Now this morning, usually I take about a minute or two to introduce what I’m going to speak on and then I launch into it. This morning, I’m going to spend maybe 10 minutes on my introduction, and you’ll see why in a minute, but I think you’ll find what I share in this introduction to be unique and of real interest.

Last Tuesday, I did an interview on a podcast that Focus on the Family does. I don’t know if you’re familiar with them or not. It was really interesting. They wanted to interview me on the newest book, Reflections on the Existence of God, and we got into it and the guy that was interviewing me asked the question, what did I think was the most compelling evidence for the existence of God, and it was a great question. I said, well, I can give you about 10, but for time’s sake, let me just share three. The first was, I said the fine tuning of the universe. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that. There’s an essay in the book called Theism’s Strongest Argument, and basically, astrophysicists tell us that there are 122 variables that have to be dialed in perfect precision for the universe to even exist. 122.

I’ll give you an example of one that we’re all familiar with. The earth is 93 million miles away from the sun. If it was a couple of miles closer, we’d burn up. If it was a couple of miles further away, we would freeze to death, but we’ve been in perfect precision, the earth and the sun, for thousands and thousands of years. Even Richard Dawkins, who’s probably the most famous atheist alive today, Richard Dawkins and his friend, Christopher Hitchens, who is now deceased, both admitted, that’s a very difficult argument for us to contend with. We can’t explain it.

A second one, I told the guy that was interviewing me was, it comes from an essay in the book called The Irrationality of Atheism. It’s kind of like, the premise is, what C.S. Lewis gave as the reason he gave for abandoning atheism. He says it was one massive contradiction. He says, you can’t live with it. He says, it’s easy to say I don’t believe in God, but it’s hard to live as if it were true.

And then the third, I think, and maybe the most, the best evidence that we have for God, in my opinion, is Jesus, the person of Christ. You know, if I had to go into a courtroom and make an argument for Him being the Son of God, I would make four arguments. Now I’m taking, this is going somewhere, guys, so hang in here with me. The first I would say is this, the first argument is His impact on history. You know, H.G. Wells was one of the great historians to ever live. He was not a Christian. He was not a religious man, but he wrote a very prominent book called The Outline of History. I’ve seen it. It’s pretty thick, But in there he makes this statement. He says, “The historian’s test of an individual’s greatness is what did he leave to grow? Did he start men to thinking along fresh lines with vigor that persisted after him?” And he says, “By this test, Jesus stands first.” And then he says, “Christ is the most dominant figure in all of human history.”

Now think about that, guys. Here’s this man. He lived three years of public life. He lived in Palestine, which was really kind of the armpit of the vast Roman Empire. And yet, he ends up being the most dominant figure in all of human history. How in the world does that happen?

Second, the second argument I would make in a court of law is the evidence for the Resurrection. Now, scores of books have been written on this. There’s an essay in the book on this, but I get this from Dallas Willard, who was the head of the philosophy department at USC for years. And he says, you know, if you can get a skeptic, a religious skeptic who is open minded, who is seeking the truth, if you let him see the evidence for the Resurrection, he’s in trouble because it’s so convincing. It’s so compelling.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this. I think this it’s a pretty interesting statement; that Christianity is the only falsifiable religion in the world. In other words, the only religion in the world that depends on historical events for it to be true, because if you can prove that Jesus did not rise from the dead, Christianity is dead. The apostle Paul even admits that. If Christ didn’t rise, this is in I Corinthians 15. He says, if Christ did not rise, the Christian faith is worthless, and we are fools to be pitied in following it.

Now, this is what, I’ve shared this before at an Easter breakfast, but I just find this so interesting. There are a number of great scholars, a lot of them are historians, some of them, one of them was an attorney, one of them was an archeologist. I think they understood this. And I think they confidently believed, through studying the historical record, they could debunk the Resurrection. Now, if they could do that, think about what that would mean. I’m sure they also thought they’d be famous. I don’t know that, but you know, to basically destroy Christianity and basically, I know of six scholars who set out to try to do that. Josh McDowell, J.D. Anderson, Lee Strobel, Frank Morrison, Gilbert West, William Ramsey. They all confidently said, Ramsey spent 30 years doing this as an archeologist. And all six of them concluded, we can’t disprove it. And this is what’s so incredible. All six of them became Christians. All six of them became Christians. And I could read to you a number of what they said.

I want to read to you the words of Frank Morrison. Morrison was a very prominent lawyer in London. He prepared to write a book called Disproving the Resurrection. And after several years of completing his research, he said, he felt compelled. “I had to write another book”, a completely different book that’s become a classic. You can go buy it today on Amazon. It’s called, Who Moved the Stone. And what he did is he demonstrated using courtroom rules of evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. And he said, “There is no other explanation based on all of my research.”

But I want to read to you these words. These are the opening words of the book, Who Moved the Stone. He says, “This study is in some ways so unusual and provocative that the writer thinks it’s desirable to state here very briefly how the book came to take its present form. In one sense, it could have taken no other for it is essentially a confession. The inner story of a man who originally set out to write one kind of book and found himself by the sheer force of circumstances to write quite another. It’s not that the facts themselves altered for they are recorded imperishably in the monuments and in the pages of human history, but the interpretation to be put upon the facts underwent a change. Somehow the perspectives shifted, not suddenly as in a flash of insight or inspiration, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, by the very stubbornness of the facts themselves.”

Remember what I said a minute ago? Christianity is the only world religion where spiritual truth depends on the veracity of clearly defined and discoverable historical events and facts.

Third argument for Christ being the Son of God. And this is a powerful one, too, the fulfillment of Messianic prophecies. And I think most of you know that the Jewish faith depends, and it’s really built around certain prophecies of the coming Messiah that they’re waiting on. But it’s also at the very heart of the Christian faith because in the Old Testament, there’s a significant number of Messianic prophecies and Jesus fulfills all of them.

Now, let me give you two of my favorites and then I’ll move on into really the subject we’re going to talk about this morning. In Isaiah 9:6, written 700 years before Christ shows up, this is what it says. “For a child will be born to us. A son will be given to us, and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.”

So think about what it’s saying. He’s saying a son is going to be given to us. He’s going to come into the world, and we’re going to called him Mighty God. And then in Isaiah 53, it talks about He will be pierced through for our transgressions. He’ll be crushed for our iniquities. Our sins will fall on him.

I remember a guy that I worked with back in the insurance business. He was from Connecticut. He moved to Alabama. He grew up Jewish and he became a Christian. And I remember us having a conversation about this. And he said this, and he was not being condescending, he was not being self-righteous. He said it out of sadness. He said, my people are so blind. This is so clear. These Messianic prophecies.

Now the fourth argument I want to spend the balance of our time on, and you’ll see why in a minute. So how did, and this is a good question, how did Jesus become, as H.G. Wells put it, the most dominant figure in all of human history? How did He do that? Well, He didn’t do it because He had great wealth, like a Solomon. Jesus had no money.

He didn’t do it with power. He didn’t have a great army like King David did. And He didn’t have any great education. He grew up as a carpenter in Nazareth. In fact, it’s interesting, in Isaiah 53, it says He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, no appearance that we should be attracted. He wasn’t a good-looking guy that drew people to Him. He had nothing going for Him. And so, the question is, how did He become the most dominant figure in all of human history? And there’s a lot of answers to that, but you know what the heart of it is, He chose the path of humility.

Now our modern world doesn’t really get this. People don’t really understand what humility is, but I contend that Christ had made such a difference in this world because of the power of a humble life. I think He was the greatest leader to ever live because He was the most humble man to ever live.

Now, my guess, in a group of businessmen, and I know we’ve got coaches in here, we’ve got all different occupations, but probably the most popular, maybe the bestselling business book of all time was Jim Collins’ Good to Great. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. but he talks about good to great leaders and they’re level five leaders. They’re very unique and they’re very difficult to find. He says, they’re not driven by big egos. They never desire to be celebrities or to be put on a pedestal. He says, “Level five leaders build enduring greatness through the paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They’re a study in duality in that they are modest yet they’re very willful. They’re humble yet they’re fearless.”

And the thing is guys that men don’t understand that this is the heart of humility. They think, I think so many people think humility are just meek and mild people. One of the greatest examples, this just popped in my head, I think of this in the coaching world, was John Wooden, probably the greatest coach ever in any sport. And I’ve read a lot of books about him. This was him. This is a picture of him. Tim Keller’s made a similar observation. He said the humble are kind and gentle, but they’re also brave and fearless. If you’re to be humble, you can’t have one without the other. And I truly believe guys, this is the way God has designed life in regard to leadership. Great leaders are humble.

And I think that this duality, that Collins speaks of is clearly in the life of Christ. Listen to these powerful words of philosopher James Stewart. He says, “When I speak of the mystery of personality and Christ, I am thinking of the startling coalescence of contriety that you find in Jesus. He was the meekest and lowliest of all the sons of men, yet He said He would come on the clouds of Heaven in the glory of God. He was so austere that evil spirits and demons cried out in terror at His coming, yet He was so genial, winsome, and approachable that children loved to play with Him. And the little ones nestled in His arms. No one was ever half so kind or compassionate toward sinners, yet no one ever spoke such red hot scorching words about sin. He would not break the bruised reed, and His whole life was love yet on one occasion, He’d demanded of the Pharisees, how they expected to escape the damnation of hell. He was a dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions yet for sheer stark-naked realism, He has all of our self-styled realists beaten. He was a servant of all, washing the disciples’ feet yet masterfully strode into the temple and the hucksters and traders fell over one another in their mad rush to get away from the fire they saw blazing in his eyes. There is nothing in history to compare to the life of Christ.”

And so, guys, as we have arrived here on this Good Friday morning, I think the real humility of Jesus is seen when He surrenders His will and voluntarily goes to the cross. So, Paul tells us, he said, “Christ existed in the form of God, but He did not regard equality with God a thing to be held onto, but He emptied Himself taking the form of a bond servant and being made in likeness of men,” and listen to this, “being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

Think about it in these terms, The Bible tells us Jesus is a king, the king of all Kings. And yet He is a king that goes willingly and humbly and was nailed to a cross. You don’t expect to see a king hanging on a cross.

Now, when I prepared this, it really struck me. The crucifixion is about the humility of Christ. The resurrection is about the power and the glory of Christ. So, what we see in II Corinthians 13:4, He was crucified in weakness, but He was raised in power. And Paul captures the essence of this with these words from II Corinthians one, when he says, “For indeed Jews ask for signs, Greeks search for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. To the Jews, it’s a stumbling block, to the Gentiles, it’s foolishness. But to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Paul is telling us the heart of his teaching is Christ crucified. But he says to the Greek Gentiles, the cross of Christ is foolishness because the Greeks were very learned. They were very sophisticated. They sought knowledge and philosophy. In fact, the birth of philosophy is in ancient Greece. And so, a crucified Jewish teacher had no relevance to them. It was foolishness.

But Paul says the cross of Christ was to the Jews, however, a stumbling block. In fact, in verse 22, the Jews, he says, were looking for a sign. What kind of sign were they looking for? They were looking for a Messiah who was a conquering military leader like David. They had been dominated and ruled by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and now the Romans. They wanted a powerful king. They wanted a conquering king and here was Jesus, their supposed king. And He gets crucified on a cross.

I mean, if you think about it, the cross of Christ seems to defy everything that relishes power. It was the absolute worst way a human being could be executed. It was torturous because you would hang on a cross for hours and it was humiliating because they would strip you naked as you hung there. And in fact, it was so horrible that Roman law strictly forbid any Roman citizens from ever being crucified. And if you think about it, guys, and you know this, we live in a world that loves and pursues power and wealth and influence. And yet here you have the cross that the Jews regarded, or the Greeks regarded as foolishness. And it was weakness, perceived weakness and humiliation.

And I love this, what I’m getting ready to read to you. This really baffled the great military leader, Napoleon. You know, Napoleon sought to conquer the world and at the end of his life, I think he’s in prison and he was reflecting on his dream of conquering the world. Listen to what he said. These are his words. “I marvel when I think of the ambitions, the ambitious dreams of myself, of Alexander the Great and of Julius Caesar but they’ve all vanished into thin air. And yet this Judean peasant who died on a cross should be able to stretch his hands across the centuries and control the destinies of men and nations.” Guys this is the power of humility.

Now, going back to Philippians 2, where Paul talks about Jesus humbling Himself. I was planning on really kind of sharing a good bit of this, but I, for time’s sake, I’m not, but it says He humbled Himself. In fact, we’re told the importance of, throughout the Scripture, to humble yourself, to humble yourself before God, what does that mean? How does a man do that? In the book The Power of a Humble Life I talk about four, and there I go into great detail. I’m not today. I’m going to share it just really quickly. The first is to have a grateful heart, giving thanks to God, acknowledging all that you are and all that you have and all that you’ve accomplished comes from His hand and from the talent and the gifts that He’s given you. Because if you don’t have a thankful heart, you know what you’re going to have, you’re going to have an arrogant heart. You’re going to say, I did all this. And that’s the heart of arrogance and pride. Second, and this in Jesus’s parable in Luke 18, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector and the importance of confession of sin.

Third, acknowledging your weaknesses, acknowledging your flaws, acknowledging your shortcomings and that you recognize I am incapable of fixing myself. I’m looking to You to help me do that. I’m looking to Your grace to strengthen me and enable me to be the man You want me to be.

And finally, and this is the hardest I think for men, we need to give our public relations department to God. As Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, don’t promote yourself. Don’t seek to impress others. Everything you want the world to know about you, keep it a secret, keep it a secret. He says, if God wants it to be known, He’ll get the word out guys, but we’re to keep all of the great things that we think we do, that we want the world known; keep it a secret. These are four ways you can humble yourself. And if you’ll put this into practice, it’ll change you. It’ll change you in a really good way. It’ll lead to the humble life.

Now, at the cross, there’s another act of humility that we need to consider. Jesus is crucified between two criminals. So, you have these three men hanging on a cross and they’re all dying, and you have all these onlookers mocking Christ saying, You saved others, save Yourself. So, these three men, these three dying men, incredibly have this brief exchange as they hang on the cross from Luke 23, and one of the criminals who was hanging there was hurling abuse at him saying, are You not the Christ? Save Yourself and us. But the other answered, rebuking him and said, do you not even fear God since you were under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong. And he turned saying to Jesus, remember me, when You come in Your kingdom. And Jesus said to him, truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in paradise.

When you contrast the responses of these two men, I think you’ll find it instructive. The first criminal hears the crowd mocking Jesus, why don’t You save Yourself? And he joins in by saying, yeah, why don’t You save yourself? And while You’re at it, won’t You save us too. It’s almost like he’s, trying to make a deal maybe. You ever tried to make a deal with God? He just wants to change his circumstances, and can you blame him? He’s trying to save his skin, but he didn’t seem to think or worry much about death and eternity. Please hear this. He doesn’t want to change what his life is centered on, which is himself. But the second criminal is more concerned about his soul than saving his skin. He was more concerned about his eternal well-being than anything else. And Jesus talks about this in Mark 8, he says, “What does it profit a man If he gains the whole world but forfeits his soul for all eternity.”

So, this second criminal gets it. He says to the second guy, because of our wicked ways, because of our sin, we deserve to be abandoned by God. We deserve what we are receiving. In contrast to the first criminal, the second man is really humbling himself and asks Jesus, will You remember me? It strikes me these two criminals represent somewhat of a parable for all of us. Again, these two men are dying, but guys, we’re all dying men. And the question is which one of these two criminals do we relate to? The first sees Jesus as a means to an end, to get what he wants. The second one sees Jesus as the end. And he entrusts his life into Christ’s care. And Jesus’ response, today, today you will be with Me in paradise.

And this will take us to really kind of what I want to end with, and that is, I would ask you to think about what was going on in these two criminals’ minds. What were they thinking? But maybe even more significantly, what was going on in their hearts? And I couldn’t help but think of the relationship that exists between the mind and the intellect and the heart and the will. As David says in Psalm 64, the heart of man is deep, It’s complicated, it’s hard to understand the human heart.

Steve Farrar gives us great insight into the heart. He says, “The heart is the seat of reason and the will. The heart is the source or spring of motives, the seat of the passions, the center of the thought processes, the springs of conscience. In other words, the heart is you. It’s your personality, your will, your emotions, your conscience, your heart is that unseen engine beneath the hood that takes you down the road of life. It’s that seat of your soul that is influenced by affections and wounds, tendencies and habits, the unique wiring of your personality and your family upbringing. It is that inner sanctuary, where every decision is pondered and made, and it is profoundly affected by what flows into it and what is allowed to take root there.”

Guys, our hearts are complicated, but it’s important to recognize there is a connection between the mind and intellect and the heart. In Matthew 9:4, Jesus says to the scribes, why are you thinking evil in your heart? Isn’t that interesting? In Luke 5:22, He’s addressing the scribes and the Pharisees, and He says, why are you reasoning these things in your heart? And you might wonder, well, what does this have to do with anything? What does it have to do with, particularly, faith? And I want to just tell you, it means everything. And I’m going to show you that in just a second.

But we are told in Romans 10:10, it is with, Paul says, it’s with your heart, that you believe. It’s with your heart that you believe. Psalm 53:1 says, “The fool says in his heart, there is no God.” And so, it’s critical to realize that the heart plays, I believe, guys, the major role in a man coming to authentic faith in Christ. Remember, Paul says, you believe with your heart.

And this first really registered with me regarding C.S. Lewis and his search for spiritual truth. Listen to what he said. He says, “My intellect was drawn to the Christian faith because I recognized it to be true, but my heart was resistant.” Think about that. My heart was resistant.

One of the great philosophical thinkers in the 20th century was a guy by the name of Mortimer Adler. This is an incredible story. He taught for years at the University of Chicago. He founded the Aspen Institute. He was the co-editor of the 55-volume series, The Great Books of the Western World. He wrote 52 books and they were all thick. They were all weighty. Try to work through one of them. He was an atheist and a self-described pagan. That’s what he called himself. But the age of 82, he became a Christian and he lived to be 98. And for 16 years, he had time to think and reflect upon his life. And he thought back and realized that that there were many times he gave thought to Christianity. He says, but he realized looking back, he said, “I didn’t want to live the Christian life.” I didn’t want to live the Christian life, and listen to what he says, these are his words. “The decision to become a Christian lies in the state of one’s heart, or will, not in the state of one’s mind.” It dawned on Adler late in life that his atheism was not intellectually driven. It came down to how he wanted to live his life.

I’ll give you one other great story. And then I’m going to move into wrapping this up. Scott Peck tells a powerful story as it relates to the resistance of the heart. And it’s a story of one of his patients. Her name was Charlene. She struggled with depression. She experienced real meaninglessness in her life. And Peck, you know, he was a good, I think he was a psychiatrist or psychologist, and in counseling her, he asked and probed and asked questions and he realized that she grew up in the church. She had a belief in God. She had somewhat of a Christian worldview, and he asked her finally, one day, why don’t your beliefs make a difference in your life and help you with your sense of meaninglessness? And there was a silence. And then she exploded with this incredible admission. “I cannot do it. There’s no room for me in that. That would be my death to surrender to God. I don’t want to live for Him. I will not because I want to live for me. And for my own sake.” Now, guys, you have to admit, what an incredible admission this woman’s response is a picture, I think, of the human heart, the human heart resisting God, refusing to surrender and she gives the reasons; I want to live my life for me. Not for Him.

I’m going to leave you with two stories, and we’ll be done. About a year ago. I read a book and the book was titled Not God’s Type. It was by a woman whose name was Holly Orwell. The subtitle was “An Atheist Academic Lays Down Her Arms”. And it was a really great book, but I want you to listen to her thought process as she wrestled with the issue of God, and you see this same pattern of the intellect and the heart. She comes to this conclusion as she’s trying to figure this out, and she says, you know, “this was not a God I could bargain with. It was all or nothing with Him.”

And she had this older professor whose name was Josh, and he was a Christian and he kind of helped walk her through all her questions. And she was brilliant, I mean, she had a PhD in English, and these are her words. She said, “I told Josh that I was faced with a new idea. If I come to see that the Resurrection was a genuine historical event, as I’m thinking, it is likely to be the case, what does that mean for me, Josh? He said, simply, that’s the big question. I continued to think about the implications. There was no way of escaping the recognition that if I assented to the truth of Christianity, a truly deep commitment was required, which ran counter to what formally, I thought Christians believed. I said, Josh, this commitment idea has nothing to do whatsoever with this idea of accepting Christ and saying a prayer and you get into Heaven. That was an idea I’d heard many times. He says, that’s the problem of cheap grace. He said, some people treat Christianity as fire insurance, and that’s not the way it should be. He acknowledged that God made demands on people.”

She said, “To surrender, which seems to be required, it’s really frightening. I keep thinking, what am I getting myself into? Josh nodded, and he said, you know, I’m glad you feel that way because that’s how it should be approached. The other thing is, isn’t this promise of eternal life a little too good to be true. He said, almost.” She said, “Almost? What would the Resurrection mean for me? What would happen to me? I felt I was stepping out into the darkness, fast approaching a point of no return.” Listen to this. She said, “My reason and my intellect have taken me a lot further than I ever thought I, that I had ever anticipated.”

But you see the resistance in her heart. She said, “One night as I lay there in the dark marveling at this new complete thing that I had before me, I understood why I had been hesitating. I had been unwilling to say, Your will be done. Not mine. I was afraid to let go of control, to abdicate authority over my own life and heart and will. At the very moment that I confronted my own fear, I knew that I was no longer bound by the fear in my life. I was afraid, but I had made my decision. I would lay down my arms.” And she waved the white flag and surrendered, and her life has never been the same. And so, as we think about humility, as we finish this up, it strikes me, the ultimate act of humility is to surrender your heart to Christ.

Now I ended the last breakfast that we had in September with a story. And I’m going to share that story again because it’s so pertinent to today’s message, but I was shocked at the response I got. So, if you were here in September, this will sound familiar. If you weren’t, this will be new to you.

On November 21st, 2008, my dad passed away and I gave the eulogy. An hour before the service, I go into the church and there are two men sitting in there, both friends of my dad. One of them, I knew, the other one, I didn’t really know. I just knew he was 89 years old, and the funeral went on and a week later, Dr. Tom Brigham died. I think a lot of y’all know Tommy, sitting right down here. It was hard to believe, a week after my dad died, he passed away and I went to the funeral, and it was very powerful because Dr. Brigham had written a letter to the pastor telling him how he came to faith late in life. And it was a very powerful letter.

And the funeral ended and there was a visitation and I’m standing there talking to a man. And all of a sudden, there’s a tap on my shoulder and I turn around and it’s that 89-year-old man that was sitting in the church a week earlier in my father’s funeral. And he had this real concerned look on his face. And he said, I need your help. I said, sure, what, what can I do? This is what he said. He said, I have just realized, at 89 years old, I have just realized all these years; I’ve had Jesus up here in my head and He’s never made it to my heart. I realize I’m not a Christian. Can you help me? And so, we met the next week and we prayed, and he surrendered. And he’s been in Todd Liscomb’s Bible study group now for like 12 or 13 years. He’s 102. I share this story because I was surprised how people said to me later, Richard, I’m not sure Christ is in my heart.

I had one gentleman who’s older than I, who came by my office, and we talked about it. And he said the very same thing. I’m not sure Christ is in my life or in my heart. I said, well, you know, you can make sure that that’s the case. We can pray a prayer of surrender. And we did, and you’ll love this. We were finished. He looked at me and he said, so I’m now in. I said, yeah. Then he said this, you’ll love this. So I’m now on the team. I said, yeah. And he and I have been having a really good time meeting since then.

And so, I leave you with this question. Are you on the team? Has Christ made it into your heart? Maybe He’s in your head, has He ever made it to your heart? Remember Jesus tells us this. Either you’re with Me or you’re against Me. There is no middle ground.

Guys, I would invite you to, if this is of any interest to you to or has spoken to you any way, to go through The Investigative Study, some of you may want to be in a Bible study. Maybe you might want to come meet with me like this gentleman did, I would love that.

But I don’t, and we’ve been meeting here for a long time, and rarely do I ever close with a prayer of surrender, but some of you might be like the people who said to me, I’m not sure He’s ever made it into my heart. So, I’m going to pray a prayer of surrender. And then when I finish, we’ll be done.

By the way, Steve, I don’t know if he mentioned it, but the cards, you can leave them on the table, or you can mail them in. I don’t know about using the phone, but a lot of you, we got older, some older guys, y’all are like me. You do it the old fashioned way. So you can mail your card in. But if, in fact, you want to make sure that Christ is in your heart, as we pray, I would encourage, I would just ask you to pray silently what I pray out loud, and then we’ll be done.

Let’s pray, Lord, God, I acknowledge my great need for You. I realize I’m sinful and I need your forgiveness and Lord, I desire to follow You. So, I surrender my heart to You. I ask that You come into my life. I pray that You’d make me the man that you want me to be. And I thank you for doing this. And I pray this all in Christ’s name. Amen.

Thank you guys for being here. Have a great Easter.

–