Pre-Intro

Speaker 1 0:00

What's up everybody? Uh, first things first. That was my email on the screen, so that's awkward. Uh , if you are interested in baptism, you can email me. Forget the H. Okay. This is the problem people have. It's j o n because I'm a Jonathon , not j. O. H. N just just throwing it out there. Okay. I don't want to act like I'm scolding you. I'm just letting you know or even better than that is that I'm actually here in real life today so you can talk to me out in the lobby. I know it's a big deal. Yeah. So , um, we can talk about it out there in the lobby. Welcome. We're glad you're here for a second. Third timers or all of the rest of you if you're online, we're also glad that you're here. We are continuing

Intro

Speaker 1 0:42

our series called Mulligan. This is week three. Mulligan is a golf term. It is when you make a really bad shot and the people that are next to you are really kind and generous and say, okay, we'll forget that one and let you do another one. So have you ever go golfing with me? Be prepared to give me lots of mulligans. I'm a terrible golfer. I've golfed one time in my life. So that's why I'm a terrible golfer. First off, and also I have to say this, the only time I golf , if you guys remember pastor Jerry Shank, he used to be our student ministries. Now he's in San Francisco doing it there. We golf together and he hit me with the golf cart the one time. But if you ask him about it, he says that I ran into it. How do you run into a moving golf cart? You get hit. So anyway you have , you see him ask him about it. It's a hot button issue between the two of us. It's been about a few years trying to figure that one out. So we're carrying on our series about getting mulligans because here's the thing, our God is a god of chances are God is a god of opportunities. Our God continually has forgiveness. He has grace, he has mercy because otherwise we wouldn't be here. We all need mulligans . We all need second chances. We all make so many mistakes, even from the beginning, as we learned last week, the very first mistake, the first rebellion, and God still gave us more chances after that and he continues to. So that's the only thing you need to know right now is that God does have forgiveness for you. That you've never done anything too bad. Can that be the first thing that you hear? There's forgiveness. There's second, there's there , there's hundred chances for you. Okay? That's how good our God is. So last week, pastor Larry talked about the first important step in this mulligan because here's the deal also, we're getting these chances. We don't want to keep repeating the same mistakes. That's also foolishness. What is it? Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. We all know that quote, I didn't create it. How many of us are living that insane lifestyle? We keep doing the exact same things and then we're scratching our heads like, well, why do I keep finding myself here? Why? What is going on? Is the world against me? No, it's because, well, there's a lot of reasons. The first

Verse

Speaker 1 2:49

thing that we talked about last week is owning it. Now, this is important and then we're going to get into some today , but before we even get into the rest of this stuff today, I want to read the passage that we're going to be talking. Can we do that? I want to read it as totality. It's just two quick verses because I believe there's power in just hearing God's word without even exposing it or exposing it and then now we're going to pray. Then we're going to jump in. Okay. Romans 12 verses one and two if you have a bible, you can turn to that. If you don't see 2019 it's on the screens. Here we go. Therefore, brothers and sisters in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your true worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing and perfect will of God.

Prayer After Verse

Speaker 1 3:43

Amen. Let's pray together. Father Again, we just say you're good. Again, we say thank you for the, for the many opportunities that you give us. Father, we thank you for your grace that we have not deserved, that we have not earned. Father, we thank you that you work through us as humans to spilled your kingdom, to spread your good news. Every word that comes out of my belt be from you may not be from me. May Your spirit be powerful in here. May it move revealing truth to us, challenging us, convicting us, encouraging us. You know what? We need God. So Holy Spirit come since Jesus name. Amen. Like

Start Of Sermon

Speaker 1 4:25

I talked about last week was owning it. Now this is important. You have to understand. You cannot skip over owning it. You can't think I don't need to own my problems and I'm going to get to where we are today or skip the first two weeks and get to where Larry's going to go to next week because that doesn't work that way. They build on each other first things first, we've got to own it. Okay? I was talking to one of my really good friends, well sorry, I use that loosely. We were really good friends when we lived together in North Carolina. Now we're friends, you know what I mean? You understand what I mean? Cool guy. We grew up together. Not only were we close because we were leading in the youth group together, we're also close in proximity. He lived like five minutes from me and so we were over at his house all the time. He has two kids, he has a wife. It was great. So he calls me, I mean, I'm in an airport and he calls me two Saturdays ago and I'm like, what is this happening? Why are you calling me? Did somebody die? Like, what's going on? It's a terrible thought. That's just where my mind went. I'm sorry guys. This is a safe place. Right? Um, so he calls me, and this is what he says. This is the first thing that he says to me. I'm reading this book, it's called Swipe right by Levi Lusko . Anybody heard of that book? It's about dating and um, you know, relationships and stuff, which I also thought it was weird cause he's married. Like I said , uh, he said, I've been reading this book and I'm getting so convicted and he says this , I really love porn. And I was like, wow , you can't say that you're a follower of Jesus. You're not allowed to say that you like porn. Come on man. This is my first thought. And I started thinking through all of the people in my life, young men like me, even older than me, we talk about struggle and being vulnerable with you right out of the gate. Okay? And we start talking and I'm thinking through the conversations we have and never once have I ever heard somebody say that they like it, let alone love it. You know what the normal conversation is? Oh, I hate it. I hate that I keep making this mistake. I hate that. I keep stumbling in this. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. And he says to me, I love it. Not to say I'm trying to find rationalization in scripture so that I can continue to do this. That's not what he's saying. He's saying, I hate how much I love this and I've been wrestling with it for 15 years and now for the first time I understand why I'm wrestling with it because I love it. That's just the dirty bottom line of humanity. We like our sin. That's why we keep doing it. And I'm sitting there thinking like, first off you can't say that, but then I stopped and I thought, wait a minute, you're probably going to see way more breakthrough in this than anybody else because you've owned it. Now you have owned this in such an amazing way that now he can start to pick it apart and he can say, wait a minute. So why do I love it? What is my marriage like at the moment when I'm struggling with it? What's my relationship with my kids? What's my career like when I'm wrestling with this struggle of this and now he's going to be able to own it. So now that he's owned it, he's in the second stage, which is where we are today. He can begin to rethink it so you can't move on from owning it and just skip to rethinking it. That doesn't work, but once you own it, then you can begin to rethink it. Let's look at this passage again in Romans chapter 12 this is Paul giving us some insight into rethinking our mistakes, rethinking these situations that we find ourselves in . We don't want to be, and he says, therefore, brothers and sisters in view of the mercies of God. In other words, we could say in light of the Mulligan that you're getting, because God's mercy is so good, you're going to get chance after chance in view of the mercies of God. He says, I'm urging you, I love that strong language. Please listen to me please. Your life will be better. I'm hurting you. Just do this, please, please, please. I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. Hold up right here in this time when this is getting said by Paul, they're very familiar with sacrificial systems. They're very familiar with sacrifices. However, what they're familiar with is actually killing the animal for a sacrifice. And Paul says, no, no, no, no, no, that's done. We talked about it in community just a minute ago. That's done. Jesus died, but he rose again. So the sacrifice has been made. Now let's raise the bar. You present yourself as a living sacrifice. A one theologian said it this way, if God died for you, you can live for him. So Paul saying, give it all to him. Surrender completely. This is how you worship God by giving him everything. Now, surrender is, it's a buzzword in the church. If you've listened to any of my messages, you know I've used it about a thousand times and the twice, two times I've spoken, or however many, I don't know. It's a very popular word. I get that. And a lot of times we hear that word surrender and we just think, oh yeah, take it all . Just take it all. That's what we're supposed to do. Right? And how many of us actually do that? Or we think we do that. And then we realize when we look back at our bank account that we didn't actually do that or we look at our time and we're like, well, I just, I really want to watch this show so I don't have any more time to give you God. I'm sorry, but how much your mother for the 15th time is very important to me, so we feel like we've survived . I'm not trying to guilt you just we feel like we've surrendered, but then we, if we take a really hard look at ourselves, we realize maybe I haven't really surrendered at all, but this is what Paul is saying. This is how you worship God. You give them everything and let's not just let that be a broad statement of surrender. He says, that's not enough. Let's continue on the passage. I'm going to tell you how to surrender. Okay? This is how you surrender. Do not be conformed to this age. Some translations say, don't be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing and perfect will of God. This is beautiful, a formula that you see in here of how you surrender. You do not be conformed to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So I've got three things we're talking about today and a little on each one. Conformity, transformation, and the process of transformation. So just a few words real fast. What is conformity look like? Let's break this apart. What is conformity? I could go on for a couple of hours on this if I'm being honest. I grew up, sorry. This is going to be shocking to some of you. I'm sure. I grew up in the 90s. Um, I'm just being honest. Come on a , I might as well had been homeschooled by the rules my parents had grew up in a really small little , uh , Christian school. Grew up in church in the south, in North Carolina, and conformity to the world is something that we used to take very seriously in Christian homes. So I don't know why, but I wasn't allowed to watch things like rug rats. What's wrong with rug rats, transformers, you know, those disguise robots , uh , wasn't a to watch like teenage mutant Ninja Turtles. I wasn't even allowed to her groans from the side. What have I missed out on? I wasn't allowed to listen to real music. Um, I wasn't even allowed to listen to Christian music if I'm being honest with you. I remember again, sorry. No verbal groans here. Okay, you can do this internally. I was in fourth grade when the first casting crowns album came out and I remember my parents made me take it back. It was a birthday guys. It was a gift to me and I had to return it and say to my friend, you're a sinner and you've given me a stumbling block that I have to remove. Cast this out from me. So I took it back and then I, as a musician, I remember when I was like 13, see my dad got saved. I feel like I should also say this . My Dad became a follower of Jesus in his like twenties. So when he became a follower, he's like, I've got to get rid of all this stuff. Don't be conformed. And then when I like became a teenager and I discovered good music, he was like, oh, I know this stuff. This is good. I'm like, yeah, you've been holding out on me for sure. 15 years. Like Boston's great stuff, you know. Anyway, sorry, that's just a side note. Where was I? We used to take that conformity to this world very seriously. You know? Some of my friends weren't even allowed to go to movie theaters because they were afraid that they were going to see, but in culture today, and I'm going to back on myself, US millennials, I get it. Our parents snapped really hard one way and then us millennials snapped really hard the other way and we said, we are free in the spirit. There's no condemnation for those in Christ. I can watch the teenage mutant Ninja turtles now and I'm not going to hell for it. I still haven't watched it though, if I'm being honest. On the off chance they were right. I'm just kidding. But here's the problem. We've snapped back the other way, and this isn't just a millennial thing. This is where our culture is at right now. There's a lot of brokenness. There's a lot of lies. There are so many problems, but here's the thing. Remember, remember when we were talking last week about Adam and eve? How did the first sin enter the world? It was through an idea, through a lie of the devil, and he didn't just come out and say, God's a liar. Don't listen to him. What did he say? He questioned God and he said, wait , wait, wait. Did God really say this? See, that's how temptation happens. That's how sin happens. That's how culture gets to you with an idea and it says, did God actually say this? We are in for the first time in America and I know America's what? 300 400 year old years old, not very old. We are in for the first time in America where biblical morality is foolishness. Now we're bigots. Now we're ignorant. Now you don't tell me what to do with my body. You don't tell me what to believe about sexuality. You don't tell me how to have my marriage. You don't tell me any of that stuff stuff and here's where the church is also going wrong. We're saying, wait, did God really say this? I know the Bible is really old. Is it still relevant and this culture is seeping into our church, but for our purposes today, the main way that culture is seeping into us and we are conforming to we have to be careful is autonomy. The world says you don't need to accomplish what you want to accomplish. In fact, you probably shouldn't include them in your plans because they'll just mess it up and they'll get in the way. Look at relationships. We already talked about porn. I can get everything I need without ever having to talk to another human being. It's just so much easier. Look at your work, look at your work. Don't tell your coworkers your plans because then they could get the glory or the praise or that promotion that you're working on. So do what yourself and this is seeping into the church. I don't have to be at church four weeks a month. I can come once a month because let's be honest, maybe you haven't noticed this yet and I'm sorry that I'm about to shatter the glass. There's a lot better pastors and communicators than me and Larry. Maybe you've never heard that before and if you really don't believe me, I will give you some podcasts. Where do you think we get our stuff from? Come on. There are some amazing men and women of God who are communicating that have great stuff to share, so I don't need to come to church on Sunday to get that. Let's be honest, John's a hit or miss half the time, so this guy's always on and I can fast forward through the parts that don't want to hear. Look at worship music. There are cds of worship music that is so much better than us because they sat in a studio and recorded over their mistakes and they're so good that we're doing their music. So you could actually hear it from the source. If you want to hear Hillsong actually sing that last song that we did, I'll share it with you. It's phenomenal. Trust me. Not that our team is not amazing either, but the world is seeping in and saying, you don't need the church to do this God thing. Do it on your own. It's your personal relationship with God. Forgetting that God himself is a community. Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ, God the father, God created humanity for community. He created Adam and eve. It wasn't an accident that there were two of them. That's the plan for community. Church is so important. This place couldn't happen without you guys. We need each other as we own it. I've got to move on. I can't keep going. I'm so sorry. We've got to fight autonomy. We got to fight this culture trying to lie, trying to manipulate us because this is how we fall and this is how we keep needing our mulligans . So Paul is outlining, don't do this, don't do this, but instead be transformed. Now that's finished. Language transformed will never be transformed in this life completely until we be, until heaven meets earth, until the Kingdom of God is finally here. It's breaking in. Trust me, he hits breaking in. I talked with the man right now it's breaking into his body. Cancer is being removed from his body. He was supposed to be terminal like I like months ago and through prayer, that Kingdom of God is breaking in and he's being healed. It's coming friends, but it's not here completely, so we'll never be completely transformed until then. That's our hope. That's the anchor for our souls. That's what we're hoping for. But transformation is a process. Pastor Larry talked about at last two weeks in a row. Time is your friend. Go on a journey of transformation. That's the call of Jesus. He didn't say, do you want to be a Christian? He said, come follow me. Come on a journey and how do we see transformation? It's all over our walls. People in process transforming our homes, communities and world. We want to, we want to see transformation. How does it happen? Paul answered his question here through the renewing of your mind. I love this verse and the Eight 30 Service. Let me down so hopefully you won't. You won't either. How many of you that sounded extreme? How many of you raise your hand? Have heard of the book the power of habit by Charles Doug HIG. I am so disappointed. [inaudible] it is a phenomenal book. It's not a Christian book. It's amazing. Charles Ducky , check it out. It breaks down the science of habit formation and then it also gives you a ton of stories of how people have used habits and harnessed habits , um, to be better, better in business, better. I think it even tells Rick Warren of Saddleback story in there. It's an amazing, amazing book, but what you learn about this, this is like, this is so funny to me. This was a groundbreaking book when it came out like five or six years ago. It's literally in the Bible guys like this isn't new information. It's new for us as humans, but Paul is sitting here by the Holy Spirit pinning things that we're figuring out. Again, 2000 years later, this is amazing. Habits are good. Did you know that habits are amazing? If you didn't have a hat , if your brain wasn't forming habits, you would pass out and your brain would shut down from exhaustion. Your brain is always trying to make habits out of everything you are doing because when your brain forms a habit, it can go on autopilot and start to form another habit so that you can do more. So imagine this, how many of you get in your car and you drive home from work and then you find yourself home from work and you're like, wait a minute. What? How, how did this happen? But when you, when you get there and that situation, think of all the good stuff you get to accomplish on your way home from work. You get to think about the next day of work that you're going to do. You get to think about what you're going to pick up from the grocery store. You get to think about the great things you're going to buy for your wife to surprise her when you get home, right? That's what we all do all the time. Um , I love you. Um , or you get to do this. This is my wife's favorite thing that I do. You get to like air drum to the music on the steering wheel and then you're like swerving in and out. Yeah, you guys know what I'm talking about. They love it when you do that, trust me, try it on your way home. Just some marriage advice for you . Um, it's good to form habits. That's what your brain needs to do. But the problem with your brain always forming habits is that your brain is always forming habits. So what are you doing that is being formed into a habit? What am I doing that's being formed into a habit? You know what I mean? If it's always trying to make your actions into a habit, you got to make sure you're doing some good actions. Cause if you're doing bad actions, your brain's trying to make it habit. So what you find in the study of habit formation is that in your brain there's these pathways, they're called neural pathways. And that's the actual habit. It's, it's an action that is being performed so much that it is carving a path in your brain. This is amazing stuff. I remember in my living room growing up from the kitchen to like the bedrooms, bathrooms, that area of the carpet was just completely worn down versus like this back corner where we put the Christmas tree. It's like that's barely worn down, but this area, that's when our dad's like, we gotta get new carpet cause you guys keep wearing it down. It's like, yeah, because we live here. Anyway. That's the same thing that's happening in your brain. These paths are being formed and what Paul is writing and also what science now tells us to do is to have your brain renewed. If you want to change these habits that looks like new pathways being carved in your brain, you are literally reshaping the landscape of your brain when you form new habits, and Paul has been telling us to do this since he wrote Romans. That's the Gospel, the renewal of your mind from conformity, from the Kingdom of man, from the way the world works. Begin the process, the hard process. Let me again specify this is not easy. If any of you guys have tried to break a habit, you know how hard this is, but this is the call of the Gospel to continue or to begin. If you've already done it, then to continue this difficult process of becoming more like Jesus. Now again, this is our part in this. I have to stop here at the beginning because I don't want this to be legalistic and me telling you it's on you. It's on you to be a follower of Jesus. Pick yourself up by your bootstraps. This is what you have to do to be a follower of Jesus. You have to do this, you have to do this. That's not true at all. This is like a 90 10 split of what Jesus does in the renewal of us as humans. And what we also have to do, Paul writes about this too, because it kind of was attention in Romans and they're like, wait a minute, if Jesus is doing everything cause he died and he rose from the grave and were forgiven, we can do whatever we want. And he's like, no, you don't keep on sinning. You gotta Stop Messing Up. You got to stop sending the best of your ability. But there's forgiveness for when you mess up. But Jesus is the one doing it. This is our part. We call that active versus passive spirituality. Passive is the work of the Holy Spirit, and that's the majority. Trust me because if you've ever just tried to be a better person, you'll realize very quickly you're a pretty bad person. And again, I say that because I am too. Um , that's why we need the Holy Spirit. Now, moving along pretty quickly here, I want to give you some real tangible stuff about forming new habits. Really, you just gotta pick up the book. What can I say? I'm not a sponsor, but go pick up the book. I'm not going to get any money from it, but you need it. Ah , habits are broken up into a thing called the habit loop in it's three parts. This is the rethink part, okay? After we've owned our mistake, now we got to get in there. Introspection. We got to do some hard work. I think it's kind of fun personally, but I'm weird that way. A habit loop consists of three things. You have the cue, the routine, and the reward. The cue is the trigger. The routine is the actual action of the habit and the rewards. The reason that the other two exist because it's why you have a habit. It's easy to pick on smoking in this illustration, but look at smoking a cigarette as a habit. Many people have tried to quit smoking for many years since they were created. Um , smoking the cigarette is the actual action. That's the, that's the routine. Now, the reward that's easy to pinpoint as you're trying to fix these mistakes you made is you're trying to be better. You got to understand this stuff. It's easy to pinpoint the reward and it's usually pretty easy to pinpoint the routine. But pinpointing the cue. That's where you see the change. That's where you see growth. So obviously we're smoking cigarettes here. That's the, that's the illustration. Not Literally, but cigarette smoking, that's your routine. The reward is the nicotine. That's why people smoke. That's why you become addicted to cigarettes is because the nicotine, that relaxation, all of that stuff. Now, what triggers your desire for that cigarette in the moment? That could be many different things. If you've spent any time with me, you know, I'm a deli man. I love my sandwiches. I've worked in a deli many years. The Deli life chose me. I did not choose it. That's just putting that out there. Now, I remember when I was working in this Deli , when the lunch rush hits us, everybody in the Deli smoked cigarettes except for me because I'm a Christian. That wasn't allowed to. Um, and I remember right when the lunch rush hits, you have all these guys come into the boss' sand . Like, Hey, whenever we get a chance, like I gotta get a cigarette, can I get a break? And I'm like, I'm going to start smoking so I can get a break. This is ridiculous. Like I'm the only one working here cause I don't smoke. But here's the thing that I realized. Of course, they needed to smoke. Of course they needed that. Nicotine is the busiest part of your job. You're probably scrambling to get sandwiches or flying off the shelves out the door and you can't handle it. So you need to go smoke. And I understand it now, rethinking it means that you do the work, whatever it is that you did this mistaken , whatever. I mean we could paint a broad picture. I could pick one of my mistakes if you want me to, but I'm not going to cause I don't have enough time. It's easier that way. You gotta get in there and you've got to start picking it apart and you got to say, why do I keep struggling with this action? And until like my friend, you say, cause I love it. I just really like it. Now he's owned that piece of it. Now he sees the bad action. He sees the reward. Now he's got to figure out what's triggering it and that's how he's rethinking it. That's how he's reworking it. That's how we get growth and then the end result is the process of transformation. That's what Paul is talking about. That is you being transformed. I want to say it again. Time is your friend. If you're looking for a quick fix, if you're looking to come in here and say, I've made this mistake and I don't want to make it anymore, she can just give me like three things and I don't have to make that mistake anymore. You're not going to find it here. I'm not smart enough for that. I'm sorry. I'm sure someone out there is, I will scour the globe of podcasts to find it for you and I'll try my best to help you, but that's not the call of Jesus. That's not the call of the Gospel. That's not what he is about. He's about a process. Come along with me. Let's go together and what you find is that as you walk with him, as you continue to evaluate, Hey, am I becoming more like Jesus in this way? No, I'm not. Why am I not? Let me break that apart and rethink it so I can be more like him. Then this transformation life, let's put some fruit on this. Galatians chapter five the fruit of the spirit. That's what your life begins to look like. People who are being transformed look like the fruit of the spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, long suffering, self-control. There's more, but I don't have, I don't remember him . There's a lot more of them. That's what your life begins to look like, but also I have to stop and say this first. The first part of that passage does not say, go be joyful and you will have joy. Go B, go be peaceful. You have peace. It says walk with the spirit. That's that passive spirituality. Walk with spirit and you will get the fruit of the spirit. Your life will then look like that. See , fruit grows as a byproduct of a healthy tree. You don't get to choose what fruit grows on your tree. You picked that tree, but that's the work. This as the , as the life is flowing through the tree, that's the Holy Spirit. As the life is flowing through you, your life produces the fruit. That's transformation. That's how we transform our homes, communities and world. A group of people together in community, walking out transformation, reigning every thought captain, making sure they're not making the same stupid mistakes, surrendering themselves. As Paul talks about in verse one, surrendering everything to him in that process and then people are going to look at this and say, who are those nutcases in Venetia that just love people no matter how hard we are to love, they still love us because people are hard to love, but a group of people that love regardless. What would that look like in Venetia? That our doors are always open for people who don't look like we do, who don't dress like us, who aren't in the same situation as us, but they're welcome here. That's what Jesus would have done. He says , we're closing this tangible next steps. I talked it fighting autonomy, owning your mistakes and rethinking them. All of this has done the best in community. We hear every single week route . It's about to start. We hear every single week in these transformation stories. How rooted was a catalyst for that, and it's not because the workbook is so amazing and it's because their facilitators are the greatest, most anointed leaders in the church or the rooms and the most beautiful environments that you could ever have. You know what it is? It's the community. So many people enter into that. When they pick up that workbook for the first time, they're like, oh yeah, I know all this. This is great stuff, but I know it. I mean, when the Holy Spirit gets a hold of you , you're like, well , I hadn't thought about it that way, but that's okay. He'll do his thing. That's not my job. But above all of that, across the board, it's always community. How crazy is it to think about when we look at the body of Christ, that's what Jesus calls the church. Now, Jesus is the head of the church. That's what he's listening and we are the body, the hands, the feet, the kidneys, any other body parts you want to name. Jesus could do this himself, but the head doesn't exist without the body. Jesus chooses to work through community. That's a radical idea because if you've read anything about church history or if you've just looked around at churches in 2019 and what's happening, you will understand God. Just do it yourself. Please. People are not doing it well.

Speaker 2 31:11

Yeah ,

Speaker 1 31:12

but he's still chooses to. He still works through us. That's why you're needed. It's not about us on the stage. It's just as important to have these greeters , these people who welcome and show love as the first face that people can see or out in the parking lot, pointing people to their park as well . Serving up on the worship team in the kids ministry, loving on these kids who maybe don't have a home life where they get loved. This is the body of Christ to people. We need each other and I'm not giving you an out of owning your problems because you're thinking, if you're thinking right here like, oh good, I don't have to be the only one owning it. They'll help me. They will. You got to own your problems. These are, these are, these are your mistakes. However, when you own it with people and they come along, as you know how many people I'm owning my mistakes with, it's so freeing and they're strengthening me. Iron sharpens iron so that I can do more so I can go further so that I can see more healing. I can see more growth. That's it. That's community guys. That's the next step for us and it's a lot more than showing up one Sunday a month, two Sundays a month. It's about being in community that goes deeper and sorry, watch your toes. That goes deeper than just being here on a Sunday for one hour. I'm not going to ask you to , but if I asked her to write to raise their hand, who serves in the church? We have a very poor understanding of what it means to serve in the church. If not doing it because you don't have time for it. That's not what it's about. This is what we're called to do as followers of Jesus. We are the hands and feet. If the foot says, I don't need to serve. Leave . If the foot says I don't need to walk. Are you going to get anywhere? We are all in this together, friends. That's the hard truth, but that's what it is. There's this term in the church today called Consumer Christianity. Again, that's conformity to the world seeping in. That's not what we're about here. We should be linking arms, doing life together, owning our mistakes together, walking forward, loving this community, being generous to this community together. So community, I'll shut up now. I'm sorry, and the last point for us, maybe you're not a follower of Jesus. That's okay. We're so glad that you're here. If you're not, again, I just want to reiterate the thing that I started with. There's no mistake that you've ever made that is beyond forgiveness. Conformity to the world says, now you're too broken. We can't use you here. Nah , you're too lost . Chad . Do not have the time for another project. You're too dead. Can't. I can't waste my time with you. Here's what Jesus says. There's nothing so lost that it can't be found. There's nothing so broken that it cannot be mended and there's nothing so dead that it can't be resurrected. There's no mistake that you can make that is beyond what he can forgive, that is beyond what he can renew and restore where you stand with me as we pray.

Final Prayer

Speaker 1 34:20

Father, we thank you for your grace. Father, we thank you for your love. We thank you for your goodness. We thank you for your presence in our lives. It's not deserved, it's not earned, but we say thank you because you give it to us so freely. Father, will your spirit move, show us areas that we got at home, show us areas that we need to begin rethinking, maybe being encouraged to do the work, not because it's so daunting, but in light of your mercies , in light of everything you've done for us, how could we not? Father, will you point us to you? It's in Jesus name. Amen.

Outro

Speaker 1 35:08

Friends , I'm so thankful that you're here. If it's your first year, second year , third time, go out to the IM or the new friends desk. We have a gift for you. If you've made a first time decision today, we have this amazing journal. This changes everything. This is free. We'd love for you just to take it 21 days. We'll follow up with you after that. There's so many great pages of content that you could learn some stuff, ask your questions, whatever it is. We want to put this in your hand. If you need prayer, if you need somebody to talk to. We have some prayer partners that are going to be down here at the front, but as leaving, before you leave, can you hold out your hands in a posture of receiving? I'm gonna leave you with the blessing from the understanding that God is good. May you taste and see that this week and do the work of rethinking the ways of this world. Amen. We will see you guys next week.