Sermons tagged with Anxiety

All right, well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here with us this morning, especially on a holiday weekend. I always joke around about you being a better Christian if you're here on a holiday weekend, and while I do believe that is true, I also think that it's just really nice and impressive when it is a holiday weekend and you choose to make church a part of that. So that's touching for me and I think good for you on that. And good for you if you're watching online and making it a point to be with us in spirit this Sunday as well. We did it. We made it to the end of the summer. This is the last in our series for this summer called 27. We'll pick it back up next summer when we jump into Paul's letters and finish in Revelation. So this is the last one that we're going to do. We're focused on the book of Jude this morning. And as if you guys needed more evidence that my wife, Jen, is a better Christian than me, when she asked what the sermon was on this week or which one I was going to be writing for this week, I said, Jude. And she goes, what are you going to do it on? And I'm like, I don't know. It's Jude. Like, I don't know the last time I read Jude. And she was like, well, I love this verse. You should do it on this one. And I'm like, of course she knows a random verse from Jude. So that was humbling. And you'd be better off if she were your pastor. But you have to settle for me this morning until she can be convinced otherwise. When I sat down to study Jude, I saw very quickly that it was kind of a microcosm of the entire Bible, of one of the dynamics happening all through Scripture and in the way that we understand scripture. So I'm starting us off here. Jude is a perfect depiction of both the depth and approachability of the Bible. Jude is this kind of microcosm and a picture of both the depth and the approachability of the Bible. Jude in verses 5 through 19, that's 15 verses. I know that's 15 verses because I counted on my fingers to make sure that I would not be wrong when I said 15 verses. In those 15 verses, there are 18 references to other scriptures, to Old Testament scriptures, and even apocryphal writings. Within just those 15 verses in Jude, 18 references to Old Testament scriptures and apocryphal writings. Some of the quotes are from the book of Enoch. For many of you in the room this morning, you didn't even know that was a book. You didn't even know the book of Enoch exists. It's an apocryphal literature. You'll find it, I think, in the Catholic Bible, but you don't find it in the Protestant Bible. But in Jude, there's references to the book of Enoch. There's, again, 18 references and 15 verses. And so if you're looking at Jude and you're trying to understand Jude, which by the way, Jude is probably short for Judah, which was a brother, a half-brother of Jesus. So if you're trying to understand his letter to the churches, how could you possibly understand Jude without understanding those 18 references? And scholars believe that the audience that he wrote this letter to, the churches in Asia Minor, they were people of a Jewish background and had grown up with a Jewish faith. They understood these references. It was like when I would refer to you and I would say, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. You know that, John 3.16. Most of you can fill in the rest of that. These references to them were that ubiquitous and that identifiable. And so as I'm studying Jude, again, I think to myself, how in the world could we seek to understand this book if we don't have any bearing for the 18 references found in the middle part of it that make it come to life and make it understandable. And this, I feel, is a depiction, too, of the depth of Scripture. I'm 42 years old. I've spent almost my entire life studying Scripture. I grew up in a Christian home. My dad was a deacon. He was important and fancy. I went to church every time the doors were open. And this was back in the day, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. I went to the church so often that my pastor felt totally comfortable calling me out in the middle of Sunday night service and telling me to quit talking. And then I would get in big trouble. I got spankings, is what I got. I would get struck with objects when I got home for that offense. Back when we raised kids right, you know. That's right. That's right, Jeffy. Let's let it all hang out here on Labor Day Sunday. Who cares? Beat your kids, Jeff just said. Don't do that. Don't do that. Totally off the rails. Jeff, this is your fault. Shut up, Jeff. But I grew up in church. I did Awanas. I memorized all the verses. I don't know if you guys did that when you were kids, but I memorized verses every week. I memorized them for the test, and then I promptly forgot them because I was eating candy right after that and then playing games. But some of them stick because sometimes I'll start to quote a verse, and it'll be in the King's English, and I'm like, oh, that's from Awana. That's from KJV back in the day, right? I went to Christian private school. I went to Christian high school. I've had a Bible class. I went to Bible college and studied theology. I got a master's degree in more theology. I've studied the Bible my whole life. Now, not as hard as I should have all the time, or maybe ever, I don't know. Not as consistently as I would like to all the time, but far and away, for the balance of 42 years, I've studied God's Word. And I'd be the first to tell you, there are myriad 42-year-olds who know way more about this than I do. But I can also say that I've devoted a life to studying it. And here's what I know. I'm embarrassed by how little I know. I'm humbled by how much more there is in this. I feel like God's word is an ocean and I've waded into it up to my waist and been like, yeah, okay. I think I get the gist. You can spend your whole life plumbing the depths of these pages and you will never get to the bottom. You will never stop learning from it. It will never return null and void. It will never not have more layers. You will never not see more connections, and there's so much of the Bible that's really impossible to fully understand without a grasp of the rest of the Bible. You can never understand the book of Galatians if you don't understand the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. You just can't do it. It's why, it's one of the reasons I say as often as I can, it's one of the reasons that one of the traits of grace is that we are people of devotion. It's why I say that 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 time in prayer. Because the bottom of this is unfindable. The depths of this are unknowable. And some of you have spent your life studying it too. And you know I'm right. Your heads are nodding the most because you've done it. And it always leaves you wanting more. So there is a degree to which approaching the Bible feels a little bit like approaching Jude. You could read Jude on your own with no background and with no study, and you probably wouldn't recognize but a couple of the references, if any, in verses 5 through 19. You don't know what you don't know. You don't know that you're not getting the depths of it. And sometimes I think people get intimidated by the Bible and how deep it is and how much there is to learn because I know good and well. Not all of you grew up being exposed to scripture every day. Some of us, when I say, and you're good believers, you love Jesus, you love the word, but when I say turn to Galatians, you're like, I don't know yet where that is. I want to know, I just don't know yet. And you go to small groups and there's other in the small group, and they're not professional Christians. They don't get paid to be a Christian like I do. That's all being a pastor is, is I just went pro with my Christianity. I'm still doing the same things that you guys should all be doing. I just get paid for it. I don't know if that's right, but I do. And you're sitting there in your Bible study with the other amateur Christians, and somebody knows way more than you. Right? They just know the Bible. We have them in every small group. And maybe you think to yourself, gosh, I don't know how I will ever understand that much. It just, it can feel intimidating. But that's also why I think it's beautiful that Jude depicts the approachability of Scripture as well. Because sure, the Bible is complicated. It's challenging. It's difficult to understand. It's unmasterable. And yet, some of the messages that come from it are so simple as to make it immediately approachable. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. It's the whole gospel. That's all of Romans compacted into a sentence or two. Right? Jesus says this new commandment I give you, go and love one another as I have loved you. That's it. That's all the law and the prophets compacted into this one commandment. I don't really understand the rest of the Bible, but I believe in Jesus and I can go love people in his name. Okay. Then you get it. And so in Jude, again, we have this depiction of the depth of scripture, but also the approachability. Because even if you don't get the references from verses 5 to 19, there's a simple message in Jude that we can all understand. Sorry, I had to crunch the ice without you guys hearing. And that's what I want to look at now, is this simple message in Jude, and we're going to spend the rest of our time on it. What is this message that Judah, the half-brother of Jesus, wanted to give us, and why did he write this short little note and it get tacked into the end of the Bible as the penultimate book? Well, I think we see the beginning of this purpose in verse 3. This is the simple message of Jude. This is why he wrote the book. And even if we have no context, we can pretty much understand what this means. In verse 3, Jude says this, Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. So here's why he wrote the book of Jude. He says that he had been eager to write to them concerning their common salvation. And so a lot of scholars believe that Jude was trying to write a letter that looked more like Romans or Hebrews, something long and formal where it kind of outlined this faith that they would share. And that's what he was eager to do, and that's what he was working on. But another matter began to press, and he thought it was so important that he put that large work on hold so he could write this short note to them. And what he wants them to do is, I wanted to talk to you about our common faith. I wanted to lay out all the things that we believe to give you some clarity. I don't have time for that now, so I'm just writing to you to urge you to contend for the faith. Why? Well, because in verses 5 through 19, what we learn is that there's false teachers. The early church, they didn't have an agreed upon Bible, an agreed upon book, agreed upon doctrines. They didn't have denominations in theology. They just had their faith and understanding in Jesus, which means that the populace in the church was very easily deceived, very easily misdirected in the wrong ways. And so the churches had false teachers that were entering into them, gaining clout, proclaiming that they knew the teachings of Jesus. And yet the morality of those teachers did not line up with the words that they were teaching. They were teaching a kind of hedonism that's clearly out of step with scripture and with God's will for his people. And so Jude was writing the churches to say, hey, you can't listen to those guys. They're trying to steer you in the wrong direction. They're wrong. You need to contend for the faith. And what's really interesting is I was thinking about it, at least this is interesting to me, is when in churches, especially in the South, you use phrases like we need to contend for the faith. That usually means go out and fight a culture war against the waves of culture that are trying to bash down and beat down the truth of Scripture. But that's nowhere in here with Jude. It's contend for the faith. Where? Well, it looks like, based on what he says, within yourself. Contend for your own faith. Fight for your true and sincere faith. Because God doesn't need culture warriors going out there fighting for the faith. Contend for it in your own heart and then guess what? You're abiding in Christ and you'll produce much fruit. Contend for it here and you will be who you need to be as we operate in culture. So I believe that Jude is telling us to contend for our faith. And the simple message of Jude then is to contend for the faith with your whole life. Contend for the faith with your whole life. And we're going to read the verses that make me think this is true here in a second. And really this is kind of a launching pad into what I'm going to preach about next week when we do our big reveal Sunday. Next week, we're going to show the plans for the new building. If it's your first Sunday with us, then you have no idea what we're talking about. But we have four acres over off of Litchford Road, and we're looking to build there. And so we're going to share the plans with the church next week. And I'm very, very excited to do that. And the message that I'm going to preach is basically this. We have to contend for the gospel with our whole life. Contending for the gospel, contending for your faith, takes everything you got, and you can't let up. And that is the simple message of Jude. It's interesting to me. Sometimes, I don't know if you guys get to see this from your perspective, but from my perspective, as I just kind of, we map out series and what we're going to teach and what we're going to cover. There's so often that God has woven things together and woven themes in week in and week out to kind of prepare our hearts for things that are coming and help our hearts respond to things that have happened. And I see him weaving things together as we approach next week as well. But I believe that's the simple message of Jude. Contend for the faith with your whole life. And I believe it because of what he says at the end. So he says, contend for the faith. Here's why. Here are the threats. Verses 5 through 19. And then he says, if you're going to contend for that faith in yourself, here's how you do it. But you, beloved, verse 20, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life and have mercy on those who doubt. So Jude says, contend for the faith. Here's what's threatening your faith. Here's what you need to protect yourself against. And then he ends with, and here's how you do it. And he gives us four things that we can do to contend for our faith. Now, here's the thing. If you're here on a holiday weekend, you didn't accidentally come to church. All right. Labor day Sunday is typically not the Sunday when non-church people decide, you know what I'm going to do on a holiday weekend? I'm going to try church. That's not normally how that goes. If you're here, chances are you are probably a church person. If you're here, if you're listening, chances are your faith matters to you or you're visiting people that drug you to church. Either way. But I'd be willing to bet that your faith matters to you. I'd be willing to bet that you are a people who want to contend for your faith. That when Jude says this, if we are believers, we lean forward and we go, yes, how? So I'm going to give you four ways that we contend for our faith directly out of scripture. But here's what I would say to you. I don't think that any of us, and maybe you will, and if you do, that's wonderful. But I don't think that any of us are going to take all four of these things, keep them in our heads and work on all four of these things this week. So here's what I'm going to ask you and challenge you to do. Pick one, one of the four things that I'm about to mention that we can do to contend for our faith. My hope and my prayer is that one of them will resonate with you, that one of them will move you, that you will lock into one of these as you move into your week. And between now and the 10th, you will turn the dial on this in your life in such a way that you are responding to the simple message in Jude and beginning to contend for the faith with your whole life. So like I said, there's four things that Jude tells us to do to contend for the faith. And the first one that we see right there at the very beginning is to strengthen your faith. When I contend for your faith, you need to strengthen your faith. This is an interesting idea to me. How do we strengthen our faith? I don't think our faith is too much different than like a muscle or a muscle group. I've joked before, and I do think it's true, that I've probably had more first days in the gym than just about anybody in history. I've had a lot of first days. Some of those first days were also my last days, and I just didn't know it yet. But I've had a lot of first days in the gym. And one of the things I like to do when I go to the gym is I like to do squats. Big muscle group. I like to do squats. I think it's important. I don't know anything about anything, but I see people in better shape than me. They do squats and like that seems smart. So I do squats, right? And I don't know how much longer my knees are going to hold out and let me like do this. I don't know how many more of those I have in me because I'm aging more like a light beer than a fine wine, but that's how it goes for me. And one of the things I notice when I go back to the gym on the first day, especially if my last day was the last day after like a lot of days and I was actually kind of like in good shape, when I put the weights on the rack and I go to do what I think is going to be a warm-up set. Okay, for those of you who don't work out a lot like me, a warm-up set is when you do a little bit less weight just to get the muscles going and then you put on the actual weight and then you do the exercise. So there's been a couple of times on my first day where I've put the weight on, you know, just like 375, 400 pounds, and I'm just doing a warm-up set. And I go down and I'm like, yeah, this ain't no warm-up set, man. I only got about four of these in me. This is the real deal. This is the real set that I'm doing right here. Because my muscles have atrophied. Because I haven't done that in a couple of, they go into atrophy and they shrink and they get weaker if we don't continue to use them. I think our faith works the same way. If we're not using our faith, living a life that requires faith, then the faith that we have, I believe, can begin to atrophy so that it's not even as strong as it once was. So Jude tells us to strengthen our faith, acknowledging that this requires a regular use of our faith. And I did not come here this morning with the intent of convicting you or making anyone feel bad, but I do just want to ask the question, when is the last time that your life required faith? When is the last time you took a step of obedience, knowing that if God doesn't come through and deliver, this is not going to go well? If we're not taking those steps, if we're not living a life of faith, then our faith is going into atrophy, and it's not being strengthened. It's being weakened. I thought back to 2015, December of 2015, Jen and I were pregnant with Lily and we were, uh, we were not wealthy people. I was an associate pastor at a church. She was a part-time office manager. Uh, we did not have a ton of money, but because Lily was due in January, we had about $5,000 set aside for medical expenses and all that stuff. That's what we figured would work and cover it. And at the beginning of December, her car, her 4Runner, started to make weird noises, and so we took it to our guy who goes to the church, a guy named Kelly. And Kelly called me one day, and after I took the car in, he said, hey, man, how you doing? I said, I'm pretty good. How you doing? I said, hey, Kelly, how are you doing? And his first words were, better than you. And I went, oh, geez, what's going on, man? And he goes, we have to replace the engine. And I said, ugh, this is terrible. How much does that cost? He said, $5,000. Which apparently is super cheap for an engine now, but back then it was not. He says, $5,000. And I'm like, well, you got to do what you have to do, I guess. So make it happen. And there goes our new baby cushion. And we're just looking at each other like, great, what do we do? And that same week, a little bit prior to that revelation, we had committed to giving a certain amount of money to the Christmas offering that year. We had talked about it, prayed about it, and there was an amount that God had laid on our heart to give. And so I went back to Jen and I'm like, I don't think we can afford to give that anymore. We just lost all of our cushions. Certainly God would understand that. But the more we talked about it, and mostly Jen thought this, I was against it. The more we talked about it, the more we thought, no, God put that on both of our hearts. He did it knowing that we would have to pay for an engine. And we should be faithful to that. We should walk in obedience. Okay. So we did. We gave the amount that we had agreed to give. The very Sunday that we gave that amount, some random person walked up to me in the lobby and just said, hey, just want to say thank you. You and your family have been such a blessing to us. And they handed me a Christmas card. And then the Christmas card was a check for the amount of money that we had given to the church that morning. And it was like God was winking at us going, I'm going to take care of you. All right, don't worry about it. Now, do you not think that my faith got stronger after that? When I took this step of faith and obedience, God, I feel like this is a thing that you want me to do. I'm going to do it. And then I watch him come through for us. That strengthened my faith. My faith got stronger. We made a decision that required God to come through in an incredible way. And he did. And so for many of us, I think it's very possible, particularly in our affluence and in our abilities to live lives that do not require faith. And so maybe what you need to take this morning is this little nudge from God to make that decision that requires some faith. To step out in obedience and trust him to come through. That's the first thing Jude tells us to do. Strengthen our faith. The next thing he tells us to do is to pray in the Spirit. I love this. Pray in the Spirit. He doesn't just say to pray. He says to pray in the Spirit. Now, why does he say to pray in the Spirit? And what does it mean to pray in the Spirit? We get an insight into this in Romans chapter 8. It's so funny to me that God laid Romans 8.28 on Aaron's heart for worship. And now just this morning I added in Romans 8.26 for the sermon because there's just so much good truth there. And God often speaks in stereo. But in Romans 8.26 it says that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. Meaning the Holy Spirit hears what comes out of our mouths and then communicates to God what we really need because we are spiritual babies and we don't really know how to pray for what we actually need. I don't think it's too dissimilar from when my two and a half year old son, John, says he needs a passy. I need a passy. I want a passy. He wants a passy, but what he really means is, I'm tired. What he really means is, I want to snuggle, which, come on, I got plenty of that. He can do that whenever he wants. What it really means is, I just feel a little bit off kilter and I want to be centered and I need some peace. That's what it means. We're praying to God for passes and the Holy Spirit's like, here's what they really need. And so to me, I think if we learn to pray in the Spirit, it's praying with an awareness that the Spirit is going to translate this to God anyway. So how do I change my prayer? How do I have an awareness within my prayer to pray according to what the Spirit will ask for, to pray according to what the Spirit will translate? How do I pray according to the desires of the Spirit and the very heart of God? To begin to put that filter on our prayers. Before we just blurt out what we need and what we want and what we're hopeful for, to put on the lens of, I'm praying in the Spirit, I'm praying through the Spirit, The Spirit is going to translate this to God. What is it that he's going to translate? I think this is why Jesus teaches us to pray by starting off praying for the will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven. We need to put on this mindset when we pray of Holy Spirit, how would you have me pray for this? Which begins, I think, with praying for things that actually concern the Father. This is appropriate at the beginning of football season. I'm not entirely sure God is very interested in the outcome of football games. I could be jaded because I prayed fervently at the beginning of the Falcons Super Bowl a few years back. And he let me down, which means that he does not care about football at all, because certainly he would have come through for my Falcons if he did. It always makes me laugh at the end of a football game when the athletes and the coach want to give glory to Jesus for this victory. Because I just think like, man, you really lucked out playing that whole team of atheists over there so that God could very clearly pick a side. He had to have been against that football team. And if God really did care about football, how does LSU ever win? Like they're Cajun rednecks. It's the worst combination. And yet they're good. So God doesn't care. It's silly, but often we pray about things and God in heaven just has grace and patience for us. I wonder what the translation is when we pray that a certain team would win. I wonder if the translation is, this one's faith is weak, God. I'm working on it. And it's funny there, but there's other ways in which it applies and it matters. One of the things I've learned over the years and the way that I pray for people who are sick and maybe dying is when I have opportunities to go and pray for families over seemingly terminally ill loved ones. If the family asks me to pray for healing, I will because I think that's an honoring thing to do. So sure, I'll pray for healing. But when I pray privately for that family, I almost never pray for healing. I always pray, Father, help this family see and accept your will. Help them to be comforted by it. And help what they're about to walk through to conspire to make their faith in you stronger, not weaker. God, please don't let this path that they're walking shake their faith to a point where they question it. Would you make everything that's about to happen, whether you heal or whether you take, would you let everything conspire to make this faith stronger in this family? I could be wrong, but I think that's a more reflective prayer of what concerns the Holy Spirit. And I think if we can teach ourselves to pray in accordance with the will of the Spirit, we better acquaint ourselves with the heart of the Father. And we see a lot more answered prayer when we do it that way. So pray in the spirit to contend for your faith. The next thing we do is we walk in God's love. We walk in God's love. Now this is what we talked about last week. How do we walk in God's love? And it's actually in the verse, it actually says, keep yourselves in the love of God. So I probably, I should have said, keep yourself in God's love. How do we do that? That was last week's sermon. That's how God's weaving things together. That was first and second and third John. How do we walk in God's love? How do we walk in love for God? We obey him. Because when we obey God, we admit his expertise and that we trust in it. When we obey God, it proves that we trust him. Right? Obedience proves trust. So how do we walk in God's love? We walk in obedience to God. And some of us may have carried in the same sin and the same weight and the same thing that's entangling us. Last week when we preached a sermon on, hey, if you love God, obey him. Where are we being disobedient? Where do we need to walk in obedience? And maybe we brought that exact same disobedience into this sermon this week, into this place this week, and God is still after us. Hey, when are you going to hand that over to me and walk in obedience there? And so maybe this week is just a reminder for you that God really does care. He really does want you to let that go. And he really does want you to walk in obedience. And that's how we need to respond this morning. The last one I love, and I love that it seems to just be tacked on there, but it's such an important concept as we contend for the faith. Have mercy on doubters. There's not too many other places in Scripture where we're given instruction on how to handle doubt and doubters, but it's really interesting to me that Jude, as he's listing these other things that we would all agree with and expect to be there, walk in God's love, strengthen your faith, pray in the Spirit. Sure, we know that. We hear that kind of stuff every week and all the time. But then after that, just as importantly, have mercy on the doubters. And I love that this is in here because can I just tell you a secret about faith? If you are a thinking person, if you are an observant and thinking Christian, then doubts in your faith are unavoidable and absolutely necessary. They are essential and unavoidable parts of faith to run into places where you are experiencing doubt. And if you have never experienced doubt, you either have the strongest faith of anyone I've met, or you, I would gently say, have not really deeply considered your faith and what it means. Doubts, wondering if all this is true anyways, are an unavoidable and completely essential part of our faith. Why do I say that? Because I know personally from experience that the faith you find on the other side of doubt is more rich and more full and more vibrant than the previous version of your faith could have ever imagined being. I walked through a profound season of doubt in my early 20s as I was finishing up Bible college and doing ministries. And then I walked through another profound season of doubt during COVID in the summer of 2020 while I was pastoring. It felt like reassembling a plane in midair. So I know that doubts in our faith are unavoidable and absolutely essential. And I know that when we do the hard work to learn and to actually answer the questions, not let the questions drive us away. I don't understand this, so I'm done with faith, but I don't understand this, so I'm gonna dig in harder. I'm gonna look from new sources. I'm gonna look new places. I'm going to ask more people. And when we find the answers that actually satisfy the doubt, what happens is we emerge with this firm foundation and this vibrant faith that's more rich and more generous than what we could have ever imagined. And what we find on the other side of doubt is that we actually love God more because he gets bigger and more mysterious and we find out we can trust him. Doubts are good, but we shouldn't stop at doubt. We should work through them and talk through them. The problem in churches with doubt is that often doubts are met with condemnation and not mercy. I shared with you guys weeks ago, and we all know that this is happening, that over the last 12 years or 20 years, 40 million people have left the church or something like that. We know the church in America is shrinking. We are now very familiar with this term deconstructing, which refers to someone who grew up evangelical Christian, who grew up with faith and as an adult walked away from it. We're familiar with that. Why is this's going on in our culture it's something that i think about a lot but one of the big reasons it's happening is because doubts in our churches tend to be met with condemnation and not mercy because our pastors and our leaders are not obedient to jude's instruction to have mercy on doubters And when people raise their hand and they go, hey, what about, or how come, or I don't understand, but how could this be true if this is also true? When people express doubts, sometimes they're met with dismissals. Sometimes they're met with condemnation. When I grew up, you felt like this person with a weak faith if you had any doubts. If you didn't understand. That the people who were in charge, the spiritual leaders, the pastors and the deacons and the elders and all those people, they were the people with the fewest doubts. They were the people with no chinks in their armor. They were the people who had all the answers and understood it the best. And so having doubts made you weak. And I think we need to have a church where having and expressing doubts actually shows some strength because you're trying to fight through those rather than bury your head in the sand. And you have a desire to enrich your faith by working through those and finding answers. So if we're going to be obedient to Jude, we need to have mercy on the doubters, understanding it's a necessary process in faith to move through those and find answers. This means, parents, we create that environment in our homes where our children are allowed to doubt, and they are allowed to ask questions, and they are allowed to wonder, and they are allowed to learn other information that causes them to question things about their faith. And they are allowed to move through that in mature ways that are helpful for them, believing that on the other side of that doubt lies a rock-solid faith. So we give them mercy when they have questions. We create environments in our homes where we can have spiritual conversations, and they don't have to agree with mom and dad about everything. And then maybe most of all, for some of us, we have mercy on ourselves. And we allow ourselves to express those doubts. We allow ourselves to express that uncertainty. We give ourselves some grace and start to seek out answers. Not being afraid of the doubt, but knowing that pushing through it and seeking answers in the doubt is going to lead to a faith that we don't have right now, but we desperately want. So we have mercy on the doubters. That's the simple message of Jude. That's how we contend for the faith. The simple message of Jude is to contend for the faith with yourself, with your whole life, with everything you got. How do we do that? We pray in the Spirit. We walk in God's love. We strengthen our faith. And we have grace and mercy on those who doubt. And we walk through this together. I don't know which one of those resonates with you. But if any of them do, I pray that you'll take it from here and you'll leave and you'll work on that this week. And contend for your faith with your whole life in accordance with the message of Jude. Let's pray. Father, you love us. We know that you do. We feel it and we see it. It's all around us all the time. God, if anybody doubts today that you love them, I pray that they would see evidence of that sometime before their head hits the pillow tonight. Lord, we thank you for the simple message of Jude and ask that we would be people who would contend for our faith, that we would contend with our whole lives and our whole heart. Lord, if we have lived lives that don't require faith, would you help us take steps of faith and watch you come through? Lord, if we need to learn to pray more in the spirit and according to your will, would you make us aware that your spirit is with us as we pray? Make us sensitive to praying according to your will. God, if there are areas of our life we know are not in accordance with your word, that we know we are walking in disobedience, would you help us to walk in obedience and therefore walk in your love? Father, if we are experiencing doubts, would you help us be brave in those? To have mercy on ourselves. And to seek out the conversations that we need to seek out. To help us arrive at a stronger, richer, more vibrant faith. Help us contend for the faith that you've given us. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, I see no one paid extra for the splash zone this morning, but I feel like I should like just stand down here and preach, but no, it's good morning. My name is Kyle. I'm the student pastor here at Grace. As most of you probably know by now, the month of July, our head pastor, Nate, is actually taking a sabbatical. It's something that was afforded to him as he has spent diligent, full-time service to this church, ministering to all of us so lovingly and so well for seven years. And so he is taking some time during the month of July to refresh and recharge spiritually in all other ways, spending time relaxing with family, on vacation, all of those things. And so I'm super happy for them. I'm super excited that he's getting the opportunity to do that. And honestly, I'm really excited for us and what that means for Grace, because you know he's gonna come out of that time ready to run in August, ready to run alongside of us in August as he comes back spiritually, recharged, and re-energized. But that also means is I get to preach this morning, which is really cool. Yeah, like cool. All right. I wasn't fishing, but I am thankful for it. I will say, like, I am mostly very excited about it. We're in our series 27, and in 27, we are going through a different book of the New Testament each week. Now, the reason why I'm mostly excited is because I think that there's a small part of me that thinks that Nate might have set me up for failure for this. Because as we talked about this series, we knew that he was going to be on sabbatical. And so there were a lot of voices, a lot of people talking, discussing, hey, what should this series look like? How should we do this series? All this stuff. And one of the main things that Nate made very clear is, hey, don't worry about us going in order. We're not going to go in order all the way through the New Testament. Just choose books that you're going to love and that stand out to you in your preparation. Awesome. Thanks so much. Man, Nate's the best. He doesn't want to be holding us to a certain book. He wants us to pick the book. And then Nate decides for the first four weeks, he's going to do the first four books in order of the New Testament. So while we know in his office that he has decided we don't have to go in order, now you guys are coming ready for an Acts sermon, and I'm hitting you with 1 Thessalonians. And not only did he set me up for failure, but he also knew if there's rioting in the building because I go out of the order you guys are ready for, he's gone. He's on sabbatical. He doesn't have to worry about it. So if you will, please bear with me, and please put down your, you know, whatever pickaxes that you're going to come to me because I'm breaking out of order because I am this morning going to peel off the Band-Aid and we are going to jump into the book of 1 Thessalonians. Now, one of the distinct things about the New Testament, as a lot of you guys know, 13 of the books are attributed to Paul and to Paul's ministry, the Apostle Paul. He wrote these letters to these different churches in these different areas, and they were all named after the areas in the people that he's writing to. And those are, and they're all written by Paul. And so for a lot of this series, we're going to be bringing up this guy named Paul, the Apostle Paul. Now, the thing about Paul, he was not a big fan of Christians. He persecuted them. He wanted to kill them. He thought like, hey, like get rid of this ideology of Christianity that you think exists because this is not, this is not it. You're wrong. You're completely wrong. I'm not having it. Until God kind of hit him literally in just this, he blinded him. I don't know what else to say. I don't really know what word I was searching for, but he blinded him and sent a Christian to go spend some time with Paul, teach Paul the truth, and then literally God opened Paul's eyes, both literally and figuratively, to the gospel that, hey, Paul, you're right that I am God, but you're wrong about who Christ is. This Jesus who came and lived, came and lived because I sent him as my son from heaven to earth to live a perfect life and to die a death signifying the death of all sins of the people who believe him. And he was resurrected from the dead, just as you've heard people tell. And that resurrection signifies that all those people who would believe in him and believe in Jesus as king and trust him as their Lord and Savior, that they are raised to life as well. That when God looks at them, they don't see the imperfections of their lives and of their walks in their life, but they see the perfection of Christ and the holiness of Christ because they have entrusted Jesus as their Lord and Savior. And once the Lord told Paul that, Paul's life was then about one thing and one thing only, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Everything that Paul did, when you read about his ministry and acts, when you read about his ministry and read his writings to each of these different churches as we're gonna go through, he has one goal and one goal only, and that Paul's ultimate goal was to share the gospel to all people and call them to repent and live a life reflective of that gospel. It's the only thing that he cared about. I want to make sure everyone I come in contact with knows who Jesus is, and I want to make sure everyone that I encounter not only knows who he is, but will give their hearts to that Christ and give their lives to the ministry of that Jesus, just as I have. And that's a lot of what 1 Thessalonians is. That's the goal of 1 Thessalonians is Paul writing to the people in the church of Thessalonica, some as reminding himself and just reminiscing on his time there, some to say, hey, like I'm so excited that this is taken, and some to say, hey, continue and press on. That is the goal of this. But as I was going through each one of his letters, as I was going through each book in the New Testament, man, what really jumped out to me about 1 Thessalonians is outside of clearly this being the goal, as it so often is in Paul's writing, I think that he just gives a really, really excellent description of exactly what that looks like. I think that's super valuable, because I don't, if you're like me, there's times where I hear sermons, or there's times where I'm reading through Scripture, and it is abundantly clear what Scripture would have me do. It's abundantly clear, okay, yes, I do love God. Yes, I know that I should go and tell more people about Jesus. Yes, I know I should minister to these people. I know I should make disciples. I should do all of those things. But sometimes I feel like it's a lot harder through Scripture to find, okay, so what exactly does that look like? And I think we find a pretty excellent description of what it looks like when we read the book of 1 Thessalonians. And so before we jump in, I want to give you a little background, a little history. So Paul and one of his ministry partners named Silas, you can find in the book of Acts, Acts 17, where they spent some time in Thessalonica. They go and join their community and start preaching the gospel, telling people who Jesus is, telling people, hey, this Jesus who came and walked on earth died for you so that you could have eternal life, so that you could have this eternal relationship with God the Father, all this stuff. And boy, was it effective. I mean, as they were preaching the gospel, the Lord was just taking hold of the hearts of the people in Thessalonica. And man, I mean, there was, it was like wildfire the gospel was spreading in the area. And it's incredible to read about. It's incredible to see. I mean, literally, it's like, it's like, you know, one of those church revivals where you see the Lord clearly moving. But in this case, it wasn't necessarily a revival because these people are coming alive for the first time. This entire city is hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ for the first time. And so it would be more of just a vival, I guess. They're becoming alive for the first time. I don't know. I don't know words like that, but that seems right. But it's incredible to read about how the Lord was moving, but then that brought some consequences as well because there were still Jewish people in the area who, like Paul was prior, was not happy about Jesus taking over, wasn't happy to hear that there were these two guys that were spreading these claims that they felt to be inaccurate, and so they started persecuting the people and kind of looked like seeking out Paul and Silas to the point that the Christians felt, the Christians and Paul and Silas all felt so distinctly worried that they ended up smuggling them out of the city at night one night because they were like, hey, if they find you, I think they might kill you. And so it is best for you and it's best for everybody if you can go ahead and leave, if we can get you out. And so they got out, they got out safely, and they got out knowing, hey, we know that a lot of people love Christ and give themselves to Christ, but man, Paul is really pretty downtrodden about the fact that he had to leave. As you read in 1 Thessalonians, there's a bit, especially on the early part of 1 Thessalonians, where he's really upset. It kind of takes on this flavor of, some of you guys probably know this, when you were a kid and your parents let you know that one of them got a new job in a new town or a new city and you were going to have to move, which meant, hey, all of these relationships that you've built, all of these friends that you have that you dearly love, you're not going to be able to see them much anymore, and you don't really have much say in that matter. You're just not going to get the amount of time that you hope to get with these people that you love. And that's kind of how Paul starts off this writing, just kind of really sad and really upset about the fact that he was having to be pulled out of this place with these people who he had really grown to love and adore. Not only that, but he got to see the way that Christ had begun moving in that place, and that excited him, but he just, he almost felt like he was leaving them when they needed him most to really learn, and to really learn from him and imitate him what ministering to other people looked like, and establishing roots where they had built a foundation of Christ. And so he just kind of felt like he got the short end of the stick on that and was really upset. So what he did is he sent another ministry partner named Timothy to go check in on him. Timothy, go spend some time with these people. First and foremost, let them know that I am praying for them every day. I pray that the Lord is continuing to move in their hearts, move in their lives, move in their city. But man, I also just pray that soon enough I get to come and see them again, to see my friends, the people that I love so much, once more. Let them know that, please, and spend some time with them. See how they're doing. See how the church is doing. See if the gospel is continuing to move, and report back to me. And so he does. He goes, he finds out, and he comes back. And the response is really positive. It's really good and exciting news that while obviously there's still issues going on in Thessalonica, but the gospel has just absolutely taken off. Where a foundation was set and where Paul had ministered to these people and showed them Christ, they were building upon that foundation and continuing daily to bring more and more people into the faith under Christ. And not only that, but it was moving outside of the city walls as well. I learned actually in researching that Thessalonica, how it is set up, it's actually kind of a, it's a trade town. So a lot of people in the rest of Macedonia and all over those nations, and also in the Roman Empire, all congregate to Thessalonica to do trading. And so while there is this there's this vival happening amongst the Thessalonians, as the gospel is traveling and hitting and encouraging so many people in this city, it is also moving outside of those city walls because as people are coming in for trade consistently, those people that are there are spreading the gospel to them as well. I actually read in a William Barclay commentary. This is really cool and really interesting. He basically said that you cannot understate, you cannot downplay how important the Christianity expanding outside of Thessalonica was for Christianity becoming a world religion. That's how important Christ taking over the hearts of the people in Thessalonica was. One of the main reasons why Christianity spread worldwide. And so you can imagine how Paul wrote to these people in response to this. First Thessalonians is in response to Timothy coming and telling him this unbelievable news. And as you can imagine, he writes just completely joyful and absolutely elated, which we've been there too, right? You've got, I mean, a lot of you guys are parents. You've raised kids that are still alive, which is like unbelievable to me, but good job for y'all. But you have kids and you have people in your life that you love and that you invest so much time and energy in. And so when you see them do well, when you see them do the thing that you helped them be able to do, get to that next step, get to that next point in life, when you see them come to know Jesus Christ for the first time, there's nothing better, right? There's nothing better, one, because somebody that you love is doing well. But two, there's just a pride in knowing that, hey, I had some small part to play in people doing well. But two, there's just a pride in knowing that, hey, I had some small part to play in people doing well, people getting to know Christ, Christ being shed and spread, Christ being spread through the nation and into other nations. And so that's how he writes. He reminisces on his time there spent with these people, building relationships, growing to love them, being a part of the culture, being a part of the community, and sharing the gospel through them, saying, hey, like, I'm so happy that I was able to minister to you in this way, and I'm even happier that the Lord is moving now, and that you guys are imitating the way that I ministered to you guys, and now you're ministering to other people in the same way, and it's effective, and I am so happy to hear it, and I think what that does is it opens up the door to asking a question. The question is, how did Paul minister to the people in Thessalonica? Okay, this is awesome. Paul ministered to these people. So many of them started giving their hearts and giving their lives to Jesus, and now they're doing the same thing that he did, and it's continuing to work incredibly well. And I think that 1 Thessalonians does an excellent job of telling us exactly what. And so as you go through, I think the whole book does a good job of sharing that, of sharing that directive, of giving, of saying, hey, this is exactly how it was done. I think in particular, chapter 2, verses 5 through 8, does a really excellent job as to making something that seems a little bit inaccessible very accessible, not only for the people in Thessalonica, but I think for the people in this room. It's a very doable strategy of ministering to people that we can emulate. And so we're actually going to start, we're going to start in verse 7, and then we're going to go backwards, because as we've established, I'm not going in order. So if you will, please just read with me verses 7 and 8. Let me read that one more time. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves because you have become very dear to us. We came and we brought you the gospel, but we brought you so much more than that. We brought you our whole selves. We gave you ourselves. I think it's a pretty excellent summation to say that Paul ministered gently and sacrificially through genuine relational love. He didn't share the gospel from a distance. It's not some guy who rolls up into this community during the day, sets up a pulpit, and preaches throughout the day, sharing the gospel, and then goes back to his place away from everybody afterwards. He immersed himself into this community. He built relationships with these people. He chose to serve them and love them well and intently. He goes after them, becomes a part of them, and builds through relational love these relationships and these friendships with these people so that they know without a shadow of a doubt that this person cares about me, that I am loved by this person. What's he doing? He's showing the love of Christ to these people so that he can share with them the gospel of who Jesus is, and they're going to be willing to hear it. I think what he realized is that we should strive to present the truth of Christ through imitating the love of Christ. We hear a lot about what it looks like to share the gospel, and I get a ton of questions about how am I supposed to do that. Like, I don't really think I'm meant to be Paul and go with a couple guys to different nations and different cities and preach to them until I'm thrown in prison and then write letters to them. But clearly what Paul is saying here, because Paul echoes a lot in his time and in his writing, I am ministering to you in this way and I am calling you to imitate and minister to other people in this way. How am I calling you to share the gospel? The same way that I'm sharing the gospel with you. I'm coming, and I'm going to be a part of your lives. I'm going to build friendships, and I'm going to love you well. I'm going to love you out of the love of Christ that I have received from Christ, and through that, through me loving you like Christ, I am going to share the truth of Christ with you in a way that is impactful, in a way that is meaningful, and in a way that you are going to be willing to hear from me because you know that I only genuinely care about you. He actually goes a little bit deeper in verses five and six. And so, hey, like, we're disciples of God. We could have come in and told you, hey, these are the things that you need to know. These are the things that you need to do. These are the things that you need to figure out so that you can be saved. But instead, he said, hey, that's not, that wasn't our goal. Our goal wasn't to share the gospel in this impersonal, in this formal, impersonal way. It was to share the gospel as personally as possible. Now, the wording of the greed part, I want to go dive into that a little bit, because as I kind of told you, he's a little bit repetitive with the things that he says throughout, and I think that is probably because they're important. Paul thought it was very, very meaningful and a very useful tool of ministry to, when he went into Thessalonica, not to establish a church and be the head of that church, not to be a guy who, what he did is, hey, I'm bringing you the gospel. I'm kind of going to be the minister here, and so please pay me, bring me food, give me shelter, so that I can bring this good news to you. Instead, Paul talks pretty distinctly about that he got a job in Thessalonica as soon as he got there, because he wanted to work amongst the people. He wanted the people in Thessalonica to know, hey, I care only's awesome that you're doing ministry and that that's your full-time job, but he's kind of saying all of you guys, y'all are doing it the way that he would do it. Y'all are doing it the way that he's calling here. That's how, I think that's ultimately maybe the thing that stuck out most to me in this is this is a message for the people of the church that aren't working in the church. I have to work hard to make sure I don't do that. I have to go out of my way to make sure that my students know that, hey, I'm going to minister to you and I'm going to love you while you're in this building, but I'm also going to go outside of these walls to make sure I'm a part of your lives, ministering to you, getting to know you so that you know without a shadow of a doubt that, yes, sure, this is Kyle's job to do this, but the only reason he's actually doing it is because he loves me, and he wants me to know the gospel. But you guys aren't beholden to those things, and I think that what Paul is saying is, y'all are doing it right. That's the way that he would call us to minister. And what I think he realized is that there is a purity of intention when you have nothing to gain from the people you are specifically loving and pouring into. How pure is your motivation when as you're building relationships and as you're building upon foundations of relationships, when you're loving people well, going out of your way to serve people, that you're asking of nothing in return, to where they know that you're only doing that because you care about them, just in the same way that you know that the only reason you're doing that is because, hey, the Lord loves this person, and so do I, regardless of who they are. And I think what I love about this is that this is a message that I, like, this is something that I see people in this church do really well. I think this is certainly something to be like, yes, I need to do this, whatever, but like, I see this all over, all over the place in this church. I got a buddy, Preston, that comes to the church that he's maybe one of the best possible, like, friend makers that I've ever met. Like, when I watch him in conversation, I'm just like, gosh, man, like, that dude genuinely cares about everything that everyone says to him. I don't know if that's true or not. I don't know if he's just trying to be like Jesus or whatever, or if he's just, well, you know, like, I don't know what it is, but I'm just so taken aback at how good he is at making people know, hey, you are my friend and I care about you. And recently we had a conversation. He said there was a guy in his office who obviously was his friend because he's been around Preston and that's what Preston does. He makes friends. And he was like, hey man, like, I just seem to notice you really care about people a lot. And you honestly seem to be a lot more content than I am with life. You don't seem to get quite as upset about stuff. You love people well. And I just kind of want to know what's your secret. I want to be more like that. I want to understand how to do that better. That opened up the door for Preston to be able to tell him about Jesus. That door doesn't get opened if Preston is just trying to give him the gospel but not give him any part of himself. But Preston gave of himself, built this relational foundation that that guy wanted to ask Preston that question. I think about my buddy Logan, another guy who comes to the church. He, two of his best friends are two people he served in the Navy with. Neither one are believers, actually. But Logan has loved them well and has built that friendship to a point that he's able to share the gospel with them, and they're not going to be turned off. They're willing to listen. Not only that, but they love him so much that they want to support him in whatever the way they can. So he's actually, he hosts every other Monday night, he hosts this film watching group where the point of it is to watch this film and then talk about how it relates to the gospel. And guess who's on Zoom every single week from all over the nation? Those two guys. They want to be a part. They want to talk about film, and they listen. They get to hear about the gospel every other week on Monday night where outside of that, they don't hear it at all because they have a friend that they love and want to support a cool thing that he's doing. They hear the gospel because Logan has loved them and has loved them well and has built that relationship to that point. My wife, Ashlyn, she rules. I don't know if I've seen more tears than watching her go from two offices, one in Garner and one in Cary, to just being in Cary. The people in that Garner office, there were just so many tears because Ashlyn is the friend on staff, on staff with those people who's going to always consistently love them well and encourage them, point them back to Jesus and be a light in their life. You don't know how effective you are at that until you leave and you find out that the response is everyone being so upset. She had a mom say, hey, I know we live in Garner, but we're going to be there in Cary. I can't stop crying. My daughter genuinely says that Miss Ashlyn is her best friend. We're going to stick with you. That happens because Ashlyn loves very well. She's got a person in the office who just, in the carry office, who just experienced a tragedy and reached out to everybody, said, hey, this happened. Please don't ask me about it. I'm not ready to talk. A week later, guess who's, guess who walked in, whose door she walked in because she wanted to talk? Ashlyn. Because Ashlyn, she knows that Ashlyn loves her well and is going to point her to Jesus and point her towards the light. And finally, I look at, I look at Karen and Chris. I know Chris isn't used to being praised on a Sunday morning, but since Nate's gone, we're just gonna, we're gonna break all the, we're gonna break all the molds here. But I mean, their, their youngest daughter is my age, graduated in 2011, and they right now have decided, you know what, we're tired of having all this stuff, we want to have somebody come and live with us. They have somebody from, a soccer player from South Africa currently living with them, a college student, which like, I don't know, can't be like insanely fun, and't be insanely easy. I mean like super nice dude, but like, you know, they've been living with a lot of freedom for a long time by themselves. And so they're just hosting kids over at their house all the time, college students, just college dudes, just rolling up, soccer players, probably acting a fool. I don't know. I'm just kidding. Definitely not acting a fool. I know you're not, bro. But I mean, how easy is it? How easy would it have been for Karen and Chris to love them well by supplying them with Chick-fil-A coupons so they feel like they have some other food? To bring them some candy, bring them some extra clothes, whatever, and just check in on them every once in a while. But what they recognize and what they realize, in the same way that Paul knew was incredibly important, is if I want to truly impact the people that are around me, then I need to truly be a part of their lives. I need to truly build relationships with these people built on a foundation of the love of Christ, loving them well, encouraging them well, and that is a true and ultimate way to make a gospel impact. And that is where then the door is open to truly not only share the love of Christ through your actions, but share the truth of Christ in your words, and to truly share the gospel to the people around you. And in Paul's writing, Paul kind of says the same thing. He's like, guys, I want to encourage you in this, but you're doing it really well. Actually, I want to read it because I think it's beautiful, and I think that the simple way that I want to encourage you, Grace, who does this so well, is the same way that Paul encourages the people of Thessalonica. So if you will, please, let's read verses, or 1 Thessalonians 4, 9 through 10. Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you. For you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, be able to show and share the gospel to so many other people. So my simple question for you that I want to close on is this. Who and where can you do this more and more and continue to do it more and more? So I want to close this morning in a prayer, but I want to, it's kind of a specific prayer. Ashlyn, my wife, she wants to be as helpful as possible in my sermons, and sometimes she feels like, I gotta like, you know, she feels like she's unhelpful. I'm like, Ashlyn, you're great. Just you loving me is very helpful. But she knew kind of what I was talking about this morning, and she was reminded of a song, it's actually by Casting Crowns, throwback, called The Bridge. And this song, I think, just does an absolutely beautiful job of just giving the same encouragement and the same prayer that we pray as we try to share the love of Christ so that we can share the truth of Christ. So if you will, we're just going to pray, and I'm going to pray over us these lyrics from this song. Bow with me. With love, we earn the right to speak your truth. It's not just what we say, it's what we do. I want to be a bridge, God, that leads to you. So reach through me and let them see, Lord, let them see. Lord, let us love like this. Let us share the gospel like this. Not formal, not impersonal, but as personal and as loving as we possibly can. We love you so much. Amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Jordan, it is interesting to me that you think profundity is what's required to get up on the stage when they parade me out here every week, falling woefully short of the bar. This is the third part in our series called Big Emotions, where we're just kind of looking at times in Scripture where we see a blow-up or a blow-out or people with with just big overwhelming emotions because that is so much a part of our life. That is something that we experience just as we go through life. Sometimes our emotions are too big for us and they're overwhelming. And so this morning I wanted to take a look at big emotions in our prayers and what happens and how does God respond when big emotions creep into our prayers, when our prayers really become cries. And to do that, I want us to think about prayer together. It's really, when you consider it, one of the more interesting passages in the Bible, one of the more interesting interchanges that Jesus has with his disciples. They're following him around. They're watching him do ministry. And at one point, they look at Jesus and they say, hey, Jesus, will you teach us to pray? Now, this is a really interesting question coming from the disciples. And many of you have probably considered this before. The disciples knew how to pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed their whole life. They had gone to synagogue every week, maybe daily at different points in their life. I don't know. They had seen a ton of people pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed many prayers before, but there was something different, so different about the prayers of Jesus that they had to stop him and say, can you teach us to pray like you pray? Because that's different than how we pray. And Jesus responds by sharing with them the Lord's prayer. You guys probably all know it. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. And so in that, Jesus gives the model of prayer to the disciples and to us in perpetuity. And if you break that down, I've always been taught prayer and I've taught prayer this way in church, in youth group, in camps, in different places, in men's groups, small group, when we talk about prayer, something that's always been really helpful for me is the acronym ACTS. And you guys have probably heard this before. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. So the way that Jesus opens up the prayer. When we pray, the first thing we should do is adore God. God, you're great. God, you're good. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. God, you are wonderful for this. God, you blow me away for that. And when we do this, it really puts us in the right posture for prayer, you know? It really reminds us who we're talking to. I had a Bible teacher in high school who was also my soccer coach, who was also my administrator because I went to a small school. And when he would pray in class, he would say, okay, everyone, let's pray, bow your heads. And we would bow our heads to pray, and he would wait 20 or 30 seconds. And so finally, I asked one day, Mr. Dawson, what are you doing? Like, that's awkward. Why do you make us just sit there in silence? What are you waiting on? Because it's almost like, does he want us to pray? Like, should we? And he told me what he was doing. He said he was taking his mind, whenever he would pause before prayer, to Isaiah chapter 6, where the throne room of God is described. And it says that God is on his throne, and the train of his robe is filling the temple with glory. And there's these six-winged angels flying around him saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And it's just so overwhelming that he cowers in a corner. And Mr. Dawson said that when, he said, when I pray, I like to take myself there to put myself in proper posture before God to remind myself when I pray, where am I going? I'm going to the throne room of God, the King of the universe, and I'm addressing the creator of the universe. That's a serious, somber thing. That's a place for humility. That's a place for penitence. This is why when we teach our children to pray, we teach them to bow their heads and close their eyes. It's a sign of reverence. It's a sign of respect for knowing who we're talking to and where we're going. It's why I encourage you as much as you can to kneel when you pray. Because it's hard to put yourself in the posture of kneeling and not feel humble, at least a little bit. And so Jesus says we should start with adoration. We should adore God. We should praise him. And then we should go to confession. What are the things, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. How have we trespassed against God? What attitudes do we bring into this day and into this prayer? What sins do we carry with us that yet remain unconfessed before the Father? What do we need to confess to God before him? And then we move into this time of thanksgiving, praising Him. God, thank you for your goodness in my life. Thank you for my family. Thank you for a church that I love. Thank you for the rain. Thank you for the day, whatever it is. It's John's second birthday today. Thank you for a great two-year-old son and for friends watching him in the nursery right now. Thank you for all of those things. We praise God for things. And then, suffocation. Then we ask for what we need. And you guys know, and you've heard this, that the tendency when we pray is to skip act and go straight to S. Skip all the other stuff and just go, dear God, I really need blank. I really need you to show up here. I really need this to work out. I'm really worried about this. It's all the I need, I need, I need. And there's a place for that in prayer. But the way that Jesus teaches us prayer, it follows this pattern of first putting ourself in the proper place and then confessing our sins, which remind us of the humility we should carry into the throne room. And then thanksgiving, let's acknowledge all the blessings God's given us in our lives before we ask him for more, and then in that proper mindset, say what we need to say. That's kind of the proper way to pray. But sometimes we pray when our emotions are too big for propriety. Sometimes we pray prayers that become cries. And the emotions that we bring into that moment are too big for acts. I've shared with you guys before that the first time Jen and I got pregnant, we miscarried. And I'm not in the business of doing comparative pain for miscarriages and who has the right to the most sorrow. But for us, the pain was particularly acute because we had been praying for a child for years. For years. We had struggled mightily. Our moms and grandmas were praying for babies. We had the church around us at the time praying that we could have a baby. We knew that's what we wanted to do. On my mama's deathbed, a few years before we got pregnant, the very last thing she did for me was direct someone to the top of her closet to get a stuffed animal that she made to give to my child when we had them. She went ahead and made it, and I think my sister finished it up for her so that we would have that to give to our first child. So when we got pregnant, we were elated. And then we went to the checkup for eight weeks, and the baby wasn't there. I don't know how long it took me to pray after that. But the first time I did pray, it wasn't Acts. The first time I prayed, it didn't look very much like our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. It looked a lot more like God. What in the world? What the heck? I would say different words if I weren't on this stage and there weren't children in the audience. That's how I felt, and that's how I prayed. What are you doing? Because we, and we're not entitled to this. None of what I'm about to say really matters, but to us it did. Jen's a school teacher. She loves kids. She's teaching in a Christian school, leading people towards you. We still have relationships with some of the kids that she taught in those days. I was a school teacher. I taught high school Bible. And then I worked at a church. We had made good choices. We were good Christian people. We had checked all the boxes. We had done all the things. And there was people who were living lives way more rebellious than us who were just tripping accidentally into family. And then we get pregnant and then you take it? No, I'm not praying acts. I'm not following the pattern for this one. There are some prayers that we pray that become cries. When we hear of the terminal diagnosis and we go to the Father and we say, really? This one? Him? Her? Why not me in your jacked up economy? Why them? There's a girl in our community. She's a young woman in our community. Just last week or two. She battled cancer for five years and came to it a week or two ago. Beautiful family, young kids. I don't know when that husband is going to pray again. When he does, those prayers will be cries. We've all prayed prayers like that. Where we're walking through what feels to us like the dark night of the soul and we don't have time or patience for propriety. We just go to our God and we are raw and we are real and we cry out, what in the world? How is this right? How does this make sense? As parents that send their kids to school in that private school in Nashville, what do those prayers sound like when they start to pray again? We've all prayed those prayers that are so big and so raw and so emotional that they become cries. And so I think it's worth it to look and see how God handles these prayers in Scripture. Because we get to see some. God in His goodness left them for us in His inspired Word. And so what I want to encourage you with today is, I know that we've all prayed those prayers. If you've never prayed those prayers, I'm so happy for you. I hope you never do, but I think you will. And what I want us to know as we look into the scripture this morning is that God is not offended by our prayers that become cries. I don't think God in his goodness and in his grace and in his mercy is offended when I look at him after the deepest pain that I've felt up to that point in my life and I go, what in the world? That's not fair. That's not right. That doesn't make sense. I don't think God gets offended by those things. I don't think he's so small that our broken hearts offend our God. And I actually think that there's grace and space for those prayers because we see them in the Bible. We actually see Jesus pray one of these prayers, a prayer that is so raw and so real and so emotional that it becomes a cry. This prayer is recorded in all four Gospels. We're going to look at the account in the Gospel of Luke chapter 22. Beginning in verse 39. And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, speaking of Jesus. And the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, pray that you may not enter into temptation. And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed, saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, this scene, many of you know it, Jesus has just left the Last Supper with the disciples. He's instituted communion. He's told them, my body is going to be broken for you. My blood is going to be spilled for you. He knows what is going to happen. He knows when he gets done praying, he's going to be arrested. And he knows that when he's arrested, he's going to be tried. And after he's tried, he's going to be flogged and beaten, and he's going to be hung on a cross and left there to die and then face death and hell. He knows that. And so he brings the disciples with him, and he says, remain here while I pray. And he goes off a distance, one would assume, so that they couldn't hear him. And it is interesting that they all ended up hearing him, because there's nothing in the text to indicate that Jesus subtly knelt and clasped his hands and said, my Father who is in heaven. No, these prayers from Jesus that we see, in Luke it says he knelt. In another gospel it says that he fell with his face to the ground. And the disciples are a stone's throw away and they can hear him clearly. And then he gets so intense in his praying that sweat begins to mix with his blood, which we know is something that can actually happen in moments of incredibly intense stress in our lives. So the prayer that Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane was not, Dear God, if there's any other way, would you please point me in that? It wasn't that. It was Jesus on his face prostrate, God, Father, please don't make me do this. Please, is there any other way? Is there anything else I can do? I do not want to bear this. I do not want to be on the cross and hear you and see you turn your back on me. I do not want to say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I do not want the crown of thorns in my head. I do not want the nails in my wrist. I do not want to do this, Father. Is there any other way? Please, please take this cup from me. That's a prayer becoming a cry. That's Jesus sidestepping propriety and crying out to his heavenly father. And in there, he finds what we should find when we pray like this. No matter how deep, no matter how raw, yet not my will but your will be done. Please give me the strength to accept your will. So I know that God isn't offended by those prayers because his son prays one to him in full view and vision of the disciples. And then he tells us about it in all four gospels. And that made me wonder, where else in the Bible do we have prayers that are raw and real and emotional? Where else in the Bible do we have prayers that have become cries? And of course, I went to Psalms. And I just started reading them and flipping through and finding them, these things where people are just raw. I am weary unto death. I want to die. Take my life. And I put them in your notes, Psalm 142 and Psalm 13 and Psalm 77. I think of Hannah's prayer in the temple when she's praying so earnestly and fervently for a child that Eli the priest thinks she's drunk. I think of the book of Lamentations, which is a whole book of tough, raw prayers. And I was going to kind of bounce around between those prayers, but then I was reminded of another psalm that's really dear to my heart, Psalm 88. If you have a Bible, I would encourage you to turn there. I encountered Psalm 88 when I took a trip to Israel several years ago. One of the things most groups do when you go to Israel is when you're in Jerusalem, you go to Caiaphas' house. Caiaphas is the high priest that had Jesus arrested, had him tried, and had him murdered. And in the basement of Caiaphas' house is this makeshift small dungeon. And a portion of the dungeon is a cylindrical room that they would tie ropes under the shoulders of the prisoner and lower them into this pitch black, dark room. Now there's stairs that lead down, but in Caiaphas' day, in Jesus' day, that was not the case. They lower you in and they pull you up when they're ready for you. And most people believe that this is where Jesus spent the night after he got arrested, waiting on his trial before Pilate the next day. And when you go to Jerusalem, you can go down into that cell. And our guide pointed us to Psalm 88. Psalm 88 was written by the sons of Korah, we're told. But it's also believed by scholars to be a prophetic messianic psalm. And many scholars believe that this is meant to be the prayer that Jesus prays after he's arrested. If it's not the prayer that he prays after he's arrested, Jesus knew the scriptures, he knew the psalms, this could very well be a psalm that came to mind that he quoted. But when I picture Jesus arrested and alone and reading, crying these things out, it brings fresh meaning to it for me. And when we listen to it and read it, I think you'll be taken aback by how very real it is. So I'm going to read a good portion of it. Beginning in verse 11. Is your steadfast love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? And then verse 13, They surround me like a flood all day long. They close in on me together. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me. My companions have become darkness. That's a real prayer. That's not a prayer you pray in church in front of other people. That's not how we teach our kids to pray. We see accusations in this prayer. You have caused my friends and my loved ones to shun me. It is your wrath that beats against me and waves and covers me. The person crying out to God in this psalm feels the darkness closing in in such a way that they don't know if they will see the light again. My companions have become darkness, he ends with. And that's it. I am grateful to God for choosing to include in his Bible and his inspired word prayers that are that raw and that are that real. Prayers that show us that when our emotions are too big for propriety, that our God can meet us in those places and hear us. He appreciates those prayers so much so that he recorded them and fought for them and protected them down through the centuries so that we could see them too. So when we pray them, it's okay. When we need to cry out to God, we can. He's not offended by those prayers. He hears those prayers. He welcomes those prayers. And here's what else happens when we cry out to God, when our prayers become cries, when we lose all sense of propriety and we're just trying to figure it out. Here's what else happens when it's literally the dark night of our soul and the darkness is closing in around us and our life is falling apart and our children are making decisions that we don't understand and our husband is making decisions that we don't understand and everything that we thought was going to happen, this future that we had projected is not going to happen. This person that I love is not in my life anymore and I see reminders of them all the time and I don't know how I'm going to put one foot in front of the other. I don't know how I'm going to do it. When we pray those prayers, this is what happens. If we look back at Luke 22, there's a verse that I skipped. Verse 43. In the middle of his praying, and there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him. In the middle of Jesus crying out, Father, please don't make me do this. Please let there be another way. God says, son, you're going to have to walk that path. But he doesn't make him do it on his own. He sends an angel to strengthen Jesus in the dark night of his soul. And I can't help but believe that God will send angels to strengthen you too. When you pray those prayers, I think God sends his angels to strengthen you as well. And I don't know what those angels look like. Maybe it's a hug. Maybe it's someone's presence. Maybe it's a text or a phone call or an email. I know in our family it's cardinals. Maybe it's a southern thing, I'm not sure. But we believe that when a cardinal shows up in your view, that that's a lost loved one who's just stopping by to say hello. Just to check in on you. And so sometimes God sends cardinals just when we need them. Another big one in our family is Mallard Ducks. You know that we lost my father-in-law a couple years ago. And Mallard Ducks were really special to him. And I can't tell you all the cool places where we've just kind of looked and there's a duck there that doesn't belong there. And it's just God kind of reminding us that he loves us, that he sees our pain, that he walks with us in that pain. Maybe, for some of us, God's using this morning to strengthen you, to buoy you. I hope so. Maybe this is just what you need. My hope for all of you is that you never need this sermon and you never have to pray those prayers. But my suspicion is you have a better chance of dodging raindrops on the way back to your car in a downpour than you do of living a life without tragedy. And so I think all of us, at some point, need this sermon and this reminder that when our emotions are too big for propriety, God can hear those prayers too. And in the hearing, in those moments, he sends his angels one way or another to strengthen us. I just got done reading a book. It's actually Beth Moore's biography. I would highly recommend it. One of the best books I've read in a couple years. And in it, she was talking to someone who faced incredible tragedy. And she asked her, how is it that you have kept going through these years? And she said, God opens my eyes every morning. I have no other explanation than that. There are nights that I went to sleep and I did not want to wake up and God opens my eyes. And so I get up that day and for us today I use the breath that's in my lungs and I praise him and I go. We will all in different times and seasons and for different reasons and in different ways walk through dark nights of the soul. But when we do, we can cry out to God. And when we cry out to God, He will hear us. And when He hears us, He will send His angels to strengthen us. I'll finish with this verse from Isaiah, and then I'll pray, because it's one of my favorites. We're taught in Isaiah that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and that he comforts those who are crushed in spirit. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. You're big, you're good, and you're gracious, and we are broken. We need you so much, and we have no right, we have no right to pound our desk and shake our fist and demand answers from you. We have no right to do that, and yet in your goodness, from time to time, you allow it, and you hug us, and you weep with us. I lift up the people today who might have recently prayed prayers like these, and I just ask that you would strengthen them, that they would feel your presence, they would feel your goodness, they would feel your love, they would be strengthened by you. Father, buoy us and tether us to you. God, we also thank you that Jesus did drink of that cup, that he did die for us, that he did conquer death and sin and hell for us so that we don't have to. And God, we look forward to a day when we understand things just a little bit better. But in the meantime, may your presence and your love be ever enough. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, my name is Nate, and I say I get to be the pastor here, although that's less convincing since I just said I don't want to preach to you guys. I still like to be the pastor. I just want to sit in the service, too, you know? And if I haven't gotten to meet you, I really would love to do that in the lobby afterwards if that's something that you would like to do as well. We are in the last part of our series called The Blessed Life, where we're looking at the blessings that come at the beginning of Jesus' first recorded public address, the Sermon on the Mount. You can find it in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. That's where we've been looking at the blessings. But it's also recorded in Luke chapter 6, so you can find it there as well. As we've looked at the blessings, we've looked at three of them. Last week, Doug looked at poor in spirit, did a phenomenal job. Thank you once again, Doug. I told Doug after the service last week, and I would say publicly, that I think the church is so very blessed when we can just kind of give him this little idea or verse or thought. I think one time I allowed him like a part of one sentence, please preach on just this part of one sentence. And he takes that into his laboratory for like six months and just thinks on it and then just says, here you go. And we all just kind of walk away going, I think I should listen to that three or four more times, but we're so blessed by that. So thank you. This week, I want to look at the final blessing that we have selected. And when I say we, I mean me. There's nine blessings, and I picked three of them to talk about. Doug picked the other one. And as I chose them, one of the ones that I wanted to talk about as we moved through this series was this one found in Matthew chapter 5, verse 9. And it simply says, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be the children of God, the sons and daughters of God, which is quite the blessing for this one. The others, you know, theirs is the kingdom of heaven, that they will be, their hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied, that will be filled, they will inherit the earth. But this one, God literally says, if you are a peacemaker, I will adopt you as my child. That's the blessing that flows from being someone who seeks to make peace. And for most of us, this is not the first time we've encountered this blessing or beatitude. Blessed are the peacemakers. And so when we think of it, we probably think of peacemakers. What I think about peacemakers, I had an experience a week, 10 days ago, where I met a buddy of mine in the afternoon just to chit-chat and catch up, just kind of like you do sometimes. And we got to talking, and he asked me about a mutual acquaintance of ours and how my relationship was with him. And I said, well, it's not super good. There's really still kind of a lot of hurt and anger there, so I wouldn't say that we're actually talking very much. And he said, well, why is that? Why is that bad? And for eight to ten minutes, I kind of enumerated my sob story of why I'm angry at this person, why I'm holding a grudge against this person, and why I'm not really too keen on cleaning that up. We don't really run in the same circles. We don't really run into each other. So it's not something that's in my face all the time. And I'm perfectly happy just floating through life, never forgiving them, never talking to them, just making them anathema to me and just moving on down the road. And I enumerated to him all the reasons why I'm justified in this hurt. And he responded with, you're right, that makes sense. And I would be angry too. You know you need to talk to him and forgive him, right? Just like flippantly, as if he hadn't heard the methodical case I laid out for 10 minutes so that he would know, yes, God does tell us to forgive, but surely this, Nate, is the exception. You were so deeply wronged. You do not have to forgive this person. He said, you know you have to forgive him, right? And I was like, eh, I mean, I think we're good. And he was like, no, you're not. You know you need to talk to him. And I'm like, yeah, but I don't want to. And he goes, okay, but you should. He's really stubborn, and he's not very smart. So this was really annoying. And I finally looked at him and I said, yeah, I know, you're right. I do. I don't want to, but I'll pray that I want to and that I can. And that was two weeks ago. I've thought about that person and that conversation every day since. And choosing a sermon on being a peacemaker doesn't help with the conviction that you have in your life that you've not made peace. I don't hold a lot of grudges, but apparently when I do, I hold them pretty tight. And so I thought, what a well-timed sermon for me. I don't know if it's going to help you guys. I'll just preach to myself. None of y'all hold grudges or mad at anybody. But I thought, what a well-timed sermon for me. I'm going to need this. This is going to be one of those ones that I'll be freshly convicted as I go through it. And it is. But as I approached the topic and began to read up on it, began to think through it, it actually came out in my studies that that sort of peacemaking, person to person, is not really what Jesus was talking about when he said, blessed are the peacemakers. See, to Jesus, a true peacemaker is one who reconciles someone with their God. So a peacemaker is someone who seeks to reconcile someone else with their creator God, which is different than horizontal peacemaking. A peacemaker is one who makes peace vertically between a person and their God. And so I kind of came into the week loaded for bear on why peacemaking is so important, why it matters so much, why we need to pursue it, and even the active part of peacemaking, how making peace isn't just staying quiet and simmering with anger and never saying anything to someone else to kind of not disturb the peace, but sometimes making peace looks like the exact opposite of peace for the sake of peace, right? Sometimes making peace looks like getting involved in World War II for the sake of making peace. And so sometimes in our lives and in our relationship, we can't just sit back. We can't just idly stand by and try to keep the waters calm where there's tension simmering underneath it. We need to actively pursue peace with difficult, challenging conversations. And I was ready to preach this because that's something I don't mind doing. And I felt like I was preaching from a strong suit. And it turns out I'm not. It's funny how God works because that's not really what this sermon is about. It's about the fact that making peace in the eyes of Jesus, first and foremost, means reconciling people to their God. And so really, as much as my buddy was a peacemaker that day, and really ultimately pushed me closer to my God in reconciliation with others, a true peacemaker is more like my friend who's a pastor. I have a friend who is a pastor and his gift, he's got this gift of evangelism. He shares Jesus all the time everywhere he goes. He's one of those guys when you go out to eat with him and the waiter or the waitress brings the food to the table, he'll say, hey, we're about to pray. Is there anything going on in your life we can pray about? And if you're like me, that makes you just a little tense. It's a little bit uncomfortable, but I can't tell you how many times out of that simple question people have broken down, people have shared things, people have wanted to talk. He'll stay after the meal and lead them to Christ right there in the restaurant. He likes to golf. He'll go golfing and he'll witness to his caddy for 18 holes when he goes on trips. And by the end, he's posting a selfie next to his caddy who just accepted Christ. And like, if you're next to him on an airplane and you don't know Jesus, you're at least going to fake like you do before the end of that flight. He is going to share his faith with you. He is going to share it all the time, and he is constantly, constantly helping people reconcile themselves with their creator. That's what a peacemaker does. A peacemaker helps someone see there is a creator God of the universe who really loves us, as we just sang, and pursues us and comes after us when we are the prodigal son or the prodigal daughter. He chases after us. He waits for us eagerly. He desires us. And we were made, Garden of Eden, perfect creation, perfect relationship. God walked with them in the cool of the evening. God designed you to be in relationship with him. It's the only reason you exist. It's the only reason he wanted to create you is so he could share himself with you. The problem is when we sin, and the easiest way to understand sin is when we assume authority in our life. When God is here and we are here and we go, gosh, I don't like this arrangement. I'm going to start making my own decisions regardless of what God wants me to do. Those decisions are sin. And that sin wrecks our relationship with God. And we cannot be reconciled to him. There is nothing we can do to reconcile our relationship with our creator God. And God in his goodness, because he loves us, sent his son to die for us and create a path of reconciliation back to him so that all we need to do to be reconciled to our creator God is open up our eyes to the fact that he created us, that he loves us, that our sin has distorted our relationship, but that he sent his son to die for us so that that relationship might be restored. And that's what heaven is. It's to exist in eternity in a perfect relationship with God. When we think about heaven, we probably think about the pearly gates and the golden streets and seeing our loved ones and the marriage supper of the lamb and all the things that heaven is going to be. But what heaven really is, the real draw, is to exist in right relationship with our God for all of eternity, exactly as we were intended to do that. And so a peacemaker is someone who opens up the eyes of others that they might be reconciled with their God. Do you understand that the teachers who are in that room right there teaching the fourth and fifth graders and who are on the other side of the aquarium supply store down the dark hallway. Teaching our kindergarten through third graders. And the teachers all down this hall who are loving on our children. Do you understand they're making peace? But slowly by slowly, brick by brick, seemingly innocuous lesson plan by lesson plan, they're helping our children make peace with their God. Do you understand that our teachers are peacemakers? Do you understand that the people who come on Sunday nights and volunteer to be small group leaders for our students, who make awkward small talk with seventh graders so you don't have to. Are slowly by slowly, bit by bit, helping open the eyes of those students to their creator God who loves them and sent his son for them. That bit by bit, those small group leaders are helping those students be reconciled to their God. Do you understand that small group leaders who open up their home and their schedules and facilitate those conversations are peacemakers who are reconciling others to their God? Do you understand that when in a small group setting you share something from your journey, something from what God has shown you that can help somebody else, that in that small way, way in that moment that you too are being a peacemaker? That really we are being peacemakers anytime we help someone take a step towards God. Anytime we help someone reconcile themselves back to their creator, when we help someone make vertical peace, we are being peacemakers. And so Jesus says, blessed are those who help others make peace with me. Blessed are those who help others see themselves as I see them and see me as they should see me. And so in this way, not only is it volunteering in the children's and the students' and small groups and conversations, but it's also being willing to have those difficult conversations. It's also my friend who said, you know you need to forgive that person. And it's not because they were trying to help me make peace with that person. It's because helping me make peace with that person will help me make peace with my God. You're a peacemaker when you sit down with a friend who you love and you care about and you say, hey man, I don't want to be in this conversation right now any more than you want to be in it. But I've noticed this habit or this hang up or this addiction or this sin that's in your life and it's not helping you. It's hurting you. And I love you. And I want to see what you look like on the other side of this sin. That's making peace. When as a spouse, you look at your husband or your wife, and you say, hey, you're acting this way, you're doing this thing, you're developing this habit, you're developing this hang-up, and it needs to end where this does. When you put your foot down and you say no more, you're making peace. You're pushing them towards their creator. And in those moments when it's really difficult to make peace and yet we pursue it anyways. Vertical peace. Jesus says we are blessed because we're helping people to be reconciled to their creator God. And it occurred to me as I thought through what true peacemaking was that Jesus is the great peacemaker. He offers the great peace out of which all other peace flows. Jesus himself is the great peacemaker, and he offers the great peace out of which all other peace flows. I'll tell you what I mean, but he's the great peacemaker as he hangs on the cross, reconciling us back to our creator God. He did not have to do that. His relationship with his God was fine. His relationship with his father was fine, but he did it for me and you. So as he hangs on the cross, he is the great peacemaker, creating the great path of reconciliation and providing us with the great and perfect peace. And it makes me wonder, how could we ever seek to be at peace with ourselves if we are not first at peace with our creator? And as I thought about this concept, and I thought about the great peace that Jesus offers, it occurs to me that I should mention this. I'm going to move over here. I'm going to be in this portion of the stage, because this is not the sermon proper, okay? This is not what I'm driving at, but I do want to tell you this. So allow me a parenthetical portion of the sermon, okay? We live in a culture that is increasingly aware of mental health issues, anxiety and depression in particular. And it's not like these issues didn't exist before. We just didn't have words for them or labels for them. We didn't really understand them or know what to do with them. We just called it being sad or being discouraged or worrying too much. I was actually talking with a guy this week who has a daughter in college who's struggling pretty big with anxiety and depression right now. And he mentioned to me that as she's going to counseling, they're doing all the right things, and they're being really diligent about it. And she's been sharing with him some of the stuff that she's been learning in counseling, some of the symptoms and some of the things and some of the stuff that she sees manifesting in her life. And he's realized, oh my goodness, I've walked with that my whole life too. I shouldn't have a name for it. I just thought I was sad. So we live in a culture with an increasing awareness of these things. And I want to be really careful because I would not for a second try to be one of those pastors who says we pray away the depression. If you're worried, you just don't trust God enough. If you're depressed, you're just not experiencing the joy of Jesus and you need to pursue him harder and pray and sing more. Could be part of it. But probably that there's a legitimate chemical imbalance that needs counseling and that needs some drugs maybe even for a short time. And so I do not for a second want to say that we pray the depression and the anxiety away all the time as a first measure. There are some things that require actual treatment. I don't want to be ignorant about that. However, if it's true that God created us, if it's true that he fashioned your soul to crave him, if it's true that we, along with all creation in Romans 8, cry out for the return of the king, that creation groans for the return of God, for him to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue, if we claw for Eden and the perfection that he created, if it's true that there's a creator God and that creator God made you and he made you to crave him and to need him and to only find satisfaction through knowing him and being reconciled to him, how could we possibly seek our own peace without being at peace with our creator? It's not the whole measure for mental illness, but it's got to be one of them, doesn't it? It's got to be a part of it, doesn't it? So I would simply say if you were one who struggles in that way, man, we want you to get all the counseling. We want you to get, if you need prescriptions, we want you to do those. We want you to be diligent about those things. But there's not enough therapy or prescriptions in the world to reconcile you to your creator. And there's not enough treatment in the world to give you the peace that he offers first. And even if that's not what you deal with, even if that's not your struggle, I would still ask you, how can you possibly be at peace with yourself and at peace with those around you if your soul is out of harmony with your creator God? So for many of us, the first peace we need to be making is with ourselves. For many of us this morning, and here at the end we're going to take communion, we're going to have an opportunity to do this. If you get nothing else from this but to leave here with the desire to be reconciled with your creator, this morning is a win. If there's sin in your life that's keeping you from having a good relationship with him, fix it. If you're like me and there's a relationship in your life, if there's a grudge that you're holding, if there's forgiveness that you need to extend and it's prohibiting you from having a perfectly peaceful relationship with your God, then fix it. If there's a habit that you're missing, a discipline that you lack, if there's a desire that you don't have, pray to God earnestly that he would speak into those things, that he would give you that desire, that he would give you that discipline, that he would supply you with that habit so that you might pursue him. But let's leave here determined and hopeful that we can be reconciled with our creator. God, let us first make peace with ourselves and in that way be peacemakers. But it does, to me, come full circles to reconciliation with others because how could we possibly be at peace with others if we are not at peace with our creator. If there is someone in your life that you're angry with, if there's someone that's angry with you, if there's someone that you're frustrated with. If there's a relationship that isn't right. No matter what the dynamic is there. They wronged you years ago. You can't let go of it. You wronged them and you've got too much pride to go to them. There's a misunderstanding. Whatever it is that's causing you to lack peace with a brother or a sister, instead of sitting back and expecting them to act, can I just encourage you to seek peace with your creator, God? Can I encourage you, instead of focusing on that broken relationship, can you focus on this one? And as God repairs this one, look what would happen. How could you possibly be at peace with our creator and not desire peace with others? Why do you think God has reminded me of this broken relationship I have every day for 14 days and he will not let it go? There's other things I'd like to think about. There's other stuff. I mean, listen, I've got plenty to be convicted about, but that's the thing right now, and it's not going anywhere. Why do you think that happens? Because my soul longs to be at peace with Creator God, and this horizontal relationship is messing up this vertical one, and so I need to go fix it to be back in right relationship with my creator. Those of you who have broken relationships in your life, someone that you haven't forgiven, someone that you haven't spoken to for years, someone that has something against you or you have it against them, how could you possibly be at peace with your creator and not seek peace with them? Not seek to be reconciled with them. So when we do this, and this is, I think, the really cool part, when we are peacemakers, when we first make peace with our God and ourselves, and then we make peace with others, we seek reconciled relationships, we encourage others to reconcile their relationships. When we make true peace, we are imitators of Jesus. When we make true peace with ourselves and with others, we are imitators of Jesus in the way that he is the great peacemaker, that he made the great path to reconciliation with our creator God. When we do that, we are imitators of Christ as we make peace with ourselves and others. And this is why the blessing is so profound. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God. They will be called the daughters, the children of God. Because we are imitators of Christ. Of course. Of course when we make peace with our creator God, we acknowledge that we have broken our relationship and that he sent his son to reconcile that relationship and we claim the death on the cross as our reconciliation. Of course we are called sons of God. That's the promise throughout the whole scripture. It means we're believers and he claims us. And of course as we seek to reconcile other people with their God and they come to know God in a profound way and they become believers and they become sons and daughters of God. Of course we are imitating Christ and then called sons of God. Of course that's why this is the blessing. Maybe this is why scripture prioritizes peace so profoundly. Paul writes in Romans, as far as it depends on you, seek peace. As far as it relies on you, make peace. No matter what, Paul ends all of his letters with grace and peace to you. And I've always wondered why Paul made such a big deal out of peace. Because he wasn't talking about this peace. He's talking about this peace. Maybe this is why Jesus prays the high priestly prayer, John chapter 17, his longest recorded prayer. You know what he prays for? He prays for unity. Here and there. Peace. It had never occurred to me before how all of these themes are woven throughout Scripture. This use of the word peace that we see over and over again, God's encouragement through the different authors to pursue peace, to be people of peace, to lead quiet and peaceful lives. Jesus opening up the Beatitudes with blessed by the peacemakers. It had never occurred to me why peace was throughout all scripture. Because peace means this peace. Reconciling with our creator God. And so my prayer for you this morning as we worshiped, this week as I prepared, is that you will seek peace with your creator. You will acknowledge he is the creator God who loves you. Your sin has distorted that relationship and broken it irreconcilably. Accept that Jesus died for you and created a path of reconciliation. Pursue that peace. And in your pursuit of that peace, look around you and help others pursue that peace as well. And in doing so, we are imitators of Jesus. And God will call us his children. Let's pray. Lord, I know there are plenty of us here, me included, who do not feel at peace with you, would you help us? Would you wrestle with us? Would you remind us of this lack of peace and the gentle way that you do it over and over again until we pursue it. Father, if there are people here who have never made peace with you, whose souls have never found rest in you, who have wandered from one thing to the next trying to find the peace and the satisfaction that only you offer. Would this morning be the morning that they rest easy in you and reconcile themselves, claim the reconciliation that you offer, and make peace with their creator, God, finally. Father, for those of us who need to make peace with others, would you give us the courage and the strength to do that? For those of us who need to pursue peace with you through eliminating things that are in our life, would you give us the courage to do that? If we need to pursue peace with you by adding things to our life, would you give us the desire and the discipline to do that? God, this morning, we simply pray for peace with you and with our brothers and sisters around us. Let us be peacemakers. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace, and I have the honor this morning of being able to close out our time in our series called Powerful Prayers, where we've been looking at different prayers throughout Scripture and waning and pulling out any meaning that we can find in those for ourself and for our life and for our faith. To make a really weird transition, I had this buddy back in the day. I'm not going to say when because I don't want people reading between the lines. It's before I was here, so none of you know. But I had this buddy who was like, I think, ascribing to be an influencer before an influencer existed, like a social media influencer, do we know these? He was so precise on his social media. Like, he didn't post, like, no caption or no tweet was posted until it had lived in, like, on his notes app for, like, two weeks to make sure it was good enough. He had times, like, he literally, he had, like, days and times. I think Sunday night, like, Sunday, like, midnight was kind of his time to post because that was when most people were at home on their computer doing homework and therefore probably scrolling Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. And so there would be the most possible, like it would optimize the amount of likes and comments and all of those things that he would get on his posts. He was very, very precise with those things, even including if his posts didn't do the numbers that he wished that they would have done, if he didn't get quite as many comments or quite as many likes as he would have liked, it bummed him out to the point that he would just delete the post because he's like, well, this is a worthless post, which is a pretty silly and funny thing. But ultimately, what we found is here is this guy who his mission was to create a version of himself that was the best possible version of himself that he could show to the people around him. And his value was placed in the response from other people to that life that he had sculpted and crafted. Now, I don't imagine many of you guys are that precise in these dealings, and so you're like, yeah, cool, whatever. Nice story, Kyle. But let me give you a couple other scenarios. See if they ring a bell, or even if they don't, see if something similar maybe sparks your interest. Your mom, and as your kids are growing up, you're starting to have more days than bad days. You're a dad, and you just can't really seem to figure out why your kids always matter, why you can't control your temper, or why your family can't just be a little bit easier. Your kids can't just be a little bit easier to manage. And you're starting to feel a bit of shame for it because I'm a mom, I'm a dad, it's my identity, that's who I am. And I feel like I'm not doing a good job. And then on top of that, you jump onto Instagram and and here's this other family who their kids have their shirts tucked in. I couldn't pay my kids enough money to tuck their shirts in. And as you see it, and as you see these posts of these families and these moms and these dads who seem to be doing it a lot better than you're doing it based on these pictures or based on small group and what you hear from the other parents in your small group or whatever it might be, you start to just feel shame. You're made to feel lesser than, normally by your own self. You're kind of inflicting shame on yourself because why am I not doing better? Why am I not being better? Or maybe you're looking at the people around in your circle, in your small group, like, gosh, man, they seem to be figuring out this work-life balance way better than I am because this is really difficult for me. It's really hard to navigate marriage while I navigate career. It's really hard watching people at my work who are doing better than I am and accomplishing more than I am and much more quickly moving up the ladder than I am. And this is what I do. This is who I am. And I'm clearly not good enough or not as good as the people around me. And so once again, you just feel shame. You feel less valuable or less valued because of your performance and what you see. Maybe people around you are starting to retire and you're like, what did they do? Why are they so much smarter and w than I am, and I still have to keep working? What's the deal here? Maybe you don't want to give up work because your entire identity is found in it. Who am I if I'm not doing this thing in my life? Here's one. Maybe something in your life has been marked by some sin and some shame in your life. Maybe it's something that was public. You did something wrong. You messed up. And the people around you know it. And you start to get more worried and more worried as you roll up to small group because you know, man, everybody knows. Everybody knows that I did this thing. And I know they can't see past that I've done this thing because I know that I can't see past that I've done this thing. Maybe you start walking around your friend groups and people are looking at you and giving you that gaze that you know, gosh, that is a judgmental gaze and I do not like it. Or they say snide comments because in their minds and in their brains, if they can belittle you, then they can raise and elevate their ego and puff themselves up a bit. Or what I think I see most of all, maybe it doesn't even matter what the people around you's reaction is because you are so crippled by the shame that is inside of you because of something that you do or something that you see that you are or things that are in your heart that you know shouldn't be there. And so it doesn't matter whether anybody shows any judgment towards you or is judgmental in any way because you've already decided you're not going to give yourself any grace and you're just going to walk in shame. And so you start to pull away and you start to disconnect, especially I got to stop going to small group. I can't measure myself up to these people because I just feel shameful and less than. I can't go to church. I can't sit around these people who love the Lord and have a Lord who loves them when I know that the contents of my heart are this or that I've done this and I cannot move past it and I cannot offer myself grace to get past this. That one is exactly what we find in the story of the woman at the well in John 4. The woman at the well is a pretty, like, it's a story that probably a lot of us have heard, but I think one of the difficulties of the woman at the well, or because her shortcomings and her sin are so specific that it's hard to actually find ourselves and place ourselves inside of the story. But ultimately, what we see and how we experience and come to understand why this woman is in the place that she's in is because she was dealing with a shame that was causing her to completely disconnect and to avoid any interaction with anyone. We find her at the well drawing water in the middle and the hottest part of the day by herself. This doesn't happen. Culturally, you don't go to get water in the middle of the day. First, because basically everything that they needed to do around the house and for themselves, they need the fresh water for that day. And so to go later in the day is to not be able to do all of those things up until that point. Second, you don't go in the hottest part of the day because it's the hottest part of the day. You know, like you have to carry those water, I don't know, the water carrying devices, vases, or I don't know what they what they... I don't know. Ashlyn made our wedding registry, so hopefully she knows the name of water-carrying devices and put them on there. I don't know. But nonetheless, vases or bowls or something that you have to carry. And then, I mean, as any of you guys know, as soon as you carry something full of liquid for any amount of time, it is very difficult, especially when it is very hot in the middle of the day. So why is this lady standing here in the middle of the day by herself doing something that every other person has already done in the morning? Culturally, we realize and we find out she's kind of hiding. She's avoiding any possible contact with the people around her because the people around her know her life. They know her sins and they know her shortcomings. And she doesn't want to deal with it. We find out what those are as she begins talking to Jesus. As she goes and he asks for water and as they begin talking, at some point he says, hey, go get your husband. I'd love to meet him. Knowing what he's doing and she says, I actually don't have a husband, I'm not married. And Jesus responds, I know you're not married. You've been married four times, and now this fifth man that you're living with, you're not married to. Essentially, reading between the lines, she has lived a life of promiscuity and adultery. And that unlocks why she's there in the middle of the day. To avoid any possible interaction with somebody who would give her that knowing gaze. Walking up to somebody who might treat her as lesser than because of her sin that she has lived in and is currently living in. Or maybe, maybe it's not even as much about what other people will do, but because she cannot offer herself and all she can think about as she's around anyone is comparing herself to the other people and it's just building up shame inside of her, and so she has just decided to eliminate all possibility of coming across anyone. But there was Jesus. As they talk, and as she kind of, why are you talking to me? I'm a woman. I'm not Jewish. Why are you a Jewish man, why would you talk to me? And his response is, man, if you knew who I was, you would ask me for a drink because I can give you water where you will never thirst again. I can give you a water that will satisfy your soul for eternity. There is no division. There's no Gentile and Jew soon enough. Because soon enough, a time is coming where everyone will be completely united under God's love, being able to be in unity, worshiping God together in his love. And I think she starts to realize who he is. And she says, sir, I've heard tell that there's a Christ who's coming. There's a Messiah who's coming, who's going to make all of this known to us. He's going to tell us how we get to experience this unity, how we get to experience unity under God. And he looks at her and he says, I'm him. I'm the guy. I'm the Messiah that you're talking about. It's an absolutely incredible story. She gets to be one of the first people on the earth to know that this is the Messiah who is coming to unite all people under God by his blood. But I tell you it not just because it's a great story, but because I think it connects really well to something that we find in our prayer that we find in Psalm 139. And that comes at the end of the story. The end of the story, as I read it, I both think, hey, this is great, and I also think, this is weird, and I don't get it. As a response to her recognizing, realizing, and understanding who Jesus is and her interactions with Jesus, she goes back into town and proclaims and exclaims to them. Now, remember, this is the lady who was off by herself getting water in the middle of the day, making sure that she had zero interactions with anyone who lives in her town and in her community because she didn't want to experience the shame of getting or having to experience anybody. But she met Jesus. And so she felt like she could go and talk to these people. That makes sense to me. And half of what she says makes sense to me. She says, could this really be the Messiah? But she doesn't pose the question. She doesn't pose the question because she doesn't go, you know what, guys, I was getting water over here. This dude asked if I wanted to give him a drink. And then he's like, actually, I got a drink for you that will quench your thirst forever. I have this guy who said that through him and by his power, that we are going to be united in God, all one people just glorifying and worshiping God. She doesn't say any of that. She says, while I was getting water, I met this guy who told me everything about my life. Could this be the Messiah? In the joy of exclamation, she brings up, I met this guy who knew everything about me. How does that make sense? Why would a person who is hiding from anybody who could possibly know anything about her life, how could she make a full 180 to now go and find all of those people and exclaim to them, I have met this guy and he knows every part of me. How awesome is this? This guy might be the Messiah. It doesn't make sense to me. And it connects, I think, really well to the beginning of Psalm 139, a prayer to David that also is insane to me and absolutely terrifying. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. All right, here's the gist. David is praying and considers it fully wonderful that God knows every single part of who he is. I don't know about you guys, but I don't want anyone to know that about me. I think if any of you knew what lied on the other side of the Kyle that I present to the world, I think you would like, no one would ever want to be around me again. There is a lot of ugly and a lot of imperfect that comes from that. And not only says that God knows every one of our actions, but he knows every one of our words that has yet to come on our lips. He knows every single thought that we've ever thought. What that means is when we decide that we're going to love on somebody or serve somebody, but it's for selfish ambition, he knows it's for selfish ambition and we're doing it for ourself. He knows that while I completely judge and I do not like this person, yet on the outside I'm going to love them and serve them however best I can, he knows how I really feel about that person in my heart. How can David consider it wonderful for a God who holds our life and our eternity in his hands? How can it be wonderful for that God to know us wholly and completely? Not only that, but verses 7 through 13 basically says, there is nowhere that I can run from you. I cannot hide from you anywhere. How can David find it wonderful? And how can the woman at the well exclaim and find joy in the fact that there is this man, Jesus, and there is this God who knows every single thought, intention, and action in our life? So we press on into David's prayer. And I think we in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God. Verses 1 through 6, you find David pray about how wonderful it is that God would fully and completely know him. In 7 through 13, you find out that there's no place to hide from him, all of which are absolutely terrifying to me. But in 13 through 18 is where you find why it is wonderful. Because God knows this completely because he created us. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. What David is saying is that as God is your child, I have been made and created on purpose. Ephesians 2.10 says we are God's handiwork. Other translations say we are God's workmanship. We are his masterpiece created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Every single one of us were created on purpose. There was intention in our creation. It wasn't random. God created you to be you. He created me to be me. He created us on purpose. He knows us completely. There's nowhere that we could go to hide. And he sent his son to experience the condemnation and the death for our sins that we deserve so that we get to experience an eternal relationship with him. All of that to say that not only as children of God, not only are we holy and completely known by God, but we are wholly and completely loved by God. To me, I see David's joy in a new light. I see complete clarity in the light of David as he declares it as wonderful to be fully known for good and for bad. I see the same in the woman at the well of why she might exclaim joyously that here is a man who knew every part of me. Tim Keller puts it this way. He says, But not be known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our biggest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved, that is what we need more than anything. That's why David was able to find peace knowing that every thought, every desire, and every action in his life, because he was a child of God, no longer, no longer shades God's view of him. Because he is fully loved and created and set apart by God, there's no longer condemnation. There's only love and there's only grace that he gets to experience. He gets to experience being fully known and being fully loved. When you look at the woman at the well. And probably for the first time in a long time, she was able to realize and experience the freedom that comes from not having to anymore be defined by or held back by her past or her present. Because all that mattered now was there's this man who not only talks of this eternity, not only talks of this unity under the Father, under God, but he is telling me, I think, that I get to be a part of it. Me, the person who has to hide from everyone because I cannot deal or bear with the amount of shame that I hold on to, this same woman who is living in utter and complete fear, completely and wholly crippled by shame, had to run down to town to the people she was avoiding, and she had to say, guys, there's this guy who knows all the things you guys know about me, and he, I think, I'm pretty sure, he is offering me the same love that he's offering all of us. Somehow, I get to be a part of this. What if us, as Christians, as children of God, lived in the freedom that she got to experience? Where we weren't always and completely crippled by the fear and anxiety and the shame that is brought on by comparing ourselves to the people around us all the time. What if we weren't defined by the accomplishments that we have or the things that we are trying to figure out? What if we weren't at all defined by anything except for people who are wholly known and wholly loved by God? Can you imagine that freedom? Can you imagine the way that you could treat people and experience life if you weren't held back by your fear and by your anxiety of how people see you or how you're presenting yourself? If you weren't consistently bringing shame upon yourself and couldn't get over the fact that you are the way that you are in certain ways, not realizing that God has forgiven that a long time ago and God created you exactly as he intended to create you? Tim Keller writes separately in a separate book, Jesus took the condemnation we deserve. He faced the trial that should be ours so that we do not have to face any more trials. So I simply need to ask God to accept me because of what the Lord Jesus has done. Jesus took on the condemnation and the trial for us. And so, in light of that, we read on. Listen. Listen. Then the only person whose opinion counts looks at me and he finds me more valuable than all the jewels in the earth. How can we worry about being snubbed now? How can we worry about being ignored now? How can we care that much about what we look like in the mirror now? To continue in my own words, why would we ever place our source of identity, value, or worth into the hands of anything outside of a perfect father's perfect love for us? Who do we think we are to not offer ourselves grace when Christ and God's eternal position in heaven, eternal posture in heaven, is to have grace and forgiveness for you? Who do we think we are that our grace should be more expensive than God's? Who do we think we are that we are not allowing ourselves and offering ourselves the grace that we have already freely been given through the blood of Christ? And when you look at the other people around you, when you look at a mom on social media, when you look at a dad who seems to really be able to just get it with their son, just really be able to play with their kids and connect and all this stuff and you're having a hard time, when you look at the accomplishments of someone else that's around you in your circle, at your work, in your small group, wherever you find yourself comparing your life to the life of another one in order to boost or deflate your ego, here's my question. What comparison can you make that compares to the knowledge that you have been fearfully and wonderfully made by a perfect creator? What comparison can you make to anyone else around you that compares to that knowledge? That you are both fully known and fully loved by the creator of the universe. And through the blood of Christ, you have been set apart for the joy of an eternal relationship with your creator, God. May we today, may we this week, strive to experience the freedom of the woman in the well, the freedom of David who prays and is thankful that a God fully knows him. Offering our self-grace, offering the people around us grace, and only looking at ourselves and the people around us in one light and one light only as people who are completely and wholly known by God and loved by God. And may that be our only distinction for ourselves. Let's pray. Lord, I don't know why it's so hard for us to give ourselves the grace and to find our identity in you, even though you've made it so accessible and so easy to do so. Lord, would you just please lighten up our hearts and allow us maybe for the first time to experience the freedom of having complete certainty in our identity, our worth, and our value in you. And look for it nowhere else. Lord, we love you so much. Amen.