What God Really Did When Jesus Died For You
Excerpt from "The Gospel: The Purpose Of The Church"

Tom Bedford • Senior Pastor
August 23, 2026

8 Minute Read

What Jesus did on the cross was larger than forgiveness. According to Colossians 2, God made you complete, made you alive, canceled the certificate of debt that stood against you, and disarmed the spiritual powers that had been using that debt to push you around. All of it happened at once, and all of it belongs to anyone who surrenders to Him.

Most people who grew up near the church can tell you that Jesus died for sins. Far fewer live like the record has actually been erased. If you have ever stood in a worship service singing about grace while a voice in the back of your mind whispered, "Yes, but what about that thing you did," then Colossians 2 was written for you.

Why Religion Loves to Replace the Gospel

Paul opens this section with a warning worth repeating: see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world rather than according to Christ (Colossians 2:8).

Men love religion, and religion loves to replace the gospel. Whenever you are part of a group that starts saying things like we are the only people who know God, we are the only people who have the gospel, we are the only people who really have it right, that is a tradition of men that has moved out in front of the gospel. Imagine believing you are the only people in the whole world who know God. All of a sudden the work becomes about maintaining your position and your influence, and the thing meant to bring people in becomes a barrier that keeps them out.

When traditions of men replace the gospel in our doctrine, our stuff becomes more important than people's lives. That is why the devil loves religion. It is the fastest way to blind our eyes and get us thinking about ourselves instead of seeing the lost.

What Does It Mean to Be Complete in Christ?

Paul keeps going: for in Him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete(Colossians 2:9-10). Notice the word you. He has made you complete.

Ask yourself what completion would actually mean in your life. Would you like the torment in your mind to come to an end, and a maturity to settle over you that is no longer susceptible to it and no longer listens to it? Would you like the warfare against your family to finally stop, and for your household to arrive at a place of completion and development in this thing called the gospel, where you are no longer under its power, where it no longer makes your decisions and pushes you around while you sit there with no ability to resist it?

When I came to Jesus, I knew that sin, ongoing and lived out and enjoyed, would kill off the eternal life living in me. Given enough time I would have let that life go and gone back to evil. So I was grateful for a completion that entered my soul and said, that is no longer who you are or what you are. You are no longer that man. You are no longer that person. Why, Lord? Because I died and rose from the dead to break its curse and deliver you from its nature. Now I live in you, and I spring up all the time, life and righteousness, so you can be like Me now instead of like what you were.

That is what it means to be saved. This is why I come to the altars, lift my hands, and cry out to God. Some people assume I do that because I am the preacher and it comes with the job. It has nothing to do with being a preacher. I am simply grateful that the power of sin no longer rules my heart, no longer rules my thinking, and no longer controls my life.

Why Do I Still Feel Guilty for Sins God Already Forgave?

The gospel does a next thing. When you were dead in your transgressions and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions (Colossians 2:13). The reason I can stand and lift my hands and weep in the presence of God is that I am alive. The gospel made me alive, and I no longer have to think about my transgressions, because I have been saved from them.

You know the thought. You are singing the song, and something says, yes, yes, but there was that. Here is what the gospel of Jesus Christ answers back: I thank You, Lord, that I have been forgiven and that it is under the blood, and I cast that thought out, because that is not me anymore. The whole world needs to hear that.

Some will say, "I am a new Christian, and I still have a lot of problems." You have fewer problems than the people on their way to hell. They have real problems. A friend and I used to remind each other when we were going through hard things that other people have real problems, the kind you find out on the streets when people are disconnected from God and end up with all kinds of hell working on them, eating their lives out and destroying them from the inside. I may not be perfect, and I do not have to be. I have Jesus, He is perfect, I live in His light, and that transformation never ends.

What Did Jesus Cancel on the Cross?

Colossians 2:14 says He canceled the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us, and He took it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

Think about what that means. The devil comes to your house and says you are this and you are that, you are all of this, it is never going to work for you, you are a big loser. Then God picks up the decree and stamps one word across it: canceled. It is finished. Then He posts it on the cross so the whole world can read how free you really are.

That is what cancel culture should be. Cancel culture has been running since the garden, where it first tried to cancel God. Now God does the canceling. Evil, canceled. You are this, canceled. Your eternity is going to look like this, canceled. You are doomed to do that again, canceled. Your children are going to have devils, canceled. Whatever decree is standing against you today, say it: canceled. That is good news, and when you surrender to Jesus, the cancellation hits.

A church that lives in a place of canceled debt should be the loudest voice telling the whole world about Jesus Christ and how their sin can be canceled too.

Did Jesus Defeat Satan on the Cross?

Paul does not stop at the canceled debt. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15). He did not only cancel the sin. He also destroyed the powers that use it against you.

So the gospel is two things. It is the message of your salvation, your freedom from sin, and your rescue from the wrath that comes upon all that rebellion. It is also deliverance from the powers that use sin against you and manipulate you with it. I am free of it, and I am free of them. Nobody gets to pick one or the other. You have to have both.

I once asked a pastor of a large church in another city how he dealt with the spiritual component of a situation he was facing. He told me that just about all the churches in his city do not believe that realm exists at all. My thought was immediate: then what kind of gospel do they have? If your gospel only deals with your sin and never disarms rulers and powers, those powers can walk right back in, because you do not even think they are there. It is the ultimate invisible person.

Jesus taught us to do the will of the Father by depending on Him for daily bread, receiving forgiveness through repentance, and being delivered from temptation and from the evil one who destroys men's lives (Matthew 6:9-13).

What Does Jesus' Authority Mean for You Today?

Matthew 28:18 records Jesus saying that all authority has been given to Him. Authority over what? Everything. What man lost and surrendered in the garden, Jesus took back, in the realm of the spirit and on the earth, and that authority can never be contested again.

Then comes the part that changes your Monday. Because you know Him, He extends that authority to you. You did not win it, and you are still more than conquerors (Romans 8:37), which means He was the Conqueror and you get to enjoy the benefit. Your job, though, is not only to enjoy it. Out of the love of God, your job is to go set somebody free.

What Jesus did on the cross made you complete, made you alive, canceled every decree written against you, and stripped the powers that once ran your life. If that is true of you, there is somebody near you still living under a debt that has already been paid. Go tell them it is canceled.

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From this Author: Tom Bedford
August 30, 2026 • 8 Minute Read
Why Being Forgiven Isn’t The Whole Story
Forgiveness clears the record of your sin. Deliverance frees you from its source. Salvation includes both, and if you have only ever been taught the first half, you will spend your Christian life confessing the same darkness you were given authority to break. Being born again was not handed to you so you could be a good boy or girl and keep your nose clean. It was given to you so you would have power and authority over the power of hell and over the rulers of darkness, in your prayer life, in your obedience, and through the gospel of Jesus Christ. His rulership of the spiritual world in Jesus Christ brought back our ability to live for God and to see His righteousness prevail in the earth over the powers of darkness. If you do not understand that, you do not understand your commission. What Is The Difference Between Forgiveness And Deliverance? Your salvation does more than forgive you for participating in darkness. It gives you authority over darkness, and it gives you the power to set other people free from it. Let that sink in, because the implication is uncomfortable. You cannot remain in darkness and think you are going to set somebody free of it. So salvation has to include deliverance from Satan and from the nature of evil that works in this world. Being forgiven for the failures is one thing. Being delivered from the source is another thing entirely. Most of us were handed the first and never told the second existed. Jesus Called The Devil A Father, Not A Force When Jesus confronted the Pharisees, He did not describe Satan as an impersonal influence floating somewhere out there. He said, "You are of your father, the devil." He calls the devil a father. "You want the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks, it is a lie. He speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies" (John 8:44). Satan is a father of lies, and he is a father of evil. That word father matters, because fathers pass on a nature. They do not simply commit isolated acts. They reproduce something in the people who belong to them. Where Did Sin Actually Come From? Some Christians would say that you are the originator of sin, that it is inherently in you, that you are the author of it, and that this is why you need to be forgiven. I would say something different. Before man was ever made, there was a devil, and he was the original sinner, the energy behind sin in man. Man, by falling in his nature, has used that energy for evil, and in turn becomes creative at it and becomes his own source of it. But Satan is the author, the father of lying and deception, and the evil one. Sin did not originate in humans. It originated in the devil. And to this day, demonic powers seek to rule humanity through deception and seduction. How do they do it? They do it by baiting and seducing the sinful nature that is in us, working through self-interest, which is a constant, and through sinful passions. So when you get a new Father, it is because you had an old father. You were saved from your old father because you have now come into relationship with the Father in Heaven through Jesus Christ. You have to be delivered from an old father in order to walk with this new Father. Why "Deliver Us From Evil" Is Part Of The Lord's Prayer Jesus made this so simple. "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." You begin with the Father. Then comes your dependency, your repentance of sin, and your forgiveness of others. And then it comes back around to this: "deliver us from temptation, and from evil and the evil one" (Matthew 6:9-13). Why is the tempter's path in the Lord's Prayer at all? Why is the evil one named there? Because you do not worship the Father and simply ignore that this other thing exists. Repentance and dependence on God is what delivers you from it and connects you to Him. Look at the shape of that prayer. Sandwiched in the middle of two places, God the Father on one side and the evil one on the other, is you. Your dependency, your repentance, and your forgiveness of others set you in the Kingdom instead of on that other path. Standing in one place, darkness has you. Standing in the other, the Father of lights has you, and with Him there is no shifting shadow. That is where the Kingdom, the power, and the glory are. There Is No Third Space Ephesians chapter 2 is a masterpiece that explains the world you are living in right now. Paul writes, "You were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience" (Ephesians 2:1-2). Stay on that phrase for a moment: the course of this world. The course of this world is everything outside of knowing Jesus Christ. There is no third space. There is God in His Kingdom, and there is the father of lies in his domain. There is no other place where you get to say, "I don't want to be in that, but I'm not too hot on this either, so can I live over here?" That is a deception. There is the Kingdom of God, and there is darkness. That is it. When we did not know God, we were living in it and operating in it. We walked in it. And who is guiding it? The prince of the power of the air, who works out of a nature of evil and disobedience, in people who want to be disobedient. That compelling darkness of wickedness is now at work in disobedient people. Here is what that means for you. God delivered you from your sin, but He also delivered you from the nature to be disobedient to God that Satan loves to revel in. Satan cannot walk into your house. Demons cannot walk into your house and take it over. But you can absolutely open the door and give it to them. Can Christians Have Demons? I took an enormous amount of heat as a young believer for saying that Christians could have demons. I got thrown out of churches over it. People would tell me they were really mad at me, and I would tell them they probably had demons. Here is what I actually want you to hear. You can have whatever you want to have. You can decide tonight to go down the street and participate willfully in dark deeds, and demonic powers will take advantage of your disobedience and come right back. Your job is not simply to be forgiven of things. Your job is to be delivered of the things that make you do what needs to be forgiven. What About Everyday Sin And Failure? We live in a fallen world and we are not perfect. We need forgiveness every day of our lives, and we need the blood of Jesus at all times. None of that is in question, and no honest reading of this should make you think you have to be flawless before God will have you. But there is a difference between daily failure and willful service. I do not need to go walk in willful disobedience, serve demonic spirits, and then say, "Well, I'm a Christian and I've been forgiven, so I'm dark and I do dark stuff when no one is looking, but I'm saved." No. You will have no authority over the powers of darkness until you stop serving them. Where To Go From Here The gospel of Jesus Christ is what sets you free. That is the whole point of it: to set people free from the power of hell, to bring forgiveness of sin, and to separate people from demonic spirits. So the honest question is not whether you have been forgiven. If you have come to the Father through Jesus Christ, you have been. The question is whether you understand the difference between forgiveness and deliverance, and whether you are still holding open a door that God already gave you the authority to close. Being forgiven is real, and it is yours. It is simply not the whole story. The rest of the story is that you were given authority over the very darkness you were forgiven for, and the power to set other people free from it too.

Tom Bedford

Senior Pastor

Currently Reading
August 23, 2026 • 8 Minute Read
What God Really Did When Jesus Died For You
What Jesus did on the cross was larger than forgiveness. According to Colossians 2, God made you complete, made you alive, canceled the certificate of debt that stood against you, and disarmed the spiritual powers that had been using that debt to push you around. All of it happened at once, and all of it belongs to anyone who surrenders to Him. Most people who grew up near the church can tell you that Jesus died for sins. Far fewer live like the record has actually been erased. If you have ever stood in a worship service singing about grace while a voice in the back of your mind whispered, "Yes, but what about that thing you did," then Colossians 2 was written for you. Why Religion Loves to Replace the Gospel Paul opens this section with a warning worth repeating: see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world rather than according to Christ (Colossians 2:8). Men love religion, and religion loves to replace the gospel. Whenever you are part of a group that starts saying things like we are the only people who know God, we are the only people who have the gospel, we are the only people who really have it right, that is a tradition of men that has moved out in front of the gospel. Imagine believing you are the only people in the whole world who know God. All of a sudden the work becomes about maintaining your position and your influence, and the thing meant to bring people in becomes a barrier that keeps them out. When traditions of men replace the gospel in our doctrine, our stuff becomes more important than people's lives. That is why the devil loves religion. It is the fastest way to blind our eyes and get us thinking about ourselves instead of seeing the lost. What Does It Mean to Be Complete in Christ? Paul keeps going: for in Him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete(Colossians 2:9-10). Notice the word you. He has made you complete. Ask yourself what completion would actually mean in your life. Would you like the torment in your mind to come to an end, and a maturity to settle over you that is no longer susceptible to it and no longer listens to it? Would you like the warfare against your family to finally stop, and for your household to arrive at a place of completion and development in this thing called the gospel, where you are no longer under its power, where it no longer makes your decisions and pushes you around while you sit there with no ability to resist it? When I came to Jesus, I knew that sin, ongoing and lived out and enjoyed, would kill off the eternal life living in me. Given enough time I would have let that life go and gone back to evil. So I was grateful for a completion that entered my soul and said, that is no longer who you are or what you are. You are no longer that man. You are no longer that person. Why, Lord? Because I died and rose from the dead to break its curse and deliver you from its nature. Now I live in you, and I spring up all the time, life and righteousness, so you can be like Me now instead of like what you were. That is what it means to be saved. This is why I come to the altars, lift my hands, and cry out to God. Some people assume I do that because I am the preacher and it comes with the job. It has nothing to do with being a preacher. I am simply grateful that the power of sin no longer rules my heart, no longer rules my thinking, and no longer controls my life. Why Do I Still Feel Guilty for Sins God Already Forgave? The gospel does a next thing. When you were dead in your transgressions and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions (Colossians 2:13). The reason I can stand and lift my hands and weep in the presence of God is that I am alive. The gospel made me alive, and I no longer have to think about my transgressions, because I have been saved from them. You know the thought. You are singing the song, and something says, yes, yes, but there was that. Here is what the gospel of Jesus Christ answers back: I thank You, Lord, that I have been forgiven and that it is under the blood, and I cast that thought out, because that is not me anymore. The whole world needs to hear that. Some will say, "I am a new Christian, and I still have a lot of problems." You have fewer problems than the people on their way to hell. They have real problems. A friend and I used to remind each other when we were going through hard things that other people have real problems, the kind you find out on the streets when people are disconnected from God and end up with all kinds of hell working on them, eating their lives out and destroying them from the inside. I may not be perfect, and I do not have to be. I have Jesus, He is perfect, I live in His light, and that transformation never ends. What Did Jesus Cancel on the Cross? Colossians 2:14 says He canceled the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us, and He took it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Think about what that means. The devil comes to your house and says you are this and you are that, you are all of this, it is never going to work for you, you are a big loser. Then God picks up the decree and stamps one word across it: canceled. It is finished. Then He posts it on the cross so the whole world can read how free you really are. That is what cancel culture should be. Cancel culture has been running since the garden, where it first tried to cancel God. Now God does the canceling. Evil, canceled. You are this, canceled. Your eternity is going to look like this, canceled. You are doomed to do that again, canceled. Your children are going to have devils, canceled. Whatever decree is standing against you today, say it: canceled. That is good news, and when you surrender to Jesus, the cancellation hits. A church that lives in a place of canceled debt should be the loudest voice telling the whole world about Jesus Christ and how their sin can be canceled too. Did Jesus Defeat Satan on the Cross? Paul does not stop at the canceled debt. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15). He did not only cancel the sin. He also destroyed the powers that use it against you. So the gospel is two things. It is the message of your salvation, your freedom from sin, and your rescue from the wrath that comes upon all that rebellion. It is also deliverance from the powers that use sin against you and manipulate you with it. I am free of it, and I am free of them. Nobody gets to pick one or the other. You have to have both. I once asked a pastor of a large church in another city how he dealt with the spiritual component of a situation he was facing. He told me that just about all the churches in his city do not believe that realm exists at all. My thought was immediate: then what kind of gospel do they have? If your gospel only deals with your sin and never disarms rulers and powers, those powers can walk right back in, because you do not even think they are there. It is the ultimate invisible person. Jesus taught us to do the will of the Father by depending on Him for daily bread, receiving forgiveness through repentance, and being delivered from temptation and from the evil one who destroys men's lives (Matthew 6:9-13). What Does Jesus' Authority Mean for You Today? Matthew 28:18 records Jesus saying that all authority has been given to Him. Authority over what? Everything. What man lost and surrendered in the garden, Jesus took back, in the realm of the spirit and on the earth, and that authority can never be contested again. Then comes the part that changes your Monday. Because you know Him, He extends that authority to you. You did not win it, and you are still more than conquerors (Romans 8:37), which means He was the Conqueror and you get to enjoy the benefit. Your job, though, is not only to enjoy it. Out of the love of God, your job is to go set somebody free. What Jesus did on the cross made you complete, made you alive, canceled every decree written against you, and stripped the powers that once ran your life. If that is true of you, there is somebody near you still living under a debt that has already been paid. Go tell them it is canceled.

Tom Bedford

Senior Pastor

August 9, 2026 • 7 Minute Read
Why Your Kids Learn Faith By Watching You
Children learn faith by watching their parents live it. Not by hearing what you know about the Bible, but by seeing how you know God when life gets hard. If you're wondering how to pass your faith to your children, start there, because how you raise your child determines what kind of foundation you are laying in them. Every decision you make right now is forming that foundation. If you have kids, this is true of you. And if you don't have kids but you serve children in some capacity, it's true of you as well. How you react to God, how you react to storms, and how you react to life is building something underneath the children who are watching. What Your Children Actually Need to See They have to see you, mom and dad, making choices in private at home when no one's looking. Here's why that matters more than any lesson you could sit them down and teach: they don't need to know what you know about the Bible. They need to know how you know Him, and how you know that He knows you. That distinction changes everything. Bible information can be handed over in a classroom. A relationship has to be witnessed. Your children need to see your relationship with God so that when they watch you face something, they see how you know God and how God responds to your life. When God Leads You Through the Storm Instead of Around It Here's the part no parent volunteers for. God comes, and He doesn't always make the storm go away. Sometimes He leads you through it to the other side instead, because sometimes God wants you to go right through the storm rather than save you from it. That's not the version of faith most of us would choose for our families, but it's the version your children need to see, because it's the one that proves the foundation holds. Testimonies are great after the test. They're hard in the middle of it. And the middle is exactly where your kids are watching you. What I Want My Children to Say About Me When I stand before God and leave this planet, I want to know one thing. Did You know me, and was I pleasing to You? Was my life lived in such a way that my children, even in the humanity of my weaknesses, saw something bigger than my flesh? I hope they'll say something like this: dad was an interesting guy, but I'll say this much, the man knew God. He might not have been perfect at it, but the man knew God, and he showed me what it was like to know God. That's not a low bar. That's the entire inheritance. My mom showed me what it was like to know God, and I learned how to know God by watching how she knew God when I was a child. Now I'm teaching my children how to know God the way I know God. One Generation Declares It to the Next My wife and I both had mothers who came to the Lord later in life, but long before we did, they began to declare God's works to us. Psalm 145:4 says that one generation shall praise His works to another. We had to watch our mothers, and then ultimately our fathers, come to the Lord and face the trial of their own humanity. We watched them surrender their pride, their flesh, their pursuit of whatever their vanity desired, and surrender in brokenness to God. It made an impact. When my mother came to Jesus, it was a ticking clock, and it was only a matter of time before I was going to be there with her, because she kept declaring who God was and I saw God shift her foundation in front of my eyes. I watched God shift her foundation right in front of me. She wasn't perfect. She was a brand new Christian. But the foundation shift was so real that it terrified me, because I thought, whatever she has, I don't have, and I am in big trouble. My wife had a similar experience. Her mother came to Jesus and the foundation shift was radical. By the time I met her mother, I was 20 years old, and all she did with me was declare God's mighty works, teach me Scriptures, tell me Bible stories, and tell me testimonies from her own life. The Decision We Made Before We Had Children We made a decision when we got married. We said we may not be rich, we may not be all this or that, and we may not be famous preachers, but my God, if I lose my children, what will it have been worth? I would rather have all of my children in the house of God living on a foundation of truth than have the things of this world. How about you? How many parents would say the same thing, that it doesn't matter what they have in terms of material things and houses, but they cannot lose their children? They cannot grow up, go out to the world, and collapse. Why You Can't Build This Foundation Alone No church is a perfect place. You could walk into most of them and rightly say it could all be done better, and the honest answer is, yes, probably. We're trying. But here's what matters more: we may not have it all figured out, but what we do want is to know God and have Him know us. He'll get us through. He'll get us there. He'll get you there. There's something about building it together that helps the foundation become solid. I watched a group of children put on a play once, and what I loved about it was that they were working with each other. One child loved another child enough to come help them in their calamity and bring them along. We're going to need each other for there to be a foundation that has power. It can't just be you. Your kids need to see other people living it too. Where Kids Really Learn to Worship When you see a room full of children dancing, singing, and rejoicing, where do you think they actually learned that? Do you think they learned it from the worship leader? They learned it from mom and dad. Because when you're driving down the road facing a trial, they can see you in the rearview mirror with tears running down your face, saying, God, You will be here. Your presence will lead us and Your power will save us. What's going on, dad? You okay? Yeah, I'm good. Just praying. What are you praying about? All things. Just praying. They know when you need God. They can feel it in the house, they can feel it in their hearts, and they know it. How to Pass Your Faith to Your Children When they see you choosing God in the hard moments, acting like a man of God and a woman of God, you are sowing into a foundation of rock and teaching them that they can know God too. What you're going to find out on the other side of all of it is that He knew us. So tell your children stories and testimonies, and help build their foundation of faith. Then go live stories and testimonies, so they see a foundation of faith actually being lived out in front of them. That's how it gets passed down, through what your children watch you know.

Tom Bedford

Senior Pastor

July 19, 2026 • 8 Minute Read
How To Set People Free (Without Being A Pastor)
Maybe you have heard messages about healing, deliverance, and the power of God, and quietly thought, "That is fine for the pastor. That is fine for the prophet. It is another day at the office for them. But I never had that." If that is you, I want to free you from a lie right now. You do not have to be a pastor, a prophet, or anything else to walk in what I am about to describe. You only have to be one thing. You have to be born again. Jesus gave His twelve disciples authority and sent them out to heal the sick and to deliver people from demonic power, from illness, and from every kind of affliction (Matthew 10). That same mission belongs to you. The qualification for it is not a title or a platform. Jesus said that being born of the Spirit is like the wind: "you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it came from or where it is going" (John 3:8). You cannot always explain it. But when you are born of the Spirit, you are already in it. You Do Not Have to Be a Pastor, You Just Have to Be Born Again I have been a Christian for forty-four years, and I will tell you the truth about how it worked for me. When I first got born again, I was a lot wilder and a lot less refined than I am now. God did not teach me to live this way through great visions. I never took a trip to the third heaven and came back with a revelation to go transform the world. Instead, He taught me through something much smaller and much simpler. Sometimes I would just be somewhere, and the Lord would say, "Look at that person." And there was this little prompting on the inside. I call it the nudge. If you have walked with God for any length of time, you know exactly what I am talking about. The First Thing: Learn to Follow the Nudge Here is how the nudge would work. The Lord would say, "Look at that person," and I would look. Then He would say it again. And I would think, "They are going to think I am weird." He would say, "Look at them again." Then would come the harder part: "Go pray for them." And more than once I answered back, "I do not want to do that. They did not ask me to pray for them." He would simply say, "I asked you to pray for them." Have you ever been in a moment like that, where the nudge was working and you did not want it to? Where you got clammy and sweaty and stirred up inside? I have paced a Walmart parking lot, praying quietly to work up my faith, just to walk up to a stranger and say hello. So this is the first thing I want to give you. Learn to follow the nudge. You do not have to manufacture it. You do not have to create it. You just have to follow it. What Does It Mean to Be Led by the Holy Spirit? Being led by the Spirit is not as strange or as dramatic as people make it sound. It does not always come as some overwhelming, otherworldly experience. Most of the time, the nudge is simply compassion, pointed. You look at someone, and your heart goes out to them. You see the pain they are in, and something inside you says, "I see you." When you notice a person who is in distress, harassed and hurting like a sheep with no shepherd, and your heart breaks for them, that is the nudge too (Matthew 9:36). This is not about showing up to entertain yourself or to have a spiritual moment in public. It is about love. Love is greater than prophecy, and it is greater than knowledge (1 Corinthians 13). When you are moved by compassion, God is all about that. Now, sometimes the Spirit does get your attention in more physical ways, and He will use whatever teaches you to pay attention. Early in my walk, whenever the Lord wanted me to notice someone, my cheeks would flush blood red. I would be sitting at a table in a restaurant, not saying a word, and my wife would look at me and say, "Something is going to happen." I would ask, "What do you mean?" She would say, "Your face is red," and then she would start scanning the room, wondering who it was. Other times my hands would begin to burn hot, and I would know something was about to happen. God was patiently teaching me, "This is how you know I am here." But even with all of that, most of the time it is still the compassion that points the way. The Second Thing: Five Words That Open Every Door Once compassion has pointed you toward someone, here is the second thing, and it could not be simpler. It is five words: "Can I pray for you?" I could tell you stories all day long that started with that one question. Who is going to be offended enough to say no? A few people might, and for them you will need a different approach, but most people respond with, "Please." I was recently at a client's house. I have a side business, and this man has been my client for ten years. He is a lovely guy, and he does not know the Lord. Every time I am there, he offers me marijuana, even though he knows I am a pastor. He does not even realize I would not do that, and honestly, I love him. So I was at his house, and I asked him, "Can I pray for you?" He said, "I do not believe in a sky God, but please pray." So I laid my hands on him and prayed for him, and he started crying. He told me, "Thank God you are my friend. Thank God you love me. You have been such a good friend to me." A grown man, standing there in tears. He did not come to Jesus in that moment. But I understood something. That one question, "Can I pray for you?" opened a conversation I was not expecting, and that conversation will lead to more conversations. Sometimes those five words are the doorway that everything else crosses over. So just try it out. You Are Not Depending on Your Own Ability When these two things work together, when the nudge points you and then you ask, that is the moment where everything becomes possible. And here is the freeing part: your dependency does not rest on how good you are at any of this. It rests on the eternal Spirit who lives inside of you. Even if you have not been a Christian very long, the Holy Spirit has been here a long time. He has loved these people with an everlasting love; He has loved them a long time (Jeremiah 31:3). The one living inside of you already knows exactly what to do. That is why Jesus told His disciples not to worry about what they would say, because it would not be them speaking but the Spirit of their Father speaking in them (Matthew 10:19-20). You do not have to work up the perfect words. When the nudge hits, the Spirit of your Father is the one prompting you to go and offer those five words. You yield, you ask, and He shows you what to do. Where to Go From Here Imagine what would happen if ordinary believers were simply released into their cities to follow the nudge. You do not even have to create it. You just have to follow it. When you see someone in distress, harassed and hurting, and compassion points you toward them, go. Offer a heart of love, and ask, "Can I pray for you?" Love has a look. Love has a sound. Love has a way about it, and when it is in you, other people can see it, even people you have never met. So the next time your heart goes out to a stranger, do not talk yourself out of it. Follow the nudge, offer those five words, and watch what He does. The door swings wide, and the Holy Spirit is right there.

Tom Bedford

Senior Pastor