Lord about how to proceed with the building and us moving. But for now, can we praise God and be grateful that all of us are safe? More updates to come. And I lean back on my bed in my pajamas and I laugh hysterically.

I recorded myself laughing in a video that I sent to my best friends and their response is, what is your problem? You are so sick. We listen and we don't judge, Roger, okay? I was living my best life when all of a sudden the chat started popping off. People are freaking out. Alexis, who oversees outreach, is crying. Pastor Cesar gets into his truck to drive here to save the lactation cookies because his wife was breastfeeding and he needed to save those cookies. People are in the chat like, oh my gosh, what are we going to do? And I was ready for photos. I Googled an image of a warehouse that kind of looked like ours from an aerial view that was on fire so that if somebody wanted receipts, oh, I came ready, I came ready. And finally it got to the point where everyone was freaking out and people were going to drive here and I said, it was the fire of the Lord because Easter was amazing. April Fools! They didn't find it funny. They need a sense of humor, okay? Michelle McKinley, who oversees our creative, she was like, this is not what we needed on our day off.

Listen, listen, you guys, it was funny. Your booty cheeks are way too tight. It was hilarious. And now everyone's grateful that it didn't burn down. See, everyone wins, okay? If we're not having fun, we're doing it wrong. And I think where we get a little bit panicked and where maybe things feel confusing is that we don't associate fun and faith. The title of today's message is, are we having fun yet? Are we having fun yet? The reason why people don't associate faith and fun is that fun feels frivolous and it's not needed. Religion is serious, Bianca. We take the death of Christ serious. And I agree, religion is serious, but I didn't commit to a religion. I committed to a relationship with Jesus and I wanna know Him. What does scripture say about Him? And I think that the depictions that we have seen of Jesus are super serious and angelic, and we think that He speaks in old English with thee and thou, and if we're not careful, our picture and depiction of Jesus could be like this celestial Gandalf stroking his beard, waxing philosophically. Dost thou protest and love thy Lord? That's actually not what we see in scripture, but this is rooted in us not actually understanding

or taking time to look at the multi-faceted nature of Jesus. In his book, Orthodoxy, which means. General Accepted Doctrine, which, by the way, if a book is named Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton, you know he's serious and he's probably dead, and he is. This is what he said. There was something far too great for God to show us when he walked upon the earth, and I sometimes fancied that it was his mirth, his laughter, his humor. The one thing that we don't see Jesus do is laugh, and so we assume that he's just super serious. But when we take a look at scripture, we see that it's one narrow picture of who Jesus is. This isn't actually a full account, a full depiction of a good God. Let's back this up with some theology. In Genesis chapter one, scripture says that, God says, let us make man in our image. Let's make man in our image. If you laugh, and if you have fun, and if you have joy, we could safely assume that so does our God, that if we have emotions, and feelings, and expressions, and we are made in the likeness of our maker, is it safe to say that God has a sense of fun, and humor, and levity? Some of you aren't told. Okay, Psalm 2-4 says, the one enthroned in heaven laughs. Oh, what? If we are made in the image of God,

can we have a sense of humor? But we never discuss this, and we think that following Jesus is serious business, and serious business is incompatible with the banter of God. So we over-index on the holy while ignoring the human side of Jesus. Now, I wanna rightly elevate who God is. Jesus is the son of God who is holy of holies, enthroned above. He is sovereign in control of all. He's mighty to hold, and he's powerful. He holds up the world, yes. But he also walked the earth, and he was incredibly human. So let's just humanize Jesus for a second. Jesus was a carpenter. He grew up in a house of a carpenter. He was a son of a blue-collar worker, and he himself had a blue-collar job. Those who he rallied around him, his disciples, his friends, his tribe, were comprised mostly of blue-collar workers as well. They basically traveled around, camped outside, barbecued fish on an open flame fire, and you're telling me that 13 men are not gonna poke fun of each other, laugh, or have like a pull-a-finger moment? I don't know. I don't know. You guys, that was funny. That was funny.

Wait, pause. And I wanna be robust in our understanding of can we see who Jesus is? Because sometimes my fear is that we have this moment where Jesus acts like holier than thou and only speaks in old English. In fact, I was talking to two guys who are part of this church, and I had asked in my market research for preparation for today, have you ever heard a message on like the fun side of Jesus or the nature of God in the indwelling of humor? And one of them said, well, the first time I heard that is when I started coming here, that I began to see a different picture of Jesus. And there was no greater strength because my fear is that we have made God some elusive killjoy without seeing the humanity of a good God. And if we're not careful, we can come in and read the Bible like it's a tool to bludgeon and beat people over the head with rather than a mirror to reflect and say, who am I in light of a savior? So I wanna see the human side of Jesus. There are 17,000 books on the life of Jesus in the Library of Congress,

and only one on the humor of Jesus. I love this quote. It's a book called The Humor of Christ by Elton Trueblood. It's a little bit dense. I put it on the screen and I'm gonna give some commentary to explain. It's an older book. And what I love is that he brings in the truth of the nature of Jesus that maybe has gone a little under the radar. He says this, there are numerous passages which are practically incomprehensible when regarded as sober prose. Meaning there's so many scriptures that if you just look at it in black and white, it's gonna feel very basic, very thin, but which are illuminated once we become liberated from the gratuitous assumption that Christ never joked. Our eyes are open when our mind is open to the fact that Jesus actually had a sense of humor. Once we realize that Christ was not always engaged in pious talk, holy talk, we have made an enormous step in the road to understanding. Christ laughed and expected others to laugh. A misguided piety, a misguided holiness made us fear that acceptance of his obvious humor would be mildly blasphemous and sacrilegious. Are we having fun yet? In the scope of scripture,

if there's one person. that had a sense of humor and loved to roast people. You're gonna be excited because we get to discover that through the life of Jesus. According to the Dictionary of World Biblical Imagery, Jesus was a master of irony and satire and hyperbole. In fact, as we are going to see today, some of his word pictures were so dramatic, it gave me license. I'm not crazy, Jesus is as savage as me, okay? And let me give you three reasons why we miss the humor of Jesus. If you're a note taker, I want you to jot this down. Number one, we have become overly familiar with the stories of the Bible, especially if you have a church background. You went to Sunday school, you went to Vacation Bible School, you maybe had the felt board with the light-skinned Jesus and perfectly chopped hair, where all of a sudden, you know, he's just holy and he loves the little children who sit at his feet. And though that is a nature and an aspect of Jesus, there's so much more to it. So we become anesthetized, we become numb. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, I heard that. And we miss the zany, the silly, the humorous intake of the words that Jesus is communicating to those that are around him. Number two, the center point and foundation of our faith

is that a sinless man named Jesus died a horrific death on the cross at Calvary so that we might have salvation. And that is so wildly important to our faith. But it's almost as if we pay so much attention to three days of Jesus's life that it overwhelms the three years of ministry that he lived on the earth. Now, his death, burial and resurrection is wildly important, but we can't ignore the human side and how cool Jesus was. I don't know what Jesus you served, but my Jesus, he was so cool. People wanted him at their weddings. He was so cool, people invited him to dinner parties. He was so cool, people were following him. And what I love is that the religious people, they were haters. They were like, that man hangs out with sinners. He's probably sitting just like them. He eats too much, he drinks too much, he parties too much. Yeah, you know what? He's a sinner. When the truth of the matter is all through scripture, Jesus hung out with sinners, but he didn't sin. Jesus hung out with sinners, but he didn't condone their sin. No, the religious people were so upset. They're like, there must be something wrong with him. No, maybe a better explanation

is that Jesus was just fun to hang out with. That Jesus was the type of person that you would want to come have a barbecue with, to invite, to have a moment with you at your dinner table. That instead of being called out, you are called up. Maybe the mark of a Christian, maybe the mark of someone who calls themselves a follower of Christ, isn't that we bludgeon and beat people with holiness, but that we would have a conversation, we would break bread, that people would want to be around us and oh, I don't know, emulate Christ. Can we be people that people want to hang out with? That when people look at our lives, that we can have a joy, inexplainable when our life is imploding. That we can have laughter when things don't go our way. Maybe the mark of a Christian is that people say we act like Jesus. And third, where we miss is that there is a cultural distance between Jesus's time and his understanding and our time and our understanding. If you know anything about comedy, culture is the container for comedy. Our cultural context makes all the difference. So what was funny in some cultures will not be funny in our cultures.

Let's make this plain. There is a show called The Office. It first debuted in the UK and the British humor of The Office was lost on Americans. We didn't find it funny, but then we come up with our own version of The Office. Same premise, similar characters, and who doesn't love Michael Scott and a prison Mike and Dwight Schrute and his beet farm and a that's what she said moment, okay? We find it hilarious because cultural context matters. So let's break this down and make it make sense. Here's a couple of examples. Let's talk about the humor of Jesus and his communication style. In John chapter four, Jesus has a conversation with a Samaritan woman at a well. He has a conversation with her and he doesn't call her out. He calls her up and basically shots fired. You know that person that tells you the truth and you like laugh, but they're low key serious. That's what I think is going on here because Jesus is like, hey, let's have a conversation. Go invite your husband. And she says all demurely like me? Little, oh, I ain't got no man. He said, girl, you ain't lying because you've had five husbands and the one you're with right now, girl,

he ain't even your man. What you said was true, uh-huh. So when I taught this here, I paralleled and allegorized the life of J-Lo and because she even married five times and the one she's with, Lord, you know, fix it, Jesus. And I wanted to paint a realistic picture of where our minds go to. Now I'm gonna pause for a second because how I teach here, I understand might be different for some people. My sauce might not be applicable for everyone. In fact, I taught. John chapter four at a large church in the Midwest. And I was teaching it much like I taught it here, except this time I wanted them to go into the theater of their mind and have a deep understanding of how different the Samaritan woman would be portrayed rather than the images that we've been familiar with in Sunday school. She is Samaritan. She's a woman of mixed race and of mixed cultures. She's not this like light skin beauty with a little bit of bang coming out and clean nails and bare essentials makeup. Like she's thug-lifing. You know, she's from the streets and she's out stepping to the well with her jug. Like I'm thirsty.

And I said, she's like the New Testament Cardi B. Oh, like, she's out here. Everyone knew who she was. See, y'all laugh. They raked me over the coals. I mean, they were like giving me nothing. I understand I am not for everyone, but they actually had to close down the YouTube comments because people were saying the irreverence. I cannot believe this. And you know what grieved me? You may not like my interpretation, but you are more concerned with anesthetizing your version of what you deem holy rather than the truth of who this woman was or worse, what she felt. Oh, man. Jesus saw people. And as I teach and as the teaching team here in this church, everyone has their own sauce, but our goal is that we go in and we see how Jesus saw. We live how Jesus lived and we loved who he loved. What's another passage? Okay, Matthew chapter seven, verse three. Here's a second example of Jesus's humor, his savagery, his dramatics. He says this to the religious people of the time. He said, why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? He's calling out the hypocrites of the time.

He's talking to the religious people and he's like, hey, yo, bro, you're out here with a plank in your eye and you can't even see the toothpick in your brother's eye. He's calling them out publicly. Go there in your mind, the savagery, the medium people, like the people that come to Forest Service and they sit in the back and they don't wanna be here. They're like, who, what is he saying? Verse four, how can you say to your brother, let me take out the speck in your eye when all the time there's a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, then you will see more clearly. You will see clearly to remove the speck in your brother's eye. Jesus is like, y'all are a joke. You can't even see what's in your eye. You're blind to your own sin and indiscretion. Listen, listen, Jesus is savage and you think that that's it? Nope, nope, I got more, I got more. You know why I like Matthew? Matthew's out here dropping dime on everyone. He is tattletailing like nobody's business. Seriously, Matthew 19, 24 says this. Here's an example of humor and cultural context. Jesus says this in Matthew 19, 24. Again, he's talking to religious people. Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel

to go through the eye of a needle than for somebody who is rich to enter the kingdom of God. So this is a needle and Jesus is saying, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Well, early Bible commentators, they didn't understand the satire, the dramatics, the hyperbole of Jesus or the humor of cultural context. So they deduced, hey, there's a small door, a small gateway into Jerusalem, the city of Jerusalem. So they assumed that a camel would get on all fours and then shimmy into the city gate. And that's how they interpreted this text. While all missing that Jesus has jokes, he's saying, no, no, you see this eye of a needle? Here's a camel. All right, how do we get this into a camel? Do we try the foot? Do we try the mouth? How do we get this in? He was using dramatics and hyperbole to say, it's so hard if you think that you can do it on your own. No, no. In the way that Jesus used hyperbole and irony in his example, you know who he always targeted when speaking like this? The religious people. So I'm gonna shoot it straight as we talk about the values of this house. If you are in this community and you like religion and you like the law and you like legalism,

we're probably not the community for you. If that's what you need, no problem. If you wanna go to a boring church, Pastor Caesar has many recommendations he can send you to. Yeah, that's what he told me. I know that's what he told me, but no, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm half kidding. So we take God very seriously here in this community. I will openly speak about what the Bible says and refers to as sin. We keep God in a holy and elevated position. Yes, we take God seriously, but we don't take ourselves too seriously. The enduring word commentary says this, when we take ourselves too seriously, we commit perhaps humanity's greatest sin, trusting in ourselves rather than God. Ooh, you know who Jesus made? fun of in scripture? Because he did. He made fun of the religious people. He made fun of the people who were judging other people while being blind to their own shortcomings. In fact, Jesus roasts the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees, they were super judgmental. In other words, they weren't fair, you see? Come on, all right, Jeremiah, it didn't work. I ran it by people, they said it's cheesy. I'm cheesy, all right?

See, now you're making me sad, you see? Like the Sadducees. I tried, every service, I tried every service, I tried. Vacation Bible school, okay, great, yeah, okay, great. He roasted the holy people of the day. You know what he calls them? Now, this is, in my mind, this is like Christian cussing, okay, like my mom Millie would not approve of this. Jesus calls the religious people, you brood of vipers. You bag of snakes. You know what he says about the religious people? He said, sons of Satan. That's a yo mama joke. Think about it, think about it. You think I'm lying. He calls the religious people, you're nothing more than whitewashed tombs. In that context, because a tomb is something dead and dirty and impure on the inside, and he's like, you're out here putting Mac and Maybelline on the outside, but in the inside, you're ratchet, you're messed up. You are ugly from the inside. Are you serious? Oh, it gets better. Jesus made fun of the way they fasted. In Matthew chapter six, Jesus straight calls them out. He said, you guys are out here walking around all, withered up like a fig, like, I'm fasting, I'm so holy. He said, what a joke. What a scene you're making.

He made fun of the way that they tithed. Oh, tithing is serious. Well, look at what Jesus says in Matthew 23, 23. Woe to you. Damned are you. Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin. These are just spices. And you've neglected weightier provisions of the law. Justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Those are the things that you should have done, but you're neglecting it. What is he saying? You're coming to the temple, and you're like, here's my 90 peppercorns, and here's your 10 peppercorns, Lord. Here's my tablespoon of cinnamon, and here's the teaspoon of cinnamon for you. Like, you're making such a scene of obeying the law for tithing, and yet you're a jerk. And yet you're mean. You've missed the point. Oh, and it gets worse. He doesn't just make fun of their fasting. He doesn't make fun of their tithing. He makes fun of their leadership. In Matthew chapter 15, shots fired, literally. He says, you religious people, you're out here like the blind leading the blind. What does that mean?

If you've ever traveled internationally, whether Barcelona or London or Munich, you can get on these tourist buses, right? Most of the time, they're red. You pay 50 euros, and they take you all around the city to see these great sites. Can you imagine hopping on a tourist bus, paying your euros, and all of a sudden, you see somebody trip on the way in, and you discover your tour guide is blind. And as you go down the road, they're like, well, to the left is, well, I don't know, because I can't see anything. And as we progress forward, I'm actually leading us into an abyss of darkness. That's what Jesus is saying. Shots fired. He's like, you're listening to people, and they don't even know where they're going. Do you think that the religious people were offended? Do you think that they were shocked? Yep, and Matthew tells us, Matthew 10, 10 through 14, they were thoroughly offended. The truth of the matter is that the only way that we could stave off offense is if we repent, because the truth of the matter is, the truth might be offensive to some. The truth might make you feel uncomfortable. And there will be people that were like, I don't wanna go to that church because they judged me.

Or did we share what the gospel said? I don't like the way they make me feel. I just wanna be anointed and called. I don't wanna be called up to what God has called me to. I think when we look about, when we look at the Pharisees and the Sadducees, it's so easy to think that we're not them. But the truth of the matter is, is that, yeah, there's a little bit of Pharisee in all of us. Religious Pharisees, political Pharisees, emotional Pharisees, recycling Pharisees, that we believe that we have the exact answer of how it's supposed to be. And what we really need to do is confess and say, I have fallen short. And I have to recognize that my way might not be the way, but Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And so as we wrap up, I wanna give us some handles about why fun is truly a value here. You're part of this community. I need you to know that fun allows us to be like Jesus. Jesus was fun. Jesus was savage and funny. And I believe that people wanted to be around him because of his nature. And to be a Christian means that we could be humorous in sanctified ways, that humor and laughter and joy defeats religion. It is a weapon against religion.

And I. believe that when we step into understanding who Jesus is, there's fun in that. Secondly, fun allows us to express emotions and passions. Proverbs 14, 13 says, even in laughter, the heart may ache, and at the end of joy, there might be grief. Just because someone has a sense of humor, just because someone is laughing, doesn't mean that they're not grieving. Just because someone is laughing doesn't mean that they're not feeling sorrow. Just because someone is laughing doesn't mean that they don't feel pain. Just because someone is going through a hard time and has a smile on their face, doesn't mean that they're not feeling the depth and the weight. It's the recognition of, but my God is good, and my God is greater. I'm gonna laugh my way forward. As Proverbs says, she looks at her future as she laughs. Can we laugh? See, when we have fun, it allows us to express our emotions. Scripture says to mourn with those who mourn and to weep with those who weep, and when we have space to process and grieve and laugh, we won't be emotionally constipated, and the problem with religious people is they feel like we have to act the same

and do the same for all the same things, and it just looks different. I got some horrible news this week. Brought in a little bit of fear, and I reached out to a couple people, and I realized that my people, my people, when I gave them this news, I made a joke about it, and they took that joke to the next level and made it more inappropriate than my joke, and I'm like, these are my people, because if you don't laugh, you'll end up crying, and if you don't laugh, you'll begin to think that God isn't good, and if you don't laugh and there isn't fun, you'll begin to resent the call that God has placed upon your life. Lastly, fun is missiological. Fun is missiological. How do I know this? My Bible boyfriend Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9, he said, to the weak I become weak, to the strong I become strong, so that all means I might win some to Christ, as many as possible, and when I do this for the sake of the gospel that I will share in the blessings, Paul is saying, hey, I will become whoever you need me to become so that you can understand this message of the gospel, and as a missionary, as a communicator of the gospel,

it's part of my sauce to laugh. Why? Because talking about sin and talking about failure and talking about transgressions is really hard. Talking about the resurrection, talking about death is very heavy, but you wanna know something? Joy comes in the morning, and if you come in here and you laugh at me or you laugh with me, either is fine with me, because if you laugh at me and you can see Jesus in a new way, then we all win. If you laugh at me and you get to see Jesus, that is the gospel, and I firmly believe that I will be a fool for Christ if it means you falling in love with him. Here, we wanna have fun. We wanna laugh our way through. We wanna mourn with those who mourn. We wanna weep with those who weep, and we wanna party with those who party. Maybe you're here today in this concept of Jesus that has always, in your mind, felt like this cosmic killjoy with a pointed finger calling out your sin and your failures feels foreign because you're seeing a picture of Jesus that you otherwise never would have experienced. Today, if you've never heard about this side of Jesus or this man named Jesus,

let me tell you that Jesus loves you so much. He wants to give you a hope that you look at the devastation around you and you laugh and say, I can't wait to see what God's gonna do to restore this. If you've never said yes to Jesus, or maybe at one point you were walking with the Lord, but you've turned your back against God, today's the day of salvation. Today is the day where you get to say, that Jesus, that's my savior. That's my shepherd. That's my provider. That's my guide. That is my Lord. I submit my life to that Jesus. To create a sacred space that feels safe for everyone in this room and the video experience or those watching online, will you do me a favor? Will you bow your head? Will you close your eyes? In a moment, I'm gonna invite you to raise your hand if you are declaring, one, I want Jesus to be the Lord and savior of my life. Two, by raising your hand, you are saying that your mistakes and your failures, what the Bible refers to as sin, could be washed clean because of what Jesus did on the cross at Calvary.

And three, the same power that resurrected Jesus from the grave will reside in you. If that is you, you are saying yes to Jesus for the first time or you're coming back to faith. One, two, three. Will you raise your hand up nice and high? God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you in the back. God bless you in the back. I think that's a hand. I'm not too sure. In the video experience, someone could see your hand in the living room. Hey, let someone around that you wanna say yes to Jesus. Let them know. But to let you know that you are not alone in this decision. In a moment, we are gonna praise the Lord because we're gonna have fun. We've learned about fun. God that we get to serve. I know we're gonna praise that fun God. But right now, I want all of us to join together in this declaration of faith

for those that are stepping into a relationship with Jesus. For you to repeat this prayer of faith after me. And please note, it's not a magic prayer. It's a prayer of declaration of saying I want. Jesus is my Lord and Savior. This is not the final step This is the beginning of your journey in submitting your life to Jesus. Repeat after me. Can we say Jesus? Forgive me of my sins Today I choose you as my Lord and Savior Cleanse my heart Cleanse my mind Cleanse my body Fill me with your spirit To do what you've called me to do in Jesus name In Jesus name and we all said amen, which means so be it. Do me a favor church We are celebrating We are celebrating because lost sheep have found a home and we're gonna celebrate right now because our God is fun So we're not just gonna learn about a fun God. We're gonna worship a fun God All right, so everybody in this place you got a little rhythm. I want us to worship I don't want you to leave I want you to stay I don't know where you need to go But you got two minutes to praise the Lord. You can do a little lead with it rock with it. Move with it Groove with it. We're gonna praise the Lord and then we're gonna sing some Red Hammond Will you please make me proud when Darren says that you are blessed? I want you to shout back that you're blessed Okay, it might be a new song. I'm taking us old school Give me some old school gospel in this place and watch the spirit break out. That's a party. So church, can I hear you? Yes No, in your face No, you're not That's right You got new things coming