Sermons tagged with Mission

All right, man, that's got to, that may be the grooviest song I've ever walked up to stage to, so pretty excited about that. Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace, and if you receive like our email communication, our Grace Vine, then you came, then you woke up this morning anticipating to see Nate preaching from stage and talking about marriage. And guess what? So did I. I woke up to a phone call this morning that Nate was sick and that he wasn't going to be able to come in and preach this morning. And so here I am. And I know that Ashlyn and I are probably like 98% towards solving marriage because we've officially hit two years as of a few days ago. Yeah, I didn't do that, but you know what? I'll take the applause. I'm feeling nervous up here and your applause is soothing me, so thank you. But while we're close to solving it, let's give it about six more months and then I'll do my marriage sermon for you guys. But no, so Nate at some point is going to serve you well by hopefully getting to preach a sermon on a prayer for marriage. But this morning, instead, I'm going to let you guys get a peek behind the curtain as to some stuff we've been doing in youth group on Sunday nights. So for those of you who don't know, on Sunday nights is when our sixth through 12th graders meet. We all come, we meet in here, we get rid of a lot of these chairs because they're in the way of fun. And we set up games, we set up all this different stuff. And then ultimately, we always have some sort of message and some sort of small groups and whatnot. And the last few times we have been meeting, we have been discussing and reading and going through this one simple verse in Deuteronomy 6, 5. So there's not going to be any slides. So like, that's kind of your like wink, wink. If you want to grab your Bible and read along, this is probably your time to do it. Because I'm going to pause here and I'm going to be any slides. So like, that's kind of your like wink wink. If you want to grab your Bible and read along, this is probably your time to do it. Um, because I'm going to pause here and I'm going to pick up on asking, and you don't have to tell me verbally because that would just be too wild, but with a, with a nice head nod or a nice head shake as anyone in here set up or, or, or did anyone have new year's resolutions this year? I've actually apparently heard that three people for sure in this room had New Year's resolutions, as Haley just told me. So I'm very glad to hear that. But I've got, all right, I got to see some heads moving. Yay? Nay? We've got some people who did. I am the king of setting New Year's resolutions. And I would not say I'm the king of New Year's resolutions, because that probably means actually doing the things that you set. And I'm not good at that. But boy, do I love thinking that I'm going to do things in the new year. This year, I went classic. I went very cliche. I didn't want to, you know, get too interesting or get too whatever. And I was like, you know what? It's probably time I got in shape. I wear big enough clothes to where people still go, nice, you look nice. No, you don't need to. It's like, trust me, you'll never see me with a shirt off, but if you did, you'd be like, ah, that's a bummer. And even getting in shape, you're still not going to see with my shirt off, but at least it wouldn't be false. But I was locked in in December. You know, we're going to see our families. We traveled in a week's time, about 29 hours on the road. And through that time, I'm like thinking through what I'm going to do when we get back. You know, I'm going to eat all of this bad food and do like nothing that's helpful or useful or important to my life and my being while I'm at my family's house because it's Christmas and Christmas doesn't count as we all know. But once I get back, like I'm doing stuff, hey, what can I cut out? What is something easy that I could get better? I could eat a little bit healthier here. Or what are some workouts that I would do that would really benefit what I'm looking for? I did research. I've got the Nike Training Club app and you can can highlight, and you can find different workout programs, or I bookmarked workouts. Oh, this one's perfect for me. It's like, I don't know any of this stuff, but I'm acting like I'm an expert when I'm scrolling through that app. But I'm figuring out, I'm planning it out, I'm locked in. And honestly, as I'm driving, and I'm like, man, my back hurts, that's probably a core thing. All I'm thinking of is like, this is going to be wonderful when I'm finally here. I'm locked in, I'm ready. I know the stuff. I've done the research. I'm excited about it. I have all of this will. My heart is ready to be healthy. And yet, as I told my students last Sunday when we were talking about some of this stuff, the most I've done is one night, I think Saturday night, because I had been thinking about this message, I decided to lay on the floor and do some sit-ups while we watched TV. So I'm like 10 sit-ups in to a new year, which is less than what I had planned, which is less than what I had been ready to do. And ultimately, as I thought about that, and as I began to think more about New Year's resolutions and why I'm simply the king of starting them as opposed to continuing them, what I recognized and what I realized is I am so good at having the heart that is ready to do the thing. I am so good at having a will of doing a thing and setting my heart on what I want to do and what I want to value in the person that I want to be, but I have a much more difficult time at marrying that heart and that will with action. I have two, a left and a right hand, so handshakes like this don't look right, but that's a handshake. What's in my head, what's in my heart, often stays there. Especially when it comes to resolutions, when it comes to setting and walking out goals, when it comes to doing those things. And I wonder if any of y'all have felt the same way. Speaking of what Haley mentioned, there's people in this room that have the New Year's resolution of joining a small group. What I know for sure is that those people know the importance of joining a small group. They know why it's valuable. They know why it builds and grows their faith. They know why building relationships with friends inside of a small group is deeply beneficial to them and to their hearts and to their lives. But as long as that's all that happens, as long as it's only what's in your heart, then it's incomplete, right? Because then you're still just sitting there on a Tuesday night when all of your peers are meeting together and growing together. And it's the same with anything that we do and with all of those things. And so now I'd like to come back to what I think we learn and what I think we begin to understand in our faith if we want to marry and we want to couple our heart and our action. And that is in Deuteronomy 6, 5. So some of you guys open with me and we can read it together. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with everything inside of you. I understand that. I understand what it takes to do that. I get to know Christ. I come to church every week and I get to learn about this God that loves me so deeply and so uniquely. And I get to learn about Jesus, God's son, this savior who God sent down to live a perfect life and yet die so that I can experience an eternal life with God in heaven through salvation, simply through faith. Love the Lord your God with all of your heart. That is easy and understanding and tangible. I can tangibly understand, okay, how do I go about that? What does it look like to love God with my inside? Well, it looks like going after and pursuing God. Sitting in church and learning more about him. Waking up and reading scripture and spending time in prayer. Sitting in small groups and listening to how the Lord works and how the Lord moves and allowing our hearts to be shaped and molded and changed and transformed in the goodness and in the love of God. But as we move forwards, the point of these verses is not simply to internally love God, but it's to love God with all that we are. I learned some Hebrew as I was reading through some of this, and so guess what? We're all learning some Hebrew this morning. The word soul here is actually translated to this word called nefesh in Hebrew. And nefesh, while it's translated in our Bibles as soul, the nefesh more has to do with the soul of who we are as a physical presence in this world. Who we are and the people that we are as we are living in our lives. And when we understand that, and then when we translate might to being with everything and with all that we have, the goal and the purpose of this is not simply to love God internally, inside of our hearts, worshiping him and loving him, being like, God is the best, I've got this down. The goal and the point of this is to recognize and to realize when we put these three words together, love God with all of our hearts, our souls, and our might, is to say that every part of your life should be dedicated to loving God. So yes, do all of the things to where you can continue to fall in love and be transformed internally in your heart by this God that loves you, created you, and wants a relationship with you every single day, but at the same time, just like me trying to do a New Year's resolution, if you're simply starting internally, then this call is incomplete in your life. And so then the question becomes, okay, well, what does it look like to love God with our physical selves? Does it look like, oh, well, I guess like if my body needs to love God better, maybe I should like raise my hands during worship, which, hey, you know, try it maybe. But I love that Jesus actually gives us this perfect and beautiful definition and explanation in Matthew 25. And so if you want to read with me, because we're going to like, it's going to be a few verses. So here's what I'm going to do. Normally what I do with students is I say, first one to find it, yell out the page number. Well, guess what? I'm the first one to find it. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to yell out this page number and it is page number 984. If you have one of the Bibles in the back of the seat in front of you, we are going to be reading verses. We're going to start in 31 and I'm going to just read this story. So if you guys are committed, I am going to read for a chunk. Sometimes that can get boring. And so let's all just like lock eyes and go, you know what? I'm not going to be bored because this is God's word and it's probably good. So we're going to lock in and we're just going to do it. So if you will read or listen along with me, please. He will put the those on his right, I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me. Then the righteous will answer him, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in or needing clothes and clothed you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you? The king will reply, I will tell you the truth. Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me. How do we love God in our lives? We do so by loving his people. How do we serve God with our physical presence? We serve the people that are in and amongst us within our lives. One of my favorite stories in all of the Bible is the story of King Josiah. So much so that if Ashlyn and I ever have a kid, I've asked that we could name our son King Josiah. I haven't decided if I want to do like King Josiah and then still give a middle name or if I just wanted to be King Josiah Talbert, which would be sick, which Ashlyn said no. So maybe if you guys are moved enough, if you could just have a couple words with her this morning, that would be great. Thank you. But I love the story of King Josiah because Josiah became the king in a weird and difficult and troubling time for a few different reasons. Let me go ahead and give you the background. This is how King Josiah's story starts out in 2 Kings as I turn and make sure I found it. In 2 Kings 22, I'm just going to read 1 and 3. Don't worry about finding it. I'll just listen along. Josiah was eight years old when he became king. Awesome. Genuinely, I would have thought you'd at least have to be 10 to be a good king, but he ended up doing it at eight. And he reigned in Jerusalem 31 years. Here's his description. Here is how he is described before his story is even told. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left. Josiah's descriptor as a king is that he did what was right in the eyes of God, and he followed after the footsteps of the one chosen king, David, that God had placed in front of him. Josiah took over a kingdom in Jerusalem, a group of people who had been set into this place to be God's chosen people, to be a people that would experience the love of God, who would get to have their hearts truly transformed by God. And through that, that as a part of the covenant that God made with his people in Israel, in Jerusalem, that his people would not only love him, serve him, and whatever, but that they would go and that they would bless the entire world. Their call was to know God, was to love God, and was to bring God and to bring goodness about the world through God. This was not a covenant or a call that Josiah had ever heard about. Because Josiah took over rule of a nation that was completely walking in opposition to God. What we learn actually in this story is it was a nation that was actually moving forward into exile. That soon enough after Josiah's reign, that Judah was going to be taken over by another nation and the people within that, but within Jerusalem were going to be taken into exile. Why? Because they had fallen short of their covenant. For generation after generation, they had walked farther and farther from God. And that is where Josiah took over. And about 18 years into his reign, he came into contact with a high priest. He encountered a high priest, and this high priest basically brought him, Josiah, for the first time in Josiah's life, the law or the word of God. And through Josiah being able to interact with this word of God, he was able to learn who God was. And as he was able to learn who God was, he was completely transformed. Truly burdened by the fact that he had lived such a life that would be walking anywhere except towards God because he realized for the fullness of the love and the goodness that was offered by God and his heart was completely changed. This child, I mean, even still at 18 plus eight, you do the math, he was 26 at this time. This young guy with all of the power in his, with all of the power you could ever ask for was forever changed and his heart was forever marked by the fact that he had encountered this God who loved him. And upon that encounter, and upon learning about this, and upon having God change and mold and shape his heart to becoming a new person, changed everything he did and everything he valued. And so, as he turned back around, the rest of his reign as king was a reign that was marked by, I'm going to continue to lead and I'm going to continue to serve my people the best that I can. But what I recognize now is while I'm doing that, the only way I can do that well and the only way I can truly love and serve my people rightly is if I do so for God, in God, and through God. He rebuilt the temple so that his people would have a place that they could go and encounter God. He got rid of all of these false idols so these people wouldn't have these temptations in front of them to walk and to go and serve other gods. He made the word of God readily available and made the word of God a foundational piece of these people who lived there. What Josiah did is when God got a hold of his heart and transformed his heart, he realized that that would be incomplete unless he turned that love around and he showed it and he gave it to his people. Josiah offered the love and the goodness of God to his kingdom because he knew that a heart for God is not enough. But a heart for God only takes full effect when I turn that around and I share that with my kingdom. And guess what? I know that none of you are kings. You're kings in like the cool sense. Like I think you're all kings and queens. You're awesome. You know, great. But all of us have kingdoms. All of us have a kingdom that we are living and, as Nate often says, that we are building. You have a family at home. You have people that you interact with on the way to work, inside of work. You have sports or you have kids that are at sports and you're standing around with parents. There are kingdoms that all of us have in our lives. And if we want to truly live out this Deuteronomy 6, if we want to truly love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, and might, then that means that as we are taking steps forwards and growing in our love of God, then at every step, we should be taking steps forwards just along with it of loving the people that are in our lives. Because guess what? God placed them in front of you for a reason. There's this old hymn that I think is beautiful that I love. It's called Christ Has No Body But Yours. We're called to love people out of the love of God, certainly to make our faith whole and to make our faith what God describes and how it's described in Deuteronomy and throughout scripture. But we're called to do the same because guess what? Christ isn't here. Christ hasn't been here for 2,000 years. God takes up residence inside of his believers, inside of the people whose hearts he has gotten a hold of. And through us and through our hearts, Christ has a body now. And through our hands, our feet, our actions, our lives, our words, we share the love of God that we have experienced so that these people can experience the same. There are people in your lives and in your worlds that will not know God the same way if we don't bring it to them, if we don't tell them about him, if we don't show him his love, who he is and what he's done. And so as we normally wrap up in students, I always send to small groups. And when I send to small groups, I normally want to have a couple things, a couple tangible things that I can grab onto. And it's normally, hey, you know what, this week, let's do this. So if you're willing, since I've decided that this morning, I'm letting you guys into what a youth group would look like, I'd like to do something similar. And I'm going to give you guys the same call. So if you find somebody who looks like a student, ask them how they did it. They might can give you some help. But what I asked them to do and to think about was this. If we're trying to marry the heart with the action, then to really love people this way requires us not simply to do it because we're supposed to, but to do it because our hearts are truly for these people. So maybe you have someone in your world right now that you can think of this week. Someone who you know in some way you could serve well or you could love well. You could love or serve uniquely to your relationship with that person. Maybe it's a group of people. Maybe it's a small office and this is the people. So, write that person down. Write that group down. And here's what I want us to commit to. Not simply going, you know what, when I get to work, I'm going to be really nice to those people. But when I wake up in the morning, before I ever interact with these people, I am committed to praying for them. Praying that God would mold and shape our hearts to having a deep burden and a deep love for these people, that I can love them in a way that is going to glorify the God that is sending me to love them. And in and through that, as you interact with them, being prayerfully aware of what the Lord would have you be in their life. When I translate these Matthew verses, feeding the hungry, taking care of the sick, what I translate it as is this. Everyone has different needs, and everyone needs love in a certain way. So my call for everyone in here is this week, whether it be one person, two people, a few people, can you be the people that loves these people well? Can you be the people that serves them? And can you couple this heart that you have for our God that loves us so deeply with the actions of letting these other people know just how deep that love is through how we love them. Let's pray. God, we love you so much. I pray that we never grow tired and weary in growing closer to you and diving deeper into your love. But God, I just pray that it never stops there, but that you give us a heart for your people. You give us eyes to be able to see where we can serve and where we can love in any possible way that would glorify you. Lord, allow us to be prayerfully aware of the people in our lives and how we could show you to them. We love you so much. We are so thankful that you let us come and be here to rest and to worship in your love. Amen.

Well, good morning, Grace. Good to see everybody. That music makes me feel like I'm waiting for a table at some sort of nice lounge or something. So you get three more weeks of that. That'll be great. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. Happy New Year to everyone, and thank you for making Grace a part of that new year for you. I would just say this. If your church attendance this morning is reflective of a New Year's resolution, that's great. My gym attendance in the morning is going to be reflective of something similar to that. So, Brad, I'll see you at the YMCA bright and early. But if it is reflective of a New Year's resolution and this is something that you want to do more often, I'm just so grateful that you've entrusted that to grace. I hope that we serve you well. And I say this in all sincerity. If you're here because of a New Year's resolution and we don't serve you well and you drive home thinking that wasn't worth it, it's not because church isn't worth it. It's because we didn't do a good job. So give another church a chance to do a good job, but don't quit on church because this sermon stinks, okay? Keep at it. It's super important. Church is absolutely vital to us as people. We were created for church community. As Aaron mentioned earlier in the service, Aaron, our worship pastor, we like to start the year with prayers for grace. We'd like to start these January series now with kind of some hopes and some prayers that we have for grace in the coming years. Last year, we spent all four weeks of January in one of my favorite prayers in the Bible. I have it stenciled out and hung up in my office at home. This is the prayer I pray over new married couples, over new babies. This is the prayer I pray, at least quietly, when I get calls about diagnoses that are tough. This is the prayer I pray when I hear that someone is struggling and might be in their last days or weeks of life. This is the prayer I pray when I go visit people at the hospital. It's in Ephesians chapter 3 verses 14 through 19. We're going to be focused this morning on Colossians chapter 1, which is basically a long form of the Ephesians prayer. Ephesians is a more succinct version, but it's basically praying the same thing. So as we start 2025, I want to remind us of this prayer for grace that we find in Ephesians. And last year we gave out magnets with this prayer on it. So I hope that some of you still have that magnet, have it in a place where you see it. I'm seeing some nodding heads. That's very good. But I just wanted to start this year out by reminding you of this prayer. And then what we're going to do is look at another version of what I believe is virtually the same prayer in Colossians and talk about the different implications of that prayer. But this is what Paul prays for the church in Eph that in the Colossians prayer. But I did want to place that in front of us and be reminded of it as we go into this prayer in Colossians. Now, as I was reflecting on this prayer, and if you have a Bible, I want to encourage you to go ahead and turn to Colossians. We're going to go through, this is going to be in my head, kind of an old school sermon, the kind of sermon that I grew up with. Now, a new modern sermon, what I try to do, what I would typically try to do, and what I started out trying to do this week is to read verses three through 14 in Colossians chapter one, where this prayer is, and try to distill it down to this one point. What's the fulcrum? What's the focus? What's the anchor of this prayer? If there can only be one takeaway for us, what should that takeaway be? And then I would spend the entire sermon trying to preach to that takeaway. But as I look through these verses, there's just too much good stuff to sweep it aside for the sake of making one point. So instead of that, we're going to go verse by verse through these 11 or 12 verses. And I'm just going to stop and go, this is what he prays here. This is what it means. This is why we need to talk about it and think about it. So this is going to be an old school five point sermon where we talk about the verse and then we talk about what it means and how it applies to us. I feel like my pastor growing up who I this is just a blow up of the bulletin is what you have on the back of your notes. This is all I ever have. But there's a lot here. And as I look at it, I think in about 25 minutes, I'm going to be halfway through with this and go, OK, we got to go fast. And then I'm just going to start summarizing things, which is what my pastor used to do. So anyways, let's get started. As I was reflecting on this prayer in Colossians, something occurred to me. And I had not really thought about this before as it relates to the prayers in the New Testament. First of all, it's important that we understand what the book of Colossians is. Colossians is what's called in theological circles a Pauline epistle. It's a letter that Paul wrote. So Paul wrote two-thirds of the New Testament. Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. He wrote those. And if you think what I was just doing was showing off, I have a master's degree in this. If I can't do that, I am the stupidest person that's ever gotten a master's degree. But those are the books that he wrote. And all of those books are letters to either a church, like the church in Rome or Corinth or Colossae, or to individuals like Timothy or Philemon. So in these letters, he's writing to instruct the churches that have been founded by him or his ministry. We get a clue in this first chapter, and we'll see that he sent out one of the pastors from amongst his team, a guy named Epaphras. And Epaphras originally shared the gospel, the good news, with the people in Colossae, and they formed a church around this good news. And now they're going and blowing. Now they're growing, and now they have a church. And so Paul spends his life going around Asia Minor planting churches and then writing letters back to the churches that he planted. And so what occurs to me is he's writing this letter to the church in Colossians, which is unique because it's actually to Colossians and Laodicea. Because he says, when you get done reading this, take it to Laodicea and read it there too. This is also for them. It's just called Colossians because they were the first addressee of the letter. But what occurs to me is he might not ever get to share with them again what he prays for them. He indicates in scripture that he prays for them frequently. But by this point in his life, he may never go to Colossae. He may never see these people in person. He may never write them another letter. He might not have that opportunity. It was expensive and time-consuming and laborious to get them a letter. He might not ever be able to share with them again what his prayer for them is. So he's got one shot at articulating a prayer for this church that they can cling to for the years and the decades to come. And I think it's really interesting in that situation to think about what does this founder of the churches, this incredibly influential apostle and missionary, what does he pray for the churches? And I think that's an interesting question because I think it's an interesting question if I could sit down with the parents in the room and ask you, when you pray for your child, when you pray for your children, what do you pray? We've got a mama holding a newborn baby back there. That baby's been prayed over. When you pray for that baby, what do you pray? If you're a grandparent and you pray for your children and your grandchildren, what do you pray for them, what would you write out? When you pray for your friends, what do you pray for them? Small group leaders, if you pray for the people in your small group, and I hope you do, what do you pray for them? When I pray for the church, when the elders pray for the church, what do we pray for you? I think those are interesting questions because you can really get a sense of someone's priorities, someone's heart, someone's clarity of vision, someone's faith by what they pray for the people that they love the most. And so I think we can get a really good glimpse at the heart of Paul and in turn the very heart of God when we ask, what does he pray for the church in Colossae? And what's interesting to me, and I pointed this out last year when we talked about the prayer in Ephesus, it's just as interesting to me what he prays for as what he doesn't pray for. Because you can read this prayer as many times as you want. What you will not find in this prayer is Paul praying for circumstances, or health, or prosperity, or success, or even growth of the church. He doesn't pray for any of those things, some of the things we think we probably find in that list. You will not find them there. So like I said, as I move through this prayer and began the task of trying to distill it down to one point, I just thought it was a disservice to the whole thing to blow by some things and not favor them in favor of making one universal point. So we're going to go verse by verse, and I'm going to occasionally highlight a phrase, and you'll see it when it's on the screen to get your attention. And that's what we're going to key in on and talk about that. So let's look at this prayer in Colossians. Let's think about taking at least aspects of it and making it our prayer for 2025 for you and for the church. And let's see what we can learn from it. We go back to that previous verse, Miss Andrea, is we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we pray for you because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God's people. I think that is an incredible compliment. What if Jesus were to come down and say, could I give the sermon this week? That'd be fine, Jesus. Go ahead. And he started it off and he said, Grace, I'm grateful for you because I know and I've heard of the faith you have in me and the love that you have for one another. What could be a better compliment to a church than that? Than to be known for your faith and love? As an individual, what could be better than that reputation to precede you, that you are known for your faith in Christ and your love for one another. What could be better? How could it possibly be better to be known in any other way? I thank my God because of you, because of your success, because of how effective you are at making money and closing deals. I thank my God because of you, because of your wisdom, because of your leadership, because you seem to be disciplined in staying in shape, because your kids seem all right and they like you. Like what other things could be as good as being known for your faith and for your love? What an incredible compliment to pay a church. It's a compliment that I hope and pray grace can receive or be thought of in that way. And I can't help but wonder then, what must you do to be known for your faith and love? What do you think it takes to become the kind of person whose reputation precedes you in such a way that when someone meets you, they go, oh, I've heard about your faith and your love. I remember my senior year, I played soccer for my high school, which I'm totally bragging about. There was 100 people in my high school. Anybody could have played soccer. Yeah, anybody could have played soccer. But we got a new teacher my senior year, a new computer teacher named Mr. Keithley, and I went in and introduced myself. I told him I'm Nathan Rector because in high school I was Nathan. I wasn't Nate, incidentally, until I waited tables at Macaroni Grill and you had to write your name upside down on the table and I shortened that real quick. That's when I became Nate. And I met Mr. Keithley and I shook his hand and said, hey, I'm Nathan Rector and he goes, oh, I've heard about you. You're the soccer player. And I was like, you're right. I am. I'm one of the best of the 45 males we have available who are willing to play soccer. So, yeah. It's an interesting thing when your reputation precedes you. What must you do to be the kind of person who's known for your faith and for your love, and what better could you be known for? There are lots of answers to this question, but very simply, at the beginning of 2025, the way that I would answer it is, if you want to be known for being a person of faith in Christ and love for one another, then you must become a person of devotion. At Grace, we have five traits. We have five things that we want every partner at Grace to be, and one of those things is to be a person of devotion. And one of the things we say all the time, I say it as often as I can, and I haven't said it often enough lately, so I'm going to start beating the drum again, is the single most important habit that anyone can develop in their life is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and spend time in God's presence through prayer. The single most important habit. There is no other habit more important than that in your entire life. And there are a lot of things I think you need to do and ways that you need to behave to be known as a person of faith and love. But foundationally, fundamentally, it starts with becoming a person of devotion. So here at the top of 2025, as we launch into the new year, the very first thing I want to challenge you to do in your new year is be a person who wakes up every day and spends time in God's word and time in God's presence through prayer. If you don't know how to do that, I wrote in this last year a devotional guide that's on the information table right outside these doors. Grab it, read through it. It's meant to help you and jumpstart you in that. But if you are a person for whom that habit has waned, if you are a person who's never successfully begun the habit, if you're a person who's never attempted the habit, if we want to be a church that is known for our faith and for our love, That begins with becoming people of devotion. Let this year be the year that you read your Bible and you spend time in prayer. And if that's what you're going to do, if you just went, you know what, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to wake up tomorrow. I'm going to do that. Great. Give yourself grace for it. You're going to mess up and the heavens are not going to part and angels sing down on you the first time you read your Bible. Stick with it. Give yourself grace. And being a person of devotion will absolutely change your life and change who you are. That's how we become known for that. Then after he tells them what they're known for, he moves on in his prayer and he just makes this interesting note. I'm not going to linger here long, but I do think it's worth pointing out and who also told us of your love in the Spirit. So if we go back to the beginning, Paul says something really interesting there. He says, in the same way that it's borne fruit with you, the gospel is bearing fruit throughout the whole world. We see already that Paul has a heart for the world, That Paul is encouraging them to think outside of Colossae and Laodicea. And think about all the other places where the gospel is flourishing. Don't see yourself as this isolated church battling on your own in this province of the Roman Empire. But understand that as far as the Roman roads spread, so does the gospel. It is spreading throughout the entire world. And I just wanted to pause here to make this statement because I think it's so important. And it's, listen, this is something that we don't talk about enough. And when I say we, I don't mean Christians, I mean me. I mean, I don't bring this up enough in our church and I need to do a better job of it. But this is true, and this is why I wanted to stop here. Mature believers allow God to foster within them a heart for the world. Mature believers, people who are growing in Christ, allow God to foster within them a heart for the world, a heart for our international brothers and sisters. I think our temptation with our faith, like anything else in our life, is to become very myopic in that faith. To just think about that faith in terms of me or my immediate family or my children. Maybe if we're generous and magnanimous enough, we care about the faith of the people around us, and we hope to see our friends grow deeper with Christ, and we hope to see them flourish spiritually. Maybe, maybe if we've been around church long enough and God's really fostered a heart, we have a genuine heart for our small group, a genuine heart for our church, and we want to see the people at Grace come to know God in a more deep way, and we want to see spiritual lives flourish here. But what I've found is rare is the believer who has a genuine heart for their international brothers and sisters. Rare is the believer that thinks about church on a global scale, understanding that there were people worshiping in Korea 16 hours before us on this very same Sunday, singing to the same God. And I think that mature believers begin to get a grasp of the global church and seeing God in action everywhere. And I'll tell you when this clicked for me. I'm blessed to have parents that have been going on mission trips since before they were cool. They went to Jamaica in like 1991 when no one was taking mission trips. I went to Costa Rica when I was going into the eighth grade and started taking mission trips often there. But it wasn't until around 2010 that I was in Cape Town, South Africa, visiting a ministry called Living Hope, which is a phenomenal ministry. My family was involved in it. I wanted to see it, so I went down with a team. And in Cape Town, South Africa, they have these things called townships. And townships are a remnant of apartheid. If you don't know what apartheid is, I do not have time to explain it to you this morning. Google it or ask someone old. The townships are remnants of apartheid. And typically speaking, it's low socioeconomic families that continue to live there. And they run the gamut from hovels and tin roofs and pallet walls to homes that would seem relatively normal to us. But it tends to be low socioeconomic status. And there's one called Masi Pumaleli. And one Sunday we got to go to church there. We go to church in Masi. It's a small white building. We go inside and there was no single worship leader. I still don't understand the organization of it. I have no idea who was in charge. All I know is that there was about 10 South African women dressed the same who were just moving around the room singing. And the words were on the screen, and you sang too, and it was awesome. And they had these things, I'll never forget. There was these like burgundy leather pillows that strapped to their hands, and when they would hit them, it would make this loud percussion noise. I have no idea what it was. But they're doing that and tambourines and one person on the piano, because you you got to have a pianist if it's going to be real worship, and they're going after it. And they're singing some song in their native language that I recognized. I knew the tune to it, and I'm singing along in English. And I was so moved by it that I left the church. I walked outside, and I looked up in the sky, and I listened to the song of praise pouring out of that church being lifted up to my God. And I was reminded of Jesus' instructions to the disciples to go and to spread the word in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and even to the ends of the earth. And I thought, here I am at the literal end of the earth, at the tip of the continent of Africa, 2,000 years later, and there is a church full of Masi people singing praises to my God, a song that I know, and I can sing along with them. Well done, disciples. You carried the gospel to the ends of the earth. And it made an indelible impression on me that we exist in a global church. And it is right and good to care about our international brothers and sisters. In March, a friend of mine is going to travel to Istanbul. And when he gets to Istanbul, he's going to meet with 15 or 20 Iranian Christian pastors who have to go to Istanbul because they can't train in Iran because their churches are illegal and they're putting themselves and their families at risk for even going and participating. And they're going to receive training so that they can go back into their communities and they can reach people for Christ. We should care deeply for what happens over those few days. We should care about those pastors and what they're doing. And that's not unique. There's underground churches all throughout China. The church is flourishing like crazy in places like Korea and in Africa and in South America. We should care about those things. So this year, maybe for you, is the year that you allow God to begin to expose your heart to things that happen internationally. Maybe this is the year you go to Mexico with our team that goes in October. Maybe you go see what's happening in Ethiopia and visit AJ. Maybe you go to Cape Town and visit Mbuntu and see what the princes are doing there. Maybe you find another way to be exposed to what's happening internationally, but I think it's vitally important for mature believers to allow God to foster within them a heart for the global church and our international brothers and sisters. And so as I was reading through this prayer and I saw Paul's commentary there, I couldn't pass it up and not mention it to you. Now we get into the heart of the prayer. This next verse is the anchor of the prayer, and it's why I say that this is a long-form version of the prayer in Ephesians, because it's praying virtually the same thing. Just verse 9. For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives. That phrase, we continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of His will, is still very similar to the Ephesians prayer. When Paul prays there, we pray that you would be filled to the fullness with the knowledge of God, that you would know the love of Christ that surpasses understanding. He prays more than anything else that you would know God. To Paul, his top priority for his churches, his top priority for you, his top priority for anybody in his life that they knew is that they would know God. That's number one. There's not a close second that they would know God. But as you go year to year, you would grow in your depth of knowledge. When you think about the person in your life who seems to be the closest to God, who exudes his love, who just oozes wisdom and compassion and grace, Paul's prayer for that person is that they would know God more. If you think of yourself as someone who's very far from God and doesn't know him very well at all, you're not even really super comfortable with this Christian thing. Paul's prayer for you is that you would know God more. If you've been languishing in your Christianity for a decade and feel not much closer to him now than you did 10 years ago, his prayer for you is that you would know God more. And when earlier I asked, parents, what do you pray for your kids? Grandparents, what do you pray for your children and their children? What do you pray for your friends? What do we pray for churches? What do we pray for people in our small group? I hope that whatever else you pray follows. Father, I simply pray that they would know you more. The way that we say it here is this. We pray this. Would the events of this life conspire to bring you closer to God? I believe this so fervently that when I get the news that someone has cancer, which has touched my life in multiple ways, I've lost multiple loved ones to cancer. So it's not callously that I pray this. But when I hear that someone is sick, the very first thing I pray before I pray for their physical health is that the events of this battle would conspire to bring them and those around them closer to you, Father. I pray that this would drive them into a deeper depth of knowledge of you. And then I pray for healing. When I hear a marriage is struggling, before I pray that that marriage is healed, I pray that the path to that healing would bring them to a deeper knowledge of you. When I pray over a new baby, I don't pray for circumstances, and I don't pray for prosperity, and I don't pray for success, and I don't pray for health. I pray that the events of this child's life and the things that surround it would conspire to bring this child closer to you. There can be no more important thing that we pray. That's why this is the anchor of this prayer. This is the stud and the wall on which the whole prayer is hung. Before it is, hey, I know about your faith and your love and the gospel's flourishing in the whole world, but here's what I really pray for you, that you would know God. And then we get two results because of two things after this that we're going to talk about. Because I'm praying for you to know God, I want you to know this and this. But this is the anchor of the prayer. If I were going to distill it down to one thing, to one verse, to treat it how I would normally treat it, we would be entirely focused on verse 9 this morning because there can be no greater priority that we can have for ourselves or for anyone else than that they would know God more deeply. That's the prayer. I hope that you'll pray that for yourselves, for your families, and for our church. That's the biggest priority. Now, why is that the biggest priority? Why is that the anchor prayer? Because of what we see in verse 10. Verse 10 says, why do we do this? So that, I love this, you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way, bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God. I don't think we put that thought in front of us often enough. Why does Paul pray that we would know Christ in increasing measure? So that we can live a life worthy of the Lord. So that we can live a life worthy of him who loves us and sacrifices us and created us and pursues us. I don't know how often you put that thought in front of yourself. Am I living a life worthy of my calling? But the reason we pray that our children would know God deeper. I always pray for my kids that they would know you soon and love you well. That they would love you better than I did. That they would obey you better than I have. Why do I pray that for my kids, John and Lily? Because they have things to do. Because I want them to live a life pleasing to God. I want them to live a life worthy, more worthy than what I have lived. This is why we pray this over the people who would follow us and over the people around us. Simply put, Paul wants you to grow in your knowledge of God because you have stuff to do. He wants you to grow in your knowledge of God because you've got things you need to get done. Because you are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that you might walk in them. You've got some good works to do. You guys, the apex goal for everybody at Grace, if you're a part of Grace for a year or two decades or more, the thing I want for you more than I want anything else in the whole world is that you would become a kingdom builder. That you would understand that you spend your entire life building a kingdom. And that it is a waste of your time to build your kingdom or anyone else's. The only kingdom worth building is God's eternal kingdom. And when we build God's kingdom, we grow it in breadth and depth. We add to the numbers of it and we grow the spiritual depth of it. And that's the whole reason that you exist is to be a kingdom builder, to leverage every gift and every talent and every treasure and every resource you've ever been blessed by and leverage that for God's kingdom rather than your own. And I believe that to be a Christian is to have a progressive revelation of what exactly that means. Because I thought I knew what it meant seven years ago when I took the job. And now these seven years later, I have a wildly different impression of what that actually means. And it's far more challenging than I ever thought it could be. So to be a Christian is to have this progressive revelation that my life is not my own. It does not belong to me. My resources and my time and my talents and my treasures are not my own. They do not belong to me. I am a kingdom builder. I have stuff to do. So why do we pray that you would know God more, that you would know Christ more deeply? Not only because it's what's best for you and will bring you the most peace and bring heaven down to earth here as we begin to experience the presence of God, but also because he's got a plan for you. And unless you know him well and are known for your love and for your faith, you're not going to be able to execute that plan of what he wants you to do. You're not going to be able to build his kingdom like he wants you to use you to build it. So we pray that people would know God better because we've got stuff to do. We are kingdom builders. God has a plan for you and a way he intends to use you. But the more years we fritter away not pursuing him fully, not being known for our faith and our love, the less we get to execute the plan. And we watch someone else do what God might have used us to do. We are kingdom builders. We can't do that unless we're growing towards God in a deeper, in a greater depth of knowledge. The other thing there that I didn't want to pass up. If we can put that verse back on the screen, verse 10, please. This is here so so that you would live a life worthy of the Lord, and then look here, please him in every way. That arrested me as I read it this week. I don't know how many of you have a life in such a way that it pleases God, joy to him. I think if most of us are being honest, the highest mark we ever hope for as it relates to how God sees us and has an impression of us, I try to live my life in such a way that I quell his disappointment or mitigate his anger. Right? Just don't be mad at me today. Just tell me I was good enough today. Just this week. I mean, honestly, this week, I pray every time before I'm about to preach, I pray just to get my mindset right and remind me of what's important. A vast majority of those prayers are thinking through the week and thinking of if I feel worthy or not to come do this, which is stupid because the answer is no, I'm never worthy of it. But it's like, have I ticked you off this week? Have I disappointed you this week? Have I lived a life worthy of you this week, or have I let you down again? My greatest hope when it comes to God is that I simply don't disappoint him that day. But I was reminded in this verse and in this prayer that it's actually possible for us to live a life that pleases him. For us to live a life that brings him joy. To live our life in such a way that he's proud. That he smiles in heaven because of us. And let me just tell you, as a parent, like all the parents here, I'm sure, I have days when I feel like I've been a good father, and I have days where I don't feel that way. And on the days when I'm not a good father, when I'm selfish or curmudgeonly or grumpy, the greatest thing my daughter Lily, who's almost nine years old, which is weird to say, the greatest thing my daughter Lily can hope for is that she doesn't tick me off that day. That she wasn't annoying that day. That she avoided my wrath and my frustration that day. She can live her life in such a way that she doesn't incite me to frustration. When you have a bad father, that's your greatest goal for that day in that relationship. But on days when I'm a good father, when I'm patient and kind and gracious and present, when I think about the negative, when I think about how often I'm getting on to her versus how often I'm praising her. When I think about what is she hearing from me? Is she hearing any encouragement? Is she hearing any support? Is she hearing any love or is she only hearing frustration? When I think about those things in those days, what I see in Lily, not in myself, what I see in my daughter is a smile, a smile, is this exuberance, this, this ability to know that she's making me proud. And when I stop and tell her, Hey, I saw the way you handled this with your brother. I'm very proud of you for that. When I sent her upstairs to clean a room and she actually does it miracle of miracles. And I sit her down and instead of just not getting mad at her, I go, I trusted you to clean your room. You did it. This is awesome. Thanks so much. That's the exact kind of little girl I want you to be. And young lady, I want you to become. You're growing in your trustworthiness. That's wonderful. When I stop and I do that like a good father and I encourage her and she has this vision for her days that she can live in such a way that it pleases her mom and I and makes us proud. There is a different aura around her. I see it bring joy out of her. You guys have a good father. The greatest goal for a bad father is to simply avoid their anger. And often we treat God like he's not a good father. But he is. And the greatest thing we could hope for day in and day out is to live our life in such a way that it pleases him. And let that give us an exuberance and a spring in our step and a greater vision for who he is. It'll allow us to hear his encouragement from the people He uses to speak things into our life. Maybe for 2025, you simply need a greater vision of who God is and what He expects from you and how proud He is of you and how much He loves you. Because if you think God just goes through His days being disappointed in you, you're wrong. I was listening to a song this morning. And it basically said that he's never loved you more, more wildly and more passionately than he did on your worst day. We can live lives that please our Heavenly Father because he's a good father. And I think we need to have a vision for that. We wrap up the prayer with the last three verses. This is very simple. So he says, I pray that you would know God more deeply, that you would know his will. Why? Because you have things to do. You need to live a life worthy of Him. You can actually please Him if you get to work on building His kingdom and follow Him faithfully. And in doing those things, we see these words highlighted that you may have great endurance and patience and that you'll be reminded that you've been qualified to share in the inheritance of His holy people in the kingdom of light. Simply put, a faithful life gives you patience for the promise. A faithful life gives you patience for the promise. Paul talks about perseverance a lot in scripture. Jesus talks about perseverance. The other authors talk about perseverance. The reality of the Christian life is that faith is hard sometimes. I think that one of the greatest blessings of heaven that we don't talk about very often is that once you get to heaven, you no longer need your faith. Not required anymore. You can set that down. Because Romans 8 tells us who hopes for what he can see. I don't know if you've ever thought about that at all, but when you get to heaven, you don't need faith anymore. Faith is choosing to believe. Sometimes in spite of sickness. Sometimes in spite of disappointments. Sometimes in spite of doubts and questions. Sometimes in spite of a lack of clarity. Or a life and a culture and voices that will clamor it out and make it difficult to hear God. The reality of the Christian life, and those of you who have lived it for a while know this to be true, it's not always easy to cling to your faith. It's not always easy to walk as stridently with Jesus as it has been or as it will be. And it's possible that we let go of that faith because we don't persevere in it, because we let the things of the world drown it out. But what Paul says is, if you're known for your faith and your love, you care about the global church, if you grow in your knowledge of God and his will, and then as a result of that knowledge of God, you're a kingdom builder who lives a life worthy of the calling that you've received, and you live in such a way that it pleases God, then in doing all of those things, you will have patience for the promise of the kingdom for which you await. So I'll be direct with you. I don't expect that all five of the points that I just made and the things that I highlighted are deeply resonating with every person in the room and you're going to do all five things. But what I really genuinely hope is that one of them got you. And that maybe 2025 is the year that you commit to becoming a person known for your faith and your love. And so to take that step, you become a person of devotion for the first time ever or for the first time in a long time. Maybe that's what you need to grab onto. Maybe you realize and are convicted, I don't have a heart for the global church, and this is the year I'm going to open myself up and allow God to begin to point me in that direction and develop a heart within me for my international brothers and sisters. Maybe this is the year that you see and prioritize, man, there's nothing more important than knowing God deeply, and that's what I'm going to pray for me and for the people around me. Maybe this is a year that you realize, gosh, I need to get to work. I have things to do. I'm a kingdom builder and I want to go live a life worthy of my Lord. I want to live in such a way this year that I actually bring joy to my Father who is in heaven. Or maybe this is the year that you just need to be encouraged to follow God and pursue Him and He will give you the patience and the perseverance to cling to the promises that he's made you. I don't know which one of these resonates with you the most, but I hope one does and I hope that you'll cling to it as we go out these doors today. I'm going to pray for us. We're going to sing and then Mikey's going to dismiss us. Father, thank you for a new year. Thank you for what it represents, for the fresh start for those of us that need it, for new opportunities for those of us that want them. God, give us a vision for living a life that pleases you, to thinking beyond you simply being disappointed in us. Remind us that we have a good father. God, I pray for everybody in this room that they would know you more deeply this year than they did last year. That they would grow in their depth of knowledge of you and your will and in that growth, God, that you would begin to put their hand to the plow and they would begin to do your work. And they would experience the joy and satisfaction that can only come from being used by you. God, we pray over grace in 2025 that you would bring to us people that need to be a part of this family, that we would be good stewards of the people who come here. God, that this would be a year marked by spiritual flourishing, by a strength of community that even folks who have been coming here for decades would mark this year as a time of flourishing for them. We pray for the weeks and the months to come. We pray that we would honor you. We pray that you would draw us close. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, Grace. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, and every now and again, as your pastor, and as a part of Grace, I just kind of get overwhelmed at how good God is to us. So this isn't the sermon, but one of my favorite parts about communion is just getting to see everybody walk by, and I get to know names and stories. And Jen commented to me, we've got about five very pregnant girls in the church right now. And each of those babies was prayed for fervently and is being prayed over. And what a blessing it is to see that happening. Bert, I'm about to start crying. If you could get me some tissues from the coffee bar, that would be great. I'm being serious, Bert. Snap to it, please. We've got folks in the church fighting cancer with relentless faith, recovering from strokes with faith. We've got faces, thank you, sir, that I'm happy to see every week, including birds. We've got tremendous friends and friendships and communities. And we are just tremendously blessed. We are chock full in our children's spaces. We are parking people at big lots. And it's just an exciting time to be a part of grace. And it's also a humbling time to be a part of grace in this community. So I just wanted to express that and hope that you feel it too. I also wanted to pray at the beginning of my sermon, so this kind of works out, because we've got a team going to Mexico Saturday. How many years have we had a relationship with faith ministry? A lot of years, decades. We've got some really sweet relationships down there. Unidos, unidos. Right, Jeff? He's got the t-shirt on. How many people are going this year? Okay. So we're going to pray for them. We're going to express some gratitude for grace. We're going to pray for the families that are about to grow. And we're going to pray for those fighting hard through difficult times. And then I'm going to try to get it together and give you the sermon I'm supposed to give you this morning. So let's pray. Father, we're grateful for this place and this family. Me, maybe most of all, this morning. We thank you for the love that's represented here. We thank you for the young women who are about to be young mamas and the young men who are about to be fathers. God, we thank you for those in our midst who are fighting hard with faith through challenges that they did not foresee and do not welcome and yet embrace as a part of a journey for you. We thank you for the growth that we see in our children and our children's ministries. And we just pray, God, more than anything, that we would be good stewards of those young souls for the time that they are entrusted to us. And I pray the same thing over everyone else that calls Grace home, that we would take good care of the folks that you have entrusted to us. We lift up our team going to Mexico and we just pray that you would continue to further those relationships and that those who are going would be moved towards you and that those who are going for the first time would be indelibly impacted by what happens there. In Jesus' name, amen. Alright, let's try this again. Run the bumper again. Let's just do that for funsies. I'm being serious. Do it. I'm going to mute my mic and blow my nose, and then we're going to have like an actual sermon. All right? Thank you. Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. This morning we are finishing up our series called The Traits of Grace where we're answering the question, if you're a partner of grace, which we don't have partners, we have members. We walked through that for a week. So if you're confused, you can listen to that sermon. If you're a partner of grace, this is what we want you to become. This is what we're trying to build you into. If you were to ask what should define someone who's been a partner of grace for many years, it would be these five traits that we've been walking through for the last five weeks. And so this week we arrive at what I believe to be the ultimate trait of a partner of grace. I think all the other traits build to this one. And so I'm just going to come right out the gates with it. If you're taking notes, you can write this down. At Grace, we are kingdom builders. At Grace, we are kingdom builders. We've got these five traits now emblazoned on the wall over the glass doors and the windows out in the lobby. As you walk out the center door, the one in the dead center on purpose is kingdom builders. This is something that we want every person at Grace to become. And this idea of being kingdom builders began to germinate for me about a decade ago in a staff meeting at my previous church called Greystone Church. Greystone is a church in suburban Atlanta. It's one of these kind of big multi-campus churches where you get simulcast out to multiple campuses when you preach, that kind of deal. And we took a staff retreat down to a lake house. And there's about 25 or 30 of us. And we're sitting in this brainstorming session where the lead pastor, Jonathan, who in many ways has been very gracious with me over the years. We're sitting in this brainstorming meeting where he's asking this question about Greystone. What defines people at our church? What do we want to instill in them? What defines us as people? What's in our DNA? And I kind of broke in and raised my hand and I said, I think we need to build a church of kingdom builders. And I kind of explained why I thought that, which is going to be some of the things that I explain to you in a minute. And Jonathan, like he listened to me. He was kind. He goes, yeah, that's great. That is super important. And then he didn't write it on the whiteboard. And I don't know if you've been in those meetings, those brainstorming meetings where you have an idea, you feel like it's a good idea, you say it, and whoever's in charge of the meeting goes, that is good. That is very good. Thank you so much for sharing that. Does anybody else have any ideas? And it doesn't go on the whiteboard. And when that happens, it's infuriating. And I know because I watch my staff get angry with me when I don't put their ideas on the whiteboard. When you do that, it hurts a little bit. So I thought maybe he didn't understand me right. So a few minutes later, I kind of approach it in a different way. You know, I'm nothing if not persistent. And he's like, yes, that's a good idea. Not right now. And then we move on again. And I thought maybe, I know, I know what'll do it. And so I explained it in a different way and because this is a Mike Tomlin's he's a coach of the Steelers he says that young young people getting involved in their profession have all the ideas and none of the responsibility that was me I had all the ideas and have any of the responsibility of execution so I mentioned it again until finally he said, Nate, we've heard you. It's a great idea. That's not going to work with what we're doing. We don't need to talk about that anymore. Okay. That's kind of what it takes sometimes for me to hear you. So I said, okay. But I couldn't let go of this idea that this seems so clear to me. And then about, I would say, seven years after that, I'm in a meeting at my church with my staff asking the same question. What are the traits of grace? What's important to us? What do we want to produce and who do we want to become? And I hadn't thought about it in a while, but it occurred to me. And so I said, hey, I just want to throw this out there. I think we were meant to be kingdom builders. And I explained why. And the staff responded enthusiastically. Yeah, that's good. Put that up there. And I know that often when there's someone leading a meeting and there's people who work for that person, that they are incented to support the ideas of that person. So that might not be authentic. But I will also tell you, and Aaron Gibson's in here somewhere. He will tell you if I'm lying, that sometimes I present ideas in staff meetings and it's just met with crickets. Just uncomfortable silence because no one wants to tell me it's a bad idea. And I go, okay, that didn't get any traction. We won't do that one. So I do feel like I can trust him. And then I presented it to the elders and the elders liked it too. So that became one of our traits, kingdom builders. Then maybe about a year after that, I was in a conversation that I believe I've told you guys about before with someone who was going to become a very good friend. And this guy was pressing me on grace and on my leadership. And he was saying, what do you want for grace? What do you want grace to be? What do you want to be true of grace in five years, ten years? What's your vision for grace? What's your vision for your leadership? What do you want to be true of you? What do you want to be true of you in five years, ten years? And I answered by saying, well, I've had these experiences in the past and I don't want to replicate those for people who work with me or for people who come to church with me. I've seen church do these things. I don't want to do those things. And after a while, he stopped me and he said, I've heard a lot about what you don't want to be, but I have no idea what you do want to be. And I realized in that moment that I had really never had a greater vision for grace than simply being healthy. And that grace required a greater vision than that. So I chewed on that for months. And finally, I came to this conclusion that this is why this idea has been germinating all along. Because I believe that grace needs to be filled with people who are passionate about building God's kingdom. I believe that the best work that we can do is to produce people who want to spend their lives building the kingdom of God with every ounce of energy that they have. And really what I would say is I want to produce a church full of people who are or are becoming John the Baptist. I want to produce people who have the same mindset that John the Baptist had, who are becoming more and more like John the Baptist in practice. And here's what I mean. Jesus called John the Baptist the greatest man ever born of a woman, which means Jesus thinks that John the Baptist is the greatest man to ever live. That's an incredible statement and a remarkable stance, and it's worth wondering why does Jesus think that, and I think, I think that this is why. John the Baptist, about 30 AD, was an elite rabbi that was allowed to have disciples. So I don't know how much you know about Jewish culture and Jewish context, but at this time in history, in Judaism, the rabbis were the pastors. Rabbi simply means teacher. And there was presumably hundreds of rabbis in Jerusalem at the time of John the Baptist, but there was this elite class of rabbis, the best of the best, that were allowed to have disciples, and John the Baptist was one of these elite rabbis because we see him having disciples with him. And he had built, in our words, in our terms, in our context, a very successful ministry. He would not, John the Baptist would not identify this way or with this, but in our context, the way to understand him best is to say that John the Baptist was a very successful pastor. If he were a modern day pastor, he would be invited on all the podcasts. He would speak at all the conferences. He would have a large church with multiple campuses. He would have this huge ministry. He'd be a best-selling author. And listen to me. I don't think that anything that I just said defines true success for a pastor. I have a much deeper respect for men and women who humbly serve their community in the name of God, in the being virtually unknown but faithfully pour their life out into a community and manage to retire as a pastor because they kept it between the ditches the whole time. I have a much greater respect for those people, for those men and women, than I do for people that have skyrocketed into Christian fame. Not that I don't respect that. I just don't think that's how God measures our success as people, how big our ministry is. But by the world's standards, what I want you to see is that by every measure, John the Baptist was a popular pastor with a successful ministry. He was baptizing people. People were following him and listening to him every day by the hundreds. Hugely successful and locally famous. And then Jesus comes on the scene. And John the Baptist actually baptizes him in the Jordan River. And Jesus and John the Baptist are cousins. And just so we're clear, John the Baptist is different from John the Apostle. John the Apostle was a disciple of Christ. He was the disciple whom Jesus loved. He wrote John, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, and Revelation. That's a different John. John the Baptist is the cousin of Jesus who paved the way for him and was prophesied about and who was eventually beheaded by Herod. Different Johns. And people started peeling away from John's church, again, crude language, but for us to understand, started peeling away from John's church and going to Jesus' church. And some of his disciples come to him, and they go, hey, you're losing members. People are not following you anymore, they're following Jesus. And this is John's response. And I think the heart of this response is why Jesus thinks John the Baptist is the greatest man to ever live. Verse 26, chapter 3 in the book of John. And said to him. And they say, John, that guy that you baptized, Jesus, people are following him now. They're leaving you and they're following him. And John the Baptist says, good. That's the way it's supposed to work out. See, John had spent his adult life building a kingdom, amassing a ministry, building a following, establishing a name for himself, becoming successful. He had spent his life building a kingdom. And then Jesus comes on the scene and Jesus begins to peel off portions of that kingdom for himself. And John's disciples come to him and they go, hey, this kingdom that you've been building, it's shrinking. And John says, no, it's not. It's growing. It was never my kingdom. Those were never my people. I was always just holding them for Jesus. I'm part of the bridal party. He's the groom. When he shows up, I don't get disappointed because everyone's paying attention to him and not me. That's dumb. I did a wedding yesterday and I'm in line to walk everybody in and the groomsmen are talking about, is it right over left or left over right? And I looked at them and I said, doesn't matter. No one's looking at you at all. John the Baptist knew his place. He's in the party. He's not the party. And so when Jesus shows up and his disciples say, hey, he's taken your kingdom. John the Baptist says, no. He's just claiming what's his. It was never mine to begin with. They were never following me. I was a conduit to Christ. I was never baptizing them in my name. I was always baptizing them in his name. And then he says that remarkable phrase, he must become greater and I must become less. That rings true in so many different scenarios for so many different reasons. And I would say in our life, one of our great challenges as Christians is to really understand what that means, that he must become greater and I must become less in every situation. So here's what I want you to see this morning. And here's why I believe this idea is so crucial and critical. Because I talk about people trying to build ministries, talk about people trying to build kingdoms, and I know that at least over half of us, if not more of us in here, we're not trying to do that. We're not trying to build a big ministry. We're not trying to build a big kingdom. We've got very humble goals in our life. But what I want you to see this morning is this. We are all building a kingdom, all of us. The question is, whose kingdom are you building? We are all building a kingdom. Make no mistake about it. The question is, whose kingdom are you building? Even if you're sitting here and you're going, my life is small. I have humble goals. I want to raise a good family. I want my children to love me when they grow up and want to come back home. I want to love my spouse and love and serve them well for the remainder of my days. I want to be a good friend to the people around me. I want to be a good part of the church that I love. We might have humble goals, but make no mistake, that's still our kingdom. It's a kingdom of safety and security and affection and compassion. It's how we leave our mark by leaving children behind us or a family behind us. So even if we have humble goals, we still have goals of building kingdoms. And oftentimes those kingdoms are our own. We're not building those for God's sake. We're building those for our own sake. Others of us are on the other end of the spectrum. I have a friend that I talk to often. He's a couple years older than me. He's like 45. And he talks about how driven he feels all the time. How even if he had the money to retire forever right now, he's like, I don't think I could just do nothing. I don't think I could just bounce from pleasure to pleasure. I have to build something. I have to wake up every day and spend time knowing that I'm building something that matters. He very much struggles with rest. He relentlessly pursues the building of his kingdom. And some of us have big lofty goals. We want to build the company. We want to build the ministry. We want to leave the legacy. We want to climb the ladder. We want to get to this position. We want to do this thing and make these impacts. Whether or not we build a kingdom operates irrespective of our ambition. Do you understand? No matter how ambitious you are or are not, you will spend your life building a kingdom. The question I want to put in front of you is, whose kingdom are you building? I would remind you of what Jesus says in Matthew. Do not put about it. Friendships rarely echo for eternity unless they're intentional. Family in and of itself doesn't echo for eternity. The company that you build doesn't echo for eternity unless you're using it for the kingdom of God. The wealth that you amass, the friends that you get, the power that you hold, the impact that you make doesn't echo for eternity unless it's for the sake of God and his kingdom. So God says, invest your life in things that will ripple throughout eternity. Don't invest your life in things that are buried with you. It's this hugely important principle. And it's important to me that you understand as I hope to compel you to consider what it looks like to build God's kingdom with your life. I don't want to talk about it in vague terms of building God's kingdom. I want us to understand exactly what it means to build it. To build God's kingdom is to actively and intentionally, this isn't in your notes, but you can write it down if you want to. To build God's kingdom is to actively and intentionally grow the kingdom in breadth and depth. It's to actively and intentionally grow the breadth of God's kingdom and grow the depth of God's kingdom. When we grow the breadth of God's kingdom, that's evangelism. When we grow the depth, that's discipleship. Evangelism, telling other people about Jesus, bringing them along with us. I tell you all the time, as much as I can, the only reason you are on the planet and not in heaven right now after you became a Christian is so that you can bring as many people with you on your way to God's kingdom as you possibly can as you live your life. So we're constantly looking for ways to expand the breadth and the reach of God's kingdom by sharing our faith. And in the South, this is really easy for us. You might think it's really challenging to share your faith in the South because it's saturated with the gospel. I actually think that makes it easier because I try to tell you, if you have friends or family members who live in the South and don't go to church, they don't claim a faith, I would be willing to bet you lunch that they have a good reason for that. It's not because they've never been invited. It's probably not because they don't have any experience with church. It's because whatever experience they do have with church wasn't good. Whatever experience they do have with pain and struggle has made them move away from the faith, not towards it. But if we went to your neighbors right now who are still at home, have no interest in going to church this morning, it wasn't even a thought for them, should we go? It's a Sunday for them. And you said, why isn't church a priority? They wouldn't be like, why is it what now? Why isn't what a priority? Why don't you know Jesus? Who? They know. They have answers. So in the South, if we want to be effective evangelists, our antenna are always up to have conversations with people about spirituality because here's what's really interesting in the Southern United States. Your explanation for why you're still in church. Your explanation for why you're still here. Your explanation for why you still claim a faith, why you've chosen to prioritize it, and it's important to you. And if we can have conversations not about, here's why you should be a Christian, here's why you should get back in church, but conversations about, here's why I still believe, here's what faith does for me, here's what I see and why I can't walk away. If we can have those conversations, we can start to open people's minds to a different church experience and a different experience of Jesus and their personal lives and maybe move them towards the kingdom of God and grow that kingdom in its breadth. And then as kingdom builders, we grow it in its depth. We grow the depth of the people who are Christians. We make disciples. At Grace, we call this being step-takers. Understanding that discipleship is nothing more than taking the next step of obedience that's been placed in front of you. And so we come alongside young mamas and we say, hey, here's what I've learned in my journey of being a mom. We come alongside young men and we say, here's what I've learned in my journey of being a father. We come alongside young divorcees and we say, here's what I've learned in my journey as a single woman or a single man. We come alongside parents. We come alongside young believers. And we walk them through that area of life and we grow them in their breadth, in their depth. So when I say, what is it, when I talk about building a kingdom and using our life to build God's kingdom, that's what I'm talking about, is using our life to grow it in its breadth and in its depth. We should go through life with our antenna up at all times, looking for opportunities to do just that. And this idea of what it is to build God's kingdom and how devoted we should be to it is really what the Christian life is. And the Christian life is a progressive revelation of this truth. It's a progressive revelation of what it means to build God's kingdom. And really, what the reality of it is, that that's the only reason that we're here. And I'll tell you where this started to occur to me and change the paradigm in a way that I thought about my faith. I was 17 or 18 years old at a summer camp called Look Up Lodge, and the speaker was a guy that really impacted me named Greg Boone. I can't remember if it was my first or second summer there, but at one point he wrote, he drew a circle on a whiteboard, and he said, I want you to tell me the things in your life that matter to you. Tell me about the different parts of your life. What does your life consist of? And so we said family. He draws a family slice. And then we said sports, friends, faith, hobbies, college, education, whatever it was. And so we kind of made this pie chart of all the different areas of our life. And Greg says, it's interesting that you made this sliver of faith. That's your Christianity. That's the part of you that's devoted to God. And we're like, yes. And he goes, okay. God's not interested in your slice. He wants the whole dang pie. And as adults, we do this too. We offer God a slice and he wants the whole pie. I bet if I sat down with you, just like somebody could with me, with no context, and I said, hey, I got a thought exercise for you. Can you draw a circle on a piece of paper? And you did that. And I said, okay, can you just draw up a pie chart of your priorities in your life? And could you try to make the slices proportional to how much you actually feel they're important? You know, we draw a big family slice, right? Some of us would draw a big church slice, big career slice, hobbies, interests, curiosity, whatever else is in there. I'd be interested to know, and only you know this, I've no doubt that virtually everyone in here would have a faith slice. How big would that be? Would it be a sliver? Would it be a huge chunk? Regardless, God's not interested in either of those. He wants the whole pie. He wants all of you. Do you mean God intimately cares about how I conduct myself in business meetings? Yeah, I do. I do because you're his agent in those meetings and through you should spread the fragrance and the knowledge of God. We should be salt in people's saltless lives. We should be lights in darkness. Do you mean that God cares about how I behave in traffic? He actually does. That one stings. Do you mean God cares about how I father? About how much I participate in church? About how much of my finances I give? About how I behave with my friends? About what I watch on TV and whether or not that helps me run my race and build his kingdom? Do you mean to tell me that God cares about what books I read and which people I spend the most time around? Yes, he cares deeply about all of those things. He cares where you live. He cares who your neighbors are. He cares how you carry yourself. He cares about your reputation in your community. He cares about everything, not just your church attendance and not just how much you read his word and not just how much you pray, but he cares about how you treat the person when you're on vacation that you will never interact with again in your life. That interaction matters deeply to God because it is indicative of your character and whether or not your light is shining and the fragrance is spreading. Those things matter to God. That's why I say that this realization of what it is to be a kingdom builder is a progressive revelation throughout your whole life. When I understood the pie chart analogy when I was 18 years old, I thought I got it. Intellectually, I'm there. And every year that goes by, I realize that God is asking me for more, that I've been holding back from him, that I've been considering my piece of the pie. And let me show you how powerful it is when it finally clicks with us, that we are here to build God's kingdom and not our own. I want us to look at Peter, and it's actually Gibson that gave me this point. I thought it was a great one. Think about Peter in the Gospels, what we experience of him. Peter was one of these guys that he was ready, fire, aim, right? Just the first one to speak. My dad likes to say about me, my family calls me Nathan, and he likes to say about me, Nathan having nothing to say, thus said. That's what he says about me. All right. Zach knows what I'm talking about. Nathan having nothing to say, thus says, there are those of us who are just wired, ready, fire, aim. I got it. I'll go. And we see this in Peter, which is why I love him so much. He's the first one. Jesus is walking on the water. Jesus is like, okay. Or Peter says, well, I'm walking on the water too. And he walks on the water for a little bit. And then he sinks. And everybody's like, oh, Peter doesn't have any faith. And it's like, you sissies are still in the boat. At least he got out, you know. Jesus says, Peter, I need to wash all of your feet. And Peter goes, you will never wash my feet. And he says, if I don't wash your feet, you can't enter the kingdom of heaven. And Peter says, well, then don't stop at my feet. Go all the way to my head. He requests a sponge bath from Christ. That's the boldness of Peter. Jesus says, you will deny me. Peter says, I will die before I deny you. And then in his weakness, he denies him three times. Whenever Jesus would ask one of those really hard questions, who do you say that I am? And all the disciples would clam up and not make eye contact and please don't look at me. Peter was the first one to be like, you sissies, I got this. And then he'd answer. And sometimes he was right and sometimes he was wrong, but he was always the one willing to be out in front. He was always brash. He was always courageous. He was always the leader. And so we see flashes of this giftedness in Peter that's not directed in the right way just yet. And then after Jesus dies and comes back and finds a despondent Peter on the banks of the Sea of Galilee and restores him to ministry. Beautiful. He spends 40 days with the disciples encouraging them. And then he leaves. And he says, I'm going to go to heaven. And I want you to go to the ends of the earth and I want you to baptize them and make disciples. I want you to go. He didn't use this language, but it's our language this morning. I want you, Peter, to go and your job is to grow my kingdom through this thing we call the church in breadth and in depth. Go evangelize to the whole world and go make disciples of them. Grow the kingdom in breadth and depth. And then he sits in the upper room for 40 days waiting for the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit comes, he realizes what his job is. They go out on the porch. They preach. 3,000 people become Christians that day. And then we get this wonderful picture of the early church in Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47. And day by day, God added to their number those who were being saved. So now this movement is off. Now the kingdom has exploded. And the Sanhedrin, the religious leaders of Israel at the time, take notice of this. They're like, we've got to stop this. What are we going to do? And so they bring in Peter and John, and they put them on trial. Defend yourself. Two chapters later, they bring in Stephen to defend himself, and he becomes the first Christian martyr, and he's stoned to death. Eighty days prior, Jesus had to defend himself on the same charges, and they crucified him. So make no mistake about it. In this defense for what they are doing, their lives are at stake. They've just healed someone, and the authority of Christ, they are preaching the gospel of Christ, and now they're being put on trial in front of the Sanhedrin, and I want you to see their amazing response. Also, if you're looking at the clock, I'm going long. Suck it up. Acts chapter 4. You're going to see verse 9, and I'm going to start in verse 8. name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed. He says, it's on you. You want to know whose name it's in? It's in the name of Christ, that guy that you murdered. That's what we're doing this in. Incredibly courageous, speaking truth to power, completely vulnerable to the death penalty. They do not care. They're stepping. He is Peter. He's a leader. He is brash, ready, fire, aim. But now he has purpose and he's speaking with incredible courage. Verse 11, Jesus is the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone. Salvation is found in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved. When they, the Sanhedrin and the people around them, saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished. And they took note that these men had been with Jesus. When they saw the courage and the eloquence of Peter that day, they knew we can't touch these guys or we're going to have a riot on our hands. So we've got to step away and try to play this a little bit differently. With his life on the line, Peter boldly proclaims the gospel of Christ and speaks truth to power. And what we see is these flashes of giftedness in the gospels where we get a glimpse into the character of Peter. Now he has a place to put it. Now he has traction in his life. Now he has understanding and context for, oh, that's what these gifts are for. And now he can use them courageously and fearlessly and correctly with efficacy to do his job and grow the kingdom in breadth and in depth. So here's what we see from the example of Peter. And here's what I want you to feel in your life. With the realization of purpose comes the application of our gifts. Each of you, each of you are gifted in some way. I know this to be true because the Bible says it over and over again. Paul talks about in Corinthians that the church is the body of Christ, and everybody is a part of that body, and everybody has a part to play. We're told in Ephesians, I remind you all the time that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we should walk in them. You have a good work to walk in. We're told in Ephesians chapter four that we have the gifts of Christ, of pastor, apostle, shepherd, evangelist, or teacher. Every one of us is one of those five things. We have those gifts. And when we can match those gifts with purpose, we light the world on fire. When we align God's divine purpose for our life with the gifts that God has given us in our life. And we have the narrative traction in our life of a purpose that is larger than ourselves to build God's kingdom. And we look at our gifts and what he's given us and suddenly we have an alignment of purpose and giftedness and we understand for the first time why God made me this way and how we are to use those gifts to build his kingdom. We light the world on fire. That's when magic happens. That's when we add day by day to those who are being saved. That's when you get up in the morning excited about what God has for you. Can I just say to you that if you have noticed in your life that you've been spending your days bouncing from distraction to distraction and from pleasure to pleasure and you're walking listlessly through your days and you're not super motivated for what you're doing, can I just suggest to you that maybe it's because you're living your life, building your own kingdom and you you realize it stinks, and that what you need to realize is that God designed you to build his kingdom, and he's gifted you to do that. And if you can figure out what that means and how your gifts can align with purpose, you will never wake up again wondering how you should spend your day. You will know because you will be directed because when our purpose is revealed, we have an application for a giftedness. So here's my prayer to you. Here's my prayer for you and the prayer that I want you to pray. God, show me how I might be used to build your kingdom rather than my own. God, show me how I might be used to build your kingdom rather than my own. And here's what I really like about this being kind of the apex trait of grace. I'm going to say this and then I'll wrap up. As I was considering what kind of church do we want Grace to be, where do we want to push people, what's our heart, how do we want to grow, what's our focus as a church? You know good and well some churches answer that question and they say missions. We're a missions church. That's what we're going to do. If you're involved with this church, we're going to move your heart towards missions to give and to serve in that way. Some churches say next generation. We're going to focus on the next generation. We're going to invest in our children and in our students. And if you're a part of the church, we're going to move you in that way. Some churches say foster care and adoption. We're going to push everybody in that way. Some churches choose local impact and local ministry. We want to make a big impact in our community. And different churches choose different paths. And I have no critique for any of those paths. but as I thought about this, I didn't want to limit your vision for building God's kingdom to whatever my passion of the day was or whichever direction the wind was blowing in the elder board. We didn't want to limit what people should do with the giftedness that God has given them. If this means you need to leave and start your own church because you've got that fire in you, go and do it. We love you. We support you. If this means you need to move and start a ministry somewhere, go and do it. We support you. But if we can be your home base as you go out into the community and in the world and build God's kingdom, we want to continue to foster that within you and build a church of fierce builders of the kingdom of God. And that can look different ways for different people. For my wonderful father-in-law, they got a lake house. And I remember when they bought this lake house, they were like, we're going to use it to serve the kingdom. And I was like, I bet you are. Sure you are. What, are you going to pray on the boat? But every weekend, while his daughter was in college, 10 or more kids would come and they'd spend the whole weekend being fed and pulled around on the boat by, they called him Professor Benson. He was not a professor, but they were in college, so fit. And they came every weekend. And when those kids graduated, he got invited to weddings. And when they had their first baby, he got texted pictures. And when I had the chance to speak at his funeral, there was a row of about 20 of them that had traveled from all over the country to come pay their respect to John. He used that lake house to build God's kingdom. I know a man who's been successful in business. And he's taken that success and he uses that company to support people who spent their professional years in ministry and now don't have the means to take care of themselves in retirement. They're on the payroll even though they don't do anything because he has a heart for them and how they spent their life. He uses different people in his company to do the finances for nonprofits for free and they give away large portions of their profit, more than 10% to other ministries and he uses his business acumen to sit on the board of nonprofits and help them become effective in their ministries. He has a vision for what it is to use his giftedness to build God's kingdom, not his own. Or maybe, maybe what God has for us to do right now is to build up those children, is to patiently, daily, with consistency and godliness and grace, build the character of our children so that they might enter into the world with a larger vision for what this life can be and simply what they want to do with it. And maybe we can build the kingdom like my mom did. I don't know what it looks like for you to build God's kingdom. But I do know that it's how you should spend the rest of your life. I don't care if you're 85 or 15. Let's pray that we would be a church full of passionate kingdom builders and just see how God lights the world on fire around us. Let's pray. Father, thank you for imbuing us with purpose. Thank you for giving us something to live for that's bigger than ourselves. God, I pray that we would each have a passionate vision of what it is to be used by you, no matter how big or how small that vision might be. Lord, show us how we can use the gifts that you've given us to have a metamorphosis like Peter, where we see these flashes of our giftedness and how you've created us. But God, then we get some traction with some purpose, and our gifts align with that. Let us experience what it is to wake up every day excited to be used by you. And God, where we are building our own kingdoms, we repent and we apologize. And we ask you to help us, reorient us towards your kingdom. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. While you guys are watching this video, I'll be on a plane to Ethiopia with some other people from Grace to support our team working in Addis Jamari over there. This morning, we have a special guest, Sarah Prince. She and her husband, Casey, have come over with Kieran and Keller, their children. They're based in Cape Town, South Africa. Years ago, Casey and Sarah were on staff here at Grace back in the old days, and then we had the privilege of sending them over there to be missionaries in South Africa, where they work with a football team called Ubuntu and are involved in their community in many other ways. So this morning, Sarah is going to come share with us a really important message from her heart, and I'm excited for all of us to get to hear from her. Good morning. Good morning, Grace Raleigh. It's so good to be here. It's so good to see your faces. Many of you I know, and it's such a privilege to be here again. We were a part of Grace when it was over there. There, there, there, there. Yep, that way. And for many years, we served at Grace. I was an associate pastor. My husband was a youth pastor. And then this church community sent us 14 years ago, almost 15, if you can believe it, out into South Africa to do ministry. I have a picture of our family, if you haven't seen them walking around. My daughter, Kieran, is in kids ministry now because she loves the kids. That's Keller. And that's my handsome husband, Casey. Behind us is the street where we live. And we will be going back there tomorrow. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. I'm so grateful to be here. And I don't want to spend a lot of time talking about all the other stuff that we do. But I did bring a few copies of my book. And I also have a few postcards. If you don't know us, I'm so excited to meet you. And we have some postcards and some... Can you help me put these out, Casey? He's already on his phone. Can you help me just set... Oh, he's taking notes. Okay. There's four points. That's all you have to know. But then can you just set those out? When you're done. Before, in the next 30 minutes. So we have some postcards and some info about our family if you don't know anything about us, but many of you do. And I just want to say, I was just chatting with someone outside and they were saying, I can't remember when you guys met and I can't believe this is happening. And you know, it's so crazy that you did this. And we always say the reason that we could risk what we do in South Africa is because we have this community to come back to. We've kind of like played, I don't know, poker, but like played all the cards or the chips or the things. And I'm a big gambler. So we gambled all the gambling stuff and we've just put it into South Africa. But we always know we have this community here that loves us, that supports us. And then we can always come home to. So we thank you for your love and support. But that's not what I want to talk about today. So I've been wrestling with something lately. This is the first time in a very long time that I have something that God is showing me, and then I'm like, okay, but God, where is that in Scripture? Usually I'm like really big into the Bible, and I'm like digging, and then that's the thing I want to focus on. But today with this topic, I've come to God curious. God, what is this thing that you've done in our world? Because in 14 years in South Africa, we have built a ministry called Ubuntu Football, where now we've sent 24 young men to America to study, one of who's here, hey-o. And we have a bunch of young men who are playing professionally, a bunch of young men who are studying in South Africa, a bunch of young men who are beginning their lives as incredible men. One of them is my son's soccer coach at his school. It's really beautiful. But as we've done all these other things, God has given us this very rich and vibrant community. This very unique group of people. Kind of different pockets of people that are very strange and very unique and very fun and very sacred. And so I've started to ask God, what is that? One story that highlights the weirdness of our community comes with a cake. So I have a cake here. Our son was diagnosed with autism how many years ago now? He is 12, so about 10 years ago. And we're in the community of South Africa as this happens, not even knowing what autism is about. That's what my book is about, Anguish to Awakening, our journey with Keller, my journey. And I have this group of friends. And I think we got a diagnosis. And maybe the next day, I was at the gym. And I ran into Kate. And she's like, oh, how are you? And I was like, I'm, you know, and I just cried at the gym and told her what happened, and we had this group of women friends, and so she sat with me, she prayed with me, and then maybe a week or two later, she said, we want to get together with you. Come over this night. I show up at her house, and this is the cake for me, and she said, we can do hard things together, and so we're celebrating that. We're at the beginning of a very hard thing, and we will do it together with you. And they had this like key chain thing with quotes and cards, and they just sat with me and cried with me. And I look back at that, think that is so unique to enter into a really difficult time and have people come and just say, we're here in the hard. We're not here for the highlights. We're not here for the good times. We're here now, today, in the hard. And it struck me as so unique. And we've had these kinds of times, these kinds of instances over and over again. And I need to admit that it's not because we're so great at friendship or that we're so great at bringing people around. I think it's a God-given gift. And I think there are some things that God has taught us along the way to help cultivate that community. That's the title today. I can't have a simple, I kept, community doesn't work, initiating community, it's not rich enough. So today's title is Cultivating Koinonia and Orating as Oracles. Because sometimes American or English words don't do it justice. And I want to talk about this. What does it mean to cultivate not just community, not just friends, koinonia, I'll explain that, and how do we operate as oracles? Because I think that's where something happens. You know, I grew up all over the country. I moved a lot. And so only when I became a young adult, I got married, like right after college, three weeks. Don't recommend it, young people. It's worked out, 22 years. But it was crazy. So I jumped into adulthood, went to seminary to become a pastor, and all of a sudden realized many things. Another sermon. But one of them was that I had no idea how to make friends. But I thought I didn't need them. I thought I was like, fine. I was just happy. I was just doing my thing. I was just bebopping around. And I started to realize I needed friends. And it was in this church that I learned the power of friendship and koinonia. We used to have a retreat. Anyone go to koinonia? Koinonia. Yeah. See? We had this retreat and I was dragged to it. Okay, fine. I'll go because I'm like a pastor or whatever. And it was this beautiful time of friendship and connection. And through this place, I learned the importance, the need of koinonia. But you know, a lot of people have never learned this. They've never been in environments where this is pushed, where this is elevated, where this is celebrated. There's lots of statistics on this, but three decades ago, there was a poll that said 3% of Americans had no close friends. 2021, 12% had no close friends. Into the pandemic, 13% of women, 8% of men had lost touch with most of their friends. This is something happening a lot more. Nowadays, some 8% will say they have no friends at all. This is something that's been talked about here. I didn't hear about this because we're in Africa, and in Africa things are done a bit differently. But there's actually a pandemic, an epidemic of loneliness. It's everywhere. And that's a word that just means you're disconnected. You don't have people. You're not anchored. You're not moored by others. And you're just kind of wandering. And it's actually celebrated here. It's just kind of how we do things here. And actually, this epidemic, the Surgeon General says that it affects one out of two adults. And it doesn't just help your mood. It's about your entire body, your entire health. It actually predicts the longevity of your life if you're lonely or if you have people around you. And so when the Surgeon General went around the states, some of the things that he heard were people would tell me all again and again. They felt isolated, invisible, and insignificant. And they said, if I disappear tomorrow, no one will even notice. Now, if this doesn't feel a bit familiar, I'm glad you're here because I have a job for you. Some of us just have people around and we don't know how we did it or why it was given to us. For us, we were just super needy and having a child with autism was one of the big things. We just kind of were like, we're broken, help us. And people came around us, which is what I talk about in the book. But I think most people don't display their need in the way that our family did. We were very vocal about it. But if you feel like you have close community, if you don't know what loneliness feels like, then great. I have a job for you. Because many people feel very, very lonely. Many people feel very, very isolated. All over the world, people are saying that they want community. They want friendship. They want that in their world, but they don't know how to find it. All community is is a sense of belonging, support, shared purpose. And it's a place where the church should be leading. We've got this whole book that is people that did it. I mean, they fought a lot, and they killed each other some, and it was messy, but like they did it. This is the book about it, and yet we are doing it poorly at times. We have a friend who grew up, he grew up doing, his family was doing missions, their South African family, and he is South African, but has moved to New Zealand. He just recently flew from New Zealand to Amsterdam for what? Does anyone know who was in Amsterdam recently? Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift. He has a beautiful family. He's very connected. But people all over the globe have been traveling in the, I don't even know, the millions, the trillions, to see this woman sing songs. Now, I hear, I know every song because of my daughter. I know every word. I know every syllable. They're good. They're fine. They're good. They're good. They're good. They're good. Did I say they were good? That is not why people are going to this concert. They are going because people have over and over and over said something like this. Entering the Erez tour was like stepping into an alternate universe where everyone was bursting with joy. I've never encountered such a warm, friendly, and kind crowd. People have called it transcendental. And it embodies love to people all over the world. It's not about the songs. It's this feeling thousands of people have when they're together. They're connected. They're a community. They're being seen and known. Now, I'm not asking any of you to be Taylor Swift, the next one, although my daughter might be. But I don't think we need a concert to create the sacred art of connection. It can happen anywhere. And God shows us how to do it. And it is a word that's more than community. It is that word koinonia in the New Testament. It's roughly translated fellowship, but it means to share together, to take part. And the same idea is found in another Greek word. That's metakos. And it means to have with or to have together. Now, I'm using sacred New Testament words to describe what those people are saying about Taylor Swift. And what I know God is desperate for people to describe about us. And again, if you don't know the feeling of loneliness, then it is your time. If you do, then I'm here to give you hope. Because it is possible among every single one of us. Being here in South Africa has highlighted to me not how special we are as a family to do what we do, but how God is really great because this group of idiots is running this incredible organization in South Africa because it's God's mission, it's God's dream, it's God's plan, and even we can't stop it with all of our fumbles and our foils and our missteps. When God has a plan, he will use the best of us and the worst of us. His plan is to be together. So I have four, I don't have a pamphlet, I'm from Africa. I don't have a pamphlet, but I do have four very simple points. If you're saying, I don't have that. I have people around, but I don't have a deep connection. Or if you're saying, I have it. This is for you. Because it's time to step into something sacred, something real. And none of my examples, I'm going to tell some stories, not a single one is a Bible study. I have the best Bible study. I want to start there. I have the best Bible study. There are these women, and my sister was just in South Africa, and she was with them. There are these beautiful women that I've known for years and years, and we get together, and we cry, and we laugh, and we pray, and we scream out to God, and it is holy. None of these examples are going to be a church or a Bible study because I want to inspire you to dream of where the church could go beyond this. This is holy, but that world needs this sacred thing. So I want you to dream. Okay, so step one. Step one of creating, cultivating koinonia. We'll end with orating as oracles, but cultivating koinonia. And actually cultivating is step three. So you're not ready for the first letter of this sermon. You ready? Step one, introspection. This sounds so simple, but it is so profound. We went to South Africa to help everyone and to save everyone and to do all the great things for Jesus. And then a few years in, we had a son who was diagnosed with autism. And we were like, no, God, not the plan. We're doing some other stuff. We have a lot to do. We have a big plan. We have a big mission. We're going to serve for Jesus. This has happened time and time again to me. It even happened recently where we have a plan and then God says, no, this is a plan. But we were in desperate need. We didn't even know what autism meant. We had to Google it as we started our journey. But this is the first step of community. It isn't creating a Bible study. It isn't finding people to play pickleball with. The first step is introspection. The first step is what is my need? What is happening in here? Number one, introspection. This came through hardship for us. But as we've walked through that hardship, we've had to be really honest. What is it that we need in a community? Who do we need around us? What does it mean to raise kids and to do this life with people in our world? What does that look like? And we've had to be very introspective. This is something people are talking about, not just Taylor Swift people, but all over the world. I recently heard an interview with this woman, Priya Parker. She wrote this book called The Art of Gathering. So I would have thought, I would never picked up this book. I would have thought it's been about like dinner parties, which I love, or like how to host something cute or how to find the Pinterest board. But for her, The Art of Gathering starts with assessing your needs. Because you cannot create a gathering of people where you are authentically a part if you don't know what it is you need in that group. Creating community begins with your own needs. What is my need here? How am I actually feeling? What do I need from other people? That sounds selfish, sounds maybe anti-Christian, but it's true because if I'm going to authentically show up, that means my needs are going to show up. My desires are going to show up. My dreams are going to show up. My brokenness is going to show up. So I need to show up first with my true self, not who I think I should be, not who I want to be, not how I want to save the world. Again, read Sarah and Casey's whole story. Me, just me. And so that starts with being honest. And as I've wrestled with this idea and asked God, where is this in scripture? I've gone to the early church, but I want to start with what I believe maybe the early church was praying. So in Acts, you see the early church and they are wrestling. There are these, talk about misfits. They were running around with Jesus, getting it all wrong, being on the top, being on the bottom, just being a mess. I love them. And then Jesus got killed on the cross. They all went in hiding. They were scared. They were confused. They were doubting. They were a mess. And then he comes back. He rises and boom, everything changes. What's fun about studying the Bible, this part of the Bible, is there is no proof that he rose. You have an empty grave. You have someone who people said they saw, and then he was gone. But here's the proof. Is this group of people something happened in? I love what Kyle was sharing about what is going to happen now with the youth. We don't need to know what happened at Infuge, although I was ready for like a video of like, Infuge, it was so cool, and here's the water slide, and here's when they raised their hands. I was ready for a video. We don't need a video of what happened in Infuge. We need young people who are radically different and on fire for Jesus. That's all the proof we need. We don't need to see the pictures. We don't need to, the dirty clothes, I'm sure, were also proof when you parents washed them. The proof is in the people, and I believe we'll see that. The princes will be praying for the revival here for the young people. And I pray that you adults will come along with them. That's the proof that something happened. So this early church, something happened. Something happened. And they were radically different. And they're walking around just being wild for Jesus Christ. But I wondered, were they introspective? Because you don't really see it. You kind of just see them like, boom, out there, you know, changing the world. What they would have been doing is reading the Old Testament scriptures. I love that. They would have been wrestling and thinking and praying and talking and saying, God, what is my part in building this new world? And so that would have started with introspection. And so we have a simple scripture that you've heard a million times, but I'm going to highlight a couple light. It says here, search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there's any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. The first step for revival is introspection. And the two words to focus on here are search. And it was a word that was used if miners were searching for gold or if Israelites were searching for new territory. They were searching like their life depended on it. Like not a little devotion in the morning, not 101.5 Christian music as they came through on a Sunday morning, not that kind of searching. I mean, searching like your life depends on it. If you don't show up, I have nothing else. That kind of searching is what the first church was doing. And then they were saying, test me. Test me. What needs to be let go? What needs to come out? What needs to rise? What is my place? What is my message? What is my calling? They were saying, test me, show me, reveal in me anything that is going to keep me from you. And then reveal in me how you want to use me. Test me. Do heart surgery on me as you take me out into this mission. You better believe that that early church was on their knees looking at those Old Testament scriptures, begging God, because the Psalms are the Psalms of that. that's the prayers. That's the way they really prayed. Begging God, search me, test me, and lead me to where you have me. So the first step is very simple. Search me and test me. I have a really great quote about this and what we need to do. There can be no vulnerability without risk. There can be no community without vulnerability. There can be no peace and ultimately no life without community. If the revival stays in here, it will die with me. It might go my whole life. But if revival stays here, then it's not done its job. It's not for you. It's not for me. It's for everyone else. But it takes vulnerability. And it takes risk. And so we start there, which is hard, but important. Step two, take initiative. This is a step also. I'm not talking about church, but I love church. Keep going to small group. Keep going to Bible study. Keep going to youth. But start going out into this world. Because this world has an epidemic of loneliness. This world is on fire. This world is in pain. This world is in need. And there are tons of places for you to go into this world and bring the love of God and create a place of belonging. This year, as I wrote my book, I finished my book last year, I was just praying, God, how can I be your hands and feet? How can I go out? What do I have to give? What have I learned that I could share? And at the end of last year, I started at Keller School, this support group of just parents who had kids with special needs or extra needs. And I just said, come once a month, just come and show up. It wasn't Christian. It was just come. We've had it now for almost a year. Every single time people risk, they're vulnerable, they cry out in need every single time. And every single time people risk they're vulnerable they cry out in need every single time and every single time someone shares faith someone shares hope in a real spiritual way because they're sharing what where they are and we're together meeting that need all of us have something to offer someplace Some place we can step out. Some place where we can open up a hand, open up a place where someone can feel not alone. And it takes us going out. And again, the early church did this. Religion was there. The buildings were there. And the early church went out. And you've read this before, but I'm going to highlight one very simple thing. So Acts 2, 41 through 47. You've heard this before so many times. Those who accepted Jesus' message were baptized, and about 3,000 were added to the number that day. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. And it continues. I'm scared I have a different version. I'll keep going. 47 is all we have. I'll keep going. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. I love the early church. And I mean, in COVID, I found myself just, when we couldn't meet, just like, okay, well, what did that look like when they first started gathering? And what they did was they just went. They would gather and they would pray and then they would go and they would gather and they would eat and they would go and they would gather and they would sing and they would go. They were just going and going and going. And as they were going, there were numbers added daily, weekly, monthly, because they were going. I think God is calling us to go. We all have something in our hand. We all have something we've learned. We all have something we care about. Let's go into the world. It could be as simple as my husband this year, he started doing paddle. You don't do that here. It's like squash and tennis together. And we have this cool paddle place near our house. And he's decided I'm going to be a paddle person. This is a place where Casey is bringing the love of Christ, the light of Christ. He's creating community in this place. But it calls us to go and to create something new. A quote here is by a guy named Bell Hooks. One of the most vital ways we sustain ourselves is by building communities of resistance, places where we know we are not alone. I hope you come here and you know that you're not alone, but just know that there are a lot of people that might need to come somewhere else to know they're not alone before they can come here to know that they're not alone. And so God is asking us to go and to create that. Step three, cultivate. Here we go. So now we've been introspective. We know what's in our hand. We know we're going to go out. Now we begin to cultivate koinonia. So this is where we nurture connections. We have places of connection and we nurture, we care for each other, we ask how are you doing, how are you really doing, what do you really need? We really reach out to the people around us, to the people in our community. Through our story with Keller we saw this time and time and time again where people would go out of their way and come into our life in radical ways to love us, to serve us, to care for us. And again, it wasn't because we were deserving of that. It was just what people felt on their heart from God to do. Sometimes I didn't even remember that it happened. People would tell me later as I was writing my book that they came and they served us and they loved us. And this is what was happening in Acts also. As they're continuing to go out, God was beginning to cultivate something really special. Let's look at Acts 4 now. It's continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. From time to time, those who owned land or houses sold them, bought the money from the sales, and put it to the apostles' feet and was distributed to those who had need. Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas, would be son of encouragement, I'm going to talk about him later, sold a field he owned and bought the money and put it at the apostles' feet. I love this because it is action. It is the church going out. It is the church that starts in here going out in radical ways, in ways no one expected, in ways they weren't being asked to do, and just saying, what can we do? Who can we bring in? Who can we serve? How can we do this differently? That is what church is, and that is cultivating a koinonia that is different and deeper than I think people are used to seeing for the church. I have another verse that I think really highlights this, and this is in Ephesians 4. So this is when Paul is writing to the church in Ephesus, and he's trying to effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called. For one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. This is the God that we are seeking, and this is the places we are invited to cultivate. And over and over again in our world, we saw people come into our lives and just cultivate this oneness, cultivate this spirituality, just to say, we are with you. We are walking with you. We believe in you. We are coming alongside. They built church all over our world outside of church. Just one little way that this happened was on Keller's first day of school. So we'd walk a long journey with Keller and we get to his first day of school. I was terrified. I think he was okay, but I was terrified. And I reached out to our good friends who had kids at the school and said, Keller's starting school. Can you just meet us at the gate? And can we just all walk in together? And so his brother and sister, not from us, and his sister all met him there. And we walked into his school together. And it was a sacred moment of koinonia, of shared space, where we knew we were not alone, where Keller knew he was not alone. And he continued then building that throughout his life there. We need action to build koinonia. We need action to go into the world and build what God is asking us to build. I'm going to end this part and then finish with step four with this quote. Some people think they are in community, but they are only in proximity. True community requires commitment and openness. It is a willingness to extend yourself to encounter and to know the other. We have to enter in and create sacred places everywhere we are. From a very needy family, I can tell you it's life-changing to know that everywhere you step, when you feel alone, when you feel scared, when you feel uncertain, when people show up as the church around you in a terrifying world, it buoys you with a hope that God is with you. I want to finish with just a fourth question. And that is, who isn't here yet? Who isn't here yet? I used to have dreams before I became a pastor of what the church could look like, more than just the church I had experienced, more than just the people I knew. I wanted diversity, and I wanted different religions, and I wanted people who saw the world differently. I've always been just kind of drawn to that. I've always been drawn to just go as far as I could go and see if something sacred is there. And again, I find that in the New Testament. You know, we know now Paul wrote 14 of the books of the New Testament. When he first came on the scene, everyone knew who he was because he was the one who was persecuting Christians. He was the one speaking out against Christians. He was the one who was the dangerous guy. And even though we have this new religion, we're not too sure about this Paul guy. But there was one person who gave him a chance, and that was Barnabas. In the early church, Barnabas gave Paul a chance and created space for Paul to come in. I want to look at this scripture in Acts 9. It's saying Saul here, Acts 9, starting at the end of 17, at the end of 19, sorry. Saul spent several days with his disciples in Damascus. That's Paul. And once he began to preach in synagogues that Jesus is the son of God, all those who heard him were astonished and asked, isn't that that crazy guy who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call his name? And hasn't he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests? Yet Saul grew more and more powerful in baffling the Jews, the religious in Damascus, by proving that Jesus is the Messiah. After many days he had gone by, there was a conspiracy against the Jews to kill him. But Saul learned of their plan. Day and night they kept close watching the city gates in order to kill him. So it wasn't just a weird guy. It was someone they thought was dangerous to their faith. But his followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the wall. Good friends. When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus. So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. This person who had to be given a place at the table because religion didn't accept him, didn't understand him, but he had a radical encounter with Jesus Christ. This person was given a space by Barnabas and went to the farthest places, the craziest spaces in all of the world to tell people about Jesus Christ. And I want us to ask, as we dream about Koinonia, who is not here yet? Who is not here yet? I love being here and seeing so many familiar faces, but God has churned in my heart this question over and over again, especially being in South Africa. Who is not at the table yet? Who is not in the doors yet? Who has not heard of Jesus yet? That is where we really begin to cultivate koinonia and the second part, where we begin to operate as oracles. And it's simply in this verse of Peter 4.11. This is my last verse. And it says in Peter 4 11, if anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides so that in all things, God may be praised through Jesus Christ to him be the glory and the power forever and ever. In other versions, it says that, as they, it says they should speak. It speaks of being an oracle. So if Jesus was the word, he then asked us to be the words of God. That's what an oracle means. That we would live as the words of God. And I want to encourage you that the way that we do this is go into places, exist in places where God isn't as clear yet, where God isn't always present in the way we're used to seeing him. As I said, I always prayed about this idea of being around people of other faiths, of other nations, of other backgrounds. And through Keller, who this book is about, he has brought us these friends who are the weirdest people you have ever met. And they are every religion. We say that we're a big joke because it's me, I'm a pastor, and they call me Pastor Prince, and then there's a Wiccan, and there's a Jew, and there is a Buddhist, and there's an agnostic, and there's just our friend Lisa. And so we are like this tribe. And we have a WhatsApp group, and it's called Pastor Prince's Free Range Women. And we are this weird tribe of people. And within this tribe, something holy happens. learned years ago this this idea called holy envy that you go to other people not to tell them what's right and they're wrong not to just change them but you just talk you just open up and you see where something holy is within them something sacred is within them and so now with this group of women, we have had many, many, many holy places. Even in just this past year, the agnostic couple, I married them in December and they were very happy for me to talk about Jesus as I was there officiant. My Jewish friend Emma, her mom died also in December. She asked me to spread the ashes and do a ceremony for her. And my Wiccan friend, her mom has Alzheimer's and she's slowly leaving this earth. And she has asked me to pastor her mom and to pastor her and to do the sermon and the service when her mom passes. And they asked me to tell their kids about Jesus because there's something about that Jesus and there's something about you guys and there's something here. And I ask about Buddhism. And I ask about the Wiccan faith. And I ask about the Jewish faith. But I know that within me is an oracle. And coming from me is an oracle. Not because I'm special. But because God is within me. And the scripture says we have the hope of glory within us. So we can go anywhere. We don't have to fear that our light will be diluted. We don't have to fear that our God will be tamed. We don't have to wonder if he will fully reign because he will forever and ever reign through Jesus Christ our Lord. But we are invited to go into the world as oracles and bring that light to all the places that are needed, and that's everywhere. God is saying go into the schools as oracles. Go into your workplace as oracles. Go into your home and your family as oracles. Be a light from within with what God has done within your heart. Nothing can diminish that. That's what I love again about the early church, and I'll finish here. The early church went into all these places, and they kept saying, you're wrong. We're going to kill you. That can't be. This Jesus can't be. And they said it again and again, all I can say is this Jesus who I've met is my king, and he's my Lord. And nothing could diminish that. One of my heroes in life is Desmond Tutu, and he says this, that we must be ready to learn from one another, not pretending that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God. Because here's what I'm learning. God is bigger and he's greater and he's more profound than what we think. And we have a broken world that's in desperate need of this God and this light and this community. But we need to dream differently and we need to see differently. We need to go differently. We need to cultivate koinonia and we need to operate as oracles. So I want to end here. What do you dream? Coming to America, people are always asking us like, what do you think? And what's your perspective? And what do you think's going on? I don't want to look at what I see. I want to look at what God still needs and what God still wants to do and what God wants to create. And again, that's what Kyle did this morning in just a few moments. We could have left after that. God is ready for us to dream about places of koinonia and us operating as oracles in a world that is in desperate need of his light and his love. So I want to invite us to dream what that could look like and see that revival that Kyle's talking about in all the places that need it most. Let's pray. God, I thank you that you are a great God, that you are not limited to our words or our songs or our prayers or how we've seen you before. God, you are greater. And I pray, God, that you would move within us to help us to dream of a new community, of new closeness, of a new connection, of new light, of new love. And help us to be your oracles. Help us to be as the early church who was pushing farther and farther to tell people of the love of you, Jesus Christ. May we not hold back in what we know you can do and how we know we can shine your light all over the world. We love you, God. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. So good to see everybody. And it sounds like to me that only the singers come during the summertime. You guys were singing great. And that was really always love it when the church sings together like that. If I haven't gotten to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby. After the service, you have dropped in. If this is your first time, you've dropped into the middle of a series called Idols that's loosely based on a book by Tim Keller called Counterfeit Gods. If you haven't picked up a copy of that, we are out, but they are competitively priced on Amazon and will be brought right to your door for ease of purchase. So I would encourage you to grab one of those and kind of read through that as we finish up the series. This is week four. Next week is the last week. Week five, we're going to talk about comfort next week, which I'm very excited to talk about that because I think it's something that every American alive needs to hear. And I think it's going to be an important one next week. This week, we're looking at the source idol of control. And when I say source idol, one of the more interesting ideas that Tim Keller puts forward in his book is the idea that we have surface idols and source idols. Surface idols are the ones that are visible to us and people outside of us, a desire for money, a desire for friends, a desire for a perfect family, for appearances, things like that that are a little bit more visible. Source idols are things that exist in our heart beneath the surface that fuel our desire for those surface idols. And he identifies four. Power, which I preached about two weeks ago. That's the one that I primarily deal with. And then approval, preached about last week that's what he deals with a lot that is not one that that's probably the one I worry about the least and then control this week and comfort next week so as we approach this idea of control in our life I want us to understand what it is and what it means if we struggle with this source idol. And again, an idol is anything that becomes more important to us in our life than Jesus. It's something that we begin to prioritize over Jesus and we pour out our faith and our worship to that thing instead of to our Creator. About four or five years ago, I was in my therapist's office. I was seeing a counselor at the time just doing general maintenance, which I highly recommend to anyone. It's probably time for me to get back in there and let them tinker around a little bit. But one day I got there and whenever I would go in and sit down on the couch, what a cliche, but whenever I would go in and sit down on the couch, he would always ask me what's been going on, what's happened since I last saw you. That was always the first question, so I knew that was the question. So in the car, in my head, I'm thinking, how am I going to answer him? I can tell him about this thing and this thing and this thing. I think that'll be enough. Well, I'll start the bidding there, and we'll see where it goes. So I go in, I sit down and he asked me the question, how's it been going for you? What's been happening? And so I told him my three things, five or eight minutes. I don't know. And I get done with it. And he just looks at me and he kind of cocks his head and he goes, why'd you tell me those things? And the smart aleck in me is like, because you're a counselor, because this is the deal? Because that's what I'm supposed to do? What do you want me to do? But I said, well, I knew that you were going to ask me what happened, and that's what happened. So I told you those things. And I don't remember the exact conversation, but he pushed back on me and he goes do you do you ever enter a conversation without knowing what you're going to talk about and what the other person is probably going to talk about and I said not if I can help it I always plan ahead whenever I have a conversation or meeting coming up I always think through all the different ways it could go and how I want to respond because I don't want to be caught off guard in the moment. And he said, how many times are you in a situation that's taken you by surprise and you didn't expect to be there? I said, very rarely. And he goes, yeah, I think maybe you've got an issue with control. Because you have a hard time not being the one driving the bus, don't you? And I was like, you have a hard time not being the one. And I kind of thought about it, and I said, my gosh, is it possible that this need for control is so ingrained into me that the reason I told you those stories is so that I could control where the conversation went and we would talk about things I was willing to open up about and I could steer away from the areas that I wasn't willing to talk about. He said some effect of, and circle gets the square. Good job, buddy. And so this need for control that some of us all have to varying degrees can be so sneaky. Sometimes we don't even recognize it in ourselves until someone points it out in us. So let me point it out in you. Some people deal with this so much that it shows up in every aspect of their life. For me, it's relational, it's conversational. I don't want to look dumb. If someone has something negative to say, I want to be gracious and not be caught off guard, whatever it is. But for some of us, we're so regimented and ordered that we have our life together in every aspect of it. We have our routine. We wake up at a certain time. We go to bed at a certain time. Our kids do certain things on certain days. If you have a laundry day, you're gaining on it. If you make your bed, you're gaining on it. Like there are things that we do. We have a workout routine that we do. We have the way that we eat. We have the places that we go. We have our budget. We have our work schedule. We are very regimented. And a lot of that can come from this innate need to be in control of everything. I think about the all-star mom in the PTA, the one who runs a better house than you, who drives a cleaner car than you, and who makes cupcakes better than you, that mom. And her kids are always dressed better than your kids. This is this need for control. And if you're not yet sure if this is you, if this might be something that you do in your life where everything needs to be ordered, and if it's not ordered, your whole life is in shambles. I heard in the last year of this phrase that I had not heard before. I'm in the last year of the Gen Xers. I think the millennials coined this phrase. You boomers, unless you have millennial children, you probably have not heard this, but maybe you can identify it. It's a term called the Sunday Scaries. Anybody ever heard that term? You don't have to raise your hand and out yourself, but the Sunday Scaries. Okay. Now for me, I have the Saturday Scaries because about three times every Saturday, I kind of jolt myself into consciousness and ask if I know what I'm preaching about in the morning. So that's, that's what I have for me. Sunday scaries are when you take Sunday night to get ready for your week. And on Sunday afternoons and evenings, you begin to feel tremendous anxiety because the meals aren't prepped and the clothes aren't washed and the schedule isn't done and the things aren't laid out and the laundry isn't all the way ready and you start to worry, if I don't, I've got this limited amount of time, if I don't start my week right, everything's going to be off, it's going to be the worst and so you get the Sunday scaries and you experience stress on Sunday night. If that's you, friends, this might be for you. And when we do this, when we make control our idol, when we order our lives so that we manage every detail of it. And listen, I want to say this before I talk about the downside of it. Those of us who do live regimented lives and who are in control of many of the aspects of them, that ability comes from a place of diligence and discipline. That's a good thing. That's a muscle God has blessed you with that he has not blessed others with, but we can take it too far. And we can allow that to become what we serve. And we can allow control over the things in our life to become more important than the other things in our life and to become more important than Jesus himself. And here's what happens when we allow this sneaky idol to take hold in our lives. The idol of control makes us anxious and the people around us resentful. The idol of control makes us anxious and the people around us resentful of the control we try to exert over them. I'll never forget, it's legendary in my group of buddies. I've got a good group of friends, eight guys, and we go on a trip about every other year. And one year we were in another city and one of my buddies named Dan just decided that he was the group mom on this trip. And I don't really know why he decided that, but he was bothering us the whole time. Don't do that. Don't go here. Where are you guys going? What are you guys talking about? Come over here. Be part of the group. Put your phone down. Let's go. Like just bossing us around the whole time. And we got mad at him. He spent the whole trip anxious. He didn't have as good a time as he could. And we, we spent the trip frustrated with Dan to the point where whenever he starts it now, we just call him mom and tell him to shut up. When we try to control everything in our life, we make ourselves anxious and we make the people around us resentful. We make ourselves anxious because we're trying to control everything. Everything's got to go according to plan. And now that we've structured this life, we have to protect this life with all the decisions that we're making and see all the threats, real and imagined, to this perfect order that we might have. And then the people around us grow to resent us because we're trying to exert unnecessary control over them as well. And it's really not a good path to be on. And the best example I can find in the Bible of someone who may have struggled with this idol of control and made herself anxious and everyone around her resentful is Sarah in the event with Hagar. Now, I'm going to read a portion of this, Genesis 16, 1 through 6, to kind of tell the story of Sarah and Hagar and Abraham. A couple bits of context. First of all, I know that at this point in the story, technically, her name is Sarai and his name is Abram, okay? For me, it feels like saying the nation Columbia with a Spanish accent all of a sudden after I've been talking in southern English for 30 minutes. So I'm not just going to break out into Hebrew. Okay, so they're going to be Sarah and Abraham, and you're going to bear that cross with me. And then what's happening in the story is in Genesis chapter 12, God calls Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans. He was in the Sumerian dynasty. He says, I want you to grab your family. I want you to move to this place I'm going to show you that became Canaan, the promised land in modern day Israel. And when he got there in Genesis 12, God made him three promises. He spoke to Abraham and he said, hey, this land is going to be your land and your descendants' land forever. Your descendants will be like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore, and one of your descendants will bless the whole earth. He made those three promises to Abraham. Can I tell you, the rest of the Bible hinges on those promises. If we don't understand those promises, we can't understand the rest of Scripture. But all of those promises require a descendant to come true. Sarah and Abraham were getting on up there in age, maybe in their 80s. And Sarah had still not born Abraham a child. She was barren or he was impotent. And she begins to get concerned enough about this that she takes matters into her own hands. She arrests control away from God's sovereign plan. And this is what happens in Genesis chapter 16, verses 1 through 6. We're going to read it together. I don't see any problems so far. Okay, a little recap here. I, for one, am shocked that the story went that way. After she said, hey, here's what you should do. I have an Egyptian slave. You should sleep with her. She'll carry a baby, and then we'll raise that as our own child. I don't know what Abraham's moral compass was at this point in his story, what laws of God he had been equated with and not. I don't know how aware he was of the myriad egregious sins happening in this one instance. But this goes exactly how you'd think it would go. After a wife, likely much older than her slave, says, why don't you sleep with my slave and you all have a child together? And then what happens? She gets anxious. She gets resentful. She sees that Hagar is haughty towards her. And then she begins to resent Abraham, blames it on him. This is your fault. Excuse me. I'm sure it was your idea. And then runs Hagar off. By taking control in this situation, she made herself anxious about everyone around her, and she made everyone around her resentful of who she was. You can see it in Abram's response in verse 6. He says, listen, she's yours. You deal with it. Don't come to me with those problems. He's tired of dealing with it. And as I was thinking about the sin of Sarah, and as I was thinking about what it's like when we take control of our own life, when we kind of take the wheel from God and we say, I've got it from here, you can ride passenger, I'm going to be in control and orchestrate everything. That what we're really doing when we take control is this. When we insist on taking control, we just get in God's way. We just get in the way. When we insist on taking control, we just get in God's way. What did Sarah do? She got in his way. He had a story that he was writing with Isaac. He knew exactly when he would, God knew exactly when he was going to allow Abraham to make Sarah pregnant. He knew exactly how the rest of the story was going to go. Ishmael doesn't need to exist. That root of Ishmael doesn't need to exist. If Sarah would have just been patient and waited on God and his timing, if she had just been patient and waited on God to write the story that he intended, if she waited on his sovereignty and his will, but she got tired of waiting, she thought it should be happening differently than this, so she took control. And as a result of that control, we have this split in the line of Abraham that has echoed down through the centuries that we're still dealing with today, over which we are still warring right now in Abraham's promised land because Sarah took control when she wasn't supposed to. She got in the way of the story that God was wanting to write. And the more I thought about that, what it's like to be getting in God's way when he's trying to direct our life the way he wants it to go, I thought about this. Now, you can raise your hand for this one. Who in here loves themselves a good cooking show? I love a good cooking show. Just me and Jeff and Karen. Perfect. Nobody else likes cooking shows. You're liars. I love a good cooking show. At our house, the things that are on the TV are house hunters, cooking shows, and sports. That's it. By the way, my three-year-old son, John, calls all sports golf. Yesterday I was watching soccer, and he said, Daddy, you watch golf. And in our house, we have a rule. When a kid is making a dumb mistake like that, we do not correct them because it's adorable, and we want them to do it as long as possible. Like the days gone by when, to Lily, anything that had occurred before today was last-her-day. Could have been last year. Could have been last week. Could have been a couple hours ago. It happened last-her-day, and it was great. At some point, she figured it out, and now we don't like her as much. But I love a good cooking show. And my favorite chef, no one will be surprised by this if you know me, is Gordon Ramsay. I really like Gordon Ramsay. I like watching him cook. I like watching him interact. I think he's really great. And so I watch most of what he puts out. And I was thinking about this, getting in God's way. And I think this fits. Let's pretend that at an auction, at a charity auction from Ubuntu, which would be a great prize, I won a night of cooking with Gordon Ramsay. First of all, I was given a significant raise. Second of all, I've spent it all on this night of cooking with Gordon Ramsay. And the night comes around. I'm so excited. I would be thrilled to do this. It would really, really be fun. I do like to cook. And so let's say that night finally rolls around and I go to his kitchen and I walk in and all the ingredients are out on the counter. And he hasn't told me what he's going to make, but all the ingredients are there. And what I don't know is he's planning to make a beef Wellington. That's one of his signature dishes. I've only had one beef Wellington in my life. I loved it. I would kill to have one that was cooked by him for me. That would be amazing. But the deal is, I look at the ingredients and he's going to teach me how to do it. So he's going to walk me through it step by step. First, you want to sear the loin. Get that, get the skillet nice and hot, sear it. Then you rub the mustard on it. Now dice up some mushrooms. And I don't know where we're going or what we're doing. I'm just following him step by step doing what I'm supposed to do. And his goal is to show me how to make a beef wellington that we've done together. Great. Except stupid me sees the ingredients, sees the steak, sees some green beans, and I go, you know what, Gordon? Actually, I've got this. It's your night to cook with Nate. What I'd like you to do is just go sit behind the bar on the other side. Let's just chat it up. I'd like to hear some of your stories. I'm going to make you steak and green beans. And I take those ingredients, and I get in his way, and I go make overdone steak with soggy green beans, and I slide it across the table to him. Having no idea what I just missed out on. Because I insisted on taking control and making what I thought I should make with those ingredients. I think that when we insist on turning all the dials in our life ourselves, taking control of every aspect of our life. That what we do is very similar to being in the kitchen with a master chef and telling him we've got this. We see the ingredients available to us and we make the thing we think we're supposed to make. Having no idea that he had so much better plans for those ingredients than what we turned out. And as I was talking about this sermon and this idea with my wife, Jen, who has a different relationship with this source idol than I do, she pointed out to me, she said, you know what they're trying to make? If your idol is peace, you're trying to make in that kitchen or if your idol is control. She said, we're trying to make peace. People with the idol of control, you know what they're trying to do with that control? They're trying to create a peace for themselves. They're trying to create rest for themselves. If this is your surface, if this is your source idol, and you try to control every aspect of your life, chances are that what's really motivating you to do that is a desire for peace in all the areas of your life. It's why your spirit can't feel at rest until your bed is made. And this is true. Why did I think of the things that I wanted to say to the counselor? Because I didn't want to get sidetracked. I didn't want to get surprised. I wanted to walk into that office with peace. Why do we prepare ourselves for the situations that we're going to face? Because we want to be peaceful in the midst of those situations. Why do we prepare for the week and get the Sunday scaries? Because we want to enter the week feeling at peace, feeling ready to go, feeling that we are in a place of rest and not a place of hurry. But here's the problem with the peace that we create with our control. It's fragile. It's threatened. It's uncertain. It's always at risk. We can do everything we can to create peace in our life with the way that we control every aspect of it. But the reality is we are one phone call away. We are one bad night away. We are one accident in the driveway away. One bad business decision. Two bad weeks of just being in a bad spot away from ruining all that peace. There are so many things that happen in life that are outside of our control that any peace that we have created for ourself is only ever infinitesimally small and thin and fragile. And when we live a life, even achieving peace, but when we live that life of a threatened peace so that now we have peace, we've done it, we've orchestrated, we've controlled, we have what we want, everything is ordered as it should be. Things are going well. Then where does our worrying mind go to? All the things that could possibly happen to disturb this peace. All of the threats real and imagined to my peaceful Monday. And then here's what we do. I know that we do it. I've seen it happen. Then we pick a hypothetical event that could possibly happen three months from now to threaten the peace that I've created, and we decide to stress about that today. And it's not even happened yet. But we're already jumping ahead because our anxiety monster needs something to eat. And I am reminded with this idea of a threatened and a fragile peace of the verse we looked at in our series, The Treasury of Isaiah, Isaiah 26.3. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. Isaiah says, and God promises, that he will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. And so what's our part in that peace? It's trusting in Jesus and not ourselves. And it occurs to me, I'm not saying this for sure, because it could just be poor planning, but I kind of believe in the Holy Spirit and the way that he times things out. I've seen over and over and over again how we've had a sermon planned for eight months, and I'll preach that sermon on that day, and someone will say, this is my first time at Grace. I'm so glad I heard that sermon. That's exactly what I needed. It's the Holy Spirit. I know that we just visited this verse. And I know that we just talked a couple weeks ago about a fragile peace. But maybe we're doing it again because some of us just need to hear it twice. Maybe some of us in this room need to hear this again and let the Holy Spirit talk to us again and be honest with God about what we're holding dear to our heart and what we may be idolizing without having realized it. Because what God promises us is a perfect peace. You know what perfect peace is? Perfect peace is an unthreatened peace. Here's what perfect peace is. Jen's family used to have a lake house down in Georgia on Lake Oconee. And my favorite thing to do when I would go down there was to kind of separate from everybody, big surprise, and go and lay in the hammock right next to the lake. Because when I got in that hammock, and I could hear the occasional boat putter by several hundred yards away, and I could hear the waves slowly just kind of lapping against the wood at the edge of that lake, and I could hear the birds and the sound of the lake, that was all I could hear. It drowned out everything else. It never seemed to matter what was happening in life when I laid down in that hammock. Everything was at peace and everything was okay. When we trust in God's sovereignty and in God's peace instead of our own, it's like laying down in that hammock next to the lake. Everything's going to be okay. Everything's going to be fine. God is in control. He knew this would happen, and I trust in him. I don't know what story he's writing. I don't know where he's going. This is not what I would have made with these ingredients, but I know that he wants what's best for me, and he wants what's best for the people that I love, so I trust him with the results of this. It's laying in that hammock and trusting in the sovereignty of God. Perfect peace is trusting in God's sovereignty, in God's goodness, in the truth that we know that he always, always, always wants what's best for us. And that he will bring that about in this life or the next. And we can trust in that. So, here's what I would say to you. My brothers and sisters who may struggle with control. I'm not here this morning to make you feel bad for your worry or your anxiety or to make fun of you for your Sunday scaries. I think all of those things are natural and a normal part of human life. It would be weird if you never worried about anything. I think it's a good goal to grow towards. But I'm not here to make you feel badly about that. But here's what I would say. If you're a person who's given to worry and anxiety and seeks to exert control, and when you don't have it, it starts to freak you out a little bit, that doesn't sound like perfect peace to me. That doesn't sound like perfect peace to me. That doesn't sound like laying in the hammock next to the lake trusting in God's protected peace rather than trusting in your fragile, unprotected, risky peace. You see? And so what I would encourage you to do is to see things this way. Excessive worry is a warning light. Excessive worry on the dashboard of your life is a warning light that should cause you to wonder what's really going on and what you're really worried about. A few weeks ago, I talked about those of us with the issue of power being a source idol and how that begets anger, and I said the same thing. Anger is the flashing warning light for us. When I'm having days when I'm excessively angry or frustrated all the time, I need to stop and pause and go, what is the source of this, and why am I so upset, and why do I have a hair trigger? What's going on with me? And wrestle that to the ground. For my brothers and sisters who who struggle with control maybe more than you realize before you walk in the door excessive worry and I don't know what excessive worry is I can't define that for you that's that's between you and God to decide how much is too much but here's what I do know excessive worry is a warning light and here's. And here's what it's telling you. It's telling you I am not existing in perfect peace. And what's our part of perfect peace? To keep our mind steadfast by trusting in him. So somewhere along the way, we've started trusting in ourself a little bit more to grab those ingredients and make what we want. Somewhere along the way, we've started taking control back from God, trusting in our sovereignty, not his, and beginning to create our own peace that is fragile and stressful. And so the question to ask yourself when that warning light starts to go off is simply this, whose peace am I trusting? I don't know what to tell you to do. Because I'll be honest with you. Like I said, I talked this sermon through with Jen. And she kind of said, yeah, all that's true. Okay, I get it. I agree. All true. What do I do? How do we not do those things? How do we not worry more than we should? What are my action steps? And I said, well, what advice would you give to so-and-so? She goes, I don't know. You're the pastor, so I'm asking you. Here's what I would simply go back to, is this question of whose peace am I trusting? Am I trusting in the peace that I've created? Or are my eyes focused on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith, so that my mind is steadfast in him and I'm trusting in his peace? Whose peace are you trusting? My prayer for you is that you'll experience the rest of trusting in God's peace. And as I enter into prayer for you, there's a prayer that I found in a devotional that I have from the Common Book of Prayer from 1552. It's amazing to me how timeless the truths of faith and spirituality and Christianity are. And how this could be written today and still every bit as accurate. But I'm going to read this prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. And then we're going to enter into a time of prayer together and then we'll worship. Oh God, from you all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works proceed. Give to your servants that peace which the world cannot give, that both our heart may be set to obey your commandments, and also that by you we, being defended from the fear of our enemies, may pass our time in rest and quietness through the merits of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen. Father, we love you. And we thank you that through your Son, we can have perfect peace. God, we are sorry for not claiming this gift that you offer us more readily. God, we are sorry for grabbing the ingredients and trying to make our own peace and write our own story. God, we are sorry that we sometimes trust in our wisdom and our sovereignty more than yours. Lord, I pray that no matter where we sit with this idol or how we might wrestle with it, that we would leave this place more desirous of you than when we came. And God, for my brothers and sisters that do struggle, that do find it difficult to give up control, that do find themselves battling that demon of worry sometimes, God, would you just speak to them? Would you let them know that you're there, that you love them, That you have a plan for them that they don't see but that they can trust? And would you give us the obedience to just do the next thing that you're asking us to do, not worrying about what the result is going to be, but worrying about just walking in lockstep with you? Father, make us a people of peace so that we might give that peace to others and that they might know you. In Jesus' name, amen.