Welcome to Gateway Church's podcast.

Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

Big welcome to all of our campuses, all of our prison campuses, and every one of you watching online.

We're so glad that you're here today to celebrate together with us.

I just want to say I had a really encouraging week.

Earlier this week, a new book of mine

was actually released called Shine Your Light.

And this is a book that I wrote this winter and I just felt the tangible presence of the Lord while writing it.

And it's key thought basically, its main message is one that I shared here at Gateway about two years ago when I used

light bulbs as an illustration of the fact that whatever personality you have,

whatever set of gifts you have, you can shine for Jesus and you can light up

your world for his love.

And there's so much more in it, so many more stories, the story of Sophie Scholl,

the Christian German girl that stood up against Hitler.

I shared her story at the first conference back in January,

and many other stories, a lot of Bible teaching you can

grab your own copy in the bookshop of every campus after service if you don't

want to that's okay too I just want to let you know that it's out there.

I'm so excited about a message that the Lord placed on my heart for this moment, for this weekend.

And I want to speak to you about something that I call the purpose of the presence, the purpose of the

presence.

We're going to start out in Matthew, chapter 4, the story of how and when Jesus calls some of his first early disciples.

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