Scripture On Grace In Weakness

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Good morning. My name is Arthur Baxley, and I am in recovery. But because of that, I try to practice every day the twelve steps of recovery in all of my affairs. Today's sermon is each time he said, My grace is all you need. Power works best in weakness. So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ can work through me. Second Corinthians 12, 9. This is the word of the Lord.

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Thanks be to God. Thanks, Arthur. Appreciate you, brother. Thanks for doing

Why Control Is An Illusion

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that. All right. Well, let me start with a uh confession. Um, I like to think that I'm in control. Like, not just a little bit. Hello, love. Like, really in control, right? Like if we were doing a group project, I'd quietly take over the Google Doc and rewrite everyone's section and then act surprised when it turned out great, right? You ever do that? No? Just me? Okay, cool. But here's attention: the longer that you follow Jesus, the more that you realize something uncomfortable. Control is mostly an illusion. And if you've lived more than about 10 minutes, you've already discovered this. That you can't control your health completely. You can't control other people. You definitely can't control your kids' attitudes. And if you've ever tried to control your own habits, you already know how that goes. Like, I'll just stop. I'll just do better. I'll just try harder this time. And then Tuesday happens. Welcome. You are among your people, friends. Uh, my name is Lawrence. I'm the senior pastor here. And before you exit the parking lot at the end of the service, thinking this isn't a real church, I need you to know that's kind of the point. Um, we are not trying to be the kind of church that makes you feel like you need to have it together before you walk in. We are the kind of church for people who are done pretending that they do. So welcome. If you're new here, glad you're here. If you're back, welcome back. If you got dragged here uh today and you're still deciding whether missing your Sunday morning routine uh was worth it, stick around. I'm telling you, this summer might actually mess you up in the best way possible. This is why this series matters. This summer, we're stepping into something that honestly might surprise you. We are walking through the 12 steps together as a faith community, as a church, not just for people in recovery rooms, not just for those people, but for us. Because what if, what if the 12 steps aren't just about addiction? What if they are deeply unapologetically rooted in the gospel?

Why A Church Teaches The 12 Steps

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Uh, the book that we're gonna be anchoring into as we go through the summer is called Steps. Uh, it's a guide to transforming your life when willpower isn't enough. It's by a friend of ours, spoken here many times named John Ortberg. And John, in his book, Steps, brings the steps into direct conversation with scripture in a way that's gonna rearrange some things for you and I. The 12 steps, he says, maybe one of the most significant movements of the spirit in the 20th century. Now, that's a really big statement here. Um, but when you look at the fact that Alcoholics Anonymous has helped more people transform their lives than almost any other modern spiritual movement, you start to take it seriously. So here's the thing about the 12 steps that might surprise people. They don't begin with strength, they begin with honesty. And not the like gentle Instagram caption kind of honesty, like the raw, uncomfortable, said out loud in front of people kind. Don't worry, we're not gonna do that quite yet. We are gonna do that together, though, this summer, all 12 of them, week by week. And right out of the gate, today, step one, I feel like just punches you right in the chest. It's just two sentences. They're almost offensively simple. They're this we admit that we are powerless and that our lives have become unmanageable. That's it. Freedom. Like that's the whole first step. And almost everyone hates it. Because we live in a culture that rewards, like,

Step One Begins With I Can’t

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it doesn't reward uh admitting weaknesses. We live in the Bay Area, right? We live in an age of optimism, of biohacking, of uh morning routines so detailed they need a spreadsheet. We do cold plunges and microdose. We have done the therapy and the breath work and we have vision boards, like multiple of them. And somehow we're still doing the thing we said we would stop doing. So here it is. The first phrase in every real life change is I can't. That's it. I can't. That's where we start. And the intro of John's book literally says this I can't fix my family. I can't keep my job. I can't salvage my reputation. I can't protect those I love. I can't stand the pain. I can't stop drinking. I can't stop binge eating, binge watching, binge spending, binge working. I can't stop looking at porn. I can't find a spouse, can't stay married, can't forgive my ex, can't make a friend, manage my temper, save money, be grateful. I can't get my skin, teeth, hair, thighs to look right. I can't get no satisfaction, can't cure my cancer through positive thinking, can't please my parents, can't have kids, can't get the kids to leave, can't get my child to come home, can't open up, can't shut up, can't sleep, can't stop working, can't stop, can't can't stop comparing, can't feel joy, can't see my abs. That was slow blow. Can't get enough likes, loves, or congratulations, can't understand what I do, can't bear criticism, can't stop criticizing, can't believe, can't walk away, can't make myself want to live, can't fix the world, can't fix myself, can't run the show. Not this whole, I've got this. Not like I'm improving, not I'm almost there, just I can't. And some of you are already resisting that because you're thinking, wait, I thought church was supposed to be like encouraging. Isn't this supposed to build me up? Yes, but real encouragement starts with truth, and sometimes truth sounds like surrender before it sounds like victory. So let me ground this in some scripture. I'm just gonna read it. I don't really understand myself for what I want to do, what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do what I hate. I want to do what is right, but I can't. I want to do what is good, but I don't. I don't want to do what is wrong, but I do it. Anyways, this is a

Paul’s Honest Fight With Sin

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guy named Paul who wrote this. Uh, he's an apostle. He's a guy who wrote a huge portion of the New Testament and is basically saying, I want to do good, but I can't seem to pull it off. Now, if Paul had a journal, that would be the entry, and we get to read it. And if we're honest, I think that's a lot of ours too. You ever find yourself doing the exact same thing that you said you wouldn't do again? Saying the thing, thinking the thing, going back to the habit, the coping mechanism, the pattern. You don't need a sermon to tell you that. You've lived it. So if you've ever sat in your car after doing the thing, you swore you were done doing, thinking there must be something uniquely wrong with you, Paul wrote it down first and he published it. And what step one is asking you to do isn't complicated, it's uncomfortable. And there's a difference. It is asking you to say the truest thing you know about yourself and your situation. I cannot control this. Now, here's where it gets interesting, and I where I think a lot of people, especially who grew up in church, uh get tripped up. We have been taught that admitting powerlessness is the same as giving up, that saying I can't is a failure of faith. But Orberg makes this critical distinction that I love in the book. He says, powerlessness is not the same as hopelessness, it is the beginning of hope. Because the moment I stop pretending I can fix myself, I become available to the one who can. And that's a different framing entirely. That the admission is not the end of the story, it's actually the start of a different one. So, step one is not introducing a new problem, it's actually just naming an old one. The first step is the hardest because it requires us to admit that we're not in control. That that's not just a behavioral issue, it's actually a spiritual one. Because underneath our struggle to change is a belief that we should actually be able to. Like I should be stronger, I should have more discipline, I should be past this by now. But what if the issue isn't that you're failing at control? What if the issue is that you were never designed to carry that level of control in the first place? Let me take you to an anchor text in the scriptures. John, the gospel writer, um, he actually uh quotes Jesus right here. And this is Jesus saying, He says, I Jesus says, I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Now, really important part. Apart from me, you can do nothing. You can do nothing. It doesn't say less. He doesn't say like you can do not as much. He says nothing. That's not harsh. That's actually just clarifying. Because we've built this whole life on trying to prove the opposite, right? Like, look what I can do, look how far I've come, look how strong I am. And Jesus lovingly says, apart from me, you can't. And step one is not about shame here, it's about alignment with reality. Let me break for us for today the step one into these three movements that I feel like is really helpful that Ortberg actually walks through because this matters for how we actually live this out. So it's the beginning of this. Step one: my life is unmanageable. Now, that word unmanageable here is doing a lot of work because most of us would say like this. I mean, parts of my life are messy, but overall, I think I've got it handled, you know, from time to time. Depends on the day.

Three Movements Of Step One

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We, friends, are curated chaos. You are a mess. We've got a solid calendar. We have a decent income, maybe a gym membership that uh we occasionally honor. Like on the outside, it looks manageable, right? But uh the unimaginability shows up in subtle places. It shows up in your anxiety that never quite shuts off. It shows up in your relationships that keep repeating the same cycle. It shows up in your inability to rest or to stop or to be present. You can manage appearances. You can't manage your soul on your own. And I think this is where humor meets honesty. I had a moment not long ago where I was convinced like I had everything dialed. Like I felt like my schedule was tight, systems I had in place, my productivity was high, I was feeling spiritually efficient. And then I lost my keys for 45 minutes in my own house, right? You you ever do that thing where you check the same place like five times, like it's gonna magically appear appear? Like it was like, oh, just kidding, right? I mean, at one point I was like literally opening drawers that I knew made no sense at all. Why? Because control starts slipping when we start grasping, right? And I think it's really funny with keys, but it's not so funny with your life. Number two, my problem is bigger than I thought. Ah, this is where it gets real. Because we don't just have surface level issues, we have deep rooted patterns. Sin is not just what you do, it's what has shaped you, your uh reactions, your fears, your coping mechanisms, your default settings. That's why willpower alone

When Life Looks Fine But Isn’t

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doesn't work. Uh, Ortberg puts it this way in his

The Deeper Problem Beneath Behavior

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book. He has this line that I felt like stopped me cold when I first read it. He says, the problem is not just that we do wrong things, the problem is that we are wrong. Not wrong as in like stupid or worthless, but wrong in the sense that our inner compass is bent away from God towards ourselves. Behavior modification cannot fix a problem. Read that again. Behavior modification cannot fix a being problem. That is why you can like white knuckle something for six months and still find yourself right back in it. You changed the behavior, but the root, it was still there. The root is the part of us that wants to be our own God, to be in control, to manage everything from the inside out on our own terms. And that root goes deep. No, no habit tracker can pull it out. You don't just overwork, you might be uh avoiding silence. You don't just scroll too much, you might be numbing anxiety. You don't just get angry, you might be protecting something wounded underneath. And so when we say I can't, we're not just talking about stopping bad habits. We're talking about the deeper realization of I can't fix myself. And that's where some of you feel resistance again because you've built a life on being capable. You're the strong one, you're the reliable one, the one people call when things like feel like they go sideways, and now you're hearing you can't. But hear me clearly. This is not removing your value, it's removing a burden you were never meant to carry. Number three. I need help outside myself. Okay, so here's the plot twist. And I need you to stay with me because this is where the whole thing turns. In recovery circles, uh, they have a phrase. It's called the gift of desperation. Uh, it refers to the moment when someone has run completely out of their own resources, like when self-management has failed so thoroughly and so publicly that they are completely out of options. And the moment is called a

Desperation As A Doorway To Faith

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gift. I know, sounds insane, right? Like if you're in that place right now, or if you've ever been in that place, it did not feel like a gift at the time. It felt like the worst moment of your life, the embarrassment, the exhaustion, the shame, not gift-like at all. But Ortberg reframes it, and this is where the theology gets genuinely beautiful, I feel like. He says, desperation is not the enemy of faith, it's often the doorway to it. We do not cry out to God when we're doing fine. We cry out when we have nothing left. And it turns out nothing left is exactly what God needs to work with. Paul in the New Testament actually says it this way. He said each time, he said, My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness. So now I am glad to boast about my weakness so that the power of Christ can work through me. I think we just need to stop there because this is like one of the most counterintuitive verses in the New Testament. And we've just numbed ourselves to it by reading it on coffee mugs. Paul is not saying weakness is acceptable. He's saying weakness is the preferred condition for God's power to show up, not in spite of weakness, but through it. I mean, think about what that means practically. I mean, the places that you've been most ashamed of, the patterns you've been hiding, the failures you've been quietly carrying, those are not the places God is just waiting to get to after you clean them up. Those are the specific places where his power operates most clearly. Now, I think this makes like zero sense to a culture that's addicted to competence. We want to present our best selves. We want to curate our image, our Instagram. We have a highlight reel at the ready. We tell people when they ask how you're doing, you're like, Oh, I'm busy, but I'm good, right? But the gospel doesn't traffic in highlight reels, it traffics in honest people. And this is where step one starts to open into hope. Because if all we said was I can't, I think that'd be a little bit depressing. But the full sentence is actually, I can't, but God can. And we're gonna get there in step two. But for now, let's just sit in the tension. I can't manage my own life. I can't heal my deepest wounds by myself. I can't transform my heart through effort alone. And that is not the end of your story, that is the beginning, friends, of your freedom. So let me bring this back to the heart of why we're doing this series. I think there's a lot of you in here that probably have never touched the 12 steps because you assumed they weren't for you. You thought, like, I'm not recovery. But what if you are and you just haven't named it yet? Like recovery from control, recovery from performance, recovery from anxiety, recovery from needing to prove something. What if this summer becomes a space where you actually experience transformation, not by trying harder, but by surrendering deeper? Like there's a moment in life when pretending stops working. For some, it comes out in crisis. For others, it's like this slow realization. But eventually you will hit a wall where you can't outwork it, outthink it, or out-spiritualize it. And in that moment, you have a choice. You can double down on control, or you can admit, I can't. And one path leads to exhaustion and the other leads to surrender and eventually to life. Let me press just a little bit deeper. If step one is simply I can't, then I think the real question underneath it is, why can't I? Not just behaviorally, but like theologically. Because if we don't answer that, we'll just default to trying harder on Tuesday afternoon, right? So at the core of scripture is this constant, uncomfortable truth about the human condition. We're not just people who make bad decisions, we're people shaped

Union With Christ Over Willpower

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by a broken nature. And the apostle Paul isn't describing a lack of effort in Romans, he's describing a fractured human will. He's saying there is a want to, right, in him that is good, but there is also a power to that is missing. And that, friends, is the gap where frustration lives. The gap has a name in theology, it's called sin. Not just like sin as a like isolated action, sin as a condition, like a distortion of desire itself. And this is why behavior modification alone never works long term, because the issue isn't just that you don't do what you want to do, it's what you love. It's actually what you fear, it's what you trust. And until those things are transformed, you keep circling the same patterns, just with different packaging. That's why Jesus doesn't show up just offering tips, He offers union. Again, John 15, 5, he says, I am the vine, you are the branches. Apart from me, you can do nothing. Jesus isn't just giving a motivational speech here, he's redefining reality. The branch doesn't try harder to produce fruit, it stays connected to the source of life. And so when you say I can't, you're not declaring weakness and isolation, you're recognizing dependence by design. You were never meant to be self-sustaining spiritually. Now, let me challenge you something gently but directly. In our context, especially where we live in this space, self sufficiency is not just normal, it's celebrated. Intelligence, innovation, hustle, you know, you can solve it, you can build it, optimize it, and that works, right? Until it doesn't. Because you can engineer success. Externally while quietly disintegrating internally. You can have clarity in your career and confusion in your soul. And here's the danger: the more competent you are in life, the easier it is to believe that you should be competent in your own transformation. So you approach spiritual formation like it's a project. You know, I'll just read more. I'm just going to pray more. I'll fix this. And those things matter. But if they're rooted in control instead of surrender, I'm telling you that it will exhaust you. Because the gospel does not begin with what you can do for God. It begins with what you cannot do without Him. Now let's connect this to formation because this matters where we're going as a church, as a faith community. Spiritual formation is not about becoming a slightly improved version of yourself, it's about being transformed into the likeness of Christ. And that transformation is not driven by willpower, it's driven by the spirit. And so you can't just manufacture Christ-like character. You can only receive and then cooperate with it. That's why step one is so foundational. If you skip I can't, you will build your spiritual life on subtle self-reliance, and it'll look good for a while until the pressure starts to expose the cracks. Because here's the deal: theology that never touches real life is just information. So where does I can't show up for you? Ask yourself that. Maybe it's in your thought life. Maybe you've tried to control anxiety and comparison or negativity and just keeps coming back. Maybe it's relational. You keep having the same conflict, the

Finding Your Real I Can’t

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same reaction, the same distance. Maybe it's internal, a habit, a pattern, a coping mechanism you swore you were done with. And every time it resurfaces, there's that quiet voice. Why am I still here? And step one answers that question without condemnation. Because you are trying to solve something that requires more than you, not less effort, a different source. You are not the solution to your deepest problem. Let me say that again. Some of you need to have this as your screensaver this week. You, friend, are not the solution to your deepest problem. And that's not an insult, it's an invitation. Because if you're the solution, then you carry the full weight of fixing yourself, and you already know how heavy that is. But if God's the solution, then your role shifts from controller to participant, from performer to receiver, and from striving to surrender. And surrender is not passive, it's the most active form of trust. Because now, for the first time, we are positioned then to receive help. That's step one. So let me just zoom out for a second. We're gonna move through all 12 steps together this summer. So here's just a taste of where we're headed, just kind of an overview. Next week we're gonna hit step two, which is the belief that a power greater than ourselves can restore us, which is gonna be interesting because some of you aren't sure what you believe about God right now. And that's exactly the right place to be. Whether you're here and you're an atheist or you're a Buddhist or you're a Muslim or agnostic. This is a great place to start. We're gonna talk about what real surrender looks like, not the passive, defeated

Roadmap For The Rest Of Summer

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kind, but the active, courageous, I'm done running kind. We're gonna take actual inventory of our lives. We're gonna talk about confession in a way that's not um punishing, but freeing. We're gonna talk about making amends, about ongoing spiritual maintenance, about what it looks like to carry this forward. And here's what I know will happen if you stay with this all summer. You will not be the same person in September you are today. Not because you worked hard enough, but because you got honest enough. And this series is especially good for you if you have some history with the church that left a bad taste. If you grew up, you know, religious and walked away because the faith that you were handed felt more like performance than truth. Or if you've never done the church thing at all and you're just checking this out, the 12 steps do not require you to have perfect theology. They just require you to be honest. And I'm telling you, I know you can do that. So my invitation to all of you is bring someone, bring yourself, a friend, a roommate, a person from work who you've been wanting to invite for two years, but never found the right series or the right conversation. This is the right series, the right conversation. So, kind of wrapping up today, uh I actually want to end with the opposite of hype, right? No big, I'm not gonna do this big push, no emotional crescendo, just a moment of honesty. So here we go. I'm gonna ask all of you to take a breath. Ready? Go ahead for real. And consider this question quietly. Where are you still trying to prove you can't?

A Breath And A Shared Surrender

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Where are you still trying to prove that you can? Not in theory, in practice. Where are you gripping tighter instead of opening your hands? Maybe it's your future. Maybe it's your identity. Maybe it's something that you've been trying to fix for years. Now instead of solving it, name it. Not aloud, but name it. And then in the simplest way possible, say this. I can't, not as failure, as truth. Because, because, because, because, friends, the path of Jesus does not begin with your strength, it begins with your surrender, and in that space something new starts. It may not be in immediately visible, instantly resolved, but it'll be deeply real. And I'm telling I'm telling you, when you finally stop pretending you can, you make room for the one who always could, and we will begin to step into that next week. Okay. So let's out loud say this first step together. You ready? I am powerless, and my life has become unmanageable. Congratulations, you are a mess. So, yeah. All right, you can tell. I'm really excited about this. What this is gonna do for me, what it's gonna do for you, what's it gonna do for the people around your life. Um, and um, we're actually uh just launching something new just to engage with you. I feel like a lot of people just need hope and help and need some encouraging. And so I'm gonna throw up a QR code. Um, this is uh where we're gonna send you. We're not spamming you just three times a week. I'm just gonna text you an encouraging message or some scripture to see, just something hopefully that'd be like, dog on a new that today. It's also a place where you can talk to us about like a prayer request that maybe you have or pastoral care. Somebody like, how do we get a

Texts, Notes, Devotionals, Prayer Support

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hold of you? Like, we need you, something's going on. This is the way to do it. And this is another cool one. It's gonna walk you through, you know, it's gonna connect with you. Um, it we kind of overwhelmed ourselves the first service. So if it takes a minute to get a response, just chill, it's gonna start responding to you. Um, you can also text in there notes each week. And I've thrown all of the notes from my talk today in there. And then I actually included and created a devotional each day. So you can go in there and click on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday if you want to work through the step or just dive a little bit deeper for those of you like, man, I'm looking for something to do, and you can just stay connected with this in that way. So do the little QR code. It's gonna take you right in your text. You're just gonna hit send because it says connect, and then you can hit notes in there later. It'll do that kind of stuff. But this is just again our way of um staying engaged with you, not spamming you. I'm gonna send three things out this week that's just literally some encouraging scripture uh for your week and then your ability to communicate back to us if you need something. Um invite somebody. Um, not because I'm like, oh my gosh, like I want to talk in front of more people and we want to share this stuff, but because people just need hope and they need help, and you're a light bearer and you're a bringer. Um, and so as you're walking through it, let someone walk with you through this. Um, and if you have vacations this summer, congratulations. I'm doing some too. Uh join us online. We got, you know, technology is great. Like hang in there with us, um, have conversations about this. I think it's gonna be really powerful for you. Um, so I'm so excited about that. I'm gonna ask you all to stand. I'm gonna send you guys off with a blessing. But before I do that, next week we're talking about, but God can. He is the highest power. Um, but if today um you want to have a conversation with us before that about what a life with Christ looks like and actually just do some surrendering today of I can't. Um, I can't be in control anymore. My life has become unmanageable. We know the manager. And we would love to get you connected. We have a little nook out there. It's

Next Week Preview And Blessing

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called This Changes Everything, because when you surrender that completely, it changes everything. I'm telling you. Um, and so we have a little uh a journal we'd love to give it to you for free, just as like a what does this look like? What's next steps? Um, would love to have that conversation with you. That's out there as a resource if you want to take somebody out there. Um, and then a blessing. We have this posture of giving up and receiving. May you be blessed this week with the freedom of I can't, recognizing how pathetic we are and how in need we are of Jesus. And may that be comforting to you. And would you have the opportunity to share the peace beyond understanding that you actually receive from I can't, because you can't. Love you, friends. I'll see you next week.