Amen and amen and amen.

Welcome to church. What an incredible weekend that we are a part of. I need to sit up, grab your Bibles. We're going to be in Matthew chapter 6.

We're walking through the Book of Matthew for the whole year. And it really is an exciting weekend.

And I also just want to say thank you before I dive in. I want to thank you. Many of you have accepted the one-year challenge to just give us a year, to do what Jesus has told you to do for a year and see how it affects your life. And that's why you're here. Thank you. I also want to thank you for receiving the Word of God so well. You're the best in the country. I get to preach all over the place, and I'm telling you, you are the bed. Now, don't clap because we're going to do a whole sermon about how it's not about us, all right? And there is going to be a significant part of this sermon where I'm going to rebuke you, so I just want to know I love you. so when I'm yelling at you later, it's because I do love you.

Last week was a hard teaching, no doubt. But I've just decided I'm the mailman. I'm not the editor of the Bible. I just got to teach what it says. And you are ridiculous. You receive it, hard teaching. And I appreciate that. And this weekend, with one weekend with what our students did, 3,300 students and leaders

gathered in this place to make much of Jesus, and it's a really, really, really big deal.

And so I need you to continue to pray for our students because it's not over. In fact, the most important things are going to happen now. Because Jesus tells this parable, we'll get to it in a few months, that the word goes out like the seed, and it's not the delivery of the seed. It's the condition of the soil that it lands on that's going to make the difference. And so the seed has gone out. The Word of God has been preached.

God is moving in the lives of our students. And we've got to pray against the enemy that he doesn't snatch it away. And we've got to pray that they don't just get choked out by the concerns of the world. And we've got to pray that are rooted in the scripture so this thing goes deep and it's not shallow. and we pray that it lands on good soil

so that it produces

a harvest that is miraculous and let me tell you why it's such a big deal i say this all the time

you have no idea what hangs in the balance back in the 1900s 1994 i was a college kid volunteering at my local church, and I was just a volunteer leader with

10th grade boys at a weekend.

Not nearly as cool as the one we just had, but we were doing our best.

It was called Disciple Now back then.

And I'm just sitting in the back, and the guy that we brought in to speak is up there slinging the gospel. I didn't even think it was for me. I thought it was

for these kids. I was just there to serve. And I'm sitting in the back row of the church

that was hosting this event and that is where I heard the undeniable call of God in my life

to surrender my life to a life of full-time

vocational ministry.

And so a part of the reason we're all here together is because that church in Richmond,

Virginia, in the mid-1990s, cared enough about our students to help us encounter the living

God.

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