Louie Giglio - A Sunday Encouragement
Hello Passion City Church, and welcome to Passion City Church today as we gather online. As we finish out an amazing year, 2024 is coming to a close, and I’m filled with a great spirit of gratitude today, reflecting on all that God has done and all that God has brought us through. I’m coming to you from the Oval at 5:15. If you haven’t been in this location in Atlanta, and if you’re joining online from somewhere in the world today, I just want to say I hope you’re having a great Sunday, or whatever day it is that you access this video. What a year it has been! Behind me, of course, is an icon of our movement and our church, the Jesus’s Life Wall. Some version of that is at all of our locations in Atlanta, and that wall symbolizes the spirit of what our house is all about. What a statement! What a summary! Three words: Jesus is life. He is the way; He is the truth; He is The Great I Am. He’s the coming King of Kings, but He is life, and that’s what God wants to bring to all of us today.
I was thinking about this space, our spaces, and how many people have come through these spaces in the month of December as we’ve been leaning into grace and glory together, focusing on the Christmas Grove. Thousands and thousands of women have come into this very space on Monday and Tuesday nights, meeting Jesus in one of the most powerful gatherings I’ve ever been a part of in my life. Ladies, I’ll just say again, I don’t know how you do it! I have to mentally and emotionally prepare for the Grove every single time, because the stories that God tells, and the way He redeems and restores, just blows me away. I’m thinking about the people who came through for Christmas Eve, and all the people who heard the story of Jesus. If you dial back to the beginning of the year at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and then fast forward back to this moment, I’m just overwhelmed today by gratitude, and I trust that you are too.
It hasn’t been the best year for everyone; for some, it’s been really hard. I know that’s even true right now. Some of Shelly and my dear friends brought a little boy into the world today, on this very day—a gift from God, a little miracle. He looks like a little champion, and I’m sure he will be. But then, one of Shelly’s dearest friends and one of the anchors of our house said an earthly goodbye to her mom just a few weeks ago, and I know that’s the story of our house. That’s the story of life—there’s good, and there’s hard; there’s life, and there’s death; there’s joy, but there’s also sorrow. But we’re here today to say to God, thank you for bringing me through. I just want to remind us all of that.
We’re coming down to the close of 2024, a tumultuous year in the world, a tumultuous year in our nation, and a tumultuous year in some of our lives, families, and stories. But you know what? God promised us that He would bring us through. He didn’t say, «I’m going to take you to the valley.» He said, «I’m going to bring you through the valley.» So I hope we can just give God praise today. We were talking a few days ago, and Grant mentioned that in the last two months, nearly a hundred people had put their faith in Jesus at Cumberland. If there’s not some clapping going on in the den right now, we need to rewind this whole thing and come around one more time. We’re all in church online, but we’re all in church right now—100 people coming from death to life at one location at Passion City Church just in the last few weeks. That’s what God has been doing all year long at our church.
We shared a few gatherings ago, and most of you would have heard that a few weeks back we surpassed our $7 million above-and-beyond goal, and we’re well on our way to $8 million in above-and-beyond giving. That’s allowing us to do some incredible things as Passion City Church. I know that when that $7 million number came out, it was like, «Wow, that’s a lot! That’s a big goal for us at Passion City,» and it was and is. But our house is a generous house, and people have responded—you have responded. To be where we are right now, not even at the end of the year, with our regular giving being so strong as well, is just a miracle of God! God is once again bringing people from death to life, strengthening people in their faith in God, and doing the things that He always does, which is providing tangibly for our needs. I pray that you’ve got that same story, whether it’s good or bad, that you’ve got that same story today: God has brought me through.
I’ve been thinking about this text today that I want to share—it’s in Psalm 81. Psalm 81 recounts God’s delivering His people out of Egypt, and in the midst of it, there’s the back and forth. You asked me; you called out to me; you cried out; I heard your cry; I took the weight off your shoulders; I delivered you out of the thundercloud. He said He moved in to rescue them. But then He reminds them, «You know, you kept wanting to go your own way even after I delivered you.» And then He gives them an invitation, and that’s the invitation I want to share with us today. I believe it’s a word for Passion 2025, which is just a few days away now. As we open our first Passion Conference, I believe it’s a word for 2025, and it might be a word for you, for your family, for this coming year.
This is what it says in verse 10 of Psalm 81: «I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth, and I will fill it.» The context, obviously, is a battle in the hearts of these people who saw God do amazing things and perform miracles, but then they turned right to some other idol or to some other god, trying to get their needs met from some other source than the one true God, who had already done the miracle of parting the sea and making a way for them to step into freedom and abundance in the Promised Land. So He’s reminding them again, the same way He does with me, because He has delivered me; and if you’re in Christ, He’s delivered you. I hope almost all of us in this gathering right now have a deliverance story: «I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of Egypt.» God has brought us out of so much, but even when He brings us out, we still have that tendency in our hearts to drift away from Him.
So, He’s reminding us again today; He’s offering again today; He’s extending an invitation again today: «Open wide your mouth, and I will fill it.» One translation says, «I will fill it with what is good.» I just want to think about those simple words today: open, open, open. Open your life, open your heart, open your hands. We tend to want to be closed often to protect ourselves. We don’t want to get hurt again, or we don’t want to put ourselves in that position again. We don’t ever want anybody to have that advantage in our lives again, so we put up these walls; we put up these layers; we have a surface relationship with people; we have an exterior that we show the world, but we’re not letting anybody close to us again. We’re not letting anybody get on the inside again. We’re protecting ourselves and, in some ways, trying to provide for ourselves, and God is saying, «No, that’s not the way it works in a relationship with Me. I need you to trust Me, and I need you to open your heart, open your mind, open your hands.» He says, «Here’s how I want you to open: I want you to open wide.»
Isn’t that a cool picture? It’s not «Hey, just open a little bit, and I’ll try to slide something in.» No, He says, «I want you to open wide.» What does «wide» mean? It means faith—open up with faith, big open spaces that God can fill, trusting God for things that only He can do. Shelly and I, on our front porch and back porch last spring, had birds build nests on our porch lights. I respect these birds like nobody’s business. These nests are works of art; they are formidable. I left them both because I thought, «It’s going to take a minute to scrape that off and clean the mud off. I’m going to need some tools to get this thing off!»
This is not a little straw thing; this is a mud nest, and it is incredible. I watched them build them, and you know, they’re so smart. They’re like, «Hey, let’s get up under the eaves of this dude’s house, on top of this warm light, where we can kind of see in the window but be protected by the corner that comes around to the outdoor fireplace. That’s a good spot—I’m going to go up there.» Then they lay the eggs, and they sit on the eggs. We’re coming in and out of the door, of course, and she’s like, «Would you stop coming in and out of this door please? 'Cause I’m sitting on these eggs right here.»
Then they have the babies, and the other birds come, and they’ve got to fight them off, and then the snake comes, and they’ve got to fight the snake off. It’s like, «I built a nest; I laid the eggs.» I don’t know where daddy bird is, but mama bird is doing the work. She flies off, and all you can hear in the nest are these little baby birds. If you can get a sight on them, they only know how to do one thing, and that is to open their little teeny-tiny mouths wider than you would think possible—like they’re going to dislocate their jaws! They’ve got their mouths so wide, saying, «If you come near here with something, I’m going to make sure it goes in me.»
I kept thinking about those little baby birds when God was saying to me, «What is in this promise? Open wide your mouth, and I will fill it.» Our lives are going to get filled by something, and I don’t know about you, but I have a tendency to be like these people and say, «God, I want to say thank you for the deliverance, but then I’m going to lean on my own understanding, or lean on my own ability to figure it out, or lean on my own ability to resource that need.» But God’s inviting me today, and at the end of this year—and I believe leading into next year—to say, «Hey, I want to do more in your life, and I can do more in your life. I can do what no one else can do in your life. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt. Never forget that; I’m the one who delivered you.»
Has anybody been delivered? Has anybody been brought out of something today? Has anybody seen chains broken and freedom become a reality? God’s got what you need today, and He’s inviting you to turn toward Him, just open up your life as faithfully as you can, as wide as you can, and say, «God, You are what I need. You are what satisfies. This year, I want whatever it is that You have for me. I trust You, and I believe that if I am in a posture of receiving, You are going to give me what is good.» Man, what a word! What a word!
I’m praying that as thousands of students come into State Farm Arena in just a few days, that’s what we want to do there. We don’t want to just sing songs; we don’t want to just have talks; we don’t want to just have a great experience in a great environment. We want God to move into the space, because I believe if we create the space, He will fill it with what is good, and I believe that’s true for you, and I believe that’s true for me.
Lord, I thank You today that You’re a delivering God, and I come to You again just in my own life, thinking maybe speaking for some of the people who are in church today, knowing that in this same text You go on to say, «But if you continue to want to go and do it your way, I’ll let you do it your way. If you open wide your mouth toward me, I’ll fill it with what is good. But if you want to go a different way, I’ll let you go a different way, but what’s in that way is not ultimately what is good.» I thank You that You are good, that You have good, that You give good. I trust that even in the highs and lows of life, we can experience the abundance that You bring, and I thank You for that. In Jesus' name, amen.
I pray that for your faith family; I pray and speak abundance for your family—not that we’re all going to get all this amazing stuff that we think we need, but that we’re going to have the fullness of what God knows we really do need. I want to invite you to church, by the way. Passion Conference number one is kicking off soon—we mentioned that already—but on January 5, that in-between Sunday between Passion number one and Passion number two, we’re having church at State Farm Arena. You should know that by now, but if you don’t, I want you to come and join us. You can bring everybody you want to bring 'cause it’s a big space. Just think about the truth: Cumberland, some of you online people, and 5:15—all under one roof. When’s the last time we were all under one roof for church together?
And just think about this: for seven straight days our movement and our church are going to own State Farm Arena for the glory of God downtown. We’ll be hearing the sounds of praise for seven straight days. So, bring your whole family; all the kids come! Sunday, January 5, Passion City Church at State Farm Arena. Hope you have a fantastic New Year! Those of you who are serving at conference, I look forward to seeing you there. Please pray for a powerful move of the Spirit of God at State Farm Arena that reverberates out to the nations for the glory of God. Great seeing you at church today, and I look forward to seeing you soon!