Sermons tagged with Impact

Good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on this cold February morning on Super Bowl Sunday. I hope everybody's got fun plans, or if you don't care about the Super Bowl at all, I hope you have a nice dinner planned for yourself. This is the third part in our series going through the book of Colossians. And this week, as we approach it, I wanted to approach the text with this kind of idea in mind. We're going to be in Colossians chapter 2 and then on through chapter 3 in some different portions of it. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn there. And then if you're at home, please turn there. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. I would also call your attention to the bulletin. The bulletin looks a little bit different this week. There's no place for you to take notes. So note takers, you're going to have to get creative. Instead, I've put a prayer on the bulletin that we're going to pray at the end of the service together. You'll pray silently as I pray it aloud. And by the time we get there, hopefully the prayer makes a lot more sense and is meaningful and is something that you will carry home with you. But we'll talk more about that at the end of the service. If you're watching online, this bulletin is attached to the grace find that you should have received this week. So you can download that if you want to, or you can just email someone on staff and we'll be happy to send it over to you if you find it helpful and want to pray it throughout your week. But as we approach the text this week, I wanted to start here. I'm not sure if any of you have ever tried to eat healthy, okay? By the looks of most of us, this has been an effort at least at some portion of our life, but there have been a lot of times in my life when I have decided that I'm going to begin to eat with some wisdom. I'm going to start to eat well. I'm a person who's had a lot of day one workouts, and I've had a lot of day one diets. Okay, there's more in my future. Maybe tomorrow. Who knows? Not today. It's Super Bowl Sunday. This is not the day to start a diet, but tomorrow is fresh and hope springs eternal. But whenever I decide that I'm going to eat well, right? I'm going to eat responsibly, which is like a rabbit. Whenever I decide I'm going to do that, I feel like I am a person who is at war with myself. I feel like I am two separate people. I am one person who wants to eat well, and I am another person who just loves food so much that he's angered by me who wants to eat well. Because I love food. I don't know about your relationship with food. Mine is probably not healthy. If I know that I'm going to have a certain dinner that night or that we're going somewhere like a restaurant or something like that, I already know what I'm getting and I wake up thinking about it. Like I look forward to it throughout the day. That's how much I love food. For the Super Bowl tonight, we're going to have pigs in a blanket. I'm going to dip them in spicy mustard. I'm going to eat more than I should. I'm already excited about it, okay? That's just how I am about food. So when I decide that I want to eat well, it's really difficult for me. And I don't know about you, but I have certain stumbling blocks. It's pretty easy for me to eat well around the house. I kind of do a good job not snacking when I'm not supposed to. I don't drink the soda and stuff when I'm not supposed to. I drink black coffee and water, and that's pretty much it during the day. That's not very challenging. But what is challenging is when I'm trying to eat well, and my sweet wife on a Friday or Saturday will say, you want to go Chick-fil-A and get a biscuit? Yeah, yeah, I do, okay? I always want to go to Chick-fil-A and get a biscuit. That answer is never no, okay? You ask me, Nate, do you want a biscuit? Yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah, I do. But you just had three. I don't care. You're offering me one. I want another biscuit. I like biscuits in the morning. So that's tough, all right? The other time it's tough is when I go out to eat. Because I'll go out to eat. I'll go to places that I like, and they have food there that I like. And one of the places I think of is Piper's. I go to Piper's because I meet people there for lunch with a lot of regularity. That's kind of my default spot. And they have salads, like I see them on the menu, right? They got grilled chicken and some fruit or some whatever, some balsamic whatever, less delicious thing that they have there. And I know that I need to order it. And I have girded my loins. I'm ready for this choice. And I go in there and I don't even look at the meat. I look at just the salads. I don't look at the other things. But see, here's the thing. This Piper's has one of the best Reuben's in the city. They really do. It's delicious. And that's what I want, right? I want the Reuben. And I've been thinking all day about how I shouldn't have the Reuben. And I've made the decision, I'm going to get the salad. I'm going to eat the thing that I don't want. But then it's like Satan's working against me or God's just giving me a special grace and telling me it's okay. I'm not sure which sign. And the table next to me will receive a piping hot, crispy toasted Reuben. As I'm sitting there trying to muster up the discipline to order my salad. And I look at that Reuben and I look at those fries and I look at that ketchup and the waitress says, what do you have? That! I want that Reuben. I did not want a salad. And I cave, right? So for me to be on a diet is for me to live at war with myself. I bring that up because I think that you'll know that this is true. Those of you who have been a Christian for any amount of time, to be a Christian is to be at war with yourself. To be a Christian, to be a believer, is to know the good you ought to do and yet still struggle to do it. I even think, and this is a sad reality, it should not be the case, and hopefully God can deliver us from this, and hopefully this sermon moves the needle on this a little bit, but I even think that to be a believer is to be constantly disappointed with how spiritually mature you are and how spiritually mature you think you should be by now. Because we know the good things we're supposed to do. We know the kindness we're supposed to show. We know the greed we're not supposed to have and the pride that we're supposed to iron out. And we know all the different things and our hidden sins and the stuff that we look at and whatever it is, the stuff that we consume. We know what we're not supposed to do and we know what we are supposed to do. And we try like heck to be that person, but we are a person who feels at war with ourself because there is the person within us who wants to eat right and there is the person within us who really loves a good Reuben, whatever that might be for you. And they exist at war with each other. I am convinced that to be a believer means to live in a state of tension within yourself of who you know you should be, of who you know God created you to be, of who you know God designed you to be, and yet not being able to walk in that. There's a verse that's super challenging for me where Paul tells us that we should live a life worthy of the calling that we have received. And I don't know about you, but I don't get to the end of too many days, much less weeks, where I look back on that week and I go, yeah, this week I was obedient to that verse. And if we're honest as Christians, it gets tiring to know that that's true. It gets exhausting to constantly fall short. Paul actually describes this tension in one of my favorite passages. It's one of the most human things to me that's written in the Bible, particularly by Paul in Romans chapter 7. In Romans chapter 7, Paul writes specifically about this tension in the Christian life when, in my inner being, but I see in my members another regenerated person as God has rescued my heart and claimed it and one day will whisk me up to heaven. He's given me eternal life and I'm living as a new creature that we're going to talk about more in a minute. I feel in this inner being a desire to live the righteous life that God has called me to live. And yet, also in my body, is a desire to revert back to my old self. It is a desire to revert to who I am without Jesus. It is a desire to indulge the flesh. It is a desire for the things that I used to consume that I know I don't need to consume anymore. That exists within us. And then he exclaims at the end of it, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Who will finally give me victory? How will I finally live the life that I'm supposed to live? And so that's where we arrive this morning. In Colossians, is this age-old question that all Christians face, that Francis Schaeffer, an author in the 20th century, framed up in a book entitled, How Should We Then Live? Meaning, in light of the gospel, in light of what we talked about in week one, the picture of Jesus that Paul paints for the Colossians, remember, they're facing pressure from within and without to go back to rules and aestheticism and to be legalistic and add on more rules than what is necessary so that they can live a righteous life, and then pressure from the more liberal part of their community to say none of the rules matter, how we live doesn't matter at all. You have total grace to do whatever it is you want to do. And so Paul, to that pressure, paints a picture of Christ as the apex of history and the apex of hope, as the connection point and nexus between the spiritual realm and the physical realm, how he is the creator God over everything, this majestic picture of Christ. And so the question becomes, how do we live in light of that picture? How do we live in light of the gospel? I am saved. I am a new creature. God has breathed new life into me. I am no longer a slave to sin, as Paul describes in Romans, but now I have this option to move forward with the power of Christ and the Holy Spirit in me and to live a life worthy of the calling that I have received. Now, how do I do it? How do I do it? That's the question that we come to in Colossians. And it should be a question that matters to each and every Christian. Father, how do I live a life worthy of the calling that I've received? How do I grow into spiritual maturity? What do I do practically? How do I live the Christian life? And it's an important question because it dictates how we pursue God. And to this question, I think we often answer it in the same way that we're trained to answer any other question in our life about how we get better at a particular thing. If you want to get better at exercising, what do you need? You need more discipline. You need to wake up. You need to do it. You need to be more disciplined in the way you pursue exercise. If you want to eat better, what do you need to do? You need to be more disciplined. You want to do better at time management. You need more discipline in time management. You want to be more focused. You want to be more productive. You want whatever it is, however it is, you want to grow and be better. What is the fundamental requirement of that pursuit of better? It's discipline. We need to do better. We need to come up with structures and systems that we follow, and I'm going to white knuckle my way to success here. And the most disciplined people within our field, they achieve the most success. The most disciplined people at the gym look the best in a t-shirt. The most disciplined people, when they go out to eat, they have the healthiest hearts. Like discipline is the root to how we accomplish success. And so, because that's true, and so very many areas of our life, even though we could philosophically talk about whether or not that's true, because we think that's true in so many areas of our life, we also just by default apply that to our spiritual life. If I want to be more godly, then I need to be more disciplined. I'm going to set up more rules, more regulations. I'm going to get up at this time. I'm going to do these things. I'm going to be the type of person that is defined by these things. We focus on our behavior and our self-discipline. And I think when we are faced with the question of how do I then live? How do I become the Christian that God has created and designed me to be? I think that in our culture, our default answer is to attempt to white-knuckle discipline our way to godliness. And here's what Paul says about that knee-jerk reaction that all perish as they are used, according to human precepts and teachings. Listen, these have indeed an appearance of wisdom and promoting self- we be the people that God asks us to be? And their response, it seems, at least initially, was white-knuckle discipline, aestheticism, following the rules. The better you follow the rules, the more God loves you. It's a very simple exchange. That's what legalism says. And so they're just going to be try-hards. They're just going to be do-betters. That's just what they're going to do. And to help them try really hard, they set up all these rules and parameters around their life. And they say, whoever can follow these rules the best is the greatest Christian. But Paul says, that's fine. Set up your rules. Have all your standards. Set the boundaries really far away from the actual boundary. He says, but all those rules and all that, the way that it looks, the way that you're living, just dotting all the T's and crossing all the I's and really, really, really having these policies in life that keep you on the straight and narrow. Paul says, yeah, those have the appearance of wisdom. And I would add in our vernacular, godliness, but they do nothing. They do nothing to stop the indulgence of the flesh that is the reason for the sinning that we need the rules for. For instance, let's say that what you struggle with is pride. Okay, I'm having to make some assumptions here because I don't have the struggle, but if you do, let's say that something that you struggle with is pride and you go, you know what, God, I gotta get rid of this. I gotta be better. I'm gonna be better at being more humble. I'm gonna try to push out my pride. And so we take intentional steps. Maybe we're people who will maybe kind of fish for compliments sometime, or maybe we'll ask people what they thought about something. And really all we want them to do is tell them that we did a good job or that we're good at this or that we're good at that. And there's ways, if you're a prideful person, there are ways to go through your life and get the people in your life to affirm you. And if you are this person, you're exhausting, okay? I've exhausted others. I say that as a friend. That's not a good road to walk. But let's say that you're a prideful person, and so you need other people to affirm you all the time and the things that you're good at, but you realize in light of the gospel and in light of God's word that pride is not good, and so we need to iron this out of our life. So we go, I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm not going to ask other people for compliments. I'm not going to ask other people to affirm me. I'm not going to seek my value in other places. And then once you get really good at that and you haven't done that in a couple of weeks and you still feel good about yourself, then what do you do? Boy, I am proud of myself for not needing other people to tell me I'm good. Now we're taking pride in a new thing. What Paul says is there is this part of our flesh that is going to manifest negative things in our life, pride, greed, selfishness, lust, whatever it is. And we can put parameters around those things, but they're going to leak out somewhere. You can follow whatever rules you want to follow. You can white knuckle yourself into some good discipline. I've seen some people who can keep themselves on the straight and narrow for years, but those negative traits that exist within you, those things are going to leak out somewhere else. And I know this because I've met a lot of people who can follow the rules really well, and they're jerks. It's just their flesh leaking out in other ways. So what Paul says is we cannot white knuckle our way to godliness. Discipline, self-control, more rules, more standards. Those do not get us to spiritual maturity. Those do not put us in a place where we can live a life worthy of the calling that we have received. That's not the answer. In chapter 3, thankfully, I believe that he gives us the answer. And I think it's a refreshing one. Because when we try to get to godliness by white-knuckle discipline, just I'm going to be a try-hard, I'm going to be a do-better, what happens is not good. Because if you have ever in your life decided, yeah, I'm going to be a better Christian, and I'm going to do it by taking these steps. I'm going to do it by instilling these standards in my life. I'm going to do it by my own effort and me trying hard. And maybe we pray a prayer, God, I am never going to do this again. God, I am always going to do this moving forward. God, I swear that that will never be a part of my life again. And we make these big promises and we make these big claims. And listen, we mean them. But here's what I know about you. If you've ever promised God that you will never or that you will always, then you have failed. That's what I know about you. If we ever have promised God, I will never do blank. I will always do blank, we have failed in those promises because we can't keep those commitments, because we're broken. Because of Romans 7, the things that I do not want to do, I do, because it's part of our nature to fail in that way. And because that's true, after we make up our mind enough times that God, I'm never going to, or God, I'm always going to, and then we fail, we get to a place where either we just feel like this broken, wretched Christian, and we're thinking, God, I'll never be good enough for you. I don't think I'll ever be good enough for you. Just please let me be saved. Just please let me just hang on until I get to the end of my life. Please usher me into heaven. I know I'll never be who I'm supposed to be. I know that I can't pursue those things, but please just accept me as I am. And we kind of just live this broken down, hopeless Christian life where we feel like we're limping our way to heaven. Or worse than that, we try so hard and we fail so many times that we get so tired of trying that we can't find it within ourselves to do it anymore. And then we conclude, God, your word says that I'm a new creature. Your word says that you will help me. Your word says that you will empower me. And yet I fail over and over and over again. So I can only conclude that you don't keep your word. And then we just wander away from the faith and we give up on God because righteousness is too hard because we've only ever tried it by ourself and we've never invited God in in the way that he needs to be invited in, and our white-knuckle disciplining to try to be better and more godly to pursue the faith that we want so earnestly ends up costing us our faith. So that's not the way. We find the way in Colossians 3. And I would sum it up like this. We grow to maturity by focusing on being rather than behaving. We grow to maturity by focusing on being rather than behaving, by focusing on who we are rather than how we behave. And here's what I mean. In this chapter, we're going to see this idea introduced here by Paul, but introduced in plenty of other places by Paul in the New Testament, of the old and the new. The old you and the new you. The old you is who you were without Jesus. The new you is who you are with Jesus. The old you, the Bible says, was a slave to sin. I had no choice but to do things that displeased God. I had no chance at all. But the new you infused with Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit does have the chance every day when you wake up to walk that day according to the life that God has called you to. We have a chance when we wake up to live today in honoring God and actually finish the day living a life worthy of the calling that we have received that day. We've got a chance. There's a new us. And the new us desperately wants to please God. And so this is what Paul says about old self and new self in Colossians chapter three. This is what he says about being versus behaving. Look at Colossians chapter three, verses five through eight first. Put to death, Paul says, therefore, what is earthly in you? Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, and covetousness, which is idol rules. But here's what we need to do. We need to put to death these things, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, covetousness, anger, slander, all these things. And at first, it sounds like that's a little bit in tension with what he just said. He said, if you want to be godly, if you want to be who God created you to be, it's not about following the rules. It has an appearance of wisdom, but that's not really helping any indulgence of the flesh. And then the very next chapter over, he's saying, put to death these things, which feels like rules and standards that he's giving us, except he's not giving us behaviors. He's telling us to put things to death. Remember how I said that if you follow rules, if you're trying to break yourself of pridefulness and you put rules around your pridefulness and then it just leaks out and into another area of your life. Jesus is, Paul is acknowledging that. See, it's not about trying to follow the rules because those unhealthy things just leak into other portions of your life. It's about actually putting the pride to death. It's about actually putting greed and lust to death in your heart so that in your heart there is no place for them to dwell. And if there is no place for them to dwell, then they will not produce the behaviors that you're trying so desperately to control. So the first thing is to acknowledge that we don't need to put parameters around our old self. We need to put our old self to death. And we do this by focusing on being. How do we put those things to death? This is what Paul says in Colossians 3. I'm going to read verses 12 through 17. Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. So you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, we live a life worthy of the calling that we have received? In the phrasing of Hebrews 12, verse 1, What the world do I live the life that you want me to live? I think what Jesus would say is, look at me. Look at me. Look at me. Jesus, what rules should I follow in this new life that you've called me to? How do I run the race that you've set before me? Jesus says, just look at me. Just keep your eyes on Christ. This is actually in complete harmony with Romans 12 that tells us that we should run the race and that we should throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles us by, in verse 2, focusing your eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of your faith. So how do we live the life that God calls us to live? We daily make ourselves aware of Christ's love for us. We daily make ourselves aware of what God has done for us. If we will daily reflect on the fact that Jesus in heavenly form condescended and took on flesh and lived amongst us for 33 years and put up with everything that we have to offer and continues to walk with us and continues to love us and continues to sit at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for you as an individual, leans into God's ears and says, she's good. She's with me. She loves you, Father. I died for her. If we will let that reality wash over us daily, how could we not put to death the pride that exists in us by walking in humility at the love of God that we receive? If we are struggling with anger towards other people and frustration and impatience, how is it possible to spend a portion of your day every day focusing on the reality of God's patience with you? Focusing on the reality that as many times as you've said, God, I will never, or God, I will always, and then you failed, that God has been right there to help you clean up the mess every time. How can we not grow in forgiveness of others when we constantly remind ourselves of how forgiven we are? How can we not grow in patience to others when we constantly are focused on the patience that God has to us? If we will focus on God's overwhelming grace, that he died for us while we were still sinners, that he pursues us while we run away from him, that even though we fail him over and over again, he continues to love us with a reckless love, that God loves us while we were unlovely, that God sees us fully and knows us completely and still loves us unconditionally. If we let those things wash over us every day, how could we not look at other people and be more loving and patient towards them in light of how loving and patient God is towards us? Do you understand that these things that we clothe ourself with in Colossians 12 through 17 necessarily put to death our old self that Paul tells us to rid ourself of. So if we want to get rid of malice, what do we do? We focus on Christ. If we want to get rid of pride, do we put parameters around our pride? No, we focus on Jesus and who he is and realize that we have no right to our pride. If we want to be more gracious people, what do we do? We focus on Jesus' grace to us. Say, Jesus, how in the world do I live the life that you call me to live? Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? And Jesus says, focus on me. Focus on me. So I would tell you, if you are a Christian who lives at war with yourself, you do not have a discipline issue, you have a focus issue. If you are someone who struggles with greed, you don't have a greed issue. You have a focus issue. If we try to be more godly and more pleasing to him by focusing on the behaviors that we need to do better, we will fail over and over and over again. But if we can put our focus on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith and let his grace and goodness and mercy and love wash over us daily, then those things will necessarily put to death the very root of the behaviors that we do not like. So again, if we are struggling in our walk with God, we do not have a discipline issue. We do not have a sin issue. We have a focus issue. We need to focus our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We need to pursue him more with more urgency. We need to let the truths of how he loves us wash over us more. And those will necessarily put to death the elements of our character that we do not like, that produce the behaviors that we do not want to do. You can think of it this way. Our old self cannot survive where our new self thrives. Our problem is we have a new self and we have an old self and we feed them both the same amount of food. We give in to them both equally. And so they both just exist in this tension and if we ever want to put to death our old self, then our new self has to thrive. And our new self thrives by clothing ourselves in the characteristics of Christ and we clothe ourselves in those characteristics by focusing him and daily letting his goodness wash over us. So it's very simple. How should we then live? How do we get to the end of a single day? Living a life worthy of the calling that we have received that day? By focusing our eyes on Jesus on that day. By looking at him that day. And letting everything else fade away and take care of itself. Because it's that simple, and because that's what we need to do, I wrote a prayer for us as a church. In a few minutes, I'm going to read it and pray it over us as a church and invite you to read it along with me. If you find it helpful, I would love to invite you to put this prayer somewhere where you can see it, where this is a thing that you will pray daily. Put it on your desk, or in your car, or on your mirror. If this is helpful to you, I would encourage you to pray this every day until it's not helpful to you, until the principles of this prayer are so ingrained in you that it is part of your daily prayer. But if we want to live a life as Christians that we are called to live, then I am convinced that this needs to be a fundamental prayer that we focus on very regularly. Not necessarily the words that I've chosen here, but the ethos and the attitude and the posture that's presented in this prayer and the acknowledgments of the truths that are in this prayer that are from Colossians chapter three and other portions of scripture as we seek to live the life that God calls us to live. So I'm gonna pray this over us and invite you to pray it along with me. Father, I know I am your child and that in you I am a new creation. Though I know this, I struggle to believe it. Because I struggle to believe, I struggle to walk as you would have me walk. So Father, help me learn to walk in this new self. As I put on the new self, I ask that you would help me see others through your eyes and so clothe me in your compassion. Help me regard others as your beloved children as you clothe me in your kindness. Remind me of the way you love me when I am unlovely in order that I might humbly love others in the way I am loved. Remind me today, Father, of who I am in you. As you clothe me in these things, let them put to death in me the remnants of my old self. Let your humility drive out my impatience, my anger, and my pride. Let your compassion and kindness suffocate my jealous and selfish heart. Let the way you see me overshadow and obscure the way I see myself. Help's name, Father. Amen.

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here as just a little point of order. If you received a bulletin when you came in and you're someone who fills out the notes, I would direct you to the back of the bulletin. In the middle of the notes is a point that starts out. I think the local church is the blank thing to which we are all called. You can cross that out. Okay, I'm not going to get to that. The word there was bigger, so if you really just want to fill it in, there you go. But we're not going to include that. So I don't want to get to that point of the notes and you guys think, oh, no, he forgot it. No, I didn't. I'm leaving it out on purpose. Also, some of you have asked, Nate, why are you wearing your Crocs? Do you have a gout flare-up? No, jerks. I know that you would love that, but I did not. I did not. I also, before I'm telling you why I'm wearing them, have promised my sweet wife that I would communicate to you that she loathes them. They are the least favorite thing of hers that I own, and it is to her great dismay that I continue to wear them every day. I'm wearing these because these are my friend's shoes. These are the shoes that you only see when I am your friend. If you come to my house, and I knew you were coming, if you come to my house and I didn't know you were coming, come on, man, what are you doing? But if I do know you're coming and I'm still by choice wearing these, it's because I'm totally comfortable with you and we're friends. If you invite me over and I'm wearing sweats and Crocs, it's because we're pals, all right? Only my close friends see these because they are shameful. And when I come to church early, I get here early on Sunday mornings, and usually I just throw these on just to be comfortable until I need to put on my church shoes, my preaching shoes. And as I was pacing, thinking through what I was saying this morning, I just realized that what I'm going to say to you this morning is hard. It's hard for me to say. It's going to be hard for some of y'all to hear. And as I say it, I want these to remind me and you that I'm coming to you as a friend. I'm saying these things to you because I love you. Because I feel like Grace is collectively my pal. And so I want you to know up front that I have been praying this week and this morning for courage and gentleness. And so these Crocs are a little bit more gentle than my preaching boots. So I'm wearing these today. Years ago, there was a show called 24. I don't know if you guys have ever seen it. If you have, your life is better for it. But 24 was released, I don't know if you remember this, right on the cusp of like DVD series and then live series. For those of you, I don't know how young you have to be to appreciate series that are on DVDs, but we used to buy whole volumes of series that now you get on Netflix. But 24 is right on the cusp of that. And so when I heard about it, my friends were watching it and they were like a couple seasons in, I think they were on season four. And they had this tradition of every Monday night, they would go over to my one friend's house and they would all watch it with rapt attention and then talk about it during the commercials. And then when it started again, total silence and they were very committed to it. And then they would kind of talk about the episode afterwards. And I really wanted to go to this. I was having serious FOMO, which for old people, that's fear of missing out. I was having some serious FOMO of my friends are having this fun and I can't have this fun because I'm not caught up on the series. So I tracked down the DVDs and got caught up on the series. And I don't know if any of you have had this experience. Raise your hand if you watch 24 on DVD. Okay, you are my friends and you know what I'm talking about. The end of the episode always, without fail, ends on a cliffhanger. And then there's that countdown, the beep, boop, beep, boop. And you're like, no, I got to know what happens to Jack. So then if you're watching the DVD series, it's like play next episode. Yes, of course. And you play the next episode and you just binge that thing. This is when binging started. And it was so satisfying to be able to watch. And this was, let's see, I was probably 19 or 20. So I could watch an ungodly amount of uninterrupted TV at a time. And I mean the word ungodly because it was not spiritual to do what I was doing, but I could watch a ton at one time. And so you power through these seasons, man. And I got through them and I got to go watch with my friend. Now this is the big night. I get to go to my friend's house. There's like 15, 20 of us there. This is great. I'm going to consume this content this way. And as I was doing it, I was like, this stinks because it ended. First of all, I had to watch commercials. That's a bummer. I don't want to watch commercials. I'm into the story. I don't want to hear about Claritin again. And then it ends. There's the beeps. And it's like, let's watch the next episode, guys. And you can't. You've got to wait a whole week. And by the time the next week rolled around, I really wasn't very much into it. And I realized within a couple of weeks, you know what? I don't really like consuming this this way. I like it better on the DVDs. So I waited and just watched it all at once on the DVDs. And I bring that up because this is when content really began to make it very clear that it was a product and we are the consumers. We can watch whatever we want to watch. We have all kinds of streaming services. We have everything available at the tip of our fingers. We can choose the content that we want to watch whenever we want to watch it. This is 24 to me illustrates when it became very clear in our culture that there's all kinds of content out there that we can consume when we want it, where we want it, and when we actually have a desire for it. When we think it's what's going to be best for us, when we feel like it's what we want in the moment, it's right there and we can consume it. I'm bringing that up because I feel like I've seen church become that for many of us too. I feel like in Christian culture, in church people, and then most pointedly at grace, I have watched a slide over the years that the pandemic has accelerated where we are now in ways consumers of church. Church, to some of us, in our mindset and in our families, has become a product that we consume. Sunday morning is something that if I have time, I'll go. If we don't have other plans, I'll attend. If there's not just one more inconsequential thing, and when I say inconsequential, I mean something that we allow to take Sunday morning away from us that isn't gonna matter one little bit in 20 years, then we'll just do that thing and I'll catch up with church during the week. I'll watch it on Tuesday. I'll binge it. I'll listen to the whole series. And it's not easy or fun to say this because normally when I come to you as the church and I say convicting things, I'm right there with you. I always put myself first and say, this is my conviction, join me in it if it applies. Well, this one's different because I get paid to do this. I don't have the perspective that church partners have. But I do have the perspective of a pastor. And I can tell you what I see from my perspective. And what I see from my perspective, as someone who leads a church, as someone who I think is pretty tapped into Christian culture, as someone who talks to other pastors regularly, I see a slide in our culture towards consumerism as it relates to churches. That for many of us, church has become a commodity or a product that I will include in my life when and where I want to, when and how I want to. And I know that none of us would cop to that out loud. None of us would say, yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm a consumer, church is the product, that's how it is. But in our practices and in our patterns, that's what we make it. I'll get to it when I can. I'll include it when I want to. I'll catch up with it on my jog. Revelation really is not very interesting of a series for me. I'll catch it at Christmas. Or, Revelation is super interesting to me. I'm going to totally pay attention to this one. Last one, I wasn't really there for it. I've seen us become consumers in the way that we volunteer, which is less and less, which is a good indicator that in my mind, church exists for me to make my life better. It's a product that's there for me to grab and to consume when I want it. And this is something that I have seen and noticed for several months. And something that I've wanted to put in front of you for several months. But I didn't know the best way to do it. I didn't know how. And I wanted to be really sure when I did it. Because I know that I'm stepping on toes right now. And here's how I've been complicit in it. Is I've allowed that mindset to reduce my role to a producer of content. There are many a week in the last two years when I viewed my role as literally nothing more than just giving you something worth consuming on a Sunday morning and forgetting about the pastoring and the leading that has to happen during the week. I have been complicit in reducing my own role as the pastor of a church to simply producing content that's good for you that you'll choose to consume again. And I'm just, I'm telling you guys, we're wrong about that. It is a dangerous thing when church gets reduced to a commodity to consume. And I'm convinced that that's true and that it's right and good for me to take a Sunday morning and talk about it and that it's worth stepping on some toes because Jesus's attitude towards the church is so vastly different than the attitude of someone who consumes the church. Jesus didn't for one second think that the church was a commodity to be consumed. Jesus for one second was not interested in putting out a product that people would want to come back to. He wasn't interested at all in commodifying and making us comfortable in the way we choose to consume his body. The New Testament does not talk about the church as something to be consumed. It does not talk about the church as if it's something that's optional for us, that we can include in our life when we feel like it, that we can include in our life when we feel like we have time or effort or energy or space. And so for me as a pastor to watch this slide in my church and say nothing about it is a dereliction of duty. It is irresponsible. So we've got to talk about it. Again, we've got to talk about it because as I thought about communicating this idea this week and what passage to use, I was thinking through the New Testament and how the church is talked about and it dawned on me, there's not like a single passage to use because the whole New Testament is about the local church. The whole New Testament assumes that you are a part of the local church. The New Testament teaches us that the moment you get saved, that when you accept Christ as your Savior, that you are now a member of the big C universal church. And it is incumbent upon you to express that membership within the body of the local church. The one book, the biggest portion of the New Testament that's written to an individual is written to a guy named Theophilus by Luke, probably on behalf of Peter. And he writes to Theophilus so that he can understand who Jesus was and what he came to do, which is to begin the local church. The one big major book that's written to an individual to explain things in the New Testament is written so that that individual could understand the local church and how it came about. Then Paul writes letters to churches. And every directive in the Bible that's given is given to us communally. There is nothing, nothing about individual spirituality in here. It all, the whole thing, cover to cover, assumes that you know and understand that you are functioning within a body. That you are functioning within the local church. And so it's difficult to pinpoint one place where this is clarified because it's assumed all throughout the New Testament. And I don't know if you've ever thought of this, but do you realize, and I believe this with all my heart, that the local church, this expression of grace that we sit in this morning, is the reason that Jesus stayed some extra years to do ministry? I don't know if you've ever wondered this, but Jesus was 33 when he was crucified. If all he came to do, if all of his marching orders were to become flesh, live a perfect life, die for the sins of the world, why didn't he just get crucified at 30? Or 25? Or 17? What was he doing? Hanging around, putting up with us? He was building the church. He was training the leaders. He was preparing the world for his kingdom. Jesus stayed those extra years and put up with us so that he could call the disciples to him and train them and show them. He taught them how to teach. He taught them how to perform miracles. He taught them how to cast out demons. He taught them how to lead. He taught them how to love. He showed them how to do ministry to one another. And then he died. And then he came back and he left. And when he left, he said, now go do all the things that I've been showing you to the ends of the earth. Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. He said, go and do what I told you to do. And how did they respond to that? They huddled up in Jerusalem. And they said, what do we do? And then they got the gift of the Holy Spirit and they started a church, man. And its numbers grew day by day. Acts 2, 42 through 47, you can find it there. And then the rest of the book of Acts is about the disciples' effort to go and to plant more local churches. All of Paul's life was dedicated to planting local churches. When Jesus left and said, you, I've given you the keys to the kingdom. I've spent these years and I've trained you and now I'm going to leave and you've got the Holy Spirit. Go do my ministry. What did lost and broken world, and there is no plan B. That's not my idea. I stole that from another pastor. I don't remember who. But the local church, this expression, this Grace Raleigh is God's plan to reach this community. And there's no plan B. We have got to do our part. We are a part of God's divine strategy, of God's divine plan. This is not something to be flippantly participated in. That's not the point. There's something bigger going on here. The New Testament teaches us that we are the body of Christ. 1 Corinthians chapter 12. We're the body of Christ. We are his different members. We're going to talk more about this next week. But the New Testament also preaches this. And this was one of the more convicting things to think about this week as I think about our attitude with how we approach church. It is admittedly an odd passage to land on for the sermon this morning, but it's Ephesians chapter 5, verses 25 through 32. This is a marriage roles passage. This is usually talked about in weddings. And when we read it, that's where our mind goes. And one day, hopefully sooner than later, I would love to walk through this passage with you as a church body and walk you through kind of how my understanding of this passage has changed over the years. But this is not what I want us to highlight this morning. As I read it to you and you read along with me, I want you guys to pay attention to the relationship between Jesus and the local church. I want you to notice the dynamic that's going on there, and then we're going to talk about it just a little bit. Ephesians chapter 5, beginning in verse 25. He says this in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. and cherishes it just as Jesus does the church because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. The church, Christians, we are the bride of Christ. That is our divine identity. We are the body that he came and died for. We are the body that he's going to come back and rescue. We are the body that he intentionally started. We are the body that was prophesied about in the Old Testament. We are the love of Jesus's life. We are the bride of Christ. And what I'm saying to you this morning is being Christ's bride should be wholly consuming, not flippantly consumed. Being the very bride of Christ should be an identity that is wholly consuming to us, not flippantly consumed. Nothing about that passage and nothing about that role says to us that there's any space whatsoever to simply be consumers of the product that church puts out. No, we are called to be a part of what the church is doing. This is where the whole idea of this series came from when I was thinking about it last fall, is this idea of doing what I can to transition us from sliding towards consumerism and push us back towards being consumed. The church was not created for us to consume it. It was created so that it could consume you. It was created for your whole devotion. It was created for you to be all in. It was created to give you a new life completely separate from your old life and give you something bigger to be a part of that we all long for. Being the bride of Christ deserves our full attention. It deserves our fanaticism. It deserves to consume us. To drive this home just a little bit, I want you to think about something with me. What would your marriage look like if you decide that you were simply going to be a consumer of it? What would my marriage with Jen look like if I decided, you know what, I know she wants to talk about her day-to-day, but I'm not really feeling it. I don't really want to do that. I want to watch football. And also, I've never done this. What would it look like if all the time my interactions with her, I only thought about, well, how does this benefit me? Is this something that I really want to do right now? Why don't I just schedule something over what's happening? What would it look like if in our marriages we simply became consumers and when we were asked to volunteer our time to make the house better, we said, what's in it for me? What are you gonna do if I clean clean the garage? You make meatloaf? All right, I'll clean it. How dead would our marriages be if we became consumers within them? And we saw our marriage as something that just produced a product that was there for me to consume if I wanted it or not. If that analogy holds true, and Ephesians tells me that it does, is it any wonder why some of us just don't feel like our spiritual life is clicking like it should be? Is it any wonder why we just don't feel like we're in sync with God? Is it possible that maybe we don't feel a spiritual vibrancy in our life because we've reduced the things of God to things to be consumed to improve our life when we feel like we need them? You know, it's funny, and it's worth mentioning. Over my years as a pastor, and Grayson at previous church, I've sat down with parents of teenagers, and they've said, we just can't get our kid to come to youth group, and we don't know what to do. And I can't say it, but I think it. Well, if you want to do anything right now, you need to get in the time machine and go back 10 years and quit treating the church like it's something to be consumed for you. You have modeled this method of consumption to your children for 10 years and now is it any wonder that when they get to make their own choices, they're consumers too? Is it any wonder that maybe we don't feel as close to God as we could when we don't treat the things of God as they deserve to be treated. I thought of this as well. Paul is at the end of his ministry and he's writing a letter to Timothy. It's one of the few things written to an individual in the New Testament. And guess what? It's about how to lead the local church. Anyways. In already being poured out as a drink offering. And the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. What a remarkable statement to make. Now I'm about to ask you a question. It's an unfair question. It's a gotcha question. And I'm admitting that up front. So this isn't to make anyone feel bad. This is just to help you think along with me, okay? Did any of us on December 31st, a few days ago, kneel and pray and say, God, thank you for 2021. I was poured out for you like a drink offering. Now, listen, you may have gotten to the end of 2021 and felt like you were poured out like a drink offering. We may have gotten to the end of that year and said, I got nothing left. But were you poured out for the right things? Were you poured out for the things of God? Were you poured out because you were consumed with your identity as the bride of Christ? So, either you're just mad at me and you want the sermon to be over. I get that. Or you're with me and you're okay. I want to be all in. I want to be consumed by the church. What do I do? Well, the very simple answer is this. You give of your time, talents, and treasures. A very simple answer to think about how can I be consumed by the local church is to give of your time, talents, and treasures. And as I was prepping this sermon, I lamented that when I got to this point in the sermon, I've been preaching for too long to really adequately do justice to what that means to give of our time, talents, and treasures. And then it occurred to me, dude, you're in charge of the series. You can do whatever you want. So next week, we're going to talk about that in detail. We're going to come back. Those of you who remain with us are going to come back and we'll go, here's how we can be all in together. Here's what it means and looks like to give of our time, talents, and treasures. But for this morning and for 2022, this is the message and the challenge that I wanted to issue to us as a church. If you're at Grace, be all in. If you're here, mean it with everything you got. You'll notice through this whole sermon, I've not talked about grace as far as what God calls us to. I've talked about the local church. And so I say this with all humility and candor. If you can't be all in at grace because you're not all about what's happening here, that's fine. There are a lot of churches. And with only kindness and love in my heart, I'm admonishing you that if grace isn't it for you, find a church you can be fanatical about. Find a church that you love what's going on there. Find a church that you can be all in, and that you can be consumed by, and you want to pour yourself out for. I hope that's grace, and I hope that what we're doing here is something that matters deeply to you. But if it's not, as just your friend, as a pastor, as a Christian, I'm telling you, we need to be consumed by the local church. So find one to consume you. And this is why I think it's so important to preach this message. And why I wanted to do it at the beginning of this year. Because I know that the cloud of the pandemic still looms over our culture. But I've got to believe that the sun's going to break sometime soon. And I don't want to tread water in 2022. I don't want to just cling on and try to exist this year as a church. I am praying and hoping that Jesus will eagerly and earnestly move in this place. I want to see Jesus show up this year. I want to see children fill that baptistry. I want to just dunk them and I want their friends to be in here celebrating it with them. I want to baptize you guys. I want to see your friends and your family and your coworkers begin to come to church with you and for you to experience the joy of watching them move into a faith because God used you in their life. I want to see you guys take steps of obedience that are far beyond what you thought you would be capable of sacrificing before. I want to see a church with their hair lit on fire for Jesus and begging him every week that his kingdom would come here and that he would move here and that he would do great things here. And that starts with our individual decision to be consumed by the body of Christ and by the identity of being his bride, and then it culminates in a corporate culture of pursuing him and of prizing him and of doing the things of Jesus because we love him and because it's our identity and because we're consumed by him. I don't want to tread water anymore. I want to move. I want to do ministry. I want to see salvations. I want to see people come to know Jesus. I want to see marriages rescued. I want to see children discipled. I want to see hurt people cared for. I want to see people prayed for. I want to see small groups blossom and multiply. I want to see discipleship happen intentionally. I want to see the great friendships that God has planted in this church do more than just make us feel good about ourselves, but point us back towards our Father and enhance our spiritual walks. And how can any, and here, you're all looking at me and I know that you want that too. And how can it happen if we're consumers? If we continue to just slide towards thinking of church as a commodity to be consumed? It can only happen if we say, here I am, Lord, and allow ourselves to be consumed for His purposes. So if you're at grace, be all in. And listen, I say that knowing and being humbled by the fact that we have a bunch of people who are all in. I know that we do. I'm humbled by your service every week. And we have people who have watched online faithfully for two years who simply have health issues that will not allow them to come and be a part of us. And I know you're all in. I know it. And so my prayer has been that the Holy Spirit would be whispering in each of your ears. And if you are someone who is all in, and if you are someone who has been consumed by the local church, that the Holy Spirit would be whispering into your ear right now, and he would be telling you, hey, this is not for you. This is to bring you some help. You don't need to feel convicted by this. Similarly, my prayer for the rest of us is that the Holy Spirit would whisper to us too. And he would be telling you right now how you need to listen. You need to hear this. For the sake of your marriage and your kids, you need to hear this. For the sake of your anxiety and your peace and your joy and your angst, you need to hear this. For the sake of being swept up and knowing how much I love you and experiencing my goodness as being part of a kingdom, part of my kingdom on earth before eternity, you need to hear this. So next week, we're going to come back and we're going to talk about what it looks like to be all in. I hope that if the Holy Spirit is telling you right now, hey, this is not you, that you will pray with me this week. For those to whom it may apply a little more. If the Holy Spirit is talking to you right now and telling you that you need to listen, I pray that you will. And if any of you are mad at me, my door is open. I'd love to chat. But next week, we're moving forward with who we got and we're gonna do some cool things this year. I believe it with all my heart. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the church. Thank you that we are invited to participate in it. Thank you for the way that it wraps its arms around us. Thank you for the way that it is your presence in our life. Thank you for how it trains our children. Thank you for how it strengthens our marriage. Thank you for how it points us towards you. God, we pray that grace would be the church that you want it to be. We pray that we would be consumed by building your kingdom here. We pray that we would understand in our bones what it means more and more to be your bride and to be your body. God, if I've said clumsy things, I just pray that you would grant grace and forgiveness where it's needed. God, we offer you ourselves. We offer you this place. We thank you for creating it. And we just ask that you would give us the faith and courage to serve you and to be consumed by you as we move through this year. It's in your son's name we ask. Amen.

The Pretty epic, huh? I mean, looky there. The sermon is half as good as the video. Y'all are going to leave here with your hair on fire. This is great. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here. So thanks for being here. I thank you for watching online or catching up during the week if that's what you're doing. This is clearly the start of our series in the book of Revelation. I have been studying and prepping for this as far back as the summer because Joseph was a fun series. I loved doing Joseph. I love narrative series where we're just telling stories and seeing what we can learn from the story. The prep time on a Joseph sermon is about two and a half or three hours. The prep time on the Revelation sermon is 10 times that for each one. So you got to start those early. But because I've been doing so much studying, I'm very happy to tell you guys that I have all the answers for you. I'm going to tell you very clearly what happens in the book of Revelation. You can't ask me a question that I won't be certain about. And this is going to be a very productive time for the church. So I'm very much looking forward to it. Revelation, for some of us, has a lot of baggage. For some of us, it doesn't have very much at all. I grew up in a Southern Baptist church in the 80s and the 90s. And when you grew up in a Baptist church in the 80s and the 90s, Revelation was a big deal. I don't know if you guys realize that or what your church contexts are, but there was a season in church life when having strong opinions about the tribulation and the rapture was just a part of church. I actually talked to a church one time in a former life. I was a teacher at a private high school, and one of the churches was a small country Baptist church. And they said, hey, we're looking for a pastor if you know anybody. And I said, okay, well, you know, I'll keep my eyes out. And they said, but we're only going to hire people if they believe in a pre-trib rapture. That's a non-negotiable for us. And I started laughing. He's like, why are you laughing? I'm like, oh, you mean that? Like, that's really important to you. And they're like, yeah, absolutely. Well, are you not pre-trib rapture? Because if you're not, I don't want you teaching my daughter Bible. I'm like, rapture is not coming up. All right. We're not covering that in 10th grade Bible. Don't worry about it. I wonder how many of you though have had, like, when I say pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib, 1260 days, the four beasts, the man, the eagle, the lion, the ox, the 144,000 Jewish males from the tribes. How many of you know what I'm talking about? You've heard those things before. Okay. And then I won't ask the rest of us, how many of you are like, I got no clue, man. Like, no idea on this. You don't have to raise your hand. But yeah, so like, how do we approach like that wide of a swath of information and knowledge about this book? Because there's some of us that have been a part of really in-depth Bible studies and there's some of us who we've avoided it all together. So in thinking about how to approach the book of Revelation for these next seven weeks, I really thought it was worth noting the tendencies that we kind of tend towards as we approach the book of Revelation. Because again, some of us are very experienced with it, and some of us have never opened it because it's scary or intimidating or whatever. So as we begin, I kind of wanted to begin the series with this thought as we think about how do we approach the book of Revelation. I would contend that most people either overcomplicate or oversimplify Revelation. Most people in their approach to it have a tendency to either overcomplicate it or vastly oversimplify the book. And what I mean is we can overcomplicate it so that we miss the forest for the trees. We can overcomplicate it so much and drill down on things so much and ask so many questions about it. When is the rapture actually going to happen? Because of this verse, I think it's going to happen in the middle of the tribulation. When is the tribulation? When's that going to happen? Are there Christians going to be on the planet during this part of the tribulation? When is the tribulation? When's that going to happen? Are there Christians going to be on the planet during this part of the tribulation? Are people, can you still get saved during the tribulation? What are the four creatures and the beasts and the angels and which angels have which wings and what do they represent and what's going on with the dragon trying to eat the baby and all these different things? what is the mark of the beast? Is it the vaccine? What is all that stuff, right? And so we can kind of drill down and the answer is no, stinking no, that's not the thing. The vaccine is not the mark of the beast. Anyways, we can get so concerned in drilling down on these details that we kind of miss the message of the book. And the thing about all those details that we'll talk about in a little bit and throughout the series is many of them are really not knowable. So to try to figure out what is the creature that comes out of the abyss that has a tail like a scorpion and stings you and it ails you for five months? Is that an attack helicopter or is that a scorpion? I don't know. And you don't either. And there's no way to know. So let's stop worrying about it, right? So we can overcomplicate it and get so mired in the details of the book that we miss the message. But we can also oversimplify it. I had somebody in my men's Tuesday morning Bible study who he's involved in a study in Revelation right now with another small group. He's cheating on me with another small group and it's hurtful. But he said, we were talking about Revelation and he waved his hand and he goes, Jesus wins. That's all you need to know. And listen, that's true. And this is a man who clearly he cares about Revelation and I don't mean to disparage him, but in that moment of just going, meh, Jesus wins, I would tend more towards that camp in my own interpretative approach of it, but that's not enough either. What happens when we overcomplicate or oversimplify the book of Revelation is that both approaches cheapen the message of the book. Both of those approaches really end up cheapening the message of the book in general. If we get so caught up with the details that it matters to us deeply who the 144,000 are and we search through the Bible to try to piece that one together, and we miss the overarching message of the book because of it, then we cheapen the message of the book. If we just dismiss it and say, listen, Jesus wins, that's all you need to know, then we cheapen the message of the book as well because there's a reason that Revelation exists. There's a reason that God called John up to heaven and gave him a vision of what's going to happen at the end of time. There's a reason he told him to write it down. There's a reason that people have died for the preservation of Scripture over the centuries. There's a reason that this book was canonized, was put in the Bible as part of every Bible that's ever been printed. There's a reason that God ends His revelation to us with this book. There's reasons for that, and so it's worth studying. And I would contend that the book of Revelation matters very much to God. And I would actually base it on the way that he starts the book. This is John writing it. Revelation chapter 1, verses 1 through 3. Listen to this. This verse, particularly the third verse, tells us that revelation is important to God. This book is important to God. And it says, blessed are those who read aloud, because this was a letter. It was written to the churches. And so there wasn't a bunch of copies. Gutenberg hadn't showed up yet. So there was just one letter and one person would read it aloud. So it's basically blessed are those who read it, blessed are those who study it, blessed are those who invest time in it. So God says that we will be blessed by doing this. And, you know, I was talking to Erin Winston, our great children's pastor, I think a year and a half or two years ago when we were talking about series ideas. And she just mentioned to me that she can't remember Grace having ever done a series in Revelation. And I thought, well, goodness, our church needs to know about this. Our church needs to know this book. We need to kind of demystify it and walk through it and see what we can learn from it. And we wanted to do it for a long time, but then the pandemic hit and this didn't feel like what I wanted to do strictly over video, right? I wanted this to be in person because some of the stuff that we have to talk about in the book is hard. That's not this week, but it's coming. And so I thought that it would be worth it to do this series together. And it'd be worth it to not overcomplicate things, to try to train ourselves to focus on the message of portions of it, rather than get mired in the details, but also get into it enough that we feel like we can understand it. So as we approach Revelation, we do need to do some background work to really understand why it was written. It was written by John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. He was in exile on the island of Patmos about 90 AD is what we think, is when we think it was written. So about 60 years after the death of Christ. He's the last living disciple. All the other disciples have died a martyr's death. He is the last stalwart of the disciples and the bastion of the early church. John really lived a remarkable life. And so God calls him up to heaven and shows him a vision and he writes it down and that becomes Revelation. And what we need to understand is that Revelation was written to bring hope to a suffering church. Revelation was written to bring hope to a suffering church. To be a Christian at this point in history is to take your life into your hands. To be a Christian is to put yourself and your family at risk. It's to go into the catacombs, into underground graveyards, to have your Easter worship service because you cannot be seen in public doing this because you will be killed. It's to know friends and loved ones who have been dipped in tar and used as live torches to light the path into Rome. It's to watch your friends and loved ones get taken and thrown into the gladiator arena with animals that rip them apart. It is a tough time to be a Christian. And so John wrote this letter to them from God to give them hope, to encourage them, to help them hang in there, to help them see a path to a better day. And so when reading Revelation, we can never separate our understanding of it from how the original audience would have understood it. We can never make it mean something that it wouldn't have meant to them. But that also means that it's right and good for us to approach it, mining it for hope. That's the best reason to approach Revelation. It's not necessarily to know what's going to happen at the end of times with great detail, but to cling to the hope that the book offers us throughout it. This is why I love Revelation. If you've heard me preach any messages for any time at all, you've heard me say things like there's coming a day when Jesus is gonna make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. You've heard me talk about Revelation 18 and 19 where he comes down with righteous and true tattooed on his thigh. He comes back not as the Lamb of God, but now as the Lion of Judah and he's coming to wreck shop. You've heard me talk about that because I take great solace in that in my personal faith. You've heard me talk about Revelation 21 when God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there'll be no more weeping and crying in pain anymore. You've heard me talk about that because it's in Revelation and it's hopeful and it's what we cling to. So when we read it, our top priority, our first priority ought to be to mine it for hope and to let it encourage us in our faith. That's far more important than some of the other details. And it's important enough to dig in and to see how it might offer us hope the same way it did the early church. As we seek to understand and interpret the book of Revelation, a couple rules of thumb for us as we walk through it together. The first is, it's not completely linear, but sometimes it is. It's not completely linear, but sometimes it's linear. And when I say linear, what I mean is just event after event from start to finish. The gospels are linear. The gospel of Mark starts at the beginning and moves through the story of Jesus to a crucifixion and then ascension. That's linear. It's just, it's all happening on the same timetable, right? Well, Revelation's not like that. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it moves through and it moves, this event happens, and then the very next thing he talks about is the event that follows the one that he just described. But sometimes he jumps. He says, I turn and I saw. And I'll show you in a second what I'm talking about. He says, then I turned and I saw, and it's something else is going on. And the thing that he's talking about over here happened before the thing he just got done talking about. Or it happens years after the thing he just got done talking about. And then in the next chapter over, he's going to talk about the stuff that happens in the middle. And then the next chapter over, he's going to talk about stuff that happened before that. So sometimes it's linear. Sometimes it's not. So you just have to know as you're reading it that he's not presenting us from chapter 1 to chapter 22 all the things in order. Another thing you should know is that it's not completely literal, but sometimes it is. It's not completely literal all the time. Sometimes it's figurative. Sometimes it is literal. Sometimes the words that you're reading are actually going to happen. They're descriptive of a thing that really will take place. Sometimes you're reading it and it's figurative language to describe to you in the best way that John can what it will be like. Or because God is intentionally using powerful imagery, it's a picture of other events that have already happened. So as we're reading it and as we're studying through it, and there's a reading plan that will be, it would be on the, is it on the table this morning, Kyle? Okay. It's there and it'll be online as well beginning tomorrow morning. I hope that you'll read through Revelation with us. I hope that you'll be talking about it in your small groups together. But as you read and study, we need to be asking ourselves as we look at the text, is this literal or figurative? Is this linear? Is this happening in order? Or have I jumped back or to a different place? We'll need to know this as we read. Now, some examples of where it's figurative and nonlinear or literal and linear are easy to find. So I'm going to read a passage from Revelation chapter 12. You don't have to turn there. You can just listen to my words as I read. This is a famous scene in the book of Revelation. Just listen. I don't know what diadems are. I think maybe crowns. Cool. Let's just go on to the next thing, right? What's going on there? Well, what's happening there is that John is neither being literal, nor is he being linear. Most scholars agree, and it's not certain, so I don't say it with certainty, but most scholars agree, believe it or not, that this is a picture of Christmas. What if I preached that this December 25th, right? What if I made that the Christmas message? Boy, that would be something. Most scholars believe it's a picture of Christmas. It's figurative. It's powerful imagery that God is using to drive home a point. And that in this depiction, the woman very likely represents Israel. The baby is Jesus. The red dragon is Satan. And Satan is trying to thwart Jesus, thwart the efforts of God. But God rescues Jesus back up to his throne, which means God's throne and Jesus' throne. And then Israel is nourished in the wilderness, which could be a reference to their exile in Egypt as slaves, or it could be a reference to the flight of Mary to the wilderness once Jesus is born and they have to go to Egypt for a couple years because Herod is trying to find and kill baby Jesus. The tail sweeping a third of the stars out of the heaven down onto earth, that's a reference to the fact that when Lucifer was kicked out of heaven and became Satan, that he took a third of the demons with him. So this isn't linear because it's Christmas. This happened 90 years before John even wrote it. And certainly not in order with the other things going on in the book. And it's not even linear within its own depiction because it's talking about fleeing to the wilderness and it's talking about the demons falling from heaven, which happened thousands of years before any of this stuff and the rest of the story was ever happening. And then the 1260 days at the end of it is a reference to half of the tribulation period that Revelation divides in half often in months or in days. So it's literally, as far as the time frame is concerned, it's covering thousands of years in a paragraph. It's got a ton going on there. And it didn't literally happen. It's figurative imagery. So that's neither literal nor linear. But sometimes Revelation is those things. Listen to Revelation 21. At the end of the book, John is given a vision. He's carried to another place where Jerusalem begins to descend. A new Jerusalem begins to descend out of the sky. God is setting it Its length the same as its width. And measured the city with his rod. 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall. 144 cubits by human measurement. Which is also an angel's measurement. Which is nice to know. If you're measuring in cubits. You're measuring as the angels do. So well done. The wall was built of jasper while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, then sapphire, a gate, emerald, onyx, chameleon, chrysolite, beryl, and he goes on and on. And then he says, and the 12 gates were 12 pearls, each of the end of the book. It happens at the end of the story. It happens at the end of time. We can read that, see where it's happening in the book, and know that that's how it's going to happen in time. And it's literal. That's not figurative speech about the specific jewels that are going to be the foundation of the wall or the way that the city is going to look or the size of the city. That's a literal interpretation. So again, as we read, we need to ask, is what's happening here, is it literal or is it figurative? Is it linear? Is it happening in the order in which it's presented? Or in its proper context, should it go in another place? When I was explaining this to Jen this week, she was asking how I was going to approach it, and I was kind of walking her through portions of the sermon. And Jen, she's my wife, for those of you who don't know her, not just a lady I talk to sermons about, but that would be cool. I have one of those. When I told her what I was going to do and how it sometimes is literal, sometimes linear, and sometimes it's not, she said, yeah, but, and she's asked the question that you guys all should have by now. She goes, yeah, but how do you know? How do you know when it's supposed to be one and not the other? Well, that's the tricky part. And the only possible answer to it is you have to work hard. How do I know when it's literal and when it's figured if you have to study? Listen, some books of the Bible are really easy to understand. Proverbs. You don't need to study Proverbs. Just read Proverbs. And it says that we should consider the ant and work even when we don't have to. There's no mystery going on there. That's pretty simple. When it says whatever you do, get wisdom, that's simple. Revelation, not simple. If you want to understand it, it takes hard work. It takes discussion. You have to read a lot of sources. You have to listen to a lot of people. There's no easy path to understanding Revelation. I can't stand up here in seven weeks and explain it to you in a way that will make sense and get everything right. I just can't do it. And people who claim that they can are dumb. They're just being intellectually dishonest. Which is why I think it's important for me to kind of share this idea with you, not just for this series, but as you encounter Revelation as you move throughout the rest of your life, which is simply when it comes to Revelation, be cynical of certainty. When it comes to the book of Revelation, when it comes to who you're listening to and what you're reading and how you're talking about it and how people are presenting ideas to you in whatever form you would consume them, we are wise when it comes to Revelation to be cynical of certainty. Now there are some things in the book of Revelation that we ought to be certain about. Jesus is there. He's in heaven. God is sitting on his throne. He's surrounded by angels. There's going to be a new heaven and a new earth. Satan's going to be dealt with. People are going to be judged. We're going to be called up there. Like there's things that we can be certain about, but there's other things you simply can't be certain about. And for someone to present you information in a way where they are certain, where they don't even acknowledge that there's other theologians, there's myriad other views of this particular passage or this particular idea, and they don't even acknowledge that those exist, well now, I don't know if I believe you about anything. I was listening to a pastor that I really like a lot. He's been one of my go-to guys for years. And his church did a series in Revelation last year. And I thought, oh, well, shoot, I'm just going to listen to his and then steal it. That'll really cut down on the prep time here. This is going to be great. But as I listened, he got to a portion, I think it's in chapter four, where there's these four creatures, these four beasts that are really mysterious. And one is like a lion, one is like an ox, one is like an eagle, and one is like a man. And there's this incredible description of them. And the same four creatures are described in Ezekiel, in an Old Testament book of prophecy, with stunning accuracy and similarity to the four creatures in Revelation. There's very little doubt that both authors, that both John and Ezekiel saw the same four creatures. Now, what are they? And what do they represent? I don't know. But the pastor that I really liked when I was listening to him, he said, well, the ox represents this, the lion this, the eagle this, the man this. Does it not? And then he moved on. And he said it as if he was certain of it. And he said it as if there was no other possible explanation than the one that he just shared. When the reality is we only see them in Ezekiel. We only see them in Revelation. Very little explanation is offered about them in either place. So to presume that we know who they are, what they are, what they represent, and why they exist is not fair. It's not intellectually honest. The most intellectually honest thing to say about them is, they're pretty cool. That's it. They matter a lot to God. They're going to be neat when we see them. They're probably going to be scary. It's going to be awesome. What do they represent? I don't know and neither do you. And don't act like you do. We can make educated guesses. There's plenty of room for that. But we ought to be cynical of certainty as we move through this. And I'm saying that, hopefully, not for your benefit in this series, because hopefully I don't get up here and start teaching you things with certainty that I don't understand. Hopefully I'll teach them honestly and present the sides that exist and are merited. But I say that to you as you move throughout your lives and as you encounter other Revelation studies. Be cynical of certainty. So that's how we want to approach the book. I told you that we would mine Revelation for hope. And there's an incredible space to do that in the first chapter of Revelation. And that's where I want us to focus as we finish up the sermon today. I will also say this for those who know your Bibles well. Chapters 2 and 3 in Revelation are the seven letters to the seven churches. They are wonderful letters. They're hugely important. They're incredibly informative for us, not just of the ancient church, but what our modern churches ought to look like. They're a hugely impactful portion of the book of Revelation. They are so important and so impactful that we're going to skip them. Because I'm not going to reduce them to a week and preach them to you like that. So we're going to skip them. I'm going to set them aside. At some point in the future, we're going to come back and we're going to do a seven-part series as we move through those letters together. But if you know your Bible well, and next week we just open up and we get to chapter four, and you're thinking, why didn't we do the seven letters to the seven churches? That's why, because they're too important to reduce to a week. And Revelation would get too boring to expand to 14 weeks. All right, so we're going to do those later. But as we look at chapter one and we begin to move through the story, I wanted to bring us to what I believe is maybe one of the most poignant moments in all of Scripture. And we find it towards the end of the first chapter. We're going to start reading in verse 12. This is John writing. He says, And these are the words of Jesus now, which will always show up in red during the series. and I have the keys of death and Hades. I get chills every time I read this. John is swept up into heaven. He's told, you're gonna see some stuff, write it down. And he looks and there's someone who is white like snow, who is shining in brilliance, who has a voice like raging waters. And he sees him and he's so terrified that he falls on his feet. He falls at his feet. He collapses in fear. And we learn from those words in red that it's Jesus. And Jesus places his hand on John's shoulder, presumably. And he says, Behold, I am the first and the last. I have died and yet I live. Other translations say the Alpha and the Omega. And I have the keys to death and Hades. I've conquered them. Which is a remarkable moment. But it's more remarkable when we reflect on who John was and what John did. Do you understand that John calls himself in his own gospel the disciple whom Jesus loved? You should probably be pretty certain of your standing before Christ if you want to go around touting that nickname. This John is the John that was the disciple whom Jesus loved that may have been, some scholars think, as young as 10 years old when he was following Jesus. He was so close with Jesus. They were such intimate friends that at the Last Supper, Jesus was close enough to John that he was able to whisper in John's ear that Judas was going to betray him before anybody else did. He was able to communicate with John that closely at the Last Supper because John was, of course, next to Jesus because he was the disciple whom Jesus loved. When Jesus was hanging on the cross dying, when he's watching his savior and friend die, Jesus looks at John and Jesus only said a few things on the cross because you had to push up on the nails to do it. And he looks at John and he says, will you care for my mother? John, this is your mother, Mary, now. That's quite the commission. Can you imagine Jesus himself putting the care of his aging mother in your hands? And if you yourself knew that the end was near and that someone needed to care for your aging mother, who would you choose? Your most intimate and trusted of friends. And John went on from that moment and he cared for Mary. He went on from that moment and he led the church and the council. He saw them through this conversion of Gentiles, this difficult period in the book of Acts. He preached the gospel. He spread the word about his friend. And this whole time, he was promised by Jesus. You see it in the gospels when he tells the disciples, where I'm about to go, you can't go. And they said, we want to come with you. He goes, you don't understand. Jesus is telling them, I'm going to die and I'm going to ascend into heaven and you can't come with me. but where I'm going to go, I'm going to prepare a place for you and it's going to be great and you'll be with me there one day. Do you understand that John, he clung to that hope. He trusted his friend Jesus. He trusted his Savior and he spent the rest of his life caring for the mother of Christ. He spent the rest of his life proclaiming the message of Christ. He spent the rest of his life building the kingdom of Christ. But John eventually ended up as the head of the church in Ephesus, and there he discipled a man named Polycarp and Erasmus, who were the early church fathers that we begin now the church history that leads down to us. John is the linchpin in this. He watched all 11 of his friends, all 11 of the disciples die a martyr's death. And now he's an old man on the island of Patmos writing the last thing that he's going to write. And he's missed his friend Jesus. And he's looked forward to seeing his Savior again. And he spent every day living for his Savior. Every day building the kingdom for his Savior. Every day pointing people towards his Savior. And when he gets to heaven, he sees a figure that he doesn't recognize and he falls to his knees. And out of that figure comes the voice of his Savior, Jesus. Out of that figure comes the assurance that John has waited for and longed for his entire life. Out of that figure rushes the peace that only Jesus brings. He gets his reunion moment. He gets his welcome home. And it tells us that meeting Jesus is the best promise in the whole book. Meeting Jesus face to face, hearing his voice, seeing his eyes, feeling his embrace, that is the best promise in the whole book, man. There's other stuff that happens. We get to be with God. We get to spend eternity. There's going to be loved ones there. It's going to be perfect. There's no more weeping or crying or pain anymore. We're going to experience all of that. It's going to be an incredibly peaceful, joyful existence. But none of it, none of it is better than seeing Jesus in person. None of it is better than your welcome home moment. When he hugs you and he says, I've prepared a place for you. And he invites you to the marriage supper of the Lamb. I was thinking about it this week. What it would be like to finally meet my Savior. And how I would probably feel compelled to say I was sorry. And how he would probably just say, don't worry about it. I've covered over all those sorries. And how we would be compelled to say, I'm sorry, Jesus, I should have done more. And he would say, that's okay. I did enough. I did it for you. And I've thought about that moment when the burdens of hope and faith don't have to be carried anymore. When we can cast those things aside because our Savior is looking us in the eye. After all the stresses and all the struggles and all the triumph and all the worry and all the anxiety and anything else that we might experience, the loss and the pain and the sufferings and the joy, whatever it is, after all of it, we as weary travelers will end our spiritual pilgrimage in heaven at the face of Christ and he will say, welcome home. And maybe he'll even say, well done, good and faithful servant. But that's the best promise of the book. That if we believe in Jesus too, that one day we will see our Savior face to face and we can rest. And if you love Jesus, and that's not the part of heaven you're most excited about, I don't know what to do for you. I hope this series can change that. But more than anything else, as we move through this book, that's what we cling to. That Jesus is there waiting for us. And we'll get that reunion moment too. Where we get to meet our Savior face to face. Now, before I close, I never do this because if I tell you guys that I won't be here for a particular weekend, then what I've found is you don't come, which is mean. That's just mean to whoever is preaching that's not me. But I'm going to tell you this time that I'm not going to be here next weekend. I've got a bunch of my buddies I've talked about before. A bunch of us turned 40 this week, so there's going to be seven of us in a cabin in North Georgia making questionable decisions. We planned this back in the spring before I knew that this would be week two of Revelation, which is a week I'd rather not miss. So when I was thinking about who should I get to preach it, Kyle's great, Doug Bergeson's great, we've got plenty of folks here who would do a fantastic job with it. But there's one person who I know that knows more about the book of Revelation than anybody else I know. I'm not saying he knows the most about the book of Revelation, just more than anybody else that I know, and that's my dad. So dad's going to come next week and he's going to preach Revelation 4 and 5. And you'll get to see half of the equation of where all of this came from. To give you a literal picture of how deeply he loves this book, I wanted to take you to Israel with us. Dad and I had the opportunity to go to Israel, maybe about 2013. And we did the tour. We're up in Galilee. We were there for a whole week or eight days or something like that. And we get down to Jerusalem and we're in the Garden of Gethsemane. And from the Garden of Gethsemane, which is where Jesus prayed the night that he was arrested and then crucified, you can actually see the walls of Jerusalem, and you can see the Temple Mount. And so this is what you see from the Garden of Gethsemane. And you can see in kind of the bottom right-hand corner of the portion of the wall is a gate. That's the eastern gate. And when we were just walking along and we saw that, my dad said, that's the eastern gate. And I said, oh, cool. And then I looked at him and he was crying. And I said, dad, why are you crying, man? It's a gate. And he says, that's the gate that Jesus is going to walk through when he returns. And it moved him. And he doesn't get moved to tears very often. But he was moved by that. Because one day Jesus is going to come back and he's going to walk through that gate. And he knows it. And he believes it. And he knows his Bible. And he knows it so well and he believes it so much that it moved him to tears. So I couldn't think of anyone better to come and teach us a portion of the book of Revelation next week. So I hope you'll come. I hope you'll be kind to him. I hope he tells you some stories about me that make you laugh and like me a little bit less. And just you're thinking, oh, he must be an experienced teacher and have done this before for Nate to be asking him to do this here. No, he's an accountant. He's taught Sunday school a bunch of times, and I think it's going to be really, really great. So I hope that you'll give him a warm welcome when he's here next week and know that I'll be beaming from ear to ear watching him online with my buddies. So with that, let's pray, and then I've got an announcement for you guys, and we'll worship some more. Father, thank you so much for who you are and for how you love us. God, thank you for this book of Revelation. I pray that we would see clear and simple messages coming out of it. God, I pray that you would give us wisdom as we move through it. Give me wisdom as I teach it. Wisdom that I have no business having. Maybe just a special blessing for these next few weeks. God, I pray that we would always find the hope in it. That we would always see the justice in it, that we would always see the good news that we can cling to, God. Be with us as we go through the series. I pray that it will enliven our hearts to you. I pray that it will increase our passion and desire for you. And I pray that it will give hope to folks who might need it really badly right now. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

This morning we really want to acquaint you with the ministries that we partner with. We want everybody to know a little bit more about what goes on behind the scenes kind of of grace because you've probably heard me say plenty of times that 10% of everything that's given goes to ministries operating outside the walls of grace. We actually have a missions committee full of people who have a heart for missions, a heart for seeing others come to know Jesus, and want to use the resources that we have to see that brought about. And their job is to find ministry partners for us to pair up with who are accomplishing the mission of God out in the world. And then they take the money that we give and we support these ministries in various ways. And it occurred to me, it's actually, we're doing this because Sarah Prince emailed me, or maybe a Facebook message. I forget how we communicate. Hey, we'll be in town. We'd love to share if we got the opportunity. And I thought, gosh, I think the church needs to know about all of the people that we partner with and what they do. And so we're going to highlight Jen Taylor. You're going to hear her story and what she does over at Refugee Hope. And then we're going to talk with the princes as well. But this is an opportunity. This is kind of a getting to know you. Let's learn who are we supporting, what are they doing, and how can we get involved, how can we pray. And so without further ado, this is Jen Taylor. She's with Refugee Hope Partners, which I think is, are you guys located outside of Raleigh as well? So we have families that have moved outside of Raleigh that we remain connected to, but our main location where we start all of our relationships with our refugee friends is actually five minutes down the street right behind the Falls of the Neuse Chick-fil-A. There's an apartment complex right there. Cool. So we're going to dive into that, but before we do, there's some folks here, even though you've been here for like your whole life, who might not know you. So tell us about your background at Grace. You grew up here. Your parents dragged you here all the time. So how was it growing up at Grace and all that stuff? Tell us about that, how long you've been involved here. Yeah, so I've been involved at Grace probably since the start of Grace. I grew up here in the youth group. I actually had Casey and Sarah as youth leaders back in the day. Like they're not getting enough attention. Exactly. But my parents were super involved. I even did, if any of y'all are back that far enough, the handbell choir. I was a part of that. Yo, we had one of those? We need to dial that back up. But yeah, so just grew up here. Had a family here. Y'all are family. And so I went away for a few years, but once I moved back to Raleigh about three years ago, it was just natural to plug right back into Grace Family and right back into the ministry here. So that's great. I'm now going to refer to you as the handbell chair. You're in charge of getting that rolling. So tell us just a broad view about Refugee Hope Partners and what they do, and then we'll kind of talk about what you do with them, and you can tell us about some of the families that you work with and things like that. So what is Refugee Hope Partners? Yes. So Refugee Hope Partners is a nonprofit right here in Raleigh. We work with over 700 different refugees from over 40, well, right under 40 different countries from around the world. Refugees come from these countries after being in refugee camps. They sign in with the UN and get placed by the U.S. government right here in North Raleigh. So they move into these apartment complex, specifically Cedar Point Apartments where we're located, and we help that transition. As refugees come in, they don't have the language that they need. They don't know the systems that are in place in America. They don't know how to read. So paperwork is a huge issue to get past. So we are there not just loving our refugee neighbors but really trying to help in everyday life build confidence, engage the community and really equip them so that they can become sustainable right here in the U.S. So we have tons of different programs that we do that through but some of them are medical, some are ESL, some are homework help. So we do tutoring for all of our kids. We have like 350 kids that we work with. So it gets to be a little bit crazy, but it's a whole lot of fun, and we do a lot of ministry. We have Bible study as well, and we share the gospel throughout. You said, I think, 40 countries are represented. What are the predominant ones? I'm sure that there's a majority there. So what are the top two or three? So we do have a very large group that comes from kind of Central Africa, the Congo, a lot of Swahili speakers. And then we also have a large group of Karenni refugees from Myanmar and Burma. That conflict is still going on. So they are 25 years deep in a refugee camp before they come here. And then we also have a lot of Middle Eastern countries represented. So a big group from Afghanistan has come recently. So we have a lot of Farsi speakers that come in as well. And as you love on them and help them and kind of help to pave a way to assimilate, I would suppose is the right word. How are you also able to point them towards Jesus? And with coming from so many different places, there's so many different faiths represented there. And I would imagine that encountering each faith has its own sets of issues and things that make it helpful and things that don't. So how do you, what do you guys do programmatically and relationally to point the refugees towards Jesus and to let them know that you're doing this because Jesus loves them and you do too. Yeah. I think the biggest thing that we do is we just love them. Jesus loved us first so that we can love them, and we love our refugee neighbors in so many ways. We are there during crises. Whenever those happen, we are right there, feet on the ground, loving them in the midst of it. And even in our programs, we don't shy away from the fact that we are a Christian organization and that we are here to love them no matter what they believe or where they come from or what their background is. That we have Bible studies that are geared towards all different groups of people. We have, even in our ESL programs, at least around Easter and Christmas, we tell the whole gospel story right there. And many of those people that are in our ESL programs come from Muslim world, Muslim background, and they're getting to hear the story of who Jesus is and how he loves us right there in our programs. That's wonderful. And what is your role now? How did you get hooked up with them? Did you start a volunteer? Was there an internship process? Or did you find them and go, that's a position that I think I might enjoy and so apply for it? And then what you started as, how has that morphed over the time that you've been with them? How long have you been with them? About three years. Okay, yeah. So when I started, I actually moved back to Raleigh and didn't know exactly what to do next. And I knew I wanted to work with refugees. So I went to talk to the executive director about volunteering. Where'd you go to school? I went to Chapel Hill. And got a degree in? Global Studies. She's using the degree, Pop. Okay, so I'm sorry. I just wanted to, so you saw that, you thought it could work, and carry on. Yeah, and I sat down for coffee, and within that coffee chat, the director said, well, we have a position for you. And so I got a job right after thinking I was going to volunteer. So it was definitely the Lord being like, you need to be here. I started out part-time doing more of the ESL program and then switched into program staff, which means that I do everything on staff. And then from there have moved into the volunteer coordinator. So I actually connect everybody that wants to volunteer. I'm the first person you see. I walk you through the whole process and all of our programs and what we do and get you connected in the programs that we have. What kind of volunteer opportunities are available? If you have 350 kids to tutor, I'd imagine you need some of those. Emil is great at high-level math, so bring him in for all your advanced students. But besides that, Zach, don't laugh so hard. That's mean, man. There's tutoring needs, I'm sure, maybe even some ESL needs, but what else? What other kind of volunteer spots are there? Yeah, so you can plug in anywhere. We have a medical ministry that helps drive families to doctor's appointments. So if you can drive a car, you can volunteer with us. We have a bridge mentorship program that literally pairs volunteers with a high school student and helps them move into those next steps of what do I do after graduation? What is my career? What could that look like? We have ESL for adults. We have a preschool, like a preschool for our three and four year olds. We have childcare during the ESL times. Anything that you would like to do, we have it and we would love to get you plugged in. And it really is any schedule as well. We run programs that are on a weekly basis, so you can plug in and really get to know people on a weekly basis. But then we also have programs that are come as you can. Show up once a month, show up once a year, that's okay. We'd love to have you be a part of our programs and really get to know the community and the refugees there. So as you think about, well, I guess I would ask you this too. I think this is relevant of every organization. What were your specific unique challenges during COVID? Because I can imagine in an apartment complex with refugees, folks who are not yet fully assimilated, that that had its own unique set of challenges. What was the biggest challenge during the heart of the pandemic? And now what are you guys thinking about as we move out of it? Definitely at the very beginning, the biggest challenge was just feeding our families and making sure that those that were unemployed were able to pay rent. That was a huge thing at the beginning of COVID and all that happened, and we were right there. Grace was with us actually donating on a weekly basis groceries for some of our families. And then as we transitioned into online school, that was a giant mess for us. I bet it was. Even just Wi-Fi and tablets, right? Even just Wi-Fi and tablets. So we were the main access for schools to help kids get computers, get internet, get connected to their teachers. We had different classrooms running all year long of if you can't get internet working or something's wrong, you come to us and we'll actually have school right there. So every morning we would be trying to sign in five different students at once to one teacher and say, no, they're here, they're attending, I promise. So just getting through that process was a big challenge. Thankfully, they're in person now and we don't have to worry about that anymore. I can't imagine what a challenge that was. I'm curious, in ministry, in my experience, you have stories or experiences that sometimes will anchor you in what you're doing. They encourage you. They kind of God-breathed into those moments, into those families, into those relationships. You see someone come to Christ. You see a family strengthened, or you see some prayers answered in a big way. And those stories kind of, they anchor you in the not so easy times. And I'm sure that you have a couple of those. So as you look back on your three years with Refugee Hope, tell us a story or two of someone that you saw come to Christ, of a family that you saw strengthened, of some prayers that you saw answered. What are your kind of anchor stories? Well, like I said, I started out in ESL. And while I was there, one of the ESL moms who comes from, she grew up in Pakistan and Afghanistan, kind of switching over those borders. That sounds like an easy background. Goodness gracious. So she and her family have moved here, and they got really connected to our ESL volunteers. And one volunteer in particular was able to share the gospel with her to the point that they do a Bible study on a weekly basis even still. And her family has moved not only from being able to speak English. She actually wants to become a nurse and wants to go back to college and get a degree. And then her family was able to, through the years of learning how to save, learning how to speak English, learning to get better jobs and fill out applications, they actually just bought a house six months ago in Nightdale and are now living on their own, sustainable, and still bring their kids back every week, at least twice a week, for violin class that we have running and to be a part of ESL and encourage the other families and moms to be a part of it. Gosh, does anyone else feel terrible about their life right now? Holy smokes, that's unbelievable. And here's what's really cool about what Jen just did. She told a story about something that someone else did. You don't think that she's had those conversations too? And she just took the spotlight that we put on her and she was like, well, this volunteer one time did this thing. That's really, really cool. As we finish up our time with you, what are we hoping for next at Refugee Hope? And what can we as individuals, not Grace as a church, but what can we as individuals do to be a part of whatever the next season of life is at Refugee Hope? Yeah, so right now we're getting, gearing up to go back to school. So one of the big things that Grace is already going to be a part of is our back-to-school drive and sale. We're actually going to equip our 350 students with all that they need for school. And so Grace can be a part of just helping supply some of the supplies, and that information will be soon to come of exactly what we are asking for. But then just prayer. Our ministry is growing continually, and we're looking at strategically how we can grow and love on our refugee neighbors, not only at Cedar Point, but all around Raleigh. So it's moving. The Lord is moving in this place, and it's really cool to see. That's awesome. I also just kind of feel compelled to say, I don't know to whom this might apply, but if you're in a position where you need workers that folks like this may be able to fill, I would imagine that you could reach out to Jen, and she could hook you up with some pretty good folks. So to whomever that might apply, I think that would be something good to keep in mind for Grace. Thank you so much for coming and sharing with us. She will be in the lobby immediately following the service, so you guys can bombard her there and we can find out more ways to get involved. And we're going to end the service with talking about a volunteer team. So if you're hearing about, like, well, Grace is involved in school supplies, and you're going to see a video here in a minute from Fox Roads, something that we did for them at Christmas, and you're like, I want to do that stuff when that's happening, you'll be able to. So we'll get to that in a minute. But before I let you go, I just want to pray for you as a church. Let's pray for her and everything that's going on at Refugee Hope. Father, gosh, we are just so encouraged by the work that you're doing just down the street from us. God, I can't imagine what it is to be a refugee. I can't imagine what it is to grow up on the border of Pakistan. I can't imagine some of the things that these people have walked through. And yet you've brought them here and they have people with them who love them. And God, we pray that they would continue to see your love in Jen and the folks that she works with and the folks who volunteer over there. Lord, if any of us are compelled to be a part of what you're doing there, I pray that you wouldn't let go of us, that your Holy Spirit would just tenaciously get after us as we get more involved in what you're doing over there and get front row seats to watch you work in the lives of these people. We pray that you would bless Jen. I know that it is fun to share success stories and it is fun to talk about what's next, but God, I also know that it is hard. And so I pray that you would be with her in those times and in those moments as well. We thank you for her, for her humble example and witness and ask that you would just encourage her and give her many, many more stories of folks who came to know you through what they're doing over there. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. who haven't been at Grace for as long and don't know who the princes are and why we get excited. So now they get to share with us and everybody can be excited together, which is great. So tell us, where'd you grow up? How'd you get to Grace? When did you realize you were in love with each other and you needed to move to Africa because this is just what God wanted you to do. So go. There's a lot of steps in one question. So I think like I was part of the, I would call it the St. Grace crowd. So Chris Sasser sort of lured me into youth ministry as a high school student. And then I felt a call to youth ministry very as like a teenager. And so he sort of nurtured that. And I interned a couple summers, and then basically we sort of always dreamed of conspiring so that once I would graduate, I would come on staff. You and Chris would... Chris and I would... Yeah, we conspired together, and that worked out. And so I used to sit between he and Karin and sort of mediate their marriage and relationship up in the old loft. In the aughts. In the early years of Grace, Chris Sasser was the student pastor here. And they were going and blowing. I mean, they were doing some really cool things. So he was doing high school, she was doing middle school, and I sat in between. And it was a dangerous place. But it was an amazing experience. But yeah, I mean, Sarah had interned as a college student as well. And then as she was at Seminary at Duke, we were also conspiring to figure out how to get her on staff. So as you're on staff, there's an attractive intern, and you're now conspiring. No, no, no, no. I brought the intern. Okay, all right. So basically we met at Fun in the Sun, the camp we used to take kids to. And she was from Lakeland, Florida, and they had a lot of pretty girls at her church. so I spent a lot of time talking to the girls at her church. You made your way over to the Lakeland crowd. Yeah. So then we moved back to Raleigh and I started working at Grace and she started seminary. I think what was a mutual attraction was we both just loved kids. We both loved ministry. I mean, we met where we were both interns, you know, loving on kids. And so that's always been a part of our life is that we just love loving on people together. We love having people in our home. And we lived, you know, five minutes from here and literally would always just have people in our home, a lot of kids, a lot of adults. And, I mean, we're just so grateful for this place. I became a pastor here. I was ordained here. We grew up a lot here. And I feel like, again, this name lives up to its name. I received so much grace in this place as we just kind of clumsily figured out what it looked like to be pastors and to love people and to be newly married. As some of these now adults can attest to on mission trips. We had some marital strife over, you know, pranks and Chris Latta. And so, yeah, we just... He was usually the center. Just strife specifically over Chris. Yeah. Usually he's in the center. Yeah, specifically. But we grew up here. It's not just your own marriage. You got other people's too now. For sure. 100%. Yeah. So we're grateful. I mean, just to sit here and to look out at so many old faces and so many new faces, it brings us so much joy. And we're just so grateful that you guys loved us while we were young. And now that we're old, that you love us from afar, it's such an incredible thing. We're the same age, I think, and we are old. What year did you guys get married? 2002. Wow. Okay. And then when did you go to Africa? So, yeah, basically I think the thing is that Grace nurtured this heart for mission because we were taking students on all these mission trips. And that was our excuse for not doing it ourselves is that we were taking Jen and we were taking Colleen. And so that's cool. We've done our part. And unfortunately, God was continuing to stir that. So she went to Uganda in 2007 with some girls who had been sort of involved with Grace. I somehow let my wife and three college girls go to northern Uganda by themselves. It's very irresponsible. I don't feel like you had a lot of choice. I don't choice. He did not. Also true. And so that was kind of a make or break moment. Either this is going to die down or this is going to get worse. And it got worse. And then she basically said, I'm going to stop working at church. And, you know, so she went to Jeff Hancock, the pastor at the time, and said, look, I'm going to stop and we need to go do something. And he had heard about this organization in Cape Town. So, hey, why don't you try them? And so the church was just unbelievably gracious to us to not only, you know, let her quit, but also just to, I mean, I took a three-month leave of absence, and they just supported that and said, cool, we'll hire someone to replace you to help the thing keep going, and go do it, go explore, and go sort of figure out what God is doing. And so it was just incredibly gracious. And so in that period of time, working with Living Hope and meeting a guy named Michael and him just sort of answering that prayer that we were having of, okay, if God, you want us to be here, what would we ever do? And so that's sort of where Ubuntu was birthed in us and then came back and told people. And I think people there advised us, you need to tell people there. You can't decide here. You must decide. You must really hear from God there. And so as we told people, everyone said, well, we hate the idea that you're going to leave, but this sounds like exactly what you should be doing. Knowing you, this is what you should do. So it was very affirming and, yeah, pushed us out the door. And what year was that? So we left in 2009, October of 2009. Okay. And my understanding is, correct me if I'm wrong, you went over there with Living Hope. And Living Hope is an organization that was founded by a pastor in Cape Town, South Africa, and initially was doing a majority of its work in the HIV community because it was, for a while, the highest case per capita in the world. And so that's where it started, and then other programs got built out of that, and now it's this whole big thing. And so you guys originally went over there partnering with them, and then at some point or another transitioned to Ubuntu. Yeah, like our 2008 time was all with them. And then in 2009, we kind of went back saying, I'm going to do, I'm going to start this Ubuntu thing eventually, and she's going to work with Living Hope and with the Methodist Church and, and, and. That's always and, and, and. Always and. Yeah, right. There's lots of ands. Yeah. I mean, I think there's been a, there's been a couple paths. I mean, Ubuntu is a path which Casey can obviously really share about what that is and even what that word means. But us as a family, we studied missionaries. I studied at Duke race and reconciliation and justice things. And we thought, let's try it out really doing this. And so we went to Cape Town the first time, lived in a cute apartment and did all the sightseeing. When we moved there, we actually moved into an impoverished community. So their apartheid has been lifted for about 20 years, but everyone is still kind of stuck in whatever community they were forcefully removed to. So in way deep in Cape Town, very south, there's a community called Ocean View, and it's mixed race people. It's colored. That's a PC term there. And so we had done work there. We'd made friends there, and we just thought, we want to try this. We actually want to live among people and try to be friends and try to be neighbors with the people that we serve. And people were like, you can't do this. People are crying. No, it's a death sentence. And we just were very stubborn. And we just wanted to give it a try. Also was serving at a Methodist church in the community. So we moved into the pastor's house. And that's really where our ministry manifesto, as I call it, was born because we showed up. I mean, someone literally, when we left, made a cake with South Africa on it. They were like, you're going to South Africa, save Africa. And we were like, okay, a little bit, we will. I mean, you just, you get this kind of hype. And so we show up in Ocean View and no one cared and no one talked to us and they were suspicious and they didn't need whatever we were selling. And so we sat alone in our house for a while and started to open the Bible and just say, okay, Jesus, this didn't happen to you. You know, when Jesus went from town to town, he had throngs of people following him, coming to his feet, touching the hem of his garment. So what are we doing wrong, Jesus? And I found myself in John 4 specifically, and it's really the woman at the well. And she doesn't want to know a religious guy, and yet at the end opens up her entire life and her soul, and then goes back to her town and converts everyone. And it's just because Jesus came to this place, and this is our ministry manifesto, look, listen, love. You know, we go to save and to conquer and to, you know, rescue all the orphans, but God really, in Jesus, showed us you just show up and you look. What's around? Who's there? What's not there? What are people feeling? You listen. You get people to open up, share their stories, share their lives, and then, if God allows, you love them. And so because God humbled us, slowly we started to make friends. Slowly people started opening up their lives to us. Slowly people started letting us in. And it's changed our lives, that humbling experience of not having the answer, of not knowing the way, of not being the saviors, and just people slowly allowing us in has changed our lives, and now these people, 11 years later, are our friends. They're our family. We do a lot of life together, and one story, I was actually thinking about while we were sitting. So Bernadette is a woman we met the first time in Living Hope. She worked for Living Hope. We did HIV support groups together. We'd go into communities. She had these groups of people, all HIV people. She was supporting them, loving them. I would just tag along. We come back. Her son, Robin, comes to the academy, becomes a part of the academy. And while he's still in high school, they're in the front yard, basically, and someone next to him is shot dead. Robin is there with a friend. The friend is shot dead by a gangster. Bernadette calls, crying, weeping, for months. Obviously a lot of grief. Robin as well. So we walk a lot of life together through this trauma, through a lot of stuff. Eventually Robin graduates from Ubuntu after he comes here to America. Now he's in Portland. He is at school. Where is he at school? Corbin University. But just recently before I came here, I was having my own crisis, struggling with how to love people, what to do, feeling overwhelmed, feeling like I can't do this anymore. Who do I call? I call Bernadette. I show up at the Ubuntu house. She now works at the Ubuntu house. She's our cook. Bernadette, I need you. I show up. I'm crying. Help me. Guide me. What do I do? She sorts me out, and she says, I tell everyone, I have this white friend, and she's my white sister, and she lives in Ocean View. She said, but Sarah, you need to be colored now, and you need to toughen up. And she prayed for me. And that's our life. Our life is not about us saving anyone. It's about neighbors. It's about friends. It's about a lot of stories that are intertwined and us finding God sometimes more than we feel like we're even helping them. Sure, sure. I like to be colored and toughen up. That's great. Casey, can you tell us about all things Ubuntu? Just how did it start? How did it germinate? What has it become? What energizes you the most now that you're 10 years in? Yeah. So Ubuntu is really, it's born out of a desire to deal with fatherlessness. So 60% of kids in South Africa grow up without a father in the home, which is a very frightening statistic because it leads to then all of the other issues that come with it, gangsterism and drug abuse and alcoholism and massive unemployment, and it keeps going. And really, Michael, it's not really my idea. Michael Jenkins had the dream and the idea, and he saw a sucker who had all the background he needed to make it happen, and I took the bait, and so we did it. But really, we work with a small group of kids who, sort of elite footballers or soccer players. And we really try to walk from really almost nine, but they enter the academy around grade six. So kind of 11 years old through the end of high school. And it's really about now we run our own school. So we register with the Department of Education. And so you go through the normal South African kind of educational system. We train four or five, six times a week. We have amazing coaches. We have a residence for about 30 of the boys who live further in town to get there every day or who live locally in their home situation. It's just not going to help them be successful. So there's about 30 kids who live in the residence. And then, yeah, and then we just spend a lot of time on their character, leadership, and spiritual formation. How do we help them become the man that will, you know, be different than what the men are in our country currently? How do we help them raise a different heart for their own community, their own family, and the nation wider? And so, yeah, in February, it was kind of like our 10th anniversary of our first training sessions. We had big celebrations. And I think what's amazing now is watching, we have this sort of first generation of graduates, of guys who finished and the things that they're doing. So in August, we'll have 17 kids now studying in the United States. One of them is here. Yeah, you got one here with you, right? So Tarek is here. So if you want to bombard Tarek to get the real stories about Casey, you can. So, I mean, poor Tarek from the age of 12, even beyond up until last year, so until he was about 20, had like one coach. He got stuck with the same guy all the way through that process, and he loves me deeply still. Is that true, Tarek? Do you love him deeply? Okay, all right. So it's amazing to not watch those guys. There's about 10 playing professionally. We have our first Olympian. So if you watch the Tokyo Olympics, hopefully Luke Fleers will play and hopefully play well. So he actually brought Tariq to trials because we had seen Luke first. But, I mean, it's been amazing. But what's really amazing is to see the two guys who are training to be teachers and Josh, who's now a policeman, and the impact that they will have. But I'm also so excited because I know that we, after 10 years of bumping around and making lots of mistakes, are infinitely better at what we do now. We have a much, much stronger team. We have all these amazing teachers and house staff and coaches that are around it. Where in those first couple years, it was like me and Mike stumbling around, wondering when the adults were going to show up and help us run this thing. And tell you what to do. Yeah. And we're like, ah. I'm wondering that here, actually, in my role. We heard. Yep. So we have this amazing team. And what's been really great is now Sarah is actually a full-time Ubuntu staff person and on the leadership team. Can you believe it? That took a long time to lure in. We're going to get to Sarah in a second. I want to hear everything that you've done because it's been a lot of different things. The last year really showed us the need to really focus on formation. We were doing it, but it was sort of on the edges of everything we did. And I think, obviously, that is her heart and what makes sense. I know that that's going to drive the next 10 years to be even more amazing and that the graduates will be even more amazing young men than we have already produced. When you say formation, you're talking about spiritual formation, spiritual health? Spiritual leadership, character formation. And what are you guys doing now to key into that specifically? So we have some programs for all of that. So spiritually, it looks like a lot of different things. A lot of it's relational. It's work that our teachers and our coaches and our staff do, especially at our residence, through relationships, just inviting them to be in a relationship with God, modeling that. We have a Bible study that our very own Casey leads at the house once a week, which is incredible and really cool. And then we have other programs that we're really excited to launch. You know, it's been kind of just a few programs spiritually. We want to get even better about that. Leadership is also something that we're really starting to do. We don't want just to expect them to be leaders, but teach them what does it mean to be a leader and that every one of them is a leader. And then character formation is actually a program that we do once a week. They have an hour that they do it. And they're learning to really know who they are and live with integrity and live with excellence. These things have to be taught, especially because of all the trauma and bad habits that some of them have faced. They really have to actually be taught these things. And so it's really exciting to now look at who we want the Ubuntu 30-year-old man to be and then intentionally and strategically create a pathway to that place. It's really exciting. That is really, really cool. And now briefly, as we are out of time, I am interested in the chronicle of all the different positions and things that you've done in your now decade in South Africa. So run us through it. And then now, I believe you just finished a book, yes? And now you're on staff with Casey. So what have you done? A lot of different things. I'll say most, a lot of pastoral stuff, really. I learned in South Africa that even if no one thinks you're a pastor, even if no one gives you a title or, you know, a cool cloak or whatever a pastor is supposed to have. We're supposed to get cloaks? Yeah, I had one. I had one back in the day here, but it's just who you are. And so, you know, people in Oceanview call me Pastor Sarah, and I don't pastor a church anymore. And I'm so thankful. I'm so honored that they call me that. So we were at the Methodist Church for a while. We've been at different churches, but we're now at a local church. We actually want our kids to now just be involved in a youth group and have that kind of stuff. So I've done a lot of things, a lot of stuff in the community, in the high schools, in the different kind of organizations of Ocean View. My book is actually about our journey with special needs because, as many of you know, our son Keller, who's now was one was diagnosed with autism mild autism and so we walked this unexpected journey where literally we googled autism after we got the diagnosis from the doctor to getting totally integrated in ocean view with the schools we got a team of therapists and experts and this really extraordinary thing happened where people just came into our house daily and changed all of our lives, most all my son. So he lost his diagnosis when he was five. And it's a miracle, but it's a miracle of community. It's a miracle of people coming into all of our lives. And it's a miracle of God saying that Keller is fearfully and wonderfully made, autism or not autism, and watching that come out. And so I finished the first draft. We're hoping to launch it next summer. It needs a lot of work. But it's really also my story of an unlikely mother, very unlikely. I didn't even know if I wanted kids. And now here I am, the mother of a special needs son. And so it's been a journey. You've got your daughters here. Are you happy that you have her? So happy. We thought she was going to be a boy. We were certain God loved us and it was going to be a boy, and now we have this incredible daughter who loves Jesus, loves acting, singing, dancing, is a leader, is kind, is this incredible person. So I don't know how he did it, but I feel like it's made me more than it's made them. And so I really want to share that story of what God has done in my life and how I found a real God in the midst of real trial. And now I'm the mother of Ubuntu. I never would have wanted to be Tarek's mom. And Tarek and I had a deep and real, even last night. There's fireworks and bourbon flowing last night, and Tarek and I are in having this deep conversation because I'm the mom. And that's what I do. And I am so humbled to be the mother of Ubuntu. Again, never would have expected it, but it's my best job I've ever had. It's the one that brings me the most joy. Best boss I've ever had. He really is. That's great. That's great. I wonder if he feels the same about his employee. Okay, Princess, thank you so much for sharing a little bit of your story. I have one more thing. Okay, let's pray. No, I'm just messing around. I just want to, I think, like, affirm and honor Grace, because, you know, like, hearing Jen share and Colleen on the video and, you know, Suzanne's work with Anastomari and stuff, it's a reflection of who Grace is. And so, you know, Suzanne and I came through the youth ministry and Beth and Bill Gentile tried to, like, ruin us at young, young ages, and they didn't. But all of that practice we then got serving people because of grace, it shaped our hearts. And now seeing kids you invested in, like Jen and Colleen, doing a really amazing work. I know that those seeds were planted by amazing parents, but we got to throw a lot of water on it for a period of time and really do something. And their reflection of that and their response to that is exactly the picture I want for Tarek and Vazumzi and Luke, that they would, through that, somehow, our feeble efforts, water something in them that when they finish, that they would change and transform South Africa. And it's a silly kind of vision we have, but I really believe it's possible. And I believe it's possible because I've seen it now in kids that I got to water the seed and that they were doing it. So today is such a perfect picture and it's such an encouraging picture for me that it really is possible that for seven feeble years of really only having one or two days a week with someone, I got to water something. And now I get, I mean, they're stuck with us all day, every day. So what does that mean I can, you know, our staff can do? And so it's such an amazing picture. But I want to honor what you've done over years and years as a church to do that. Thank you. And I would echo that and just say we really have a very strong group of folks on the missions committee who care deeply about this and are kind of the stewards of this culture that Grace has fostered through the years. And it's one of my favorite things about our church. You guys are having an event tonight here. We are. We're having an event at 7. And we're just going to share some more stories. Vazumzi Plamana, who was here actually two years ago sharing, he is now at NC State. And he actually couldn't be here because he's at his church today, and so he'll be here tonight. And so we're so excited to just share a little bit more about what God's doing. And we wanted to say thank you. Look, Listen, Love is the organization that Grace started to launch out missionaries. And so when you support Acts of Grace, sorry, Look, Listen, Love is manifesto. Acts of Grace, thank you. And that's the way that you support us so that we can keep doing what we're doing. Ubuntu is its own 501c3, but Acts of Grace just keeps us there and allows us as a family to keep doing what God has called us to do there. So we'll share more about that tonight, and we're so thankful. Wonderful. Thank you. And they'll stick around, too, to chat with after the service. Let me pray for y'all, and then we're going to suffer through Alan Morgan together, and then we'll eat some tacos. All right, let's pray. Father, thank you so much for all that you're doing in South Africa, in Ocean View, and in the ways that you are using the princes and also drawing them more near to you. God, I pray that their walk with you, that their exuberance to follow you, that their joy that they find in you would be contagious as they move in and out of circles and relationships in what they're doing in South Africa. God, we pray for Sarah in her new role, that she would thrive there. It certainly seems as though all the experiences that you've given her over the years have prepared her for this in really incredible ways. And we lift up Casey as he continues to plug away at this thing that he's done now for a long time. I pray that you would give him new and fresh excitement and motivation and that he would wake up tomorrow as excited about Ubuntu as ever. And God, we thank you for bringing them here safely, for them being able to share their story. And we pray that you would write many, many more good stories through what they're doing down there and that you would just draw these young men and these folks in the community to your son Christ through what they're doing. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

We always talk about the stories of Moses and Abraham and David and Paul. We know all about the boys, but what about the girls? Why don't we talk more about the people in the Bible who are like me? It turns out the girls of the Bible are pretty awesome. And when we take the time to learn their stories, we will be amazed at what God can do with someone who is consistently, humbly, and lovingly faithful. What up, faces? Good to see everybody. This is great. Thank you for being here this Sunday morning. It really is good to get to see everybody's faces. I didn't really know what to expect this morning, but this is really, really great. It's good to see y'all. Thank you for joining us online if that's what you're doing. Somebody told me this morning it was a little bit hard to get out of the omelet routine, but they made it here anyway. But if you came to the omelet routine and you're enjoying one right now, good for you and your sweatpants. But we are happy to be here. This is, I think, part six of our series called Faithful, where we're looking at the stories of faithful women throughout Scripture that really have profound impacts on the kingdom of God through simply being faithful and kind of walking in obedience with what God placed in front of them. This morning we arrive at a woman in the New Testament named Lydia. And I think that she is an incredibly relevant figure for us in the New Testament church and particularly for us in the North Raleigh community. And I'll tell you why, but we really don't get much of a picture of Lydia except for this snippet of verses in Acts chapter 16. So if you have a Bible, you can turn to Acts chapter 16. We're going to be in verses 13 through 15. A little bit later, we're going to be in Philippians chapter 1. So you can go ahead and mark your Bible if you want to turn there and read with me. But we don't get a lot about Lydia. We just get this snippet about her involvement in the church in Philippi. And that city might sound familiar to you. That is the church that Paul planted that received the letter that we know as Philippians. So a lot in the New Testament is made up of these letters, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and Corinthians. Those are letters from Paul to churches that he planted. And so Lydia plays an integral role in the church that he planted in Philippi. And so this is where we pick up the story. He's gone to Philippi, and he has begun to preach the gospel. This is his very first day. He has just arrived. He goes to the town square. He begins to preach the gospel, and he meets this woman named Lydia. Here's what happens. We're going to pick it up in verse 13. the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. And after she was baptized in her household as well, she urged us saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay. And she prevailed upon us. So Paul and his traveling seminary, as it's known in theological circles, Timothy, Titus, Barnabas, some of these guys are traveling with him. There could have been as little as four or as many as eight to ten folks with him as he traveled. They go into Philippi. They go to a place of prayer. So they go to wherever the spiritual place was, and they share the gospel. They talk about Jesus. Lydia hears this message of the gospel, is compelled, says she's in. She, I want to sign up. What do I have to do? They had her fill out a new member card, and she put it in the, she, they talked, and she accepted Christ right there, and then they took the next step of getting baptized, which is, we always see baptism as a step of obedience after faith, and so she took this step of obedience. She got baptized. And it says her household was baptized. So her family members were baptized. And then she looked at Paul, who just rolled into town, and she said, you guys need a place to stay. Come stay at my house. And I love the way that she leverages the spiritual guilt here. If you are willing to validate the faith that I am claiming, if you believe me, then stay at my house. If you don't think that this stuck, you know, you don't think I'm really a Christian, then go stay somewhere else. But if you think that what you just did worked, then come stay at my house. Like, what choice does he have? So he says, okay, I'll stay. Now, in this, just this little short snippet here, I feel like we see so much about Lydia that is really profoundly accurate to us. Before I do that, though, there's one thing in here, in this snippet about Lydia that I wanted to point out. This is not part of the sermon, okay? So let's pretend together that we've entered into a parenthetical expression, okay? I'm opening up the parentheses. Normally when I preach a sermon, I don't like to make a bunch of different points. I try to just make one point to send you home with to think about, but I don't know when I'm going to get back to Lydia and this was too good of a thing to pass up and not mention to you, okay? So while I'm in the parentheses, as I was researching Lydia, it says in the text that she was a worshiper of God. But it also says in the text that God opened her heart to receive what Paul had to say. A lot of scholars believe that she was sympathetic to the Jews that were already there, that had preceded her. So she knew about the same God that we worship, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The same God that Paul was preaching about, the same God that sent his son Jesus. She knew about this God, and she was sensitive to this God, but she wasn't all the way in on this God. She wasn't a practicing Jew. Lydia was from Thyatira. She grew up in a pagan environment. She grew up with Greek and Roman pantheons. That was probably her heritage. And so what we know about Lydia is that she was spiritually sensitive and spiritually seeking. She was open spiritually, but she was not yet decided spiritually. And when Paul came into town and shared the good news of the gospel, talked about Jesus, and she heard him, everything clicked with her. She was sensitive to the Jewish God, and now she'd heard the message from Paul, and now it makes sense to her. Now it clicks with her, and now she's all in. And what I think is fascinating and incredibly relevant for us now is that she was spiritually sensitive, spiritually seeking. And what we see is that God had laid the groundwork, that the Holy Spirit had begun to knead the soul of Lydia and the heart of Lydia as for fertile ground so that when her soul finally encountered the gospel, it would spring forth and respond to it. And so Lydia's conversion has very little to do with the profundity of Paul's words and the effectiveness of his sharing of the gospel and has everything to do with the Holy Spirit working on the heart of Lydia to prepare her for this moment. And I wanted to stop there and point that out so that I could simply ask you, how many Lydia's are there in your life? How many Lydia's will you encounter on your tennis team or on the golf course or in the office or in the neighborhood, the new couple that comes over and you don't want to help them move their things in, but if you do, you might get to have a conversation with them. How many people are just floating around in our lives whom the Holy Spirit has been working on, who are spiritually sensitive and seeking, who are attuned to spiritual things, and who are ready to hear the gospel, are fertile ground for the message of Christ, and they're simply waiting on you, like Paul, to blow into their life and actually share that story. So don't shy away from doing that. We have the opportunity to talk about our faith. We have the opportunity to answer spiritual questions of the people around us. We have no idea how long the Holy Spirit has been working that soil to prepare it for the good news of Jesus. So share the gospel. We have no idea when we're talking to Lydia. Okay, close parentheses. That may be what you needed. The rest of this may stink for you, and maybe it all stinks. I don't know. But hopefully something is effective. But that's that idea. You take that for what it worth. Now, the other thing we see about Lydia, and this is, I think, probably more relevant to our North Raleigh crowd, is that Lydia was a dealer of purple, okay? Now, many of you probably know, you probably picked up in your history lessons somewhere along the lines that purple was an incredibly expensive dye. It was the most difficult dye to create in the ancient world. I think it came from snails and getting it was really, really tough. And so anything that was dyed purple was an incredibly expensive garment. That's why purple is the color of royalty. So she dealt in really high-end goods. Think of her as like she owned Lululemon. Really overly expensive, not worth it stuff. That's what she sold. Then other rich people just flocked to it. This must be what we need. Surely purple is the color. That's what they did. Okay, so this is her. She's walking in affluent circles. She's a successful woman. By all accounts, very few scholars and theologians, she was single. So she was widowed or her husband had left her or something, but she was the head of her household, which is an interesting dynamic in the ancient world that didn't happen a lot. She becomes very influential in the church, which I think is a phenomenal example for the women that are influential in the church now and the elders that we have. But she was an affluent woman. She had things. She had money by all accounts. By all accounts, she probably had a big, nice house. She invited six to eight guys to come stay there and feed them for what ended up being a longer stay than Paul had had at any of the other cities. She was a woman of means. And I think that this is particularly interesting because up until this point, we really haven't seen anyone with wealth and affluence and resources encounter the gospel and sign up to become a part of the church. When we read the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, that have the story of Jesus and the disciples within them, we see Jesus say things like, foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but even the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. I've told you before that Jesus and the disciples literally couch surfed and camped for three years while they went around Israel doing ministry. They didn't have a home base. Maybe Mary and Martha and Lazarus' house in Bethany was the closest thing they had to home base. I'm sure they could sleep there whenever they decided they needed to, but they didn't have anything. And when Jesus called the disciples, he didn't exactly call them away from lucrative careers. They're fishermen and tax collectors and carpenters and farmers probably. So he didn't call them away from means into poverty. And then Jesus actually encounters a rich man and he says, what do I have to do? And he says, sell everything you have and follow me. And there's an important principle there, which means I need to be more important to you than your stuff. So if you can prove that that's true, then come on. Otherwise, your priorities aren't there yet. But we don't see in the Gospels a person of influence and means encounter faith and become a believer and get engaged in the church. This is really, to my knowledge, the first time we see this. And I think that that would make this particularly interesting to the American church and even more particularly interesting to the North Raleigh crowd. Because listen, it's not a secret. We know this. We may as well be able to be comfortable with it and talk about it at church. A lot of us, we've got means. We have a couple extra nickels to rub together. A lot of folks in this church, you probably have more now than you thought you would when you were growing up, when you started your career. I'd be willing to bet there's a pretty good chance that for a lot of us, especially those of us who are at the tail end of our career or have already hung it up, you probably have been blessed with more than you expected. There's a lot of affluence in North Raleigh. Just to be honest, we got a lot of people at the church who have means, who have been successful. And that's okay. We have some people who might feel like, I'm not one of those. You might be talking to everybody else. You're not talking to me. I am not a person of affluence. I can relate to you. But listen, if you compared yourself to some of the families that we support at Fox Road, I bet you probably are affluent compared to them. And I know for a fact that everybody in this room, if you wanted to compare yourself to the families that we go to Mexico and build houses for, for $6,000 worth of cinder block, you're pretty affluent compared to them. So to me, when a woman of means encounters the gospel and then begins to interact with the church, we as North Raleigh should lean in and say, how do we do that? What's the example that she sets for us? How does she encounter the church with her wealth and with her affluence and with her resources? Because we are a church that has wealth and affluence and resources to varying degrees. And I feel like it's important to ask this question and to learn from her example because there exists in Christian circles, and I think it's almost uniquely Christian or maybe just uniquely religious, but my experience is Christianity, it's uniquely Christian to kind of feel bad about wealth, right? To kind of feel bad about having. To not want to have too much. To not want to drive too nice of a car. To not want my house to be too big. To not have to, I'm going to get a beach house, but it's going to be modest, you know? Like, I'm going to have a golf membership. It could be there. It's going to be here. It's going to be cheaper. Like, there's some uncomfortable stuff that exists around the things that we have and the resources that are available to us. We're just not comfortable with it. Case in point, I saw this displayed for me a little while ago. Some time ago, I was with somebody that I consider a friend. They're very dear to the family. He's not from here, so don't try to figure out who it is. I was with him, and our families were together. He's older than me. He's like my dad's age, so he's in generation older than me, and it was time. We decided to hop in the car and go get some meat to throw on the grill. So we go and we hop in his car and he's got a new car, it's a new Mercedes. And I hop in the Mercedes and we're riding down the road and I'm looking around and listen, I'm not a car guy. Okay. I don't, I drove a Nissan Leaf for the first three years that I was here. I think that's, that's all you need to know, to know that I'm not a car guy. All right. I don't care, but I am a car interior guy. I like soft seats, and I like big screens, and I like things that you touch, and then they change. Like, I like the technology inside of cars. That's pretty important to me. So I sit in this big, nice Mercedes, and I'm looking, and there's a screen like the whole width of the dashboard, and the seats are-stitched by elves and it is nice in there. It is really nice. I'm certain that a baby animal died for that steering wheel. I'm positive of it. We're riding down the road and I'm like, this is nice, man. Do you like this better? Prior to this, he had a BMW. I said, do you like it better than this? Yeah, for these reasons. Well, what does this do? And I'm kind of just talking to him about his car. It's a new car. He just got it. He says he likes it a lot. And so, great, let's talk about your car. And at some point or another, a few minutes in, he goes, he plays this card on me. Oh, you know, it's just a car. Oh. It's just a car. Just give me point A to point B. Okay, all right, loud and clear. We'll talk about something else. So we talk about something else. Now, I get home. I shouldn't admit this to you. Please don't judge me for this. But when he said, ah, it's just a car, that got under me a little bit. Because I'm like, bull, not just a car. So I Google it. I know, sorry. I Google it. The car's $115,000. Now listen, I don't care if your car is $115,000. It doesn't matter one little bit to me. But don't try to convince me that it's just a car. You don't get to play. Here's the deal. If you spend $115,000 on your car, that's fine. That's between you and your creator. I don't care what you do, but don't come at me with, well, it just gets me from point A to point B. If that's true, buy a Prius, okay? That's a $115,000 Mercedes that does more than that. I've seen it. It's nice. But you know why I did that? Because he's a really godly dude. I wish he would move here and become one of our elders. He teaches a weekly Sunday school class, and he sends me the notes every week. And you guys would benefit way more from his Sunday school class than from my sermons. I'll tell you that right now. They're really good. And he supports his church. He's integral there. His children love the Lord. And I thought about why did he feel the need to kind of, it's just a car. Because there's this thing about wealth and about having things that makes us uncomfortable. And there's those questions that we ask. I need a new car. How nice is too nice? I'm going to buy a new house. How big is too big? I'm going to get new countertops. How nice if they have gold in them? Is that too much? Should I not get that? And within these Christian circles, I think that we're made to feel badly about having means, about having nice things. And so when the gospel encounters a woman who has nice things and has means, I want to see how she responds to it and how she serves the church. Because I think we get caught up in that. How much car is too much car? Do I really need this extra wash? Do I really need this extra thing? Do I really need the Lululemon? Do I really need these need these things? Or should I be giving it to the kingdom? Like, how should this all work? What's the interaction there? And listen, I don't care how nice your things are. And for those of us who might want to judge my friend for having a car that's that nice, I'll tell you this, I can guarantee you that that car cost him less from a perspective of net worth and annual income than my 2015 Highlander cost me. It's got leather seats. It's really nice. And so I have lived enough years to get off being concerned how nice is too nice. I know they'd say they're a believer, but they live like this and they have all of these things. And do you know what they could do with that? I don't deal with that. That's between you and your creator. I don't care. I'm happy when my friends have nice things. It doesn't matter to me. And I think when we start to worry about what kind of things it's okay to have that we get it wrong. We're not thinking about it correctly anyways. What I want us to see this morning is it's okay to have things. What matters is what we do with what we have. It's okay to have affluence. It's okay to be successful. It's okay to have more than you would have expected. What matters is what you do with the resources that you have. This is why the example of Lydia, I think, is so important. Lydia encounters the gospel and immediately, right away, she accepts Christ, she gets baptized, she has her household baptized, they believe too, and then immediately her wheels start turning. How can I use what I have to serve this new church that I'm a part of? What can I do to move this forward? She knows she doesn't need to preach. She's not going to go preach it more effectively than Paul did. They don't have a 401c3. They don't have anything to give to. So what can I do to help this movement that I am now a part of? I know. I have a big house. I have people who can cook. We're going to handle your meals. We're going to take care of you. Come stay at my house. If you do nothing else at all, if you believe me that I am sincere in my faith, please allow me to use my resources to bless this ministry. Allow me to use what I have to move forward God's kingdom by giving you a comfortable place to stay. I almost did a whole sermon on the incredible hospitality of Lydia and how that's rippled down through the years, but I actually think it's more than that. It's not just being hospitable. It's in her head. The switch was flipped immediately. Okay, I'm a part of the kingdom of God now. How do I use the things that I have access to to further this kingdom? And so it's not about what we have. Who cares? It's about what we do with what we have. It's about flipping the switch in our brain that makes us stewards of what we have. A few weeks ago, we did baby dedications, and we talked about this idea of stewardship just very briefly. These children are not our children. They are God's children that have been entrusted to us, and we are going to hand them back over to him. The things that you have are not your things. They are God's things that he has entrusted to you, and you are responsible for how you use them. She immediately got this idea of stewardship and wanted to use her resources to further the church that she was now a part of. And so what we see is that Lydia's faithful stewardship had a profound impact on the church. What we find out later is that Paul and his companions stayed in Philippi for longer than they stayed anywhere else in that journey because they had these good, now budding relationships there. They felt so welcomed there. What we see in the letter that he writes back to the church in Philippi is this incredible warmth from Paul. It's called by scholars the Joyful Letter. It's a very short book. I think it's four chapters, but it's incredibly impactful. It's a great book. If you're just picking up the Bible, you don't know what to read, read Philippians gospel and do his work so that the church could take off there, so that we could have this letter thousands of years later. And if you don't believe me, I'm going to read, I think it's the first eight verses in Philippians, because this is Paul greeting them. So what Paul does is he goes around and he plants churches. And then he goes on to the next place. He leaves them in the hand of capable leaders. And he goes on to the next place. And then he writes letters back to them to encourage them. I've heard these things are going on. I want to encourage you in these ways. He writes letters back to them. This is what makes up a bulk of our New Testament. These letters that Paul wrote to the churches. And at the beginning of the letters, he always says, greetings to you, grace and peace from Paul, an apostle in Jesus Christ, and says a couple of things, and then he gets into it. But I'm telling you, the greeting for the church in Philippi has more warmth and heart to it than any other letter by far. Look at what he says. He says, Paul to this. This is a direct reference to Lydia. That is a warm letter. I love grace. If God takes me somewhere years from now and I write you a letter back, it will not start like this. It will not be this warm. That is an incredible amount of love and warmth. I pray for you all the time. My heart yearns for you. I thank my God every time I remember you. My soul yearns to be with you as it does with Jesus Christ for your partnership with me from the first day until now. You can't tell me that Lydia's instant switch to stewardship, that Lydia's hospitality, that Lydia leveraging her resources to further God's kingdom didn't have a profound impact on Paul and on the people traveling with him and on the efficacy of the church that they left behind through this simple act that we see of hospitality where Lydia says, I have resources, they're yours now, you can use whatever you need. And so the lesson of Lydia is this. Maybe God has given you stuff so he can use your stuff. Maybe God has given you resources so that he can use your resources to further his kingdom and to bless others. Maybe we don't just have more than what we expected because life has just been good and now we're supposed to enjoy it. Maybe we're stewards of the things that we have to further God's kingdom. Maybe he gave you stuff because he wants to use your stuff. And if we will adopt this mindset of stewardship and use our resources for the things of God as directed by God, quit getting worked up about whether or not it's okay to have and just admit that we do and say, okay, God, now how can I use this for your kingdom? He is still in the business of bringing about profound change and impacting eternity out of generous hearts. I remember when Jen and I were, I think we were engaged or just newly married. We will have been married 15 years this July. Can you imagine? Poor Jen, 15 years every day. Jen's parents bought a lake house. A little bit south of Atlanta, there's a lake called Lake Oconee, and they bought a lake house down there. And Jen's sister was in college. And they said they bought this lake house, And then they said the Christian thing about buying the lake house, right? Like, they're doing okay in life. They're buying a lake house. And we're like, oh, that's great, John Terry. You're buying a lake house. And they're like, it's for ministry. Sure. You can minister to yourself on Saturday morning while you're looking at the water. I want to be a part of that ministry, right? And I've seen people say, we're finishing our basement for ministry. We're getting a third house to minister to people because once a year, the pastor stays there for a weekend. So it's God's, right? This is how we do it. And so they said, we're getting this lake house. I'm like, oh, that's great. And they're like, it's for ministry. And I was like, sure. Yeah, you can minister to me and Jen. We'll eat your food. But they meant it. They meant it. And Lauren, who we called the Pied Piper, was always bringing tons of friends, right? Every weekend, John worked at AT&T. He'd wrap up at 4.30 on Friday and he he'd head down the road to the lake house, and Lauren and her friends would meet him there. And every weekend, they'd go down there, and Terry would drive down and meet them, and me and Jen were invited, and it was really thrilling for me to get to ride on the boat and have an opportunity to wakeboard after these chiseled Adonis college athletes were back there doing flips, and then I'd get up there and just kind of fall over and get concussed and want to come back in the boat. I loved going to the lake. But these kids came every week, and they would feed them. They would buy steaks. They would buy tons of stuff, more food than they could know what to do with. They'd throw it all away at the end of the weekend, and they'd do the very same thing the next week. This became such a regular thing that they started to come without Lauren. They started to come without calling. There was one night, I'm not making this up, 10.30 at night, John and Terry are in bed. It's 10.30, they're falling asleep, and they hear, Big John! Big John! And he looks out the window, and there's literally 15 college guys parked in front of his house. And the only one that he knows is a guy named John Collins, who's the one yelling at him. And John says, I told my friends you wouldn't care if we came. To which I would say, you've lied to your friends. I do care a lot, and go away. John goes down the stairs, flings open the door, makes sure everybody has something to eat, makes sure everybody's got a place to sleep. They're sleeping all over the floor. It wasn't a big place. They're sleeping all over the floor like on each other. Next day, he's up at 7. He's taking them out on the wakeboard all day. He tells Terry we've got to get some stuff for them. She goes grocery shopping. They host these boys, right? This happened all the time. They loved him. He was in some of their weddings. He profoundly impacted these boys by literally using that lake house as a ministry, by not getting worked up about, is it good or is it bad or should I or shouldn't I, but saying, God, I'm going to buy this and it's going to be yours. Some of those boys prayed to accept Christ with him. He got to meet their kids. And 15 years after they experienced the generosity, and they called him Professor Vinson, there was 15 of those boys at his funeral. They flew in from Miami and Phoenix and Boston, and they were there, and they were blubbering, and they were talking about the profound impact that John had on their life. They were talking about how he showed them through his generosity and being measured with them what it was to be a man who walked with Jesus. One of them was his pallbearer. One of the pallbearers, he was crying so hard outside of the church that I had to do his part because he literally couldn't. John was a man who had a good job and he was successful. He made smart decisions. But when he had the ability to help, he did. When he had the ability to give, he did. And like Lydia, because the gospel took root in his life, he didn't see his things as his things. He saw them as God's things for him to hold on to and use for God's kingdom. So I would tell you this this morning. The lesson of Lydia is still true today. God still uses a generous spirit in deeply profound ways that will echo through the decades that you have no idea about. He gave you your stuff so that he could use your stuff to further his kingdom. And so what I'm telling you this morning is, in this affluent North Raleigh community, I don't care how much you have. I don't care how much resources you have. I don't care what you buy or any of that stuff. What matters to God is what you use it for, however much or little you have. What matters to God is our attitude towards the resources that he's given us. And so I would tell you this this morning. If you have your things, and you have your wealth, whatever that means to you, you have your resources, whatever that means to you, you have these things in your life, you feel blessed by them. If you're the only one that's blessed by them, if your families are the only ones that are blessed by them, there's a chance we're misusing God's things. There's a chance we're not learning the lesson of Lydia and understanding that God gave us stuff so that he could use our stuff. God gave us resources so that he could use our resources. Can you imagine the type of impact a church like this with the resources that we have can have on our community if we will more and more learn this lesson from Lydia and see these things. When we encounter the gospel, look at the resources that we have, not feel bad about having them, but say to ourselves, how can we leverage these things as a church to impact our community together? The good news is, I think a lot of us get this. We're pretty good at this, but I want to see us do more. I want to see us adopt this mindset. I want to see us learn more and more from the lesson and from the example of Lydia and believe that by being faithful stewards of the gift that God has given us that we can make profound impacts on the decades to come and even eternity. So let's be like Lydia. Let's pray. Father, you are so good to us. God, for those of us that feel blessed, we just thank you for that. We thank you that we do have more than we could ask or imagine. I pray that we would see ourselves as stewards of the resources that you've given us. I pray that it would matter deeply to us to leverage the things we have to further your kingdom, to reach people for you, to point people towards Jesus. Father, for those of us who feel like we might be struggling, I just, I pray that we would see that as a season. I pray that those folks would be blessed in that they're struggling. God, plant seeds in us, little ideas of generosity and a generous spirit. Give us the opportunity to participate on the front lines with what you're doing and experience the blessing of what it is to bless others with things that you've used to bless us to. Make us as a church more like your servant Lydia. In Jesus' name, amen.