Find James, chapter one in your Bibles. Before we get there, I want to do a couple of things. My name is Trevor Davis. I'm GCC's pastor. If you're a guest, thanks for coming today.

When God decided to judge his people in the Old Testament for running after other gods and being unfaithful to him, eventually he sent them to Babylon. They left the promised land by force and they had their homeland stolen away. And they went into captivity in Babylon. And that was God's judgment. And today, even in the United States of America, where we began, a nation with a Christian worldview, and the argument was going to be, which kind of Christian are you going to be?

Not, are you going to be one? And we've gone from there to now. All of our government institutions are Babylon. They're all under God's judgment. They are all idolatrous.

And that includes our schools, our public education. And so this week, I'm born and raised Olive Branch. My mom retired as a schoolteacher with desoto County Schools. I went through desoto county schools. I'm grateful for what it used to be, but now it's more Babylonian.

But I want you to know that there's hope. Because even in Babylon, God put Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in a foreign land, away from the temple, away from all the ways they worshiped, away from their parents. And he kept a remnant of believers faithful to him, even when it was hostile around them. And so what's getting ready to happen? When I was a kid in elementary school, summer break lasted from just before Memorial Day.

And we went back to school just after, what, Labor Day? Kids, we used to have 33% more summer break than you got. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. Alright, so that was that.

And so, I mean, we were out so long in the summer, we were ready to go back to school. But for the first time in my life, students go back to school in July, this Thursday. And also going back into our government schools are Christian teachers, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednegos and Daniels. And so I'm grateful for you. And our church has lots of people that work in the school system.

So I wanted just to take a moment before school starts and have a special prayer for you. So if you're a teacher, a teacher's assistant, an administrator, you work at the schools, will you stand to your feet so we can thank God for you and pray for you today? Just stand up where you are. Anybody in here, there's going to be a bunch in the Second service. There's one Jenny Ruth back there.

Anybody else? There's Tim. Okay. Are you a resource officer, Tim? You're kind of important.

Yeah. There we go. There you are. Four or five. First of all, let's thank God for these folks right here.

See, what I want to say to you is, even though our government institutions are godless, God hasn't left them. God forsaken. He put you there. And so I don't think you need to expect that you're going to bring a countywide revival on the first day of school. What we're going to pray for you is that you live such a consistent testimony day in and day out, not perfectly, but faithfully this whole year that by the end of the school year, everybody that's been in your class, everybody that's met you, knows there's something different about you.

And his name is Jesus. So we're going to pray for you now. And I'm just going to. I'm going to say a quick word. Normally, I would have some people come over there and lay their hands on your shoulder.

But what I want to challenge you teachers to do, and also the students is after church is over and we have prayer ministry, I want to just challenge you to come forward for prayer ministry and ask the prayer team to pray for you and your testimony and your walk with God. And in the 25, 26 school year, take that step of faith and nail it down. But right now, our church is going to pray for you. So let's bow in prayer and ask God. God bless these believing teachers and assistants and resource officers and principals and assistant principals and cleanup crew and everybody in our church who knows you that works for the schools.

God, I pray that. I pray it's the best year they ever have. Shining the light of Jesus. And I pray you give them success. God, make them good at their job.

Let the test scores go up. Let the impact they make increase. God, fill them with your compassion. They see the real world coming in and out of their classrooms and walking up and down their halls. Lord, I know that these men and women are heartbroken over the terrible home lives of the students that they get so attached to.

God, I pray you'd turn it into prayers. God, I pray you turn it into faith. I pray you turn it into Bible verses quoted without even referencing the addresses in the Bible. God, bring the wisdom of God into those classrooms through these that are standing, that are your servants. God, I pray you'd protect them.

I pray you protect their home life, God, their families, their marriages. Their children. God bless them. And Lord, I pray that they won't get discouraged. God, you give them strength for the journey.

And Lord, I pray that they start well, they continue on and they finish well this school year, Lord. And Lord, I pray that they know your presence. And I pray that students come to Christ because of the influence and the testimony of their teachers. We pray this Lord, in Jesus name when a faith filled church said Amen. Hey, you're heroes.

We'll give you one more round of applause. Awesome. Awesome. Well, today is part eight of our summer series that's only eight parts long. So I'm finishing it today verse by verse through James chapter one.

Let me just say that as I've expounded, I've expounded these scriptures for you and if you've been bored the whole time, look, I know I'm not that bad. So if you've been bored with the verse by verse teaching of the scriptures, I think it's an indicator that the Holy Spirit is trying to get your attention because the Spirit of God loves the word of God and the spirit of God is in you. If you're a believer, you should be feeling fed by the expository preaching of the word of God. And so I just want to challenge you on that. And today we.

Look, I'm going to start a new series next week. You know what I'm going to do in that series? I'm going to teach you the Bible some more. Is that okay? It's not going to be verse by verse through a book.

We're going to do some stuff. But today, do you have a heart to hear? Do you have ears to hear and a heart to receive God's word? Our series has been called Tried and True Faith under Fire. And today the text is the last three verses of James 1:25 through 27.

I want to give you a sermon I call real, compassionate and clean. And our text reads this. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does. If anyone among you thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his own heart, this one's religion is useless, pure and undefiled. Religion before God and the Father is this to visit orphans and widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

Brothers and sisters, the Word of God. Let me ask you a question. What if no one could hear the words you say? About your faith. They could only watch how you live.

No verse on your bumper, no social media post that you've attached a Christian song to. No Sunday best church outfit with a photo of your family in the lobby of your church. Just your everyday habits on display. Would they see Jesus or would they just see someone surviving the chaos of earth like. Like everybody else who doesn't know the Lord.

You see, James isn't asking what you believe in our text today. He's asking what your life proves. In our text that we just read, we are handed a street level blueprint for the real deal kind of faith. Not performance, not ritual, but a faith that shapes your habits, a faith that governs your words and a faith that guides your walk. Well, I'm going to give you a list of four things in my sermon outline today.

Four marks of authentic boots on the ground Christianity. Four instructions from James, the Lord's brother, as we finish chapter one of his letter. Are you ready? Number one. James tells us, stare into the mirror and then step into the mission.

Here's verse 25. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, circle that in your Bible and is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work. This one will be blessed in what he does.

Is God's word meant to be a coffee table decoration in your house?

No, it's both a mirror and marching orders. If you want to know God's will, here it is. If you want to know what he wants for you, want to know what he thinks about you, if you want to know what you're supposed to think about him, all contained in the 66 books of the Bible. It shows us who we are and it sends us into who we're becoming.

So it's a mirror and a mission. Now let me ask you a question. Does a mirror fix your face when you look into it?

Do you wish that it did? No. It shows what needs to be fixing. And James says that when you look into the Scriptures, it's a mirror. It shows you what needs to be fixed if we walk away without changing.

After looking into God's word, after hearing clear sermons week after week, after going to small group and having the truth of the Bible applied directly to our lives, James says we've got spiritual amnesia. Our minds are deteriorating. So the question is, are you using the word like a mirror that corrects and confronts or are you using God's word like a museum piece that you admire from a distance and you're just glad it's contained? Somewhere James says, if we're not letting the truth change our actions and adjust our attitudes, then we're just playing dress up with it. Hebrews reminds us in the New Testament that the mirror that James describes is no dead object.

It's alive. Hebrews 4:12. Do you know this verse? For the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two edged sword.

So the word doesn't just reveal our blemishes, it cuts through the excuses and it also exposes what's real. Let me tell you a story, tell you a story about a man who lived in the 1800s and changed the world. His name was Charles Finney, and he wasn't always a revivalist, though he wasn't always someone who preached. And large crowds gathered and they went away changed. Although that did happen later.

But he started out as a hotshot young lawyer. He was confident in his reasoning and his logic, but he was not confident in the Lord. One day he sat alone in his law office with an open Bible on his desk. And he had been reading the Bible not out of Curie. He had been reading the Bible out of curiosity.

What is this thing about? Not out of any commitments he had made to it. But that day was different. As Charles Finney read the scriptures that morning, the words on the page gripped him. The spirit of God swept over him like a wave of the sea.

I have a book called they Found the Secret. And it's like 40 stories of Christian people that God used in a mighty way. And they all had an experience like this. It's the secret, the word. The spirit swept over him and this wave was heavy.

It was holy. By the way, the word for God's glory in the Old Testament, kavod means weighty or heavy. God's glory is heavy. It's undeniable. And Finney later wrote, and I quote, that he wept out loud like a child that morning.

Nobody around. He was overwhelmed by a sense of God's presence and a sense of his own sin. Friends, has this ever happened to you? It's the secret. There was no altar call at the law office that day.

There's no choir music. There was no emotional hype. It was just the word of God doing its deep surgical work, plowing through the fallow ground of a hardened heart of a smart, successful man.

Charles Finney made a famous quote, and I'll give it to you right now. He said, the Holy Spirit seemed to go through me body and soul. Indeed, it seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love. End quote. That encounter changed everything.

Finney walked into that room a well dressed skeptic. He walked out of that room and a man who had put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Clothed in the righteousness of Jesus and consumed with God's glory and a burden for lost souls. That's what happens when the mirror of the word of God becomes a window into your heart, beckoning you into the mission. That encounter lit a fire in Charles Finney that never burned out.

He became one of the most influential evangelists of the 19th century. Over a half a million people confess their faith in Jesus Christ through the preaching of the Gospel of Charles Finney. His revivals shook cities. He is known by his bold gospel message as one of the people who helped ignite what's called the second Great Awakening in America. That's the power of the word of God when it moves from mirror to mission.

Have you had waves and waves of liquid love pour over you? Have you had the spirit of God poured out in your hearts? Stare into the mirror and then step into the mission.

That's number one. Here's number two. James says, tame your tongue or trash your testimony.

Verse 26. If anyone among you thinks he's religious and does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his own heart, this one's religion is useless. Well, that's kind of in your face, isn't it? Hey, if you're not doing it and it's not happening for you, it's all worthless. James says your words reveal your worship, friends.

If you're saved and baptized, it matters how you talk.

He's not talking about a few slip ups here and there. He's talking about a lifestyle where your tongue runs wild. He says there's no evidence that the Holy Spirit's moved in your life. If you, if what you say and how you say it didn't change once you met Jesus and were converted. You can sing loudly on Sunday, but let your words wreck people Monday through Saturday.

And if that's you, James says your religion is noise, it's not truth. And look, we've all heard people excuse this. They go, look, this is just the way I am. I just speak my mind. What you see is what you get and you just have to to live with it.

This is the way I am. You know, the whole Bible says that the way you are is not good enough for God. Like the way you are hung Jesus on a cross. So look, I don't want to be the way I was. I want to be the way God makes me.

Like Jesus if your mouth is unchecked, your religion is a wreck. That's what James says. Or another way to express it. Spiritual noise is not the same thing as spiritual maturity. You know, you can pray eloquent prayers, you can open your home to lead Bible studies under your roof.

You can quote scripture fluently. But if your speech tears down more than it builds up, James says, something's way off.

It's not how loud you pray, it's how carefully you speak that reveals real faith. You know, the people who need Jesus may never see your church attendance because they don't go to church. But they hear your tone in every conversation. They know whether or not the spirit of God has made you gentle.

Let me say it a different way. Your tongue is your testimony.

An unbridled tongue is a billboard for fake faith. James is saying you need to look. Because if there's a disconnect between how you present yourself in public and how you talk in private, the gap is the truth.

And I don't want you to understand James 1:26 as a verse that is telling you to shut up. It's not a mute button verse. This isn't about talking less, it's about speaking life. And there's a difference. When the spirit of God has control of your heart, then he also takes the reign of your tongue, too.

I guess what I'm saying to my church today is Christians must use their words differently than anyone else. Do you know Ephesians 4:29? Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth. But what is good for necessary edification, the NIV says, but only what will build others up.

How did you do with Ephesians 4:29 this week?

True or false? Our words should build, not break.

True or false, our words should edify, not erode. If it doesn't help someone grow, you probably shouldn't say it. That's James. Point. General Robert E. Lee, American hero, was once asked for a reference about another lesser ranking officer who had been known to publicly slander General Lee.

Lee responded about this man with kindness and honesty, gave him a glowing recommendation. When someone asked General Lee why, hey, don't you know what that guy's been saying about you? Here's what General Lee said. They asked me what I thought of him, not what he thinks of me.

That's what a bridled tongue looks like. Tame your tongue or trash your testimony. James says, that's number two. Number three. Am I going too fast for you?

Good. Number three. James says, love the ones the world overlooks.

The first part of James 1:27. Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is to visit orphans and widows in their trouble.

Friends, real faith walks toward brokenness, not away from it. To visit widows and orphans in their trouble. Orphans and widows represent in the Bible the most vulnerable people in society, the ones with no advocates, the ones with no security, the ones with no defense, no backup, no safety net. And hey, isn't this a beautiful verse? Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this to visit orphans and widows in their trouble.

Isn't that pretty? But let me tell you something. James is not being a poet here.

This is no metaphor. When he says, to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, he is calling us to step into their mess. I wasn't at the Warrior center on Thursday night five minutes before the first lady told me her story, and it's a doozy. I want to believe it, but it is out there. She said her friend sold her out.

Her girlfriend sold her out to a guy, drug dealer, guy that she knows, who grabbed her and kept her and beat her, like, senseless for six days and until she escaped. She said, he didn't sexually assault me. He just used me as a punching bag. I went for drugs and he went for violence. And she said, he knocked out my top four teeth.

And then she showed me and they weren't there. I said, well, how long ago was this? She said, like two months ago. She says the bruises have healed. And she said, but more than the bruises.

She said, jesus healed me.

I thought I was going to minister to her.

She reversed it.

There's lots of horror stories out there, but the best stories are the horror stories that get rescued by Jesus. And I heard some on Thursday night. You walk into the mess. Real faith doesn't wait for a scheduled serve day from the church. It notices.

It shows up. It inconveniences itself. Did you know you can have a D theology in a big old Bible, but if it never takes you into broken places, James says, you're missing the point.

James says, what about those people who get overlooked by culture? God calls them VIPs. They matter to him. By the way, Isaiah saw this, too, in the old testament. Isaiah 1:17, he said, Learn to do good, seek justice.

Rebuke the oppressor. Hey, the best way to rebuke the oppressor in our culture is to vote against them. Rebuke the oppressor. Defend the fatherless. Plead for the widow.

Everybody say, defend the fatherless. Everybody say, plead for the widow. Listen, there's a biblical definition for an orphan. And it's different from the way we define orphans. The way we define orphans is you've lost both of your parents, right?

That's modern culture's definition for an orphan. That is not the Bible's definition for orphan. Fatherless is the definition for orphan in the Bible. The biblical definition for orphan is a child with no father. Because most everywhere in the world, except here in the very wealthy west, if you lose dad, you lose it all.

You lose your ability to have food on the table and have a table and have a roof over your head and be clothed. You lose all your physical protection and defenses. Somebody's gonna steal your mom and, and sell her into slavery, and they're going to do the same with the kids. This is planet earth everywhere, except basically us. So a biblical orphan is somebody that doesn't have a father.

Let that sink in for a second.

Now, I want you to think about the world around you now that you know that the biblical definition for an orphan is someone without a father. Did the number of orphans around you just increase?

The best expression of pure religion might not be on a stage up here, but it's probably going to be in a quiet moment when no one else is watching. When you foster a child and you give them a dad, when you bring groceries to a widow because it was really hard for her to get out and do it herself. When you sit at the hospital and hold the hand of somebody that's dying, love the one the worlds. Love the ones the world overlooks. Hey, and I'm a preacher and I know things.

Which means when there's a verse about orphans, I have to talk about George Mueller.

So let me tell you about him. George Mueller was a man who didn't just talk about faith. He lived it with open hands and knees bent in prayer. In 1836, when he opened his first orphan house in Bristol, England, George Mueller had almost no money and zero backing and support from the community. But he did have one thing.

He had this unshakable conviction. If God cares for the vulnerable, then God would provide. So Mueller never made public appeals for money. He never said, hey, look, see these poor orphans over here that I'm housing and feeding? Would you help me?

Not one time. He didn't send out letters asking for support. He didn't put any posters on the walls in the streets. He never did it. The only person he asked was God.

He didn't pass the plate. He prayed. And again and again, when you read his biographies, God just brought the stuff that was needed to house the orphans and feed them. Often in the nick of time. He would have a milk cart or a train carrying dairy products.

The milk cart would break down in front of the orphanage or the train would break down right outside and the stuff on the train would spoil. The only time you had left was enough time to get it to the orphans 100 yards away. God did that for him over and over again.

Bread would arrive at the door in the morning. It was needed. People asked George Mueller, how do you feed hundreds of children with no guaranteed income? That's what everybody wanted to know. Mueller would smile and say one thing every time.

It is not really all that insightful. It's true.

He would say, the Lord is faithful. That's all he would say. You see, to him, orphans were not a cause. They were children with names and stories and dignity. And over his lifetime, George Mueller cared for over 10,000 of them.

Not because he was efficient. You can't make taking care of orphans efficient. Not because it's easy. You always run out of house parents. He did it because real religion moves toward those that are in trouble.

Love the ones the world overlooks. From the Old Testament to the New, God always had his eyes on the margins and he calls his people to do the same. John wrote about this first John 3, 17, 18. But whoever has the world's goods and sees his brother in need and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? Let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.

Number four on our list today. Stay clean in a polluted culture. James says.

Here's the second part of James 1:27 and to keep oneself unspotted from the world, let me say something to you. If you spent your whole life caring for widows and orphans and you didn't care about your testimony and you didn't keep yourself from being polluted from the world, you. You wouldn't go to heaven when you die. James isn't saying caring for widows and orphans is how you become a Christian. He's saying those who become Christians care for those that are vulnerable.

And they don't walk in the filth of the world. They keep themselves unspotted. It all goes together. So James isn't calling us to isolation in this verse. He's calling us to distinction.

Is James telling us we ought to run away from the culture?

The answer is no. He says we rise above the culture by influencing it for the gospel. That's one of the reasons I wanted to Pray for the teachers earlier today and go, you know, in a dark place, God's sending you in as a light. We are salt and light. Jesus said light exposes and light sanitizes.

Salt preserves and salt irritates and agitates. And a church that follows Jesus does all of that. But here I want to ask this question as I close this message today to finish this up. How do we get polluted? If true religion, we keep ourselves unspotted from the world, how do we get dirty?

Well, number one, it starts when we consume without filtering.

A hole in the ground popped up in the last week or so between a church building in my neighborhood and a warehouse. There's a little strip of grass. It's about 6 or 8ft wide, and it runs about 800ft parallel with Polk Lane. And I walk by there every morning. The other day I noticed ground, and the next day I noticed water bubbling up.

And the next day I noticed it was sewage. Raw sewage. Amen. Hallelujah. I get to walk by that and gag, right?

And then I noticed that the people that cut the grass now, they mow around the sludge. And so the grass is all except right in the middle. Now. It's like a Mohawk, right in the grass. I look for the Mohawk and it's just gross.

It's raw sewage.

Listen, we walk in raw sewage spiritually every day. It's the culture, it's the world system. It's this doomed planet we're on without Jesus. We walk in it and we don't have to get all of this stuff on us. We don't have to consume it.

You need some holiness preaching from your preacher. Every now and then you scroll and stream and binge things that preach a different gospel. And this different gospel that you scroll and stream and binge says, sin is normal, holiness is weird, and self is king. But the Bible says sin will kill you. Holiness is necessary, and Jesus is king.

It's a different gospel, and we watch it and celebrate it and say, did you see this show? Did you go to that movie? Listen to this song. After a while, your spiritual taste buds dull. What once grieved us now entertains us.

Paul's words echoed loudly here because we're spotted by the world. He says in Ephesians 5:11. Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.

But instead of exposing them, we sometimes laugh along with them. We consume without filtering. I was a radical believer for the first three or four years after I got saved. You know what helped me stay radical? I stopped Listening to the world's music.

What went in my ears, in my eyes and in my mouth changed and holiness mattered. And I found out it's more entertaining to walk in the presence and the power of God than anything Hollywood can entertain me with. Has that happened to you? Filtering. Where is it?

How are you going to do James 1:27b? Keep yourself unspotted from the world if you don't start filtering what you consume. And then there's the tone that we adopt. It is easy to let the world train your tongue. And here's how you know if the world has trained your tongue.

You're always sarcastic, you're always joking, snarking, slanderous, and you're mad at politics all the time. You can get out of all that. You can get close to God and fellowship with Him. We get so used to the noise of hot takes and cancel culture that our words sound more like the crowd than they do our Christ. James would raise an eyebrow and ask this question.

Can a spring send forth fresh water and salt water from the same opening? Now we'll get there. That's James, chapter three. There's the tone we adopt. And number three.

This also pollutes us. The most dangerous one of all. We just get numb to it. We're just used to all this. This is just normal now.

What used to bother us doesn't bother us anymore. We wink at what we once wept over. And the grime, the sludge, the raw sewage coming up out of the ground has become familiar. But James says, keep yourself unspotted because even a small stain distorts the message of a holy God. The wisdom writer in the Old Testament says, it's the little foxes that spoil the vines.

It's the little things that are going to wreck your testimony, not the big ones.

We just get numb to it all. Being pure in our culture is not being narrow minded. Say Amen.

It is being powerful. It says, I belong to someone else. I wish I had time to preach on sexual purity this morning. I've been thinking about that. I think the Lord's drawing me to preach about that to the church because I don't think anybody else is saying it in the culture.

I think that living with your boyfriend or girlfriend has just become normal and expected instead of. Do you realize you're quenching the spirit in your life? If you're a Christian, you've destroyed your testimony and you're worldly and now it looks like that you've never met God. Do you know that? Or if it's Just normal.

You just sleep with your college girlfriend or boyfriend or high school. That. That's what everybody's doing. I got to get my body count up. Do you understand?

That's wicked and defrauding. Who's saying it? And I'm wondering if there are parents that are going, I just got to mitigate it until they get married. I just got to help them not get pregnant. And I wonder.

I wonder if there's confessing Christian parents that have taken their daughters to abortion clinics to take away the embarrassment of them and become murderers with them.

Too much unspotted from the world. If the church doesn't raise the biblical standard, no one will. Let me say it this way. You can't make a difference if you stopped being different.

Stay clean. In a polluted culture, how can you shine if you're soaked in a sludge? Everyone else is. Holiness starts in your heart, but it spills out into your habits. It's more than avoiding sin.

It's about actively pursuing the character of God. You become like what you worship. If you become a worshiper of God, you'll become like God. And that means you can't worship yourself and the world's goals for you anymore. The call to be unspotted is not.

Some never cross either. It's not about pretending to be perfect. It's about resisting the gravitational pull of a world that is racing away from God.

In other words, if you blend in with the world, don't be surprised when no one sees Christ in you.

In the 1800s, Pastor Horatius Bonner took a long, hard look at the church around him, and he said something that haunts me. He said, and I quote, I looked for the church and found it in the world. I looked for the world and I found it in the church.

That line still strikes like a lightning bolt 200 years later. What Bonner saw was a church that had lost its edge, believers blending in so well with the culture that no one could tell who followed Christ and who didn't. They were not keeping themselves unspotted from the world. And that's why James ends with this challenge. Stay clean.

Stay distinct. Don't let the mud of the world cling to you. Be in the world and clearly not of it. Look, I want them to know I'm different. Because if they know I'm different, they'll ask why?

And I'll say, it's Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

Paul agrees. Romans 12:2. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Okay, so for prayer ministry today, let me give you three ways you can apply this to your life immediately. If these statements are true for you. Come for prayer. Don't let the enemy steal this word before you leave. Number one, my words need a reset.

Come for prayer if you need the spirit to clean up your speech. At home, online, behind closed doors, God can heal what's been hurt. Number two, my heart's grown numb to people in pain. If you stop noticing the vulnerable and the hurting around you, let God stir up your compassion again. Come be prayed for about that.

And lastly, Pastor, I've let the world rub off on me. If compromise has crept in and you feel spiritually stained and weak, come and ask God to create a clean heart in you and wash you clean and set you apart again. He will say yes to that prayer. Well, that's my word for you today. Do you receive it?

There's a card in your seat. On the bottom it says, what's next for me? We haven't been having people take next steps lately, so I want to see if we can get some. I want to get to know people by joining a group. You want to be in our small group ministry?

It starts up in two or three weeks. Mark that box. I'm ready to trust Jesus. Some of you've been kicking the tires of Christianity and it's time for you to believe. Mark that box.

We'll get in touch with you. I want to rediscover my faith in Jesus. I've been away, but I feel God drawing me back to himself. Can you help me with that? I'm ready to be baptized.

Some of you believe, but you hadn't put on the jersey of Team Jesus yet, hadn't joined the team. I'm interested in membership. Can I just say quickly, if you come here all the time, it doesn't make me your pastor and it doesn't make our church your church. When you join a church, it's kind of like you take a wife. Like, we commit to you and you commit to us.

And I don't know if there's a long line of pastors knocking on your door every day saying, can I be your pastor? But in case there is, would you let me break to the front of the line today? I want to be your pastor. Our church wants you to be our church. Mark.

I'm interested in membership. That's enough. You think about those today. Let's stand and pray. Prayer team, come to the front, please.

Well, that was James, chapter one. Did it help you this summer?

I'll take four. That's good. As the prayer team's come, let's bow and pray today. Lord, so many decisions need to be made in this room. So many next steps.

We've heard so much from the word in three short verses. God, in our weakness, in our flesh, we're going to forget a lot of that. Would you help us to remember and apply exactly what you have for us today? God, empower these prayer ministry teams to encourage your church as they come for prayer afterwards. God bless our teachers this year in Jesus name and a faith filled church says see you Wednesday morning.