‍Jo Vitale [00:00:35] So welcome to the podcast where we invite you to Ask Away.

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Ask Away. We hope it's been a great week so far. So in our last episode, we were discussing the fact that if Christianity is true, then we should expect to see evidence of the Holy Spirit at work in the Christians life to bring about transformation that enables them to more beautifully reflect the life and character of Jesus Christ. And if we don't, that is a problem. In that conversation, Vince briefly mentioned that one of the reasons we don't always see the kind of change that we'd expect is because although many of us label ourselves Christians, but not living surrendered lives. 

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[00:01:19] Today we want to dive deep into that specific challenge by sharing with you a talk that Vince gave at an outreach event at the Jersey Shore this summer. Does God want committed Christians? And one of the things I always enjoy about visiting New Jersey is that I'm convinced Vince's accent gets more pronounced when he's back home. So have a listen and let me know what you think. But this is also a special occasion for us personally as a large number of Vince's family, close friends and even friends of Vince's parents were able to attend in person, and it led to deeply meaningful conversations and times of prayer afterwards. We hope it leads to meaningful interactions in your relationships, too. Here's Vince.

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Vince Vitale [00:02:12] Let us pray. Lord God, it is our joy and our privilege to worship you this morning. Help us now to hear only what you would have us hear, that our minds would honor you and our hearts would draw us close to you. We ask this morning, Lord, closer than ever before, and we trust you for this in Jesus’ name, Amen. Well, it's a distinct honor to be here this morning, knowing something of the history of God's powerful work in this place. And I'm so thankful to the leadership team and to all of you for having me. I also feel very at home preaching here at the Jersey Shore. I spent the first 23 years of my life in New Jersey. I grew up in Manalapan High School and CBA Christian Brothers Academy. Then my family, who is here, moved to Point Pleasant, and then I went to Princeton for college. And for me, it was not until college that I experienced anything like this. People singing from deep within themselves, utter devotion to a God who is real to them and personal to them. 

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[00:03:27] As you heard, I was invited to a meeting of Athletes In Action by two soccer teammates. Really had no idea what I was being invited to. Had no idea at that point of what a campus ministry or a campus fellowship was, but it had athlete in the title so that was good enough for me. And I remember walking in a few minutes late, the singing had already started, and it's one of the most vivid memories of my entire life. Walking in and seeing these peers of mine singing their hearts out to this invisible God. I had no idea what to make of it. And then I began to listen to the lyrics that they were singing. And I realized that these Princeton students were praising and worshiping God for how incomparably great he is because he's a name above all names. And I found it so disorienting because if someone was better than me, that had always made them an enemy, that had made them my competition. That had produced resentment and bitterness in me that motivated me to get back on top. 

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[00:04:33] But here were these Princeton students who had worked their whole lives to be seen as the best, and they are singing their hearts out to this God precisely because he's so much better than they are. I didn't know what to make of it. And as I walked home to my campus dorm that night, I just remember finding myself praying an agnostics prayer. I can remember saying the words, "God, I'm not sure if I'm talking to anyone, but if I am I would really like to know about it." And my teammates had challenged me to read the Bible. I wasn't that interested, but I was always up for a challenge. And in my arrogance I began to read through for the first time and I would actually add things and I would cross things out where Vince disagreed. I'd actually write a big BS in the margin of my Bible wherever I disagreed. And Christians to look over my shoulder and say, "Vince, why do you have a piece in the margin of your Bible?" And I'd say, "Well, that verse makes for great Bible study.". 

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[00:05:39] That was my starting point. But as I kept reading, I found myself unexpectedly captivated by the person of Jesus, the way he carried himself, the way that he treated people, especially those that other people thought weren't worth the time of day. A woman caught in adultery, everyone wanted to stone her. He just said, "You who are without sin throw the first stone." And one by one, they all walked away. Do to others as you would have them do to you. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. I was reading these things and I knew that they weren't in my heart, but somehow deep down I knew that they were supposed to be. And at this point, I remember thinking to myself, too bad faith is so irrational. Because I was being drawn to the person of Jesus, but I was studying philosophy at Princeton. I couldn't just check my brain at the door to take some blind leap of faith. And I can remember actually reasoning to myself, if there's a God and if he made me with this mind, then he would want an honest intellectual search to point in his direction. And as I kept reading the Bible, it is exactly what I found. 

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[00:06:54] I got to the Book of Acts, the history of the early church, and I started to come across all sorts of words that I never expected to see in the Bible. Words like reasoning, examining, explaining, convincing, debating, disputing, persuading, even proving. I remember reading that the Bereans, this one people group, were more noble than the Thessalonians. Why? Not because they had blind faith, but it says because they examined the scriptures daily to determine if what they were being told was actually true. And I thought to myself, this is not a God who's asking me to take some blind leap of faith. This is not a God who's asking me to check my brain at the door. Far from it, this is a God who, yes, is asking me to love him with all my heart and all my soul and all my strength, but also with all of my mind. And I don't have time this morning to tell the whole story, but as I began to seek God also with my mind, I was absolutely astounded at the strength of the arguments for the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

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[00:07:54] And to this day I remain utterly convinced through much research that there is not a single other remotely plausible explanation for the start of Christianity other than the actual miraculous bodily resurrection of Christ. Only the resurrection explains why Christianity did not die with Jesus on the cross. And if God began to speak now, not only to my heart, but also to my mind, the experience of it was like my faith had two wings now. It was like for a long time I was trying to have faith. I was trying to fly, but I only had one wing. But now, as I began to pursue God with both my heart and with my mind, it was like I had two wings and I could soar in my faith. And it just felt so natural and right. And one day at the end of my freshman year, I found myself in my dorm room 122 Jolene Hall, and I was just overcome with the reality that Jesus was who he claimed to be. The way he had spoken to both my heart and to my head. There was nobody else in the room, but I screamed out loud, "Oh, my gosh, this really happened!" And I dropped to my knees and I joyfully gave my life to Christ. 

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[00:09:08] And I'll share one more detail of my story just to honor God for his utter kindness and faithfulness in His pursuit of me. I was speaking somewhere a few years ago and after I was done, a woman came forward and she had tears in her eyes and she was visibly moved. And she said, "Did you say 122 Jolene Hall?" I didn't normally mention that detail, but I happened to. And I said yes. She said, "Well, I'm about 15 years older than you. And I also went to Princeton. And I spent my four years in college in 121 Jolene Hall praying for the salvation of the guys in 122 Jolene Hall." "All these years," she said, "I just thought that God had never heard that prayer and he had never responded to that prayer, but as you were sharing your testimony, somehow I just knew in my heart that God had heard my prayer and he had responded to my prayer word for word for the salvation of the guys in 122 Jolene Hall." And just the utter faithfulness of God that 15 years before I ever thought to turn my attention to him, he literally had a woman praying for the wooden floor on which I dropped to my knees and gave my life to him. 

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[00:10:26] And I hope that's an encouragement to some of you here who maybe have been praying for things for a long time that you have not yet seen come to pass. God is always doing more than we can see, nevertheless. Our reading for this morning is a very helpful framework for understanding the Christian life. Jesus says, "Follow me and I will make you become fishers of people." Three components. A calling to follow. Then an inner transformation, we are made into someone new. And then a commissioning; we're sent out with a new identity and a new purpose. And all three components of this verse are extremely challenging and they're extremely countercultural because Jesus says follow me in a world where we are told to be leaders and influencers, not followers. Followers is an insult. Followers are weak. Followers get made fun of. Then Jesus says he will make us. In a world where we're told Just be yourself, you do you, do your thing, Jesus makes this offensive claim that we need to change. That we need to be made into something new. And he says, I will make you. 

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[00:11:37] Whereas the world tells us to take pride in the fact that we are self-made men and women, but Jesus says that only he can make us who we were created to be. And then finally, this weird bit here. He's going to make us into fishers of people. Not fishers of power or money or success or stability or fame or anything else, but fishers of people. And what a weird notion. What are you going to do when you grow up? I'm thinking about being a fisher of people. When you make the decision to follow Jesus, people are not always going to get you. That's a talk for another day. Today, I want to just linger on the first component of this verse because there's an order to it. It is only possible to get to the second two parts of this verse if we truly understand what it means to decide to follow Jesus. And I don't know most of you, so I don't want to make any assumptions about where you are at in the decision to follow him. Because when Jesus says, "Follow me," he is not talking about following him on social media. He is not talking about observing him from a safe distance and giving him a thumbs up once in a while when he says something witty. 

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[00:12:48] When Jesus says, "Follow me," we heard it in the reading. He's literally standing in front of Andrew and Peter and he's saying I'm going. I'm leaving now. Are you coming or not? It's binary. Yes or no. All or nothing. You cannot stay where you are and follow me. A decision is required. You are either coming or you are not. And they left everything to follow you. Jesus's invitation is an invitation to complete surrender. But sometimes, sadly, we settle for being committed Christians. Sure. We're committed to Christianity. What our parents did, it's good for our children. It aligns with our politics. I'm an Italian American from New Jersey. Doesn't that make me a Christian? There's this great mission at the beach in Ocean Grove every summer that the family loves going to. Look, these can all be good things and good reasons to be committed to Christianity. But commitment and surrender are two very different things. 

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[00:14:06] I am a committed New York Yankees fan. I just gained half the audience, lost half the audience. Through and through, my dad is a Yankees fan. You can blame him. I'm a Yankees fan. My kids are Yankees fans. We go to games at Fenway Park with our Yankees hats on. Here's me and my youngest boy, JJ, in the hospital the day he was born. You can still see the hospital bracelet on my arm. And what are we doing? We're watching the Yankees. Of course, we are. What else would we be doing? Poor kid didn't stand a chance. I am a fully committed New York Yankees fan. There's no question. It's part of my family lineage. I'm going to die a Yankees fan. I am committed, but I'm not surrendered to the New York Yankees. See how weird that even sounds coming out of my mouth? It's a very different thing. It's an entirely different category. If the Steinbrenner's called and asked me to move my family to a different country to be a missionary for the Yankees? That would be very weird. What are you talking about? 

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[00:15:15] If the Yankees sent me a sacred book and told me to live my life by it, that would be very weird and I would feel no compulsion to follow. I'm committed to the Yankees, I really am, but I'm not surrendered to them. They don't have that sort of authority in my life. But truly following Jesus, and this is really my main point this morning, is all about making the transition in your heart from commitment to surrender. Because the Bible speaks of our relationship with God as a marriage. And the decision to get married is an all or nothing decision. You are either married or you're not. If I stood at the altar on my wedding day and looked at my wife after hearing the vows read, (my wife to be) if I looked at Joe and after the vows read and said 80%. A solid 80%. I'm 80% in on those vows. How do you think that would have went down? I know exactly how that would have went down. What if I said 90%? How about 98? You think Joe would have said, all right, good enough. No. 

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[00:16:31] Marriage is 100% surrender. Now, of course, it doesn't mean you have it all figured out. No, when you get married, you've got nothing figured out. And there's this long, hard, beautiful road ahead of living into the decision that you've made. But that first decision, those vows made on your wedding day, there needs to be no holding back. No hedging your bets. One hundred percent, I'm all in. I find this visual helpful. When Jesus calls us to follow him, we have an all or nothing decision to make a complete surrender, a stepping into marriage. That decision on the bottom there is either switched on or it's not. And then, yes, then there is this long, beautiful process of living out that surrender day by day as we form our new lives together with Christ. But far too many people, people who go by the name Christian, have never fully surrendered to Jesus. They've never made that binary all or nothing decision in their heart. That switch has never been turned on. And then they get frustrated because they're walking around day by day trying to push up the demur of their sanctification on their own strength, trying to make changes in their life on their own strength and wondering why nothing seems to happen. 

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[00:17:53] And then they get disillusioned. And then we start to doubt the power of the gospel and then people start to deconstruct their faith. It is so important that we get this because we have so often been told everything in moderation. Nothing wrong with a bit of religion, just don't go overboard. Don't become one of those fanatics that goes to Ocean Grove every summer. And look, sometimes everything in moderation is good advice. I've got no problem with a bit of TV, but when your kid's eyes get so glazed over it that they start to look a bit like the cartoon characters that they're watching on TV, it's time for a bit of moderation. Funnel cake. It would be a sin for me to come back to the Jersey Shore and not have a funnel cake. But when I'm tempted to go back for my third in the same day, then we have issues. Then we need a bit of moderation. Many things are best in moderation. TV, food, clothing. But here's the thing, these are all objects to be consumed, which makes them very different from a subject that we are invited into relationship with. 

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[00:19:07] Funnel cake in moderation, healthy and good. No argument there. A marriage in moderation, that's not healthy at all. Giving 80% of yourself to marriage does not get you 80% of a good marriage. It gives you devastation. How about parenting in moderation? Anybody tried that? How'd that go? No, there's nothing moderate about parenting. You don't get to just take days off from parenting. In so many ways, parenting is a full surrender to another person. My mom is here today. And when I was about six years old, I was out playing football on my neighbor's front lawn. It was actually my neighbor Chris, my best friend who's here, and I was getting knocked around pretty good probably by him. I came running home trying to my mom, who was on the front porch, and I was saying, "I'm not tough enough. I'm not tough enough." So guess what Mom did? Well, Mom did what any loving mother of a six year old son would do. She positioned herself like this, she got down to quite an athletic stance and her nose out in the air. Looked at me lovingly, and then she said, "Punch me in the nose. You are tough enough. Punch me in the nose.". 

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[00:20:24] And I know what you're thinking, crazy Italians. And indeed, I just looked at her like she was crazy-- and she was. But she persisted, punch me in the nose. And I don't know what sort of psychological state I must have been in, but finally she asked for it. I reared back and I gave my sweet mom a straight right hand to the nose. And to my astonishment, and to hers, blood actually began to come out of her nose and trickle down her face. But then came one of the most gorgeous images from all of my childhood. Through this blood came the most dazzling, radiant, joyful smile and my mom said, "Now get back out there." She sent me back out into that game and she went inside to get cleaned up. Now, you might not know what to make of that story. I'm not recommending this as parenting 101. I mean, what a crazy thing for my mom to do. What an unthinkable messy, bloody thing for her to do. But there's also some sense in which what an extravagant display of love. 

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[00:21:41] It's not mere commitment. That's surrender. I mean, my mom literally surrendering her body, offering her own blood for the sake of her child. You see the difference? Big difference between commitment and the sort of surrender that we have in the context of our deepest relationships. The full surrender of a parent. The full surrender of a spouse. It's the life that Jesus lived. It's the life that he calls us to. And I want to be very clear. It is impossible to do Christianity in moderation. Jesus knows nothing of moderate Christianity. I recently learned of a man named Maximilian Kolbe. He was a priest who was imprisoned in Auschwitz in World War Two because of the way he had protected Jews during World War Two. And there came a point where one of the prisoners in the camp escaped. And so, to deter future escapes, the deputy camp commander decided what he would do is he would read out at random 10 people's numbers, and those 10 would be put into an underground bunker and starve to death. 

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[00:22:51] And so Maximilian stood there, and as the 10 numbers were read, his number was actually not read. But the man next to him, his number was read. And as it was, he dropped to his knees and he cried out, "My wife. My children." And Maximilian, without hesitation, stepped forward and said, "Can I take this man's place?" And he was allowed to. And he went down with those other nine into that bunker and he ministered to them for the next two weeks until they died of starvation. And that man whose life had been saved spent the rest of his life going around and telling people of the grace that he had received. And the danger, when we hear a story like that is just to think that's crazy. To not even be able to conceive of that. That's just off the charts. But we need to be careful about that because there's another sense in which that's just normal Christianity. Maximilian is standing there and he's going, I know Jesus and Jesus knows me. I know what my eternal destiny is. I have this stranger next to me. I have no idea about him. If somebody needs to die, I'm going to take his place. I mean, it's what the scriptures say. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for others. 

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[00:24:18] I mean, this is why Christianity grew in the first place. Did you know that? In the first few centuries, the plagues of the first few centuries, the Antonine Plague in the second century, the Cyprian Plague in the third century, when everyone was running for the hills, they were getting out of the cities. That's where that phrase come from. They're getting out of the city so they don't get infected. Many of the Christians stayed in the cities to care for their neighbors. And many of them gave their lives for their neighbors, taking on the infection of the plague even as they nurse their neighbors back to health. Statistically, you are actually more likely to survive those first few centuries if you had a Christian as a neighbor. How awesome is that? Wouldn't it be amazing if we were known for that again. If you move in next door, you don't know your neighbor from anyone, they find out you're a Christian, they're not a Christian at all, but they're thinking, I'm so glad we've got a Christian next door. Yeah, they're a bit weird. They're a bit intense. But you know what? If my family needs to sacrifice, if my family really needs something, I know I'm going to be able to count on them because that's what their gospel says. That's who they follow. That's what they believe is. 

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[00:25:33] Jesus is asking for our all. And he's worthy of our all, our full surrender, our unconditional wedding vows. For better or for worse, for richer or for poor. In health, yes, but also in sickness. All that I am, I give to you. If my vows to my wife, my human wife are stronger than my vows to the creator of the universe, then something has gone wrong. All that I am, I give to you. Have you held anything back from God? Sometimes I think we struggle to fully surrender to God because we struggle to believe that He really wants that sort of marriage intimacy with us. That he really loves us that much. I mean, you marry someone in response to their love for you, but we tend to think, yeah, Jesus loves me. John 3:16, heard it a million times. We're well past that. We need to catch ourselves if we start to think that way. Join me for a bit of a thought experiment. I want you to imagine the strongest person that you know in terms of physical strength. And now I want you to imagine that person in an arm wrestling match with God. Who would win? What? Would it be close? No. 

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[00:27:01] I mean, God flung the stars across the sky; we're not confused at all about the power gap between our power and God's power. How about the smartest person you know? Think about the smartest person you know. And now think of them in a math competition with God. Who wins? Is it close? No. God calculated the fundamental constants of the universe. There's no confusion in our intuitions about this credible intellectual gap between us and God. But now if I ask you to think about the most loving person in the whole world, maybe it's the person who loves you most or maybe it's just the most loving person you can think about in all of history. Does God love you that much, that unconditionally? Does he love you more than that? How much more? And you see there can be, for some of us, this strange tendency in our hearts to radically suppress our conception of God's love. When we talk about God's power. No confusion. Completely intuitive to me that my power is here and his power is up there. Intelligence, same thing. But sometimes I can find myself thinking with respect to love, wow, if God could just love me as much as my parents or my brother or my best friend, if he could just love me that much, that would be amazing. 

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[00:28:29] Much more than his other attributes, we sometimes struggle to get our heads and our hearts around God's love because we don't think we deserve love that vast. And, of course, we're right about that. That's what makes it grace, an unmerited gift. But if we're honest, there's something in our hearts that would rather receive a reward than a gift. It's an interesting question to ask yourself, actually. If you could have either a reward or a gift of exactly the same value, which would you prefer? And there's often something deep within us that wants the reward, isn't there? Because we want to earn what we get and we want the praise for getting it. And that is what makes God's love so uncomfortable to us. You didn't earn it. You'll never earn it. You can't earn it. You don't deserve it. You didn't come anywhere close to deserving it. It is a gift that we are completely unworthy of and that can make us feel very uncomfortable. So I think sometimes what happens is that subconsciously we just start to bring God's love down to something that we think is closer to what we might deserve. And that makes total sense because it's what we're used to doing. It's what the world has taught us. It's how the world operates. 

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[00:29:50] I have a friend who used to work for one of the top global consulting firms and they hire him out for 70 or 80K a week and he'd be expected to produce tenfold. And he told me that the first thing he was trained to do was to find the insecure overachievers in the company. And then to give them weekly meetings in which he would always tell them something that they were doing wrong. Prode the insecurity to try to squeeze out more and more productivity. And now that approach might be highly productive, at least in the short term, but it can really mess with our heads. Because we can so easily fall into thinking of God this way. My God is the turnaround guy that's brought into our under-performing lives. And his goal is really just to get stuff out of us. To get us to behave in certain ways. We are the nameless, faceless employees that he needs to squeeze more productivity out of so we can be more effective for his bottom line, more fruitful for his kingdom. He doesn't really care about us. He just cares about getting a good return on his investment. 

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[00:31:05] When I used to teach at a seminary, I would interview prospective applicants. And my favorite question to ask in the interviews was what does God think of you? If I asked God right now about you, what do you think he'd say? What does God think of you? It's a really good question to be asked because it makes you experienced instinctive response of your heart, which is not always the same as perhaps the right answer that you know up in your head. And when I used to ask seminary applicants that question, what does God think of you? Typically I would get exactly the same answer that I would expect from an insecure overachiever at work. They'd say, "I don't think he's too pleased with me right now. I know I need to do better. I haven't been very consistent with my quiet times. I haven't been praying enough. I really didn't share the gospel with enough people last month, but I'm still really committed to doing better next month. These are people applying to seminary to be pastors, and that was the typical response. 

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[00:32:10] And here's the major problem with that. If you ask my sons, Rafael and JJ, what I think of them, and if they instinctively give you that sort of answer, I would be absolutely devastated. If they thought that my love was in any way dependent on their behavior, I'd be devastated. If they did something good and then they brought it to me and they said, "Well, Dad, do you love me now?" I'd be devastated. Or if they did something bad and then they came to me and sort of sheepishly asked like, "Dad, do you still love me?" I would be devastated. Nothing could make me sicker to my stomach than if my kids were living in such a way that implied that I had not done enough to convince them of my love for them. That it is unconditional. That nothing can separate them from my love. Same with God. God is not primarily our boss, prodding the insecurity to try to squeeze out of us more and more productivity. No. He is our father and the thing he wants most from us, far more than anything else, is simply for us to know the extent of His love for us. 

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[00:33:28] Every night before bed I ask my sons, "Who loves you?" And in unison they joyfully exclaim, "Dada!" Best part of my day every day. As a father, there is nothing I delight in more than hearing my kid’s full assurance of my love for them. And as a father, there is nothing God wants more than for you to truly know the depth of His love for you. We think God's love is basic Christianity 101. Yeah, of course, I know God loves me. But the truth is that many confessing Christians never really accept God's love. Not in full. What does God think of you? He is absolutely crazy about you. He tenderly formed you in the womb. He takes great delight in you. He rejoices over you with loud singing. You are the bride of his youth, the apple of his eye, his poem, his master [inaudible]. The Bible says all of those things, and there is not a single thing that you need to do to earn it. And there is not a single thing that you can do to change it. Do you believe that? Here's how Jesus put it and what I believe is one of the most overwhelming verses in all of scripture. "As the father has loved me, so have I loved you.". 

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[00:34:40] How does Jesus love us? He loves us with the same love that his father loves him. Take a moment to just sit with the gravity of that statement. The perfect love that exists within the Holy Trinity, God has that same divine love for you. The ultimate and most fundamental problem of humanity is that we are finite beings created for an infinite love. Finite beings created for an infinite love. And so we tirelessly search this world for the things that will ultimately satisfy us and they never do. They can't. Because an infinite longing can never be satisfied by anything finite. The restlessness in our hearts can only be satisfied by one thing. You've made us for yourself, O' lord. And our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. Have you found your rest in God? Not just you believe in him up here, but have you found your rest in him? Are you still competing for his love or are you resting in the joyful assurance of it? Is the Christianity I've spoken about this morning the Christianity that you know? Is the faith that I've spoken about this morning, the surrender that I have spoken about this morning, is that the relationship with God that you know? 

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[00:36:10] Some of us have been so inoculated by small moderate doses of Christianity that we have never actually caught the real thing. Many people are committed to Christianity. It's my logo, it's my team, I've got the apps, I watch the content, I listen to the music, I wear the t-shirt. Many people are committed to Christianity but not surrendered to Jesus Christ. And that is tragic because it is only in full surrender that we experience the fullness of life that Jesus promised. I plead with you today, do not do Christianity in moderation. Jesus asks so much more of us. And he has so much more for you. There's only one place in the Bible, only one actually, where God explicitly tells us to test him. And the passage is all about full surrender. He says, "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse." Talking not just about finances, but not holding anything back from him. "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse. Test me in this." Only time the Lord says, "And see if I will not throw open the flood gates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.". 

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[00:37:32] If you are here this morning and you are a Christian, go all in. Hold nothing back. And when someone asks you about your faith, don't give them a moderate answer, which is not actually true to the faith that you have in the person that you follow. If you are a Christian here this morning, tomorrow, someone is going to ask you, "How was your weekend?" "Fine, thanks. You?" How many times in my life I've answered that question that way. But you know what? That's not even true. That's a lie. I've sat here with you this morning and worshiped the living God. I've spoken the most eternal truths of the universe about him. I've sensed his spirit dwelling within me. I've known you as family, as brothers and sisters, even though we've never met. My weekend was not fine. My weekend was incredible. Think about just that one question. You probably get asked that question five times a week. Let's say that's 250 times a year, maybe 60 years in your adult life. About 15,000 times in your life, you're going to be asked, how was your weekend? Let's make a promise to each other right now. We're never again going to respond to that question with "Fine, thanks," because we have too much to share. 

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Vince Vitale [00:39:00] Invite people into the fullness of life that is possible in full surrender. And if you are here this morning and you are not a Christian, I plead with you, do not do Christianity in moderation. Do not judge Christianity based on moderate commitment. Jesus knows nothing of moderate commitment. And his commitment to you was anything but moderate. He is the groom who made the full, unconditional wedding vows, not just when it was better for him, but when it was worse for him on that cross. Literally giving up the riches of heaven to be poor among us, becoming afflicted himself so that we could have health. All that he is he gave to us. He is that parent for whom nothing could be too much for their child. He is that parent that took our punch right on the nose and then did something unthinkable and messy and bloody as he came down, as he bent down to see us face to face so that we would know the fullness of his wonderful face, so that we could see his love for us in his eyes. 

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[00:40:21] And he stepped into our suffering with us, even though that meant suffering at the hands of those that he had created, even though that meant suffering at the hands of his own children, there is nothing that he would not do for his children. Jesus surrendered himself in full for you. Will you surrender yourself fully to Him? Test him. Test God. Bring everything into the storehouse. Make your full, unconditional wedding vows. Hold nothing back, and then see if he will not throw open the flood gates of heaven and pour out so much blessing and you will not even be able to contain it in your heart. 

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[00:41:06] And so, Lord, we praise you for who you are. Thank you for this morning, for what you've done in each heart. Thank you, Lord, for the depth and the breadth, the extent of your love and nothing can separate us from it. Or if there's anyone who's kneeling here this morning that's been in doubt about your love that's had those questions in their mind, God, can you really love me that much? Anybody who's been tempted to think of you as that boss that's just prodding the insecurity, just looking for more and more productivity, I pray right now, Lord, that there would just be an overwhelming sense of peace in their hearts that would be from you, that would be from your Holy Spirit. That they could rest. Lord, we ask you for forgiveness for when we have approached you moderately or near commitment. Lord, we also acknowledge before you that coming to you in full surrender is not something we are capable of. We don't have that in our hearts. And so, Lord, we thank you for your promise and we ask that you would pour your love out into our hearts by your spirit whom you have given us. And would you do that to overflowing right now? Lord, would you open up the floodgates in the lives of each one here? And we trust you for it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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