Do Your Job

I've been able to visit this is my third visit there. We had great service time and connecting with each other and 60 plus of the guys went through my book Reaching into their future and they applied that in their own way and they actually took it on like a class So they would give a report on each chapter and their own reflections And I came home with all of their book reports so to speak and while we were there We gave we had a ceremony of graduation Where they were all given a certificate and then I went sell the cell and I was able to pray with them so I just want to pause right in this moment and just say to all my brothers there that are on life row and God is still doing and work in your lives and to hear your worship go up before the throne and to be with my brothers this week You guys really inspired me church. Would you give it up for all my friends there on life row? So it's been a really good week and it's gonna conclude not this morning But tonight with our worship night all of our locations coming together you're all invited to Worship tonight at six o'clock. It's gonna be a powerful powerful time. We're not recording or anything And it's not gonna be live streamed out there. It's just gonna be the experience in the room It's gonna be our opportunity to to worship God and see what God wants to do in the room And there's something special everybody said in the room When you're in the room All right, we're gonna transition now into tonight today and the message The title of my message today is this do your job turn the person action say do your job and to set it up Just set it up I I want to take you back to a time when I was in college and I was working for a company called Granger perhaps you've seen their boxes or some of their commercials and I worked in their warehouse where it's in a commercial industrial supplier and I would My first day on the job I was excited to get a job for in the first place and then they Train me and my first job was as a picker a picker would get an order and they would have to go with their cart around all these warehouse spaces and In those warehouse like you want you see behind me? I'd go have to pick something off a shelf put it on an order and then take it to the shipping area where a shipping person would put it Up on a set of rollers and then they would do another thing and then finally we get out

Eventually to the customer that day and for me. I wasn't overwhelmed. So they taught me how to Pick how to find the right aisle the right Shelf and the right items and get it there and and at first it was overwhelming But eventually I figured it out and then my supervisors were watching me and they gave me training for other jobs in different Places where they felt that I was good enough to handle another Responsibility eventually I actually was able to operate a forklift and they let me do that and as I got in there I got to go up and down and then I got to take pallets off and and take it around and I got better better And then finally my my last year that I worked there I actually was one of the shipping guys and I was able to get it out now I want to parallel what I went through in the jobs the various jobs that I had with what we're going to read today in Ephesians chapter 4 because in Ephesians chapter 4 we're going to find that we're all given different gifts and different roles and different jobs Also the ministry can get out just like in my job at Granger if I did my part Everybody else did their part then the customer would receive what was meant to be happening that company had a mission This church has a mission and God is at work in our church And we've been in this series where we've been talking about how in an isolated world together is better than alone Say that with me in an isolated world together is better than alone and just as we have each week I've got a kind of a living room set up here on the platform But the idea for us is is that we've been gathering together in groups around the city and Some of us in restaurants other of us virtually even and gathering together to spend time Looking at the Word of God discussing it and moving from monologue to dialogue and actually talking about it and Paul is speaking to the church through this letter from from prison and he's challenging the church and Ephesus to See each other not only see Jesus and what he's done and that becomes one form of we But it's it's also to see we as a body of believers We need each other turn the person actually say I need you and And so, reminder that as we We're sitting in a living room, and I've got some help today. Val and Donovan, Grant are gonna be here. Not all of them are gonna read.

I just shout you out and thank you for helping. Would you give it for my friends for helping me out today? (audience applauds) And we're gonna start off with Ephesians chapter four, starting with verse number one. Who's got this, Val? "Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God." - You have been called by God. Now Paul again says I'm a prisoner of the Lord, which means he's not in the room, but he's sending a letter, and he says I want you to lead a life worthy of your calling. He's calling them up, not calling them out. He's reminding them, and he's begging them. Now when someone begs you, it means it's really important to them. And in this case, it's really important to Paul that the church in Ephesus lives up to something that they're called to. Now what is a calling? I'm not gonna go into a full teaching on that this morning. Other than to say this, we're all called to the voice of God. When he came along and he whispered into your soul, and you said yes, and you began to turn and follow him, that's a calling. Jesus did this with his disciples when he would come along and the fishermen were in their boats. He'd say to them, "Come and follow me."

And then it was up on their choice of whether or not to follow Jesus. And so they got up and they followed him. So what Paul is referencing is the calling is also following the voice, that calling. Now there are assignments that come out of that, and part of that is first to understand when Paul is speaking, he's not speaking just to individuals, he's actually speaking to the church. And in the church, the church also has a calling collectively together. We are called to be light in the middle of darkness, salt and light. Jesus used those words in Matthew chapter five. But as a church, we're not just to be in the city and have nothing to do, but we have a calling. Not just I have a calling, but we have a calling, and he's saying, "Don't forget who called you." And I would just like to say this under the sound of my voice today, every single person here is here because God called you. Now some of you have a drug problem, you got drug to church. Somebody else brought to you. But the Holy Spirit is at work pulling you in. And the Holy Spirit does that at different levels and different layers, but even as all of us are called to be together today, did you know that not only do you as an individual have that unique experience, but we have a calling.

God wants us to do something. He has an assignment for us, and in verses two and three, we're gonna discover how we can live a life worthy of the calling that God has for us. Many of us, we live up to our own standard. But how many know God has a bigger, higher standard? That to live up to what God is calling us to be, we're gonna have to do certain things. So Donovan, once you've got verse number two. - Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other's faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. - I love this verse, and I just wanna walk through how we do this, okay? So when it says, always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other's faults because of your love. Now, we'll go on here, but he's saying, if you're gonna live up to your calling, it's gonna have to require a relationship with other people. So it's not just you memorizing enough scripture, you personally being holy, you personally having all of the righteousness yourself, you can't live up to your calling without other people. And when you live up to the con, there's some attitudes and behaviors here that are required in order for you to live up to that. You'd be humble and gentle and patient with each other.

This is interesting because for all of us, we're not tested when we're in church and we're worshiping God and there's great unity in the room. Where we're tested was on the weighted church today. I won't ask for a show of hands on how many of you had an argument already today. lives in that space. If you're going to be who God has called you to be and living unity, then it's gonna require humility and gentleness and patience with each other, making allowance for each other's faults because of your love. Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 13 that love keeps no record of wrongs, right? So if he's saying that, he's saying, okay, you're gonna have some wrongs, but you're gonna have to fill the gap of their bad behavior with grace. Somewhere along the way, you're gonna need to make an allowance shifting in the accounting columns of your checkbook of your heart. You guys don't all know what a checkbook is anymore. I just realized that I was just thinking like, who even has a checkbook anymore? In your phone app where you have columns for, now the reality is that we're going to have to adjust how we deal with each other and what we do with their faults. Our world is used to point out everybody else's faults and holding them to their faults for the rest of their life.

But in the kingdom of God, there's grace that covers over. And as believers, because we wanna grow in our calling and live up to our calling, then we are gonna have to learn to deal with other people's mistakes and other people's sins towards us. We're gonna have to figure this out. And he says, "Make every effort to keep yourselves "united in the spirit, "binding yourself together with peace." I would just say this, regard to what Paul is talking about. He just knows people. Even in the church, in the church, there are people that chest. Does anybody ever read somebody else's post and they're a Christian and they made you mad? I mean, it's actually easy to get frustrated. So you're gonna have to make every effort. You're gonna have to put some effort in it if you're gonna retain unity. In the church, in relationships, in your family, in your core connectedness, you're gonna have to work on it. And you can't just let it just happen to you or wait for the other person to take the first step. It's gotta be, no, we gotta do this together. It doesn't happen easily. Does anybody here ever lost unity

in a key relationship in your life? What did that feel like? What did that do to everything else? What did that do to your team? What did that do to your family? What did that do to perhaps the church you were in? You got to contend for unity. Okay, let's go on to verse number four. - For there is one body and one spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and father of all, who is overall, in all, and living through all. - Paul's now beginning to talk specifically to the Christians in Ephesus, and it has every parallel with today in 2026 for us. He's beginning to isolate what we should believe in and what we shouldn't believe in. Because in the pagan culture of Ephesus, there were so many different religious beliefs, multiple gods all around them, and different belief systems with how you handle ethics and economy, how you handle personal ethics, business ethics, all of those things. And there were a lot of opinions about people, well, you can follow Jesus, and you can follow this other God. And so Paul wants to kind of narrow the focus, and he says, there's one, everybody say one.

Now, one doesn't mean two, it doesn't mean 1.1, it means one, it's a whole number, there's nothing else around that, just one. There's only one body, he says, the body he's referring to is the church. There's only one, there's only one spirit, that's a capital S, holy spirit. I mean, you know, in our day and age, there's a lot of other spirits that people are dabbling into. It's not okay. So he's saying, nope, there's only one spirit. We go to the same holy spirit. We don't do spirit and Ouija boards. We don't do spirit, the holy spirit and the spirit. Are you hearing what I'm saying today? And then he says there's only one hope, one hope that has to do with what we all are looking forward to, not this moment and not the moments of our past. Thank you, Jesus, for our salvation. Thank you for what you've already done. But we collectively have one hope. There is a day coming at which we will be around the throne worshiping the Lamb of God and there will be no tears shed in that moment. There's not going to be a cry. There's not going to be a worry because everything will be complete. We all can look forward to the day that Jesus returns and calls us home. Come on, somebody. So there's one future that we all have. And then he says, "One Lord, that word Lord has to do with who has the authority to make decisions. Who gets to determine what I do with my body? Who gets to determine what I do with my money? Who gets to determine what I do with my time? For the believer, the believer, there is only one Lord. Only one. We submit it to him. That's why we have practices in the in the rhythm of disciplines of the church that just help us stay connected to the one Lord because there's a tug of war in the world. Everybody else wants to be the Lord. Your own belly and appetites want to be the Lord. But there is only one Lord. Come on, somebody. And this is one faith. Faith has to do with things that you're believing in and taking steps toward. Belief alone is not

faith. Faith is saying, "I not only believe that, but I'm moving toward that." We have one faith. That's it. We're not believing and something else. It's just belief in him. There's only one baptism. This is a really big deal. I had somebody ask me this after an early service. And they said, "Well, tell me about water baptism and where that fits." And there's so many different beliefs out there. But first of all, Jesus did it. Jesus was the first one to go and we can all follow the leader, right? But in the New Testament church, when a person would come to faith in Jesus, they would surrender to him. They would ask for forgiveness of sins. And then they would follow Jesus in the waters of baptism. It was preached everywhere they went and the New Testament church went. And when they would go down in the water, they would identify with Jesus in his death and they would come back up in his resurrection. But it was a statement also to everyone in their life that they are now connected to the family of God, that they are followers of Jesus. And now, all of the people that are in the church that have been baptized are all one baptism. We have all come together. The challenge is that in the ancient world, that there were baptisms to a whole lot of other things and other religions. There were baptisms into other sects and other religions. And so Paul, when he's writing, he's saying, "Listen, in Jesus there's only one baptism." That's it. Now, some of you were baptized when you were a little kid by a baby as a baby by your parents. And you're like, "Well, am I supposed to get baptized or not? My parents did it? I would just say this. I think that every adult or a person that's mature enough should follow in their own volition into the waters of baptism." It's not dishonoring your parents for what they did. It's actually fulfilling their desire at the beginning. So if you've never been water baptized and you've been holding off simply because you didn't know what to do with that, I would just say this, finish the race on this. One baptism. Follow Jesus, do it as an adult, and follow him. We've got baptisms on our app and you can go to our website and sign up for it if you need to. Finally, one God and one Father. Both those things are a big deal. Now, I would just say this. One God seems obvious, but there is only one God. But the word father actually throws a whole different wrench into some of the intercultural and interreligious debate that's going on in the world in conflict right now. People that follow Islam or people that follow other religions, they are okay with Christians being Christians. But when we start talking about God as father who had a son, that's where they get. That's where the distinction is. The distinction is why would God the Father send his It only makes sense in Jesus.

And so we gotta remember when we're intersecting with other religions, what the truth actually is. In a pagan, do what you want world, all paths lead to the same place, but not on the Jesus team. It's not all paths lead to the same place. There is only one way to the Father and it's through Jesus. John 14 says this, Jesus told them, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." No one can come to the Father except through me. Now, all that to be said, now we have to think about, well, we're only talking about the big church and we're only talking about we in this, no, unity in the church does not cancel out individuality. Unity does not mean conformity to everything or uniformity. There's distinctions and we're, all have different gifts and we have the ability to come together. In fact, let's go into verse number seven. Verse number seven. However, he has given each one of us a special gift through the generosity of Christ. That is why the scripture say, when he ascended to the heights, he led a crowd of captives and gave gifts to his people. Notice that it says he ascended. This clearly means that Christ also descended to our lowly world and the same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens so that he might fill the entire universe with himself. - So we've talked about the ones before.

Now it says he has given each one of us a special gift. So there's one God, one Father, one faith, one baptism, all of the ones, but now he shifts the language to you and I and he says each one of us has been gifted with something and we didn't earn it. In fact, some versions will say a grace. We've been graced with. That means we didn't earn anything, but he's given each one of us. And the team has a unified goal and they go for something under God, but the individual players have special parts, special gifts, special roles as well. And you and I need to understand that the things that Jesus did for us, it talks about in there that he ascended, he descended. I'm not gonna go deep into that today, except to say that in the spirit world, he went in and he went into hell and snatched the keys of death, hell in the grave. And he's in heaven, he owns it all. There's no like place that he's not Lord. He literally is Lord of all. And he led, it says in there, he led captives or like captives and gave his peace and his gifts to people. So he's giving things away. So in Jesus' death and resurrection, you need to understand it's not only about your salvation, it's also his purpose, his mission was to give you something, to give you a gift, and all of us have those gifts.

And Paul, like a coach to his team, talks about those gifts and how they're really a big deal for us. So verse number 11 says, - Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church, the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. - So he gives specific gifts, he says in verse 11, to the church. And so he's got apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers. These are gifts for the team. They're meant for the people. And he's talking about it's for the church. It's not to be ruled or served, but it's actually for the people. I've got a picture of a sideline with the Minnesota Vikings head coach and defensive coordinator and other coaches that are on the side with them. And if you look, they got headsets. They're showing that somebody had a holding call or something, the referees. I don't like the referees some games, to be honest with you. But if you'll notice the guys with headsets, they plan all year, they run practices, watch film, and their whole goal is not to play. These guys don't even play on the field. All they do is coach the players who are actually playing the game on the field.

This is exactly what Paul is talking about, these five gifts doing. They are here to help the team win. For you to win in the call of God that is on your life. And so it gives specific things, 'cause I don't have real long to go into this, but if you think about the pointer finger, the pointer finger is going to be the prophet. The prophet points things out, right? It's the prophet Nathan talking to David, King David, you are the man and calls him out. Prophets have an insight of something that God's mind is there, and it's not only for bad things, prophets can speak a right word at a right time, and this is the office. This is not to be confused with just being one that is used in prophecy, 'cause prophecy is a gift given where everybody can prophesy, and Joel, and it's quoted again in Acts chapter two. So, but the office of prophet is meant to speak to the church and give a right word at the right time. The next finger over, I'm gonna hold my hand together, fingers together here, is the middle finger, okay? The middle finger is the evangelist, okay? Now, and I've switched these up, so I'll use the one for, I'll switch prophet and pastor up to just pick on different gifts once in a while, but if the evangelist sticks out from all the others, it's the evangelist always notices

who everybody else doesn't notice. They're thinking about the people that aren't in church, they're thinking about the people that aren't here, they're wanting to go. And evangelists inspire the church to reach their friends. Now, even pastors are called to do the work of the evangelists at times. Paul told Timothy, do the work of evangelists. Even pastors are meant to challenge the people that go do your job in that way, okay? And then the next finger I wanna mention is the ring finger. The ring finger is the pastor, 'cause the pastor is married to the church. The pastor smells like the sheep, has to be with the sheep, understand? The pastor's married to the church. Then the pinky, the pinky is the teacher, 'cause they get in your ear. (audience laughs) They have a way of making things known, and then the thumb is the apostle, and the apostle pulls it all together. The apostle has the ability to pull the whole hand together to grip something. And so in the church world, those five things are meant to help the church win on the field, so to speak. It does not mean, or equal, that those five gifts are a paid church staff member.

That's a modern thing that we have. Not everybody was paid in the church world, and they have those five calling, those gifts. What was their job? Their job is, verse number 12. - Their responsibility is to equip God's people to do His work and build up the church, the body of Christ. - So their jobs are to focus on the body of Christ, to do what God has called them to do. Some versions say to do the work of the ministry. And the idea is that those gifts are functioned like those coaching staff on the Vikings are focused on you being who God has called you to be. To equip the gifted body of Christ to do the work of the ministry. To equip and prepare people to win on the field means that the gifts need upgrades at times. They need coaching. Every one of us need coaching. Every one of us need our gifts to be upgraded. And everyone is either a 4/11 person or a 4/12 person. You're either an Ephesians 4/11 person or you are an Ephesians 4/12 person. How long does this job last? How long are we supposed to do this for? I want you to go to verse number 13. - And this will continue until we all come to the such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's Son and that we will be mature in the Lord measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.

- All right, how long do we do it? We do it until, now look up at the scripture, says this will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith. We gotta be in unity, okay? And knowledge of God's Son that we will be mature in the Lord measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. I don't know what level of maturity you have in your faith right now. But I want to say the role of the Ephesians 4. but pastor, teacher, I'm gonna challenge you to measure up to what Christ's standard is and to pursue the design he has for you. I don't wanna call you out for bad behavior. I wanna call you up to who God has called you to be. How long does it last? Until we're there, and guess what? None of us will fully be there until Jesus returns. We haven't reached that standard yet. When the gifts to the church, the four 11, and the people of God, the four 12 are functioning together, then verse number 14 happens. Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won't be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ,

who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly, as each part does its own special work and helps the other parts grow so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. Now, man, this is so good, you guys, this text. But tell me this isn't about 2026, right? Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won't be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. How much new teaching is out there on your TikTok? Your Instagram feed. And it's confusing, right? Says we will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. We need to be careful. Let me just say this, this whole promise of not being tricked comes from a place of connectedness. If we are connected as the body and the 411 is doing its job and the 412 is doing its job, then when those things are going on on your phone or you're hearing friends talk a certain way, you'll recognize this isn't something's not right about this. And then you'll also have spiritual authority to bring that to out of relationship and say, is this God or not? I don't understand it. And the body connected prevents us from being deceived.

This is such a big deal for us. And then it says instead we will speak the truth in love growing in every way more and more like Christ who is the head of his body. Instead we will speak the truth in love. We've got to know the truth in order to share the truth. If you don't know the truth, you need to keep reading the truth. I promise you, I will go first by first in this thing. I promise you I'm not going to hide anything but I can't get hungry for you. You've got to do some of the study. This is why in a context of groups it's a big deal. If we can do this together, then we will grow up and immature things won't become a part of our life. Only mature people recognize when there's immaturity. Immature people don't even see it. So as we grow together, no longer immature, not tossed and blown by every wind of new teaching, people are going to hear from us and we're going to speak the truth but how are we going to do it? We're going to speak the truth in love. That's what's different. Sometimes we have facts that are shared like a sword that hurts people. But in the kingdom of God, we speak the truth in a way that truly loves people, parents loving their children.

Don't let your kids get away with things, train them up in the way they should go. And sometimes I mean you're discipling them and they don't feel loved at the moment but how many know the Lord disciplines those he loves. But we're doing it with the voice of love, not the voice of anger. (gentle music) I really believe this. There is a promise if we are connected to the body of Christ, the 411 people doing their job, equipping the 412 and the 412 are dialed in and doing their job. We won't be deceived, we'll be filled with love and the connected body will be doing the work of the ministry. Turn to the person next to you and say do your job. Do your job. Not do your job. I'm doing my job, please do your job. That's what it is. Say, I'm gonna take my responsibilities, the 411, the call of God, assigned to the church. There's all kinds of pressure nowadays for pastors to be more than pastors. That somehow they've got to be everything else. And even in the church, there's an ease to let the pastor do everything. Let the pastor handle everything, especially in a smaller church community.

Sometimes the pastor does everything. They're the preacher, they're the finance person, they're the person that does hospital calls, they're the people that handles everything and they're burning out. That doesn't work. And in our church, I can't do everything and I'm not called to do everything. I'm only called to equip you to do the work of the ministry. And so we've built in things like our advisory elders in our bylaws. The advisory elders are spiritual leaders from outside our church that advise us and quality important times, much like apostles would. They're not telling us what to do, but they're covering for us. I need to be under a covering. We've got people on our board that look at the finances every month and we have a treasurer and we've got people that are in the finance department doing that work because they have a gift to do that. I can't do that. And if I did, and there's a lot of preachers that have tried to do that and they've gotten in trouble doing that, I'd rather keep me out of that trouble, please, right? So we've got kind of a system built in that we have pastoral staff in each of our locations working with our leadership of the church

because really it's the people of God that are called to do the work of the ministry. It's you team, Emmanuel. It's you that are connect group leaders. It's you that do the work of the ministry and you're on the prayer teams. It's you that steps up and ministers to other people. My job isn't your job. And don't ask me to do your job because I'm tired doing my job. Just do your job. That's how it works. (congregation applauds) The 412 are the called by God to do his work in the world and in the church. Some people don't even know they have a gift. You can't go to work if you don't know what you're going to work to do. So you got to isolate and understand what is my gift? So we have growth track. It's a early stage way of looking at yourself and assessment and saying, what are my gifts? Well, find places that you can begin to serve so much like I did when I was picking orders. It's a starting point. When you go through growth track we can get you to the ministry in the church but it's not stopping there. You're far more than whatever it is that you do.

You have gifts that can grow and in relationship to other people. We want you to become everything God has called you to be. That's what we want. And I want you to be able to do your job but not just in church, also in the world. There are so many gifts that flow. If you read through Romans 12 there's a list of gifts that Paul gives leadership and hospitality serving other people. There's so many practical things. Not everybody is called to be a preacher. Hallelujah for that. We'd be all tired of hearing people that preset us, right? All of us need to step in and be what God has called us to be. And my ministry is not important than your ministry. Actually, I might be the one everyone sees every week but you are the one sent by God on mission to reach the world. You have a ministry in the church and in the world. Don't view yourself or your ministry gift is inferior. First Corinthians one. Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world's eyes are powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world. Things counted as nothing at all.

And use them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. Today, I'm calling on the body of Christ to do your job. Not someone else's role or calling, just humbly saying, "Lord, hear am I, use me." to receive the guidance of the gifts you send me. Today, God may be directing you to pray for someone in this service or in the lobbies. Be ready to do your job. The spirit may be stirring you to connect your ministry outside of the church, in the world to the church by receiving the equipping of the word. This might be for your Monday. And some of us have been deceived by influencers that sound good, but they're not connected to God's authority. And instead of, because you've got church heard or somebody uses it wrong, instead of withdrawing from the church and other believers, you may need to do the opposite and lean in. Don't disconnect, reconnect. Would you stand with me today, church? (gentle music) Today, we're gonna ask, in each of our locations, we're gonna ask our pastoral staff, elders, prayer teams to be ready to pray for the people of God. And this may feel odd, I don't know, if you've ever gotten out of your seat before, or you're just used to observing. But I'd like to ask the prayer teams and pastors come right now.

We also have some in the back of the balcony. We just humbly wanna pray for you, the people of God. We wanna pray that you would step up and live up to the calling of God on your life, that God would help you. And it doesn't matter what it is in whatever situation it's not always platformed public. Some, most of us are behind the scenes kind of people anyways. But we wanna pray for you. And on top of that, we wanna pray that God would anoint you to help other people. Not in the sanctuary, but out in the world. And you're like, I don't know how to get connected, Pastor Nate, you can take a connect card, fill out and say, I really wanna get connected, and hand it into me or one of our pastoral staff afterwards. Let's get serious about it. In the body of Christ, what is our role? What are we gonna do? How do we do it? And we're gonna pray for you. And we believe something special happens when we do the word of God. When we do what Ephesians 4, 11 and 4, 12 says, these people up front here, they're called of God for you. They don't have their Vikings stuff on right now, but that's a cool thing. They're not called to do Kevin O'Connell's job. They're not called to do some other coach's job. They're called to coach you, to care for you,

pray for you, believe. And a blessing comes when we call on the elders of the church. It says in James 5, 13, are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of you happy? You should sing praises. Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven. Today, we're going to worship. We're going to sing a song. But if you would, if you can make a personal altar, if you want, wherever you're at, and you're just saying, Lord, I want to accept the gift, the calling of my life. But I really want to double-dog dare you, challenge you to take that next step and go and just say, would you pray for me? Then we don't need to do long prayers. There's a lot of people here, so we'll try to do as fast as we can. But if we want to pray for the called ones, pray for you, pray that God would anoint you to be who He's called you to be,

you would feel the support, and you would not be immature, and you would not become a victim of people who are trying to trick you, but that you would have a mindset of Christ and your maturity would grow in such a way that God would use you in the ministry for the world around you. I'm going to pray, we're going to sing, and then it's on you what your response will be at this moment. Father, I just thank you. I thank you for what your word says. I thank you that your word works. I thank you, Lord, that in this day and age of so many different voices, and people calling out other people and confusion about the word of God, we don't need to be confused in the family of God, because Lord, you have put together the church. You've assigned four 11 leaders to work with four 12 people that are called of you, and I pray, O God, that we would be everything that you have called us to be. But we live up to the calling that is in our life. We will not live at average, but we be who you've designed us to be. We pray in Jesus' name.