Gary Hamrick - The Year of the Lord's Favor (01/22/2026)
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In Isaiah 61:1-3, the prophet foretells the Messiah’s mission; Jesus fulfills it in Luke 4 by declaring Himself the anointed one who brings good news to the spiritually poor, healing to the brokenhearted, freedom to captives of sin, and light to those in spiritual darkness—transforming ashes into beauty—during the present «year of the Lord’s favor» before His return in judgment.
Scripture Reading: Isaiah 61:1-3
Isaiah chapter 61. I’ll read the first three verses. The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.
Introduction to the Messianic Passage
For you note-takers, there are a number of passages in the Old Testament that we call messianic passages. And by that I mean a messianic passage is a portion of Scripture that speaks about Christ before Christ, but which would end up being fulfilled by Christ. This is one of those passages. What we’re reading here in Isaiah 61 is a messianic passage. Isaiah was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write, 700 years before Christ, about Christ—things that would all be fulfilled in Christ.
This is one of those rare messianic passages where, if there’s any doubt whatsoever, we have the Bible as the best commentary on the Bible as to whether or not it is a messianic passage. We know it is, because when we read in Luke chapter 4, during the ministry of Jesus, He actually goes to the synagogue in Nazareth, opens the scroll of Isaiah to the passage I just read, and reads most of what we just read together. Then He rolls up the scroll and He sits down and He says to all those in His hearing in the synagogue, «Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.» Meaning, these verses here from Isaiah 61 that point to Messiah are fulfilled in Jesus as Messiah. And Jesus even quotes these verses and says of Himself, «I’ve come to fulfill these.»
Jesus Reads Isaiah in the Synagogue (Luke 4:14–30)
So let’s see that story in Luke chapter 4. If you have your Bibles now, you can go to your New Testament, go to Luke chapter 4, and I want to just share this occasion with you that I’m referring to—when Jesus picked up the scroll there in the synagogue of Nazareth and read most of the verses that I just read at the beginning of our study.
So here we are: Luke chapter 4, and I read from verse 14 down to verse 30. It says, Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about Him spread through the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised Him. He went to Nazareth, where He had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day He went into the synagogue, as was His custom. And He stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. Unrolling it, He found the place where it is written, and then here’s what He reads: «The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.»
And then He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on Him, and He began by saying to them, «Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.» All spoke well of Him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from His lips. «Isn’t this Joseph’s son?» they asked.
And Jesus said to them, «Surely you will quote this proverb to me: 'Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.' I tell you the truth, ” He continued, „no prophet is accepted in his own hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.“
All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this, and they got up, drove Him out of the town, and took Him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw Him down the cliff. But He walked right through the crowd and went on His way.
Context of Luke 4
All right, now before we talk about Isaiah 61 and how exactly Jesus fulfills it, I want to just note with you this story here in Luke chapter 4. So we still have your Bibles there—don’t close them, because I want us to take a look at Luke chapter 4 and understand the context of what’s happening here.
First of all, in Luke chapter 3 it tells us that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. It was not for the remission of sins, but it was basically a coronation and ordination of His public ministry—the commencement of His public ministry as being separated unto God. Followed by, in Luke chapter 4, the first part of chapter 4 which I didn’t read, Jesus goes into the wilderness of Judea where He fasts for 40 days and 40 nights and draws closer to His Father. It’s the beginning of His ministry; He gets His heart set in the right place. At the end of the 40 days of fasting, of course, Satan appears to Him—we know the story—and Jesus successfully resists Satan’s temptations, quoting Scripture, rebuking him in that way.
Right after He ends this forty-day fast, then His public ministry begins, and one of the first places He goes is to the region of Galilee. And in the region of Galilee is the city of Nazareth, the town in which He grew up. Jesus spent most of His life in Nazareth—His early years from about the age of three until He turned about thirty. When He turned thirty and His ministry began, He relocated to Capernaum, where He would spend the last three and a half years of His life. Capernaum would become His home base for His ministry. But about twenty-seven years or so He spent in Nazareth.
And so He goes to Nazareth, His hometown, and now He’s a respected young rabbi. And it is customary that if there’s a rabbi in your town who happens to be visiting, that you let him teach in the synagogue. Well, Jesus is no ordinary rabbi, of course—I mean, He’s the hometown boy. And so they welcome Him in with open arms and the like: „Well, of course, come in here and share with us what God has put on your heart.“ And the attendant hands Him the scroll of Isaiah.
And we have the privilege of having multiple Bibles, and we have Bibles that are bound like books, but in those days the Scriptures were not written in books that were bound. They were written by scribes on scrolls, on parchments that were rolled. Even today, if you go to Jewish synagogues, they have the Torah, they have the Jewish Scriptures that are usually there, and they are rolled and unrolled to be read.
Well, Jesus takes the scroll from the attendant, unrolls it to Isaiah 61. Now let me clarify: chapters and verses were not added until the 13th and 16th centuries AD. Chapters were added in the 13th century; verses were then added in the sixteenth century. And it was just in order to make us more able to find certain passages in our Bible. But originally the Scriptures were written without chapter and verse delineation.
So Jesus is not literally turning to „Isaiah 61"—we know it as Isaiah 61—but He’s intentionally turning to the part of Isaiah that He knows speaks of Himself. And He turns here to what we know as Isaiah 61, and He reads this portion.
Now I want you to notice the part that He reads compared to what Isaiah gives us in Isaiah chapter 61. When you look at Isaiah 61 versus Luke 4, you’ll note with me that when Jesus starts reading what we have in Isaiah 61, He reads all of verse 1 and just a portion of verse 2, and then He basically puts a period there. He rolls up the scroll, hands it back to the attendant, and sits down.
Now this was typical for a rabbi: when you’re about ready to launch into your sermon after reading the Scripture, the rabbi would sit, and then often in those days the congregation would stand for the duration of the teaching. Yeah, that’s to keep you awake. So He sits down.
Now I want you to notice where He stops reading in Isaiah 61: the result of verse 1, and then He reads just that part of verse 2 that says «to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.» That’s where He ends—period. He inserts punctuation there. The punctuation is important, friends, because punctuation can change the whole meaning of a sentence. You know, for example, if you were to say, «Let’s eat, Grandpa, ” that means, Grandpa, let’s have a sandwich together. But if you leave the comma out, now you’ve just made Grandpa the sandwich.
So what Jesus does here intentionally is He inserts a period by the fact that He’s done, and He rolls the scroll up and hands it back to the attendant. Now why is He done? And notice that the delineation between the first part of verse 2 and the next part of verse 2: He ends with „declaring the year of the Lord’s favor.“ The next part of verse 2 says „and the day of vengeance of our God.“
Now here’s the reason why He stopped just where it says in verse 2, „to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.“ He inserts punctuation there because He follows up by saying, „Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.“ If He had read the next part about „the day of vengeance of our God, ” He would not have been able to say, „Today the Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.“
Why? Jesus' coming happens in two phases: the first coming of Christ, which has already occurred, and the second coming of Christ, which is yet to occur. When Jesus first came, His ministry and His mission was for salvation. It was a time of grace. Jesus even says in John 12:47, He said, „For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it.“ The initial purpose of the first coming of Jesus was to usher in grace so that people might be saved.
But the second coming of Jesus is „the day of vengeance of our God, ” as Paul would write in 2 Thessalonians 1:7-8: the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven in blazing fire with His powerful angels, and He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
And in between the first coming of Jesus, which is about salvation, and the second coming of Jesus, which is about judgment, there’s this gap, there’s this pause. We are living right now in the pause. We are living right now between the first coming of Jesus and the second coming of Jesus, which means we are still living in the year of the Lord’s favor. There is opportunity for people to still be saved and to respond to the love of Jesus and the good news that He died on the cross for your sins, that you might humble yourself and invite Christ into your heart and live your life in devotion to Him. We’re still living in the year of the Lord’s favor. That’s what this means for us—we’re living in this gap period. It still applies to us now.
Keep that thought in mind; I’m gonna come back to it. But I want to clarify what’s happening here in Luke chapter 4. So still keep your Bibles open there to Luke chapter 4, and I want you to notice that when He says to them, „Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing, ” He is making the direct statement, „I’m Messiah.“ They all knew this was a messianic passage, but for Him now to say, „Hey, by the way, this is being fulfilled right now in your hearing"—He’s declaring to them, «I’m Messiah.»
Now at first they just kind of dismissed this, you know, at first just like, «Oh, aren’t His words gracious?» That’s what the text says. «My, aren’t His words… isn’t He Joseph’s son? This is wonderful. He’s come back to town to visit us. This is great. He’s such a wonderful guy.» And they just kind of dismiss that first part about His being Messiah.
That’s why Jesus adds in verse 24 here in Luke 4, «No prophet is accepted in his own hometown.» And by the way, just by way of principle—not a literal application of this verse, but in terms of the principle of this verse—the reality is that you as a Christian will often find that the people who accept you least, in terms of your faith, are those who have known you most. A prophet is without honor in his own hometown. Why is that? Because the people who know you most knew who you were before you got saved, and that’s still the lens through which they’re looking at your life.
So it’s kind of incredulous: your old friends—"With you got saved, buddy? Let me talk. You’re the one who always would get drunk with us. You would always cuss up a storm. You would always sleep around. What are you talking about—you found salvation? You got saved? You’re a Christian now?» And so they often won’t accept your newfound faith because they’re too familiar with your old ways.
Now it can also work in a positive direction, where people who knew you in your old life before you came to know Christ can see the amazing contrasts, and it is a testimony to them and it speaks to them. But there are also many times that people will dismiss you because they’re still going to judge you through the lens of the life you used to live, and they’re still going to be evaluating you for the old life that you were.
Now in the case of Jesus, He hadn’t sinned, so they weren’t looking at Him through the lens of a previous sinful life, but they were still dismissing Him because they were just writing Him off as, «You’re just a hometown boy. Come on, you’re the carpenter’s son. You’re Joseph’s son. You’re the kid who would play sandlot baseball with all the other boys in Nazareth, and you’d climb olive trees, and you’re telling us that You’re Messiah?»
So there’s still, for the moment, they’re just kind of pondering this, and they’re just dismissing it. But then they get angry, and they get angry at the next thing that He says in His sermon. So look again here in Luke chapter 4, verse 25. He says to them, «I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon.» He says, «And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.»
Now you have to ask yourself, when you read that, what’s so bad about what Jesus said that the people would want to run Him off a hill and kill Him? He’s just giving a couple of examples about the prophet Elijah and Elisha and what happened during the times of their ministry.
But the problem to the Jews—what you have to do for the moment is go back 2,000 years, put on Jewish ears, and hear what Jesus is saying through the filter of 2,000-year-old Jewish ears. Jesus is actually commending the fact that the prophets Elijah and Elisha went to Gentiles to minister God’s grace to them. He says, in the day of Elijah there were a lot of widows in Israel—a lot of Jewish widows in Israel—but Elijah wasn’t sent to any of them. He was sent to a widow in Zarephath in Sidon, a Gentile woman.
And then He adds, and remember the story of Elisha—in Elisha’s day there were plenty of Jewish lepers in Israel, but Elisha was not sent to any of them. He was sent to a Gentile by the name of Naaman, a Syrian.
Now what is Jesus saying? What He’s saying to them is, «Listen, I’ve come to fulfill these verses. I am the Messiah. And I just want you to know, Messiah came not just exclusively for you Jewish people. He came for you, but He also came for every stinking Gentile you have ever disdained in your life, because I’ve come to save all people who would believe in Me.»
When He said that, okay, the hummus hit the fan, you see. Because now, go back 2,000 years—okay, no disrespect to the ladies in the house—but 2,000 years ago women and lepers were second-class citizens. They weren’t respected in society. And Jesus just elevates them as people of God that God loves and that God wants to reach just as much as He wants to reach the most spiritual Jew.
And so when He comes and He announces this, He’s saying to them, «I’m assigned—by the way, the mission of Messiah is not just the way you think. The mission of Messiah: I’ve come to save all who would believe in Me—every single person. I’ve opened My arms to—that’s why I’m gonna be stretched out on a cross. It’s to be open to all who would believe and receive.»
When they hear this, oh, they don’t like it. So what do they do? Take Him up a hill; they try to kill Him. They want to throw Him off a cliff. There is a little hill in Nazareth, and they want to just throw Him off the hill. They’re so furious at Him. And verse 30 says, «But He walked right through the crowd and went on His way.» So it indicates some kind of a miraculous moment where they tried to lay hands on Him, they couldn’t, and He just kind of walked through the crowd and went on His way.
Spoken-Word Summary of Luke 4
Now two weeks ago we had Matt Mayer here, and he spoke for me and did great—was had a great teaching. And in the middle of his teaching he had this little like spoken-word rap thing, and I just kind of got up at the end of the service and jokingly said, you know, «I got to work on one of those.» And I was just joking. And then I’ve had since then several people come to me like, «Hey, when are we gonna hear that little spoken-word rap thing you’re gonna do?»
So in the style of Matthew Mayer, I would like to summarize the events of Luke chapter 4—don’t clap yet. The Jews in Jesus' day said, «Ain’t no way Jesus is Messiah. What you say?» Bang—they rejected Him, despised Him. They didn’t recognize Him; they dissed Him and dismissed Him. Oh, Jesus was Messiah, but in their ignorance they missed Him. They loved Him, then they hated Him, and then they wanted Him dead—all because Jesus spoke the truth, but they didn’t like what He said. So they ran Him up a hill, attempted to kill—it was all a big thrill. Somebody chill—Jesus ain’t going down because of those clowns. So Jesus just made His way, and you could hear Him say, «You can see you later, bye-ah. I’m Jesus the Messiah.»
Now, so listen, the crazy things you people make me do. I guarantee you’re not getting that in the Catholic Church to make friends—you’re not getting that in the Catholic Church, and you’re probably never gonna get that again here from me. But anyway, just having fun.
Application of Isaiah 61 Today
So let’s go now to Isaiah chapter 61—see if I can reel this back in. I want us to go back to our original text in Isaiah 61 and see what all this means for you and me. Since we’re still living in the favorable year of the Lord, in the gap between the first coming of Christ, which was about salvation, and the second coming of Christ, which is the day of God’s vengeance, then the benefits of Jesus' ministry are still available to everyone today.
I’m going to read verse 1 again in Isaiah 61. It just simply says this: «The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.»
Isaiah here mentions—and Jesus confirms by reading this in Luke chapter 4—four things about the ministry of Jesus. And here they are: number one, to preach the good news to the poor; number two, to bind up the brokenhearted; number three, to proclaim freedom for the captives; and number four, to release the prisoners from darkness.
Now you’ll notice with me that there are four groups of people here that I’ll underline in yellow: we see here the poor, the brokenhearted, the captives, and the prisoners. And all four groups are descriptive of the human condition. We are the poor; we are the brokenhearted; we are the captives and the prisoners. And Jesus has come to heal us, deliver us, and set us free.
Now I’m gonna go one by one through these very quickly, but here’s what we need to understand about each one. First, He’s come to preach the good news to the poor. When the word «poor» is used here, it doesn’t mean materially or financially. It means spiritually poor. How many of you understand that you can be materially wealthy but spiritually bankrupt? And the opposite is true: you can be materially poor but spiritually rich.
The Bible says in James 2:5, «Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom He promised those who love Him?» In Ephesians 1:18 Paul says, «I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints.»
Fact is, I have been—and many of you have also been—in places around the world where people have literally nothing. I’ve been in homes with tin roofs and cardboard walls and dirt floors. People had literally nothing, but because they had Jesus, they had everything. And it’s also true likewise that a person can have everything by this world’s standard—you can have money, success, power, fame, notoriety—and if you don’t have Jesus, though, you have nothing.
And this is why Jesus came to preach the good news. «Good news» is just a word that means gospel. Gospel means good news. Jesus came to bring good news, and the good news is that in God’s economy the wealthiest people are those who know Him. When we acknowledge our spiritual poverty and come humbly to Him, we then gain an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade, kept in heaven for you—that’s what Peter says in 1 Peter 1:4.
And this is why Jesus would say in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5, verse 3, «Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.»
Number 2: He came to bind up the brokenhearted. There are a lot of brokenhearted people in this world. People have experienced tremendous loss and heartache—people who have been touched by tragedy and adversity, people dealing with the death of a loved one, medical issues, divorce, miscarriage, bankruptcy—you name it. There is no shortage of pain in this world.
But you will never find more compassion and more hope for the brokenhearted than with Jesus. There is no earthly remedy for the brokenhearted like there is with Jesus.
The group Third Day came out years ago with a song called «Cry Out to Jesus, ” and it speaks about this. If I could read the words for just a moment, it goes like this:
„To everyone who’s lost someone they love
Long before it was their time
You feel like the days you had were not enough
When you said goodbye
And to all the people with burdens and pains
Keeping you back from your life
You believe that there’s nothing and there is no one
Who can make it right
But there is hope for the helpless
Rest for the weary
And love for the broken heart
And there is grace and forgiveness
Mercy and healing
He’ll meet you wherever you are
Cry out to Jesus, cry out to Jesus
For the marriage that’s struggling just to hang on
They’ve lost all of their faith in love
And they’ve done all they can to make it right again
Still it’s not enough
For the ones who can’t break the addictions and chains
You try to give up but you come back again
Just remember that you’re not alone in your shame
And your suffering
Because there is hope for the helpless
And rest for the weary
And love for the broken heart
And there is grace and forgiveness
And mercy and healing
And He’ll meet you wherever you are
Cry out to Jesus
When you’re lonely
And it feels like the whole world is falling on you
You just reach out, you just cry out to Jesus
Cry to Jesus
To the widow who suffers from being alone
Wiping the tears from her eyes
And for the children around the world without a home
Say a prayer tonight
There is hope for the helpless
Rest for the weary
And love for the broken heart
And there is grace and forgiveness
Mercy and healing
He’ll meet you wherever you are
Cry out to Jesus
Oh, cry out to Jesus.“
This is why David would say in Psalm 34:18 that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
Number 3: Jesus came to proclaim freedom for the captives. Well, as the word implies, „captive“ means that we are in bondage to something. And people can be in bondage to a lot of things—they can be in bondage to drugs or alcohol or pornography or anger or unforgiveness—you name it, we can be in bondage to it.
Peter once confronted a guy in Acts chapter 8 and called him out: in Acts 8:23 he said, „For I see that you are full of bitterness and captive to sin.“ By nature, all of us are captive to sin. What Peter said of that guy in Acts 8:23 is true of all of us—we are all captive to sin.
But the good news is there is freedom in Christ—not that we will never sin again when we come into relationship with Him, but that we will never be mastered again by sin in the way that we were before we came to know Christ.
And Paul describes it like this in Romans chapter 7. He describes this struggle by saying, „I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I end up doing.“ He adds, „I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.“ Then he asks a question further down in Romans 7:24: „What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?“ And then he adds, „Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!“
Number 4: Jesus came to release the prisoners from darkness. Before we come to know Christ, the Bible describes the human condition as living in darkness. We are spiritually blind; we are prisoners of that darkness. But when you come to know Christ, you step into the light, and you begin to see things like you never saw before; you begin to understand things like you never understood before.
This is why Paul would say in Colossians 1:13–14 that He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
You see, there is new freedom in Christ, and there is forgiveness in Christ, and there is healing in Christ, and there is joy in Christ; there is salvation in Christ.
And this is why here in Isaiah 61, if you’ll just glance at verse 3, he summarizes by saying that in addition to all this, He’s come „to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. And they will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor.“
In other words, he’s saying here that God takes spiritually bankrupt, brokenhearted lives that are captive to sin and spiritually blind, and He brings beauty out of ashes, and He brings praise out of despair, and He brings gladness out of our mourning, and then He makes us righteous through His Son, and then He plants us like an oak tree for the display of His splendor.
Personal Testimony Shared
I got an email a few weeks ago from a lady who said that Isaiah 61:3 has been kind of her life verse. I won’t share her name, but she said I could use her story. She wrote to me and she said, „I wanted to send along my testimony about how this verse, Isaiah 61:3, about bringing beauty out of ashes has been the story of my life and how God has used this as a source of comfort and inspiration to me.“
And in her email she writes about how as a teenager she battled deep, dark depression—so serious that she contemplated suicide. I think the implication in her email is that she attempted it, because it says that she received professional help and entered the hospital with scars on her wrists. And then she writes about how God healed her, helped her, brought to her spirit joy instead of sadness.
And just a few months after she got out of the hospital, entering her senior year of high school, she was raped by an acquaintance. She said, „I had no idea how I was going to make it through this one.“ She said, „God’s perfect love, though, knows no enemy too strong, and He held me close through it all—through so many residual battles I faced in the months and even years after. And I am a testimony now to how God turned the ashes of my life into something beautiful.“
She says, „The 29th of this month—which was yesterday—will be 19 years since my rape, but God has proved victorious in my life as a fulfillment of His promises in this verse.“ Because God takes lives and makes them beautiful. And the Lord can do a similar thing for you.
I don’t know where you are in relation to Him, but He loves you and He died for you, and He wants to bind up the brokenhearted. He wants to proclaim the good news to all of us who were spiritually poor. He wants to set us free from those things that hold us captive. He wants to open our eyes so we might be spiritually enlightened instead of prisoners of darkness. He wants to bring beauty out of ashes. And God still does that, because this is still the year of the Lord’s favor.
Closing Prayer and Invitation
Let’s pray together. Lord, thank You for Your grace. Thank You for Your life that You offered on a cross for our sins. Thank You that You take lives like ours and You bring beauty out of the ashes. You’re a God of restoration and forgiveness and salvation. And Lord, You’re still doing that good work in the lives of people today.
I’m just gonna pause in my prayer. With your head still bowed, eyes closed, and I just want to invite you to receive Christ as your Savior if you don’t know Him today. Many of you already do—I understand that. The Bible says that if even one sinner repents, the angels in heaven rejoice. God is interested in every single one of you—even those of you who will later be listening to this by podcast.
So I want to invite you: if you don’t know Christ, open up your heart today. Surrender your life to Him. Invite Him into your heart that He might take your life and bring healing and forgiveness and redemption.
So with your heads bowed, just seated there, if you would say, „That’s me, pastor—here, I want to receive Christ as my Savior"—no one looking around except me; I just want to be able to know who to pray for. I’m not gonna call you out. Just go ahead and raise your hand and say, «That’s me. I want to know Christ as my Savior. I just need Him today in my life.» Just raise your hand just where you’re seated. Raise it up high. God bless you. Yes, thank you. Yes, God bless you, sir. Others—raise your hand. Yes, God bless you. Yes, thank you. God bless you.
If you raised your hand—you want to know Christ as your Savior—I’m gonna lead you in a word of prayer right now. Just open up your heart. You can pray this with me. Just whisper this prayer—just repeat it after me; make it yours. Just whisper this prayer with me. Just say:
«Thank You, Jesus, that You died on a cross for sinners like me. I pray right now that You would forgive me of my sins, that You would bind up my broken heart, that You would set me free from captivity, that You would open my eyes that have been blind, that I might receive You right now as my personal Lord and Savior. I surrender my life to You, and I commit to live my life for Your glory—to follow after You this day forward. But I receive Your love, and I receive Your grace, and I receive Your forgiveness for my life, and I put my faith and trust in You. Thank You, Lord, that You still bring beauty out of ashes. Redeem my life, I pray, in the matchless name of Jesus.»
And all God’s people said, Amen and amen.