Sevens 2023

MESSAGE TRANSCRIPTION: 

Well, this morning we have four very powerful speakers who are going to be speaking. We started this about five years ago. We have four different speakers, all speaking from the same passage that I assigned to them. I met with them, explained the process they have prepared, they have prayed, they’ve leaned into God. They have practiced and practiced and practice, and I need you to be engaged. I need you to laugh at their jokes. Even if you don’t think this a joke, just go ahead and laugh and say amen. Encourage them. Again, we have Stephanie, Justin, Brad, and Casey who’s going to be sharing with us this morning. So I’m going to pray and then Stephanie’s going to come and bring it. All right? And so after each one’s done, then we’ll give them a big round of applause as well. Father, come now and use these four of your children for your glory and for your honor, give them strength. Help them to be mindful of the things that you want them to say and help them to recall that, and Father, give us ears to hear as well in Jesus’ name that we pray and everyone agreed and said amen. Stephanie, come on.

Thank you.

Stephanie Parrot

Good morning, Eastside. My name is Stephanie Parrot. My husband, Mark and I and our two kiddos, Emma and Jack, have been Eastsiders now for the past five years. We are in a caring life group, thanks for supporting me guys, and I serve on the hospitality team that served you this morning. One thing that I love about Eastside is the transparency that we frequently experience as other Eastsiders share how God has worked in their lives because it reminds me he’s constantly working on all of us. So today it’s my turn to share part of my journey with you. Sometimes I find myself lacking strength and courage and overcome with fear. Have you ever felt that? Well, the good news is we aren’t the first ones to have to struggle to muster up the strength and courage, to not be overcome by fear, because in the first chapter of Joshua, God implores Joshua four times to be strong and courageous.

Joshua was Moses’ aid. Moses has died and been mourned, and now God is telling Joshua that he will lead the Israelites to conquer and inhabit the promised land of Canaan. Like us, Joshua needed some reminders. So in verse nine, God is reminding Joshua again, “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged. For I am with you wherever you go.” But, I wonder if Joshua thought really God? Is that even possible? I mean, you are asking me to lead a group of people who even you and Moses couldn’t get to follow you’re leading. Are they really going to listen to me? Well, I bet you can relate to feeling fear and weakness. If a calling on your life is something that you can do without God, it’s not a calling from God. God wants us to do life with him and in his power. So if you think I cannot possibly do this or I’m just too scared, God could have you exactly where he wants you. In one long season of my life, I was asked to be strong and courageous. From a young age, I knew success in this world for me would be a husband and a handful of children, then along came our baby Emma and I was so happy. It’s like I got to play house for real.

Well, 10 and a half months went by when I realized, oh, we’re expecting again. Surprise. We went to our nine week ultrasound, a strong heartbeat. I am living the dream until the carpet was pulled out from under us, that 12 and a half weeks, within 24 hours, it was all over. I had miscarried. Do not be afraid or discouraged. What if it happens again? And it did three more times. What am I supposed to do? You want me to be strong and courageous? You want me not to fear that I might never have the family that I thought for years you had set upon my heart to desire. You want me not to be discouraged when a friend announces a pregnancy and I lost another one? Well, I sought the Lord daily through Bible reading and prayer to try and find that strength and courage.

Sometimes I believed it, other days I just went through the motions, but I was honest with God in my pain, weakness, and fear. Even though I felt like he failed me, I kept seeking him. In time, God led us to pursue a domestic adoption. Adoption? How on earth will we ever find birth parents to choose us? And we’re not supposed to fear the cost. Do you know how expensive that is God? I was a stay-at-home mom at the time so I prayed. How can I contribute to this financially? God impressed upon my heart to ask family and friends if they had any items to donate for a yard sale. A yard sale Lord? I only have this tiny pile of junk, but over the next two months, three full garage stalls of items showed up. Well, if you’re like me, there’s always something to fear. God, how can I possibly know a great day for weather to have this sale?

And what if I don’t get rid of the items that are now filling the space of three full garage stalls? In a prayer time I heard May 18th and 19th, the first day came and went and we counted our earnings. $2,800 a great success. Then the phone rang, “A baby boy will be born in Florida next Friday. The birth parents have chosen you, buy your plane tickets and come this week, plan to stay three weeks.” God said, do not fear, here is the cash to pay for your plane tickets and hotel stay. I will be with you as you go to Florida. But still fear came. God, what if we stay in the hospital for 48 hours and they decide to keep the baby? But by this time I had learned God would give us the grace to handle whatever came. Well, we named that boy Jack. That is the story of how God redeemed our losses. He proved we could trust him. He was with us, and we could have the courage to know that he would be our strengths if we walk closely with him.

What about you? What are you fearing right now? What do you need strength or courage to face? Even this week, If fear starts up into your soul and your mind, I invite you to pray instead of worry. See, I boiled it down to this. When feeling fear inside of you, then trusting God is what you do. Soon as you feel that fear coming in your heart and your mind, you trust him and pray. It’s really the only thing to do because God is with you. He will give you the courage and strength. If you trust him with your fear, he’ll soothe it and fight the battle for you. It’s when we choose to trust God that we get to live the full life that He wants us to live here on earth. “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged for I am with you wherever you go.” Thank you. Good luck.

Justin Raymer

Good morning, Eastside. I’m Justin Raymer, I’ve been attending Eastside for six years with my family. I’m a life group coach. I’m a life group leader and I’m a member of the tech team as a camera person and a director, so good luck following me. I’m going to mess with you a little bit. Oh, they had my picture up. I didn’t get you. This is my crew. It’s my daughter, Brenley, who’s four, my son Bowen who’s seven and most of you know my lovely wife Lauren. She’s been a leader in the new guest ministry for some time now. So she’s the smiling face to greet you when you come in and I’m the guy she introduces you to because I’m not going to walk up and introduce myself. I have the curse and blessing of being an introvert. So this is challenging for me, but what a perfect verse for me to get asked to do, right?

And speaking of that, most of us all have our story of when Virgil asks us to get up here and mine’s a God moment and confirms God sense of humor with me in my life. So, I walk into Virgil’s office and we’re having a meeting about life groups and we’re waiting for everybody else to show up and I’m kind of sitting off back behind him and he’s looking at his calendar and he’s like, Justin, what are you doing June 11th? And like any good introvert, I start digging from my phone and looking down and that’s a joke. And I looked down and I just blurred out, Hey, I think I’m serving that day, surely that’ll get me out of whatever he is saying, he goes, “perfect!” I was like, well, whoops. So he said, I need you to speak at sevens and I got through denial and anger real quick, and I arrived at bargaining and I asked him, well, what’s the verse on?

And he goes, oh, it’s Joshua chapter one verse nine, and I’ll stop here. Has anybody done a devotional, got distracted and forgot to go back and do it? A lot of hands not up. There’s a lot of liars in here. Okay, me too. So I forgot, and like I said, I was scrambling for my phone. I pull it open and the first thing opens my Bible app. Can you guess what chapter of my devotional was on that day? Joshua chapter one. So we had a good laugh and I agreed right then and there it was clear that God wanted me to do this. So here’s the verse. You’ve heard it.

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

Joshua 1:9

Again, Joshua, hearing directly the words of God speaking straight to him four times saying the same thing over and over to pound it into his thick skull like mine, that you need to be strong.

You need to be courageous. You need to have these character traits and that kind of faith with what you’re about, the face. So I think about all the things that have happened in my life, and there are a lot of opportunities for me to point to God’s glory with his authority over my life, his presence in my life, or when he is casted out fear or given me courage like now, and I think the one that’s important for me to talk about today is it’s a crossroads in our relationship, and it was a crossroads in my faith, and it started with me in college. I was going to Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights, Kentucky, and I was studying sports business and if you looked at the company I kept or the way I behaved, you wouldn’t be able to tell I was a Christian.

But if you asked me, I’d tell you I was. See, I was living on my own, very flawed judgment and prerogative, which gets you nowhere, which I’m sure a lot of us have an example like that. But it was there that I started pursuing the career that I have now. I currently work at Eastern Kentucky University. I’m the director of campus recreation. I love what I do and who I do it with. It’s literally my dream job, and to get to this point, my journey started at Northern Kentucky, but it led me to Ball State, which is where I met my lovely wife Lauren and we dated for about a year and a half before I asked her to marry me, which is another hilarious story, but you have to ask me that one because she won’t tell you the ending of it, obviously, she said yes, but there’s another piece to it, so asked me later.

But after we made that commitment to each other, it was time to figure out where we were going to spend our lives together, which is stressful no matter what, but with my job, you go where the jobs are, which is where a university is, and Ball State wasn’t going to hire me because they didn’t have positions for me there after grad school. So I was applying to everywhere in the country. It was kind of like an athlete marketing themselves to go play at a school. I mean, I was applying from Washington to Florida, New York all over, which builds up a certain level of anxiety especially in my wife Lauren, who had never left Muncie, Indiana. Poor thing.

And I was the guy coming in to take her and she’s going to go with me, right? So there’s a lot of anxiety and a lot of pressure on me for that. But we’re about to graduate and northern Kentucky, my undergrad has a job open doing exactly what I was doing when I was working there, all the things I got two more years of experience in my boss, my mentor at the time who was still a very good friend of mine, would’ve been my boss in this position, and I knew all the people well, and all my friends were still in Northern Kentucky. So this was going to be perfect. This was the perfect scenario. I was a shoe in. It’s an hour and a half away from everything Lauren’s known her whole life. This is it. God’s planned all this out for us, and this is where God’s sense of humor comes back in my life.

I crossed both interviews. I’m back home in Indiana at the time, and I’m playing golf with a buddy. We’re standing on the seventh hole. I’m looking at a 40 foot bender putt uphill, downhill, right to left, hit the pace, it’s solid. Ball disappears. We go nuts. Putt of my life, probably for a double, but hey, it was a good putt and I’ll never forget it because I’m walking back to the cart after we’re celebrating high fiving and the phone’s buzzing, and you know when the phone buzz and when you’re golfing, it’s either the wife asking when you’re done or it’s work calling to interrupt you, right? This was a little different. This was a 8, 5, 9, 5, 7, 2 number, and I know that’s Northern Kentucky. I know that this is the moment. This is the job offer. My boss, my friend will be on the other line, other end of the line. This is all the relief and this is all God’s plan playing out perfectly for us. So I answer the phone, it’s not my friend, it’s his coworker, and she says, thanks for applying. We’ve chosen another candidate. I’m crushed, I’m lost, I’m discouraged, because, I wasn’t good enough, and I’m afraid to call Lauren and tell her I have no idea still where we’re going to end up. And I’m running out of golf balls.

So, I call her, I tell her, and we grapple with anxiety, depression, fear, worry, doubt, you name it. We dealt with why would God put all this right in front of us just to pull the rug out? So we grappled with that for about three months, and I kept the interview process going and we’re like living with friends. Both our leases are up. It was tough. And I get an interview at a small school in Missouri in Rollo, Missouri. Have you heard of it? No, you haven’t. It’s pretty much a truck stop. So I get an interview there and Lauren’s like, “well, I’ll go with you just in case we get the job. I need to see where we’re going to live.” I was like, okay. So we go and I start the interview and it’s very early on that I realize I really don’t want to do this. I don’t want to work here, and it’s about 10 minutes after that thought that I go, they’re going to offer me, and that sucks.

And Lauren’s out looking for houses, and she pulls over into a church parking lot and she looks up to see where the nearest target is, and that’s two hours away. That’s about when she goes, I’m going to live here, and that sucks. Days go by, I get the phone call, I get the job offer. We had the wedding scheduled, we get married and we go live in misery. I mean Missouri, for a couple years. But looking back now, this was our wilderness moment. This was God putting us somewhere so that we could go through the trials and tribulations to find out how profound and clear his presence was in our life. We spent that first year away from everyone we knew, everything we knew and nowhere to run, but to each other and even if we didn’t want to, there was only the bathroom upstairs.

The blessing was that if I had have got the job at Northern Kentucky, she would’ve been exposed to the life that I was living before that I would’ve been very vulnerable to jump back into that and she would’ve either jumped in the darkness with me or had an hour and a half to get away instead of six and a half. You see, for us, and for me, the takeaway was that whether I’m a six and a half hour drive away from where I know God is in my life, if I am that lost and away from him, he’s still working out everything for me and now that I’m seeking him clearly and wholeheartedly, I can look back at the past and see how clear and important his presence was in my life. I’m less anxious about the future and when things don’t make sense, I’ve got his strength and his courage to stand on. Thank you.

Brad Bermudez

A little bigger crowd this go around. Good morning everybody. My name is Brad Bermudez and my family and I have been attending East Side since about 2018 when we moved here from North Carolina. I have a beautiful wife, Mallory. She’s up here on the front row somewhere, can’t see her, and three amazing children, Kinsley, Caden, and Callan, as you see there on the screen. I currently serve on the parking team when we’re not out of town at the lake. I’m a generosity rockstar, and currently in an awesome men’s life group, and in moving here, we left all our family. So what I love most about East Side is that how they truly make you feel welcome, encouraged community, and really makes you a part of the family, which is what we need in moving here. A family that encourages an all in life for Christ, continuously challenging you to take your next spiritual step, even if it’s uncomfortable, right?

Because I’m very uncomfortable right now, and this is my next spiritual step if you haven’t noticed. So today we all got tasked with speaking on the passages in the Bible, Joshua 1:9. And God said,

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

Joshua 1:9

And I kind of simplified this, and in my own opinion, what this means is that in life, when God calls on you, whatever that may be, whatever ask he’s asking of you, just say yes. Because it’s easy, right? No, no, it’s not easy. It’s not easy for me to be up here because I said, yes, but he asked you not to be afraid. Be strong and of good courage for he’ll be with you wherever you go. And whatever he asks you to do, he’s going to be with you.

So why not say yes? But you all know it’s easier said than done, right? So before I tell you, I share with you about how I struggle applying this in my own life, let me just tell you, when I got that text from Virgil’s assistant saying, “Hey, Brad, Virgil would like to meet with you.” and I’m like, I know it’s going to have something to do with me getting on this stage, and guess what? Here I am. So of course I met with him the following week and I said, yes, he has this kind of subtle way of just sliding in there, Hey, it’s no big deal. I need you to speak at sevens. I was like, all right. But I was already nervous and honestly not really nervous to get up here and talk in front of you all a little bit, but not much. I was nervous about what I was going to say, not trying to lose my words or train of thought, or really, really seeming like a hypocrite because to tell you, I’ve kind of been in my walk. I’m straddling the fence. I didn’t have a good example of how I’ve applied this in my life.

I didn’t have an example. So I was like, I don’t know what I’m going to talk about. So on the drive, my drive home, I really started thinking really hard and it hit me. I was like, you know what? I’ve never really surrendered my life to God. I’ve never leaned on him fully, broken the chains and had the courage to give him full control of my life. I’m too busy trying to control my own life. And don’t get me wrong, I do lean on God in certain areas of my life and I really try to be the best Christian I can be and live and live in all in life for Christ, but I’m not consistent. I’m frequently just spinning my wheels and I feel like I’m always taking one step forward and two back. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to stand up here and sugarcoat that I don’t have it all together.

From the outside, I look like I have. Everything’s great. I’m doing just fine. But on the inside, I’m a complete train wreck, a train wreck of emotion, stress, guilt, anger, and just a constant state of stress. Anybody else felt like that in your life? Yeah, it’s horrible. So now I’m going to pull the curtain back a little bit and just share with you what I’m talking about there, and so I work all the time. I’m workaholic and I’m constantly stressed from working all the time trying to climb that corporate ladder and I’m in the military too. So I’ve got civilian career. I’m trying to climb the military, having a family, having three lives essentially when I’m home. The perfectionist in me, OCD, always worried about the house looking perfect yard and all the work needs to be done. I’m stressed about my kids, how they’re acting all the time.

I’m very overbearing and hard on ’em, stressed about what people are thinking of me, how they’re perceiving me as a leader in my professional career and my church as a father and husband. Stressed about being a hypocrite in my Christian walk saying one thing and living another, stressed about not being a godly figure in my home. And this one hits home. I need to be the godly figure in my home, be the husband my wife needs me to be and nurturing father that my kids need me to be not letting go of my past and the things I’ve done and just continually making bad decisions, just simply not living right. My mind is never peace and it’s always racing, and I’ve just been spending too much time trying to be everything for everybody and not my family or myself. So it’s all just compiled. And as you can see, I’m just wanting a big ball of stress. I mean, it’s not fun. It sucks.

I need God, right? So lemme share with you how all of this big me being a big ball of stress is just negatively impacting the people that love me the most, just my family. So the vicious cycle has caused me to grow, irritable. I’m very irritable. I have a short temper when I’m home, I’m always on edge. I try to hold it together at work. I really do in church and in life, but it’s just getting to where it’s building up and I feel like I’m going to bust. I can’t hold it in any longer. I, I’ve grown very impatient with my children, a very short fuse with them at home. I don’t let ’em be kids. I try too hard to make them little adults and don’t spend genuine time with ’em. I don’t put my full attention on them when they tell me about their day or try to engage with me.

I only acknowledge it and I try to acknowledge it, but I just move on to something else because I’m always on the go. My daughter’s in middle school and going through a lot right now, physically, emotionally, and just being in middle school in general, in today’s generation, it’s tough being a girl. I need to be there for her now more than ever though. But instead, I’m too busy getting onto her. Go figure for being disrespectful, not cleaning her room or talking back, whatever. And in turn, I get furious and lose my temper and it just causes a big blow up. All because I’m too prideful to see the root cause of all the acting out. It’s not me directly. I’m not doing anything to her. But it’s because of me, because I’m not stepping up to be the father she needs me to be. She needs her dad there for her.

Same with my twin boys. They need their dad and my wife needs her husband. I have said hurtful things to my kids and my wife out of anger, not meaning to, but just in the moment. Reactions. I’m very reactionary rather than calming down, stepping back, walking away, and resolving the situation in a godly manner. My relationship with my children and my wife right now honestly is not good. I find myself trying to fix them or thinking they’re the problem when really I need to look at the mirror in myself and I cannot fix it. I try and that’s me controlling myself. Only God can, only God can fix what is going on in my life; and I’m tired of being this way. I physically cannot continue to live like this and be in the state of mind, and I really need God’s help. So Virgil calling me to his office and asking me to speak today at this sermon series was God.

Opportunity, was God’s opportunity, giving the god’s for me to be sorry, for me to be strong and courageous just like Joshua, and I really believe that now. He asked me to say yes. He asked me to surrender and say yes, and get up here and tell everybody and lay it down before the church and him. Let my burdens go surrender and give them to him and let him be in control of my life instead of me trying to control it. Obviously, it’s not getting me anywhere. I’m not going anywhere. He asked for me not to be afraid. Trust him. Don’t be dismayed. He’s with me and he’s with me right now because I tell you what, if he wasn’t, I wouldn’t be up here. I’m going to tell you that right now.

So while I didn’t have a past example in my life of me applying this verse in my life, God gave me the opportunity, the courage to say yes and get up on the stage and create that right now for myself. So I’m literally creating this. I’m living this in my life right now by being up here. So I’m here to say, this is my opportunity, and he gave me the courage to say yes and get up on this stage and share my story with you all. So I’m here to say I’m tired of taking one step back and one step forward and two back. I’m tired of just spinning my wheels. I’m going to give it to God and put one foot forward each and every day and try my best to be better for God, my family, the church and my friends, and truly pursue an all in life for Christ. Thank you for allowing me to share my story. Thank you. If any of you have a similar story, sorry, in your life, please reach out to me. I can help, and I may not have all the right answers, but I promise I’ll hope you get through it. Thank you. Thank you.

Casey Rodas

Good morning, east Side. My name is Casey Rodas. This is my family, my husband Justin, and our four kids. Trey is ten, Spencer and Sydney are seven, and Trevor is three. We’ve been coming to East Side for almost seven years now. Our good friends, Jamie and Justin, not the same Justin, we are overrun with Justin’s around here, invited us to church and they described it as cool, laid back, the music was good, the preaching was good. So we thought, Hey, let’s give it a shot. I actually knew Pastor Virgil and his wife Rose. We worked out at Edge Body Bootcamp together, and I loved them and a full circle moment as the Lord would have it. I’m now their trainer at that same gym and they love to hate me on some days. I can remember walking into East Side with our girls. They were still small enough to be packed in their car seats and just in awe of the vastness of it all.

I grew up in church. My family, the bishops traveled around singing southern gospel music and we were in and out of a lot of churches, but none of them were structured quite like East Side. So I was a bit overwhelmed, but as soon as we walked in, we saw some familiar faces and started to feel comfortable. And the faces we didn’t recognize had no issue coming up and introducing themselves. Any of you guys experienced that? They made us feel immediately known and welcomed. It’s one of my favorite things about East Side. So, we quickly decided we wanted to be all in. We joined Virgil and Rose’s Life Group on Sunday nights where we met other young couples in the church. We started giving and I started serving on Ekids. I thought, well, I’ve got a lot of kids, so I’ll just jump in right here.

My time in Ekids was very heart opening and rewarding. And if you want to see pure and abandoned love for Jesus, I encourage you to visit that room during their time of worship. So let’s get to the verse that Virgil ask us to speak on today, Joshua 1:9. If you don’t know it by now, let the Lord help you. Okay? Let’s all say it together. Here we go. “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” Great job. So in this verse, we know that Joshua is leading his people to the promised land on his way. He’s going to face many trials and tribulations, some enemies, and of course he’s probably going to have some insecurities. So what is God saying to Joshua? Be bold, be courageous.

Be confident. All right. So whenever he is facing these enemies and maybe asking himself, why am I doing this? Lord? The Lord is saying, listen to me, trust me, lean on me. So as I was thinking of a time in my life where maybe I’ve used this verse a thousand times have went through my head that I’ve had to be courageous. But one time in particular, I can recall where I actually learned how to apply this verse, and it changed the trajectory of how I approached situations moving forward. So in March, 2017, I got a Facebook message from the new worship Pastor Brandon Grant at the time, and let’s just call it what it is. He heard from some snitches at the gym that I could sing, and he wanted to know if I would like to audition for the worship team. We talked back and forth for a minute, and ultimately I told him I was going to pray about it and I would get back to him, okay, how many of you in here have used that excuse before?

I’m going to pray about it and we’ll talk later. I had no intention of praying about it. Deep down in my heart, though, I knew that I wanted to do it. I knew that God had gifted me the gift of singing and I wanted to share that with my church, but I was petrified because this stage is big and there’s a lot of you guys looking back up at me right now, and I was scared. So I didn’t rely on my own courage. But about two weeks later, I sent Brandon this message ultimately saying, Hey, I think I’m going to try out for the worship team. So I relied on my own courage. I didn’t ask God for courage. And then I was sitting right in these chairs and I felt personally victimized. Okay, I know some of you to don’t have to raise your hand by Virgil during one of his sermons.

You feel like the spotlight’s shining right down on you. You sink a little bit deeper in your seat and you’re like, he’s talking to me. What does he know? Who’s he been talking to? That’s how I felt. So let’s just say the Holy Spirit led me to take my next spiritual step and audition for the worship team. I walked in to my first practice, shaky hands. I was a nervous wreck. But after practice, I will never forget someone was praying and they said, heavenly Father, we’re so grateful to be here, and we know that on Sunday morning, if one of us messes up, if something goes wrong, it doesn’t matter because all of this is to bring glory to God. It is to lift Jesus up and bring others closer to you. And I thought, okay, wow. That knocked me off my feet and put me in my place right at the same time because none of this was about me at all.

It was about Jesus. It was about bringing others closer to Jesus. So circling back to Joshua, how can he lead his people with confidence and boldness in the face of all these setbacks, it’s with God. It is through the presence of God, because God is always with him. He will never abandon him. So if Joshua can lead, if people through God, I can lead because God will never abandon me. And I don’t have to be overqualified. I don’t have to know every scripture in the Bible. I don’t have to know every song on Spotify. I can lead because God is always with me.

He has given me the talents to bring people in my community closer to him. He’s laid out the pieces of my life and knows every next move I should make. It’s my responsibility to lean on him for guidance, strength, and confidence. Joshua 1:9 reminds us that God is with us so we can be confident as we pursue his calling in our life. Once I leaned into this way of living, of trusting and pursuing what God laid out for me, I began to have doors open for me in other areas of my life. I gained the courage to go from being a primarily stay at home mom, to owning my own business, the gym that we talked about earlier. I now am the owner. And it’s where I first met Virgil and Rose and I’ve fostered many loving and transformative relationships at that place and I’ve invited a lot of people to church.

Did I feel qualified to do this? Absolutely not, but these opportunities have been placed before me and I went for it, not because I thought I was going to be the best at it, but because I could keep my eyes fixated on Jesus. And I knew he had a plan. He was for me in that moment and in all areas of my life, God has set things in motion for me to lead worship, open a business, start new friendships, and even go through some of the hardest years of my life personally and financially to lead me to a bigger purpose. I just had to be obedient like Joshua. I had to have courage and faith that he would carry me through it and once I did lean into his calling, I realized that the business, the singing and the leading, it’s all to bring others closer to him. It’s all to be a voice, a teacher, and a testimony for him. So I want to encourage you this morning to lean in, lean into the things that scare you, and approach them with boldness and confidence and do it in the name of Jesus. Your boldness will make a difference in the life of someone else and when you step out, encourage, it could be the stepping stone for others to do the same. Thank you.

Wow. What about that? Huh? Wasn’t that awesome? Yeah. Again, you see people at East Side, the heart of East Side is all about surrender. And as the worship team is making their way back out to the stage, I just want to remind you that that’s God’s will for your life. People go, I don’t know God’s will for my life. It’s to surrender to whatever he’s asking you to do next. And whatever that may be. For some of you, it is reconciliation. For some of you, it’s to extend forgiveness. For some of you, it’s for you to say, I’m sorry. For some of you, it’s to step into generosity. For some of you, it’s to say, uncle, and join the life group and give life group an opportunity. For some of you, it is to serve. For some of you, it is for you to receive Christ as your personal Savior.

Like you know that God’s been knocking on the door of your heart for some time now, and you know that today needs to be your day of salvation. Today should be your day of saying yes to the Lord. In a moment we’re going to observe baptism. For some of you, your next step is to be baptized. Had a young man come up to me after the first service and said, I was saved a long time ago. I’ve never been baptized. Can you do it soon? And I go, well, let’s talk about that. And so we set a date and he’s going to go public. That was his next step. He overcame fear. He was no longer dismayed, discouraged. Again, I don’t know what your next step is, but today you’ve heard from these four eastsiders that with God, you can take that next step. And so this morning, let me just ask you to bow your head; and as you bow your head, I’m just going to ask if you’re here this morning, you need to take that next step. Just pray right now unto God. And God, I know that you’re with me. I know that you’re for me.

I know that you’re cheering for me, and I’m just going to take the next step after the service. I’m going to take that step. I’m going to go up to Pastor Virgil. I’m going to go up to Lauren or Carla or whomever on staff or maybe your life group leader, and let them know the decision that you made today that you’ve been putting off. So, Lord, thank you this morning for these words of encouragement from Stephanie and Justin and Brad and Casey. Lord, thank you for the next steps that’s already been taken this morning. Thank you for the steps that are being taken right now. And thank you for the step that we’re going to witness in a moment with baptism. So, Lord, we just say yes to you. We deny ourselves, take a brick cross and follow you. And we pray these things in the name of Jesus. And everyone agreed and said, amen. Now.