Welcome to the first weekend worship services of 2025. Happy New Year. I pray God's blessing on you. I pray this is a year of breakthrough for you. I pray it's a year of abundance. Of health and peace. And a year of purpose—that you could join the great mission of God in filling this world with the grace and truth of Jesus.

It's been a decade since the Ebola Outbreak of 2014, and we're still here. It's been half a decade since the Covid Scare of 2019ish, and we're still here. And it has been about 2 months since northern California got hit with a Bomb Cyclone... and look, we're all still here.

So good news all around, I'd say. You're a survivor. Well done.

But there is even better news, and this is where I want to start us off in 2025.

I have a 5 part series to kick off the new year. It's called Shock to the System... I'll explain why.

But let's get into the Word.

You are today gathered (or tuned-in to) a church. A church is a gathering of people dedicated to exploring and living the message of Jesus and the worldview of the Christian faith as laid out for us in the Bible.

And what I want to say to you today is that Christianity is awesome.

I know that not everybody shares that view. And I am perfectly aware that you or people you love have been hurt by the church. I'm sorry for that.

It could be that you even feel hurt by God. I get that. I want to talk through these things over the coming messages.

For now, I respectfully ask you to keep an open mind.

Because just erasing God, doesn't erase the problems of suffering and pain... it may be erasing the most powerful solution ever given in history.

However, without denying the problem, let me set that aside for a future message.

Because I want to show you why I can say that Christianity is awesome.

And... with that... why I can say that if you are a Christian — or if you were one of many, many people who told us they were receiving Jesus and becoming Christians just in the month of December... or if you were one of many, many people in 2024 who prayed to receive Jesus, so you're starting off your new year as a Christian...

Then I want to say to you that this thing you have accepted, this faith you have believed is beautiful, and powerful, and truly, epically awesome.

There is no philosophy, no science, no religion, no faith-system, and no anti-faith system that offers the psychological health, the mental sanity, the verifiable truth-claims, the historical validity, and the transcendent hope of biblical Christianity concerning the message of Jesus Christ and his matchless gospel of grace.

The first reason that Christianity is awesome is because Christianity is Christ... Christ on display. Christ in your heart. Christ in your life. Christ in your thinking.

No one ever loved you like Jesus. Only Jesus can satisfy your soul, and only he can heal your heart and make you whole.

The second reason that Christianity is awesome is because Christianity announces a message called grace. There's a lot I could say about grace, but let me just say it this way:

If I had to sum up in one word all religion and all philosophy and all the alternatives to Christianity... in one word, I would spell that word D-O. Do.

If I had to sum up in one word biblical Christianity, I would spell that word

D-O-N-E. Done.

From the Cross, Jesus cried out, "It is finished," and we've been resting our hearts there ever since.

That means that the main Christian message is not about stuff you have to do for God. It's mainly about what God has done for you and will do in and through you because of Jesus.

Which is the set up for this verse, which is the set up for the 5 part series I am using to kick off 2025:

"To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given, that I should preach... the unsearchable riches of Christ" (Ephesians 3:8).

If you are a Christian, you possess a portfolio. You have assets. You have riches that are literally unsearchable because they are so vast.

In other words, like a man named Joseph, you've been blessed with a beautiful "coat of many colors," the unsearchable riches of Christ.

Wear it proudly.

That is the heart and soul of the Christian message because that kind of generous giving is the heart and soul of Jesus himself, and that is why Christianity is awesome.