(upbeat music) - Hey, this is Pastor John Ryan Cantu from PNEUMA Church in Houston, Texas.

Thank you for listening to the message today.

I hope that it blesses you and all those that you share it with.

God bless you. (upbeat music) I'm not gonna ask you to welcome your neighbor today.

Welcome everybody.

I'm gonna ask you to go ahead and open your Bibles and we're gonna go into the word.

And, amen. (congregation clapping) Can I get your attention this morning?

I want you to go with me to Matthew 24.

Holy Spirit, I pray that you have your way this morning, Lord.

Have your way, Father God.

Lord, I pray that you do what you wanna do, Father God, that you say what you wanna say, Father God.

I pray that I'd be sensitive to your spirit, Lord, as you speak this word over your people, Father God.

I pray that we would be receptive, Lord.

I pray, Father God, that our hearts would be softened, my God, that we don't approach this word with pride.

I pray, Father God, we don't approach this word with any distractions, Lord.

I pray against any movement that the enemy is trying to do in this place, my God, anything that he's trying to throw our way, my God, to distract us.

Lord, I pray, Father God, that you would get our attention.

Holy Spirit, I pray, Father, in Jesus' name, that this word would heal and restore and save and convict, my God, and do everything that you need to do, Lord.

This is your time.

This is your time.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Matthew 24, 36.

You have it, say amen.

Praise the Lord.

It says, "But concerning the day and the hour, no one knows.

"Not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, "but the Father only.

"For as were the days of Noah, "so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

"For as in those days before the flood, "they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving "into marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark.

"And they were unaware until the flood came "and swept them all away, so it will be "the coming of the Son of Man.

"Then two men will be in the field.

"One will be taken and one left.

"Two women will be grinding at the mill.

"One will be taken and one left.

"Therefore stay awake."

Someone say, "Stay awake."

"For you do not know what day your Lord is coming.

"But know this, that if the master of the house "had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, "he would have stayed awake and not would have let "his house be broken into.

"Therefore, you also must be ready, "for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect."

Amen.

You can take your seat this morning.

I don't know what God is gonna do through this word.

I feel a very different spirit this morning than I did in our first service.

And I don't know what it is.

I feel something heavy and I wanna try to be sensitive, but I'm also gonna preach what the Lord has asked me to preach.

We know that Jesus is coming.

The King is coming, amen.

And he's coming soon.

I don't know when.

I don't know if it's gonna be in my lifetime, but I know that he's coming back.

And I know that when we lose the expectancy of his imminent return, we get comfortable.

And the only thing more dangerous than a dormant church is a comfortable church, a church that lets its guard down.

A church that gets too comfy in the AC of the church service on a Sunday morning once a week.

The devil might not be successful in winning the church back into the world, but he has done a pretty good job convincing the world, or I'm sorry, convincing the church that we still have time.

And when you think that you have time, you get comfortable, you procrastinate, amen.

I'll tell you what, man, it's the best feeling when I'm super stressed because I gotta meet a deadline only to find out that the deadline is actually a week out.

And then I can breathe, and I don't have to worry so much, I can wait an entire week to get it done, right?

So you no longer act with haste.

A church that stops believing in the imminent return of Christ will get lazy and will slack off when it comes to evangelizing and discipling, and we might even neglect our own spiritual responsibilities and our worship to the King of Kings because hey, I got time.

I could do it next week.

I ain't really feeling it right now, but I'll get rejuvenated on the next night of worship.

I'm not really feeling it right now, but maybe on the next Pentecost Sunday.

I'm not really feeling it right now, but maybe when the next prophet comes into town, I'll go to church so that he can give me a word.

We get comfortable and we get lazy, and that's a dangerous spot to be in.

And so we have to lean into the craziness, as crazy as we sound, saying Jesus is coming soon.

We have to live like he's coming today, and I know that it's been more than 2,000 years the church has been saying he's coming back, he's coming back, he's coming back, but we need to continue living as if he is coming back soon.

The worst thing that we could do is forget that he's coming and not be found in the position that he wants us to be in when he does return.

The King is coming, and I've been feeling, I don't know why, I've been feeling an urge for several months to bring a teaching on eschatology.

Eschatology is the branch of theology that deals with the end times.

And I realize that when it comes to the end times, it's a very hot topic.

Everybody wants to talk about the end times.

We're fascinated with the when and with the how of the end time events, and for some reason, Christians like to follow those prophetic figures that have it nailed down the day and the time that Jesus is coming back.

I pray that you're not one of those people, and if you are, please don't say you come to PNEUMA, right?

Because I don't understand how those people can take a very simple statement made by Jesus in the Bible.

There's nothing to take out of context here.

He says no one knows the hour of his return.

You don't have to be a Greek scholar to understand that.

No one knows means, in the Greek, no one knows.

And so, in fact, I would even argue that there's a lot that we don't know about the end times in general that we think we know.

There's so many different interpretations of the end time events by, I mean, you can read any type of commentary on the book of Revelation, and all of these scholars will have a different type of interpretation.

Holy Spirit, men and women of God.

Some people believe in what's called Preterist eschatology, which interprets many of the end time prophecies as already having occurred.

Some people believe in the rapture, other people do not.

You might have heard the term pre-millennialism, post-millennialism.

Some people believe in a literal millennial reign of Christ, other believe that the time is figurative.

Other people believe that we're living in the millennial age right now.

And so there's so much that we don't know, and so whenever I teach eschatology, I tell people, look, this is what I believe, this is not what I know.

So for that reason, I don't love teaching the end times, because I like to teach and preach on the things that I know.

When it comes to eschatology, there is so much that we can't know.

I don't know what the mark of the beast is gonna be.

I don't know.

And because I don't know, I don't really care to speculate, 'cause it's a waste of time, I don't know.

You don't know, and the guy on YouTube doesn't know either.

I don't know, I don't know if the millennial reign will be a literal 1,000 years.

I believe it will be, I don't know, I could be wrong.

I don't know who the anti-Christ will be, I don't know exactly what's gonna trigger his return, or his appearance.

What I do know is that Jesus is coming.

What I do know is that he is coming back for a holy church, a pure church, a church that is on her knees, waiting for the return of the bridegroom.

And we gotta be ready.

We gotta be ready, tell the person next to you, are you ready? - Ready. - The title of my sermon is At The Ready.

And this is not a message that I wanted to preach today.

Because again, I do this all the time with God.

I argue with him on the word that he wants me to bring.

I said, Lord, I'm talking to Christians, they are ready.

They're ready.

Maybe there's a few of them that are not really ready, but we'll get 'em, you know?

We'll get 'em today, you know?

But that's all I'm saying, I got like, do I really need to spend 40 minutes preaching to the choir?

And again, I don't see what God sees.

And there's a lot of people that I might think are ready who are not ready.

There's a lot of people who every Sunday, they get ready for church, but they ain't ready for heaven.

There's people who come to church and they lift up the name of Jesus, they lift up their hands, they know all the songs, but they're not ready.

And so as I read through Matthew 24 and Matthew 25, which are great, they talk about the end times, I find myself asking the question, what does readiness look like?

Because we're not really told how to be ready, we're just told to be ready.

That we have to be watchful, that we have to be alert because he's coming like a thief in the night when no one expects him.

So I wonder, like, is there anything else that I need to be doing more of to get ready?

And if I were to ask you today, are you ready, if Jesus comes back today or if you died today, are you ready to be in his presence?

And you might say yes, some of you might say no, others might say I'm not sure.

I want you to be sure.

I want you to know that if Jesus were to come today, the church would not still be having church, we would be in heaven, we'd be in his presence.

And so Jesus, he illustrates readiness with two parables.

The first one is the parable of the 10 virgins.

Jesus says that there were 10 virgins, five wise, five unwise, and as they were waiting for their bridegroom, they were waiting for his return so that they could be escorted to the wedding banquet.

And the five wise virgins, they took extra oil for their lamps just in case the oil ran out.

And the other five took what they thought was just going to be enough, not anticipating a delay from the bridegroom.

But when the bridegroom did delay, the five virgins who didn't bring the extra oil had to go out and they had to try to find some more, they had to try to buy some, and in doing so, they missed the window of the arrival of their bridegroom.

And so in the context, readiness looks like having enough of what you need to last however long it takes.

Did you get that?

I don't know if you got that.

So if you're always running on empty, come on.

If you're always running on spiritual emptiness, you can't wait to get to Sunday.

If you're always running on empty, you might have enough sometimes, but if you don't have more than enough Holy Spirit, if you don't have more than enough joy, if you don't have more than enough love for the things of God, you might be okay, but you also run the risk of being caught with nothing in a given moment of life where God doesn't seem to be answering your prayers, and the blessings aren't happening anymore, and the promise is taking too long, and life is beating you down.

You might be found with nothing because you didn't prepare more than enough of what you needed for the seasons of drought.

We can't run on yesterday's oil forever.

We can't run on yesterday's glory.

We can't run off of last week's beautiful Sunday service.

We can't do that.

We have to have more than enough.

We have to be constantly replenished with the things of God to maintain a lifetime of faith.

And so that means that daily we have to be seeking God.

We have to be worshiping God.

It's gotta be easy to worship God.

When we come into this place every Sunday, it should be easy for the saints to lift up a shout of praise to God.

It should be easy for us to lift up our hands and worship because we don't have to warm up for three songs and then get to the last song, and then say, okay, God, I'm ready.

No, we have more than enough.

By the time we come into this place, we are ready for an outpouring of the Spirit.

We have to have more than enough.

Jesus said, ask for the daily bread, the daily bread.

And I believe that there's a lot of Christians starving spiritually because they're trying to eat the crumbs of stale bread.

They're trying to eat the crumbs of yesterday's bread.

When Jesus is saying, you need to ask for the bread daily so that you always have the provision, you always have enough.

It's easy to have faith when God speaks to you.

It's easy to have faith when there's a prophetic word given to you.

It's easy, but what about when God doesn't speak to you?

What about when there's a moment of silence?

Do you have more than enough faith of what you need to outlast the drought?

So if I were to ask you right now, if Jesus were to come back today, would you go to heaven?

Maybe you're gonna say yes.

But if I were to ask you tomorrow, around the same time, and you're like, well, I don't know, then that means you're like the five virgins who had to go out and buy some more oil because the oil that you have only lasts in the right environment.

It only lasts in the right atmosphere, around the right people, at the right time, at 11 o'clock on Sundays.

There's no carryover from Sunday to the rest of your week.

You have to pray that Jesus comes back on a Sunday so that you're found in the right place.

So in this context, readiness looks like having enough to last, and there's a whole sermon right there that I'm not gonna preach, but that's just one aspect of readiness that I want you to see.

The next parable that Jesus tells is a parable of the talents.

And so in the parable of the talents, a master leaves his three servants in charge of his possessions, and he goes on a journey.

In the parable, the master represents Jesus, and the servants represent those who claim to be his disciples.

And the first two servants, they invest what was entrusted to them by their master, right?

And they reap a harvest, they profit, meaning that they are in a better state than when their master left them.

I hope that you are in a better state today than the day that you receive Jesus.

I hope you don't look the same.

If you've been saved for two years, I hope you look like it.

Because the third servant does nothing with his investment, he digs it in the ground, afraid that he might lose it.

And so in this context, readiness looks like stewardship.

Have you prepared for the return of Christ with how you steward what he has given you?

Have you been obedient with your callings?

Have you been responsible with the gift of your salvation?

Have you allowed the Spirit to take root in you to produce fruit?

Have you grown?

Are you in a better place today because of the gifts of salvation that he's given you, or are you just walking around saying that you've been saved by grace, but you've dug it in the ground?

Social media says God first, but you don't really put God first.

If Jesus were to ask you or come back and say, what did he do with what I gave you, how many of us would be ashamed of our answer?

Not a lot of amens today, man.

And so in this context, readiness looks like stewardship.

So I'm gonna ask you again, are you ready?

Are you ready?

You still with me?

Look, talking about Christ's return, it really is a heart check for all of us.

I'm not trying to scare anybody today.

I just wanna remind you that Jesus is coming back and he's looking for a church that's ready.

He's not looking for a church that think it's ready.

He's looking for a church that is actually ready.

How many marriages end up in divorce thinking that they were ready to get married, but they actually weren't?

I love you, you love me, we're ready.

What else do I need?

Well, one question I started to ask when I do like premarital pastoral counseling, it's not, are you ready to get married?

It's, are you ready for marriage?

Well, two different questions.

Are you ready to be a husband?

And are you ready to be a godly husband?

Are you ready to be a priest?

Are you ready to lead your family and take the responsibility and bear the burdens of the spiritual frailty in the family?

Are you ready to protect them?

Not just by providing for them, but providing them spiritually, are you ready?

And then the wife, I have to ask, are you ready to be a wife who honors and submits to the headship of her husband?

Are you ready for that?

'Cause if you ain't ready for that, I don't know if you're ready for a godly marriage.

I don't know if you're ready for a marriage that God can bless.

If I were to ask any of us in the room what it means to be ready for the return of Christ, I think we would all say the same thing.

We gotta have Jesus in our heart, we gotta walk in faith, we gotta live with the Holy Spirit.

We're no longer identified with what the world says, we are identified with our creator, right?

If Jesus were to come back today, I'm pretty confident that I'm ready, I'm leaving.

I've done what he's asked me to do with my life, I've stewarded well, not perfectly, but I've done well, I've operated in seasons of not enough because I had enough of the Holy Spirit to sustain me when everybody else was quitting and getting mad at the church and getting mad at God and leaving.

I think I'm ready, and I hope that you are as well.

But I also want you to think about another layer of readiness that I think we often miss.

You're still with me?

I'm going somewhere, talking to Christians today.

So in the same discourse, this is Matthew 25, so Jesus is dealing with the same question of what will the signs be of your return?

And Jesus says this in Matthew 25, 31, we're gonna read a little bit.

Matthew 25, 31, Jesus says, "When the Son of Man returns "and comes in all his glory and all the angels with him, "then he will sit on his glorious throne.

"And before him will be gathered all the nations "and he will separate people one from another "as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

"And he will place the sheep on his right, "but the goats on his left.

"Then the king will say to those on his right, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, "inherit the kingdom, prepare for you "from the foundation of the world.

"For I was hungry and you gave me food, "I was thirsty, you gave me drink, "I was a stranger, you welcomed me, "naked, you clothed me, sick, "you visited me in prison and you came to see me.

"Then the righteousness will answer him saying, "Lord, when did we see you in this way "and do all that you said that we did?

"And the king will say, 'Truly I say to you, "'as you did it to the least of these of my brothers, "'you did it to me.'"

How many of us can say we're gonna be found on the right side of Christ?

Oh man, we got a lot of work to do.

That was like three of you.

I need to change up my sermon today.

How many of us believe that we will be on the right side of Jesus, receiving the commendation from Jesus saying, "Well done, good and faithful servants."

How many of us can say that?

I hope so, man.

Because then, verse 41, he will say to those on his left, "Depart from me, you cursed into the eternal fire "prepared for the devil and his angels.

"For I was hungry and you gave me no food.

"I was thirsty, you gave me no drink.

"A stranger, you did not welcome me naked "and you did not clothe me sick "and in prison you did not visit me."

And then they will say, "Lord, when did we see you "in this way and not do these things?"

And he says, "As you did not do to the least of these, "you did not do it to me.

"And these will go away into eternal punishment, "but the righteous into eternal life."

So the message that I want you to get today is this, church.

I don't want you just to be ready to go.

I want you to be ready to stand before the throne of judgment.

Christians are ready to go.

We ready.

God, get me out of this place.

Come, Jesus, come quickly.

I'm sick of the pain, I'm sick of the tears, I'm sick of the suffering.

I'm sick of the politics, I'm sick of what's going on in Washington.

I'm sick of everything.

Come, Jesus, now.

I'm ready for my mansion, I'm ready for the streets of gold, I'm ready for the Sea of Crystal, I'm ready to dance in your presence.

Praise God.

You're ready to go, but are you ready to stand before the throne of judgment?

Because every single one of us will.

And I'm not here to suggest that if you're a Christian, you might go to hell.

No, the grace that saved you saved you.

The grace that saved you has you.

The Bible says that nothing can pluck you out of his hand.

If you are a professing Christian who carries Christ in their life and the Holy Spirit in your heart, I will see you in heaven, brother.

I will see you up there.

But the Bible also talks about a judgment that we will all pass through based on what we did.

You hearing me today?

What you do matters to Jesus.

Not just what you have.

Yes, what you have, Jesus, that matters.

That gets you into the pearly gates of heaven.

But the Bible talks about what we do, we will receive judgment on.

I believe that, listen, I believe that everything that you did before you came to Christ will not be counted against you.

The Bible says you are a new creation.

The oldest passed away.

But there are some things that we did after Christ that I know, not believe, know, we will all be judged on.

The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5, 10, this is Paul talking to the church, he's talking to Christians.

And he says, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

John writes in Revelation 20, 12, and I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened.

Then another book was opened, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged by what was written in the books according to what they had done.

Listen, this does not mean that we are saved by works, but we are absolutely judged by them.

And I don't know what the criteria that Jesus is going to use when I'm standing before the judgment seat of Christ.

I don't know how he's gonna judge me.

I don't know what the rewards are gonna be.

I don't know anything like that.

But from what I read in scripture, God doesn't only want us to have him in our heart, he wants us to have his heart.

I'm gonna say that again.

God doesn't just want us to have Jesus in our heart, he wants us to have the heart of Christ.

Feed, clothe, visit, tend the needs of the least of these, see people with compassion, bring more people to Jesus, speak Jesus to the people who need to hear Jesus, love on the outcast of the orphan and the widow, build houses of restoration and healing, not just for the church, but for the spiritually desolate.

And while you're doing all of those things, make sure that you've got enough oil, because kingdom work gets hard, and it gets tiring.

Make sure that you have enough of God to sustain you when the enemy wants to tear you down and convince you that the church is not grateful for all the hard work that you're putting into the kingdom.

Make sure that you have enough.

And make sure that you steward your gifts well.

Don't waste away the good news of the gospel and dig it in the ground.

Make sure that it grows, see that it produces godly character and godly children and godly marriages and godly generations.

Are you ready to stand before the throne of judgment as a Christian?

The passage, this passage at the end of Matthew, it tells me that God will not just judge me on how much I loved him, he will judge me on how much I love others.

That is the judgment that awaits every single one of us.

And my job, church, and my obligation as a pastor is not just to bring people to Jesus, it's to urge you to bring people to Jesus.

Ephesians four, it says that he gave apostles and prophets and evangelists and shepherds and teachers to equip the saints, we're all the saints, for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body.

You know, people ask me, they ask how they can serve in church and sometimes I don't know what to tell them because we got a lot of servants and we got a good amount of help and leaders and ministry and they got their team and I always wanna put someone somewhere, if you wanna help out in the church, I wanna make sure that we, yes, I'm gonna get you right now.

But sometimes at the top of my head, I have to think about it, like I don't know.

Pastor, where can I serve in the church?

Let me get back to you, let me ask around.

But if you're looking for a place to serve in the church, why don't you begin with serving the kingdom?

Because in serving the kingdom, you will serve your church.

Brother Mikey, I mean, you know, I gotta talk about you, bro.

This guy doesn't have a position, he's not a leader in the church, he's not active, I mean, he's everywhere, but he's not actively involved in any particular ministry, but he is involved in kingdom work and that is the work that every single one of us are called to.

You don't have to wait for a title or a position or a place in any particular ministry before you can start witnessing and evangelizing the people and bringing people to church, like that is the ministry of every single one of us.

Now, there's plenty of places to serve.

Yeah, you can see brother Larry and sister Heather and PNEUMA kids need some help and all that as well.

But you can do kingdom ministry, kingdom work without being involved in any particular ministry.

I fear that sometimes we lose the imminence of the return of Christ, that we're too comfortable.

And I just wanna caution every single one of us today that we expect Jesus to come back, that we are ready, not just to party in heaven, but we are ready to stand before his judgment seat.

Jesus is coming back and we need to prepare.

I'm gonna have the worship team come up, I'm not gonna, well, it's actually, I didn't think I was gonna preach very long.

This week, Leila asked me, she was asking me a whole bunch of questions about the rapture and the tribulation and just end times in general.

And whenever you tell a kid about these things, many times they fear like that is gonna happen tomorrow.

At least that's how I was when I was a kid.

When I learned about the end times, I remember praying every day, Lord, please let me have a girlfriend before you come back.

And he outdid himself, he gave me a wife and two kids.

But every, y'all already know, even when we were not living in the ways of the Lord, we went to Colorado, we weren't going to church.

Every single night, I would pray, Lord, if you come back tonight, my parents might be staying here, but send me with you.

That was a low blow, my bad. (congregation laughing) But that's, you know, kids kind of, they have that urgency.

Once they know about it, Leila was looking at the sky.

She was, on the way home, she was like, why is the sky pink?

You know?

(congregation laughing) She was scared, you could tell that she was scared.

She had a lot of questions.

And so I was explaining all of these things to her in my interpretation of the end times, and I talked about how there would be a time of tribulation for those who weren't raptured, for those who aren't the church.

And she asked me if it was going to be hard for those people that stayed behind and went through the tribulation.

And I told her very, I mean, just like I was teaching her, I was like, yes, it's gonna be really hard.

It's gonna be very hard for those who profess Christ as Lord because some of them won't be able to eat.

They'll be persecuted.

It's going to be really hard for those who aren't raptured.

And all of a sudden she's quiet for like 10 seconds.

And I turn around and I just, I noticed that she's got tears in her eyes and she's crying.

And I said, what's going on?

What's wrong?

And she says, I don't want, and she gives a certain person's name that she loves, I don't want this person to not make it to heaven.

I don't want this person to go through the tribulation.

She says, I don't want them to have a hard time.

And can I tell you in that moment that I was inspired by my eight-year-old daughter where I had to say, God, I never wanna lose that.

I fear that the church has lost that.

I never wanna lose the urgency of the mission that you have called me, not as a pastor, but as a Christian too.

I never want my heart to not break for those who still don't have you.

Because when we lose the urgency, we lose the readiness.

There are things happening in our world, church.

There's things happening in our nation.

Nearly every sign that the Bible speaks about has already been seen.

There's been wars, there's been plagues, there's been famines, there's been celestial signs.

John says that many antichrists have already come, we are living in the last days.

We're living in it.

And we can't get so distracted by what's happening in the world that we stop preparing.

We cannot get so distracted that we stop doing the work of the kingdom because we're paying so much attention to the signs that are happening.

If the signs are happening, that means the urgency should be felt even more.

Don't get distracted by what's going on in the world and focus on the work of the kingdom because Jesus is coming and he's coming soon.

And every single one of us have people in our lives who are not yet walking with Christ.

I know that many of us are prepared.

I know that many of us are going to heaven.

And I know that many of us are prepared to stand before the day of judgment.

But I wanna leave you with just this final passage from the words of Jesus, Matthew 7 21.

If you've been here long enough, I mean, you've heard me preach on this many, many times, but Jesus says, "Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, "but the one who does the will of my Father."

He says, "On that day, many will say to me, "Lord, did we not prophesy in your name?

"Did we not cast out demons in your name?

"Did we not do many mighty works in your name?

"And I will declare to them, I never knew you."

Depart from me.

So my challenge to every Christian in the room is to prepare to stand before the King of Kings on judgment day.

Because there will be a day, can I get your final attention here, just in case you're zoning out?

There will be a day where we see Jesus face to face and the first thing that we're gonna wanna do is bow.

We're gonna wanna bow.

We're gonna want to cover our face because of the beautiful, radiant glory coming from Jesus.

We're gonna wanna worship.

That's what we do as Christians, we worship, we love.

But there's gonna be a day where Jesus says, "Stand up, get on your feet.

"Look at me.

"What did you do in my name?"

Worship is a lifestyle, it's a lifestyle.

Everything that we do can be done in worship.

Sometimes I think we need to reframe the way that we think about worship and we can talk about that at another time.

But worship is not just coming in and just listening to the songs and getting emotional in the presence of God.

That's an aspect of it.

And so many of us, that's what we're gonna wanna do because we're so used to it.

We're so used to coming into the presence of God and kneeling before Jesus.

But Jesus can say, "Get up, get on your feet."

What did you do with what I gave you?

What did you do with the beautiful gift of grace?

Did you stick it in the ground?

What did you do?

I wanna be able to say, "Lord, no, I didn't, "I didn't only cast out demons in your name.

"I didn't only preach in your name.

"I wanna say, Lord, I loved in your name.

"I showed compassion in your name.

"I spoke your name.

"I worshiped your name.

"I declared your name in the driest seasons of my life "when I was almost out of oil.

"I cared for people in your name.

"I clothed people in your name.

"I fed the hungry in your name.

"I tended the least of these in your name.

"I lived righteously in your name."

That is what I wanna be able to say to Jesus on the day of judgment.

Because if I can say all of that, if I can say all of that, he will say, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

And from that period forward, I can get back down on my knees and spend eternity with Jesus, my King of kings and my Lord of lords.

And that's what we all want.

That's what we all desire as a church, to worship, to worship and to be in his presence and to love him and just to be able to pour everything out of what we have.

But I want you to understand that you are being held accountable for what you do with the salvation that you have.

And so that is my, I want you to stand with me.

That is my challenge to the church this morning.

That you would prepare to stand, not just bow, but stand before the King of kings on the day of judgment.

And so I wanna make an altar call this morning.

First, I wanna make it for those who don't, who say, "Man, I don't know if I'm ready.

"If Jesus comes back today, "I don't know if I'm going to heaven.

"I don't know if, "I don't know because I don't have enough oil.

"I don't know because I'm always running on empty."

If that's you this morning, without shame, would you just come forward?

Just come forward and let's pray with you.

Let's pray that the Holy Spirit would just flood your life so that you walk out of here today, knowing that if Jesus were to come back, you are going with him.

And then the second one is for anybody else who has had this gift of salvation, but maybe you haven't done everything that you can with it.

Maybe you haven't been obedient in certain ways.

Maybe you haven't loved in the way that Jesus is calling you to love.

And you wanna be able to get to that throne of judgment and say, "Lord, everything that I did, "I did it in your name because I loved you, Father."

If that's you this morning, I want you to come forward as well.

As the worship team sings, we're gonna declare the holiness of God, not because of anything that you've done for us, my God, but because you are holy, Father.

You are a holy God.

You are a worthy God.

And we worship you, Father God.

We worship you in spirit and in truth, Lord.

These altars are open, church.

If you need to come up and you need to give your life, you need to have a moment to God. - Thanks for listening.

If you'd like some more information on PNEUMA Church, visit us on our website at mypneumachurch.org.

If you enjoyed the podcast, you can subscribe or share it with your friends on social media and tag us @mypneumachurch.

Thanks again and God bless. (gentle music) [MUSIC]