Sermons tagged with Gospel

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.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace. Before I jump into the sermon this morning, I did just want to make note of the fact that this morning and today actually is July 4th. And so that's exciting and that's super awesome. Thank you to everyone who has decided to join us on July 4th. And for everyone who's online, we're thankful that you're watching us online on your holiday. But as we think about July 4th, and as we think about these patriotic holidays that we come to, and as we talk about them within the church, it is normally within the realm of just being incredibly thankful to live in a place where we are free to gather together like this and worship God how we want and however we are able to do so. And so this morning I just wanted to make note of that, but then this weekend as I was thinking about that, and I was thinking about that we celebrate that freedom, one, because it's a freedom, but because that is not a freedom everywhere. There are Christians around the world who live in places where they are not free to worship in this way. They are living out their faith. They are meeting with other Christians. They are taking the gospel to places that is illegal to do so. And so as we celebrate our thankfulness and our praise for this freedom that we have, let us be mindful of those people as well, that those people who live there are those people who have left the freedom of America as missionaries to go and take the gospel to places where those freedoms do not exist. And so will you real quick just bow with me as we pray for both of those things. God, thank you for allowing us to live in a place where we are able to freely worship you, freely just learn more about you and grow closer to you. God, we realize that on days like today, it's just the perfect time to celebrate the fact that we get to celebrate you. And God, we also realize that this isn't the case for everyone. And so we also pray for those Christians worldwide, whether they be people who are native to countries where it is illegal to have and to spread the gospel, where it's illegal to worship you, or whether it be our American missionaries who have left their cushy freedoms to be able to take the gospel to places where it's not free. And so God, today, allow our joys to be sweeter as we celebrate you, as we celebrate our ability to celebrate you, and allow us to continue to be mindful of those who don't have those freedoms. We love you so much. Amen. So when I was coming towards the end of my college days, I basically, my last semester of college, I knew for sure that I was going to start working at Greystone Church as the student pastor. Many of you know Greystone is where our pastor, Pastor Nate, where he used to work. And so that's how we got connected. I got to work underneath him there at Greystone. Well, also, I found out at my second semester of my senior year of college that I had torn my ACL and my meniscus in such a way that it was going to have to require a full repair for both. Basically, I had hurt my knee at one point, like two years prior to that. I had gotten an MRI. He said he didn't see anything conclusive. He didn't see anything that was conclusive. And so I took that to mean, all right, let's go tear it now. And so for the next two years, I just played sports until I went back, got an MRI, and the list of things wrong with my knee were longer than the list of things I have to tell you this morning. But with that being the case, not only did I have ACL and meniscus surgery, but with a repair of both of those things, not a shaving, but a repair, it takes like months and months up to like over a year to be able to do any of the fun, athletic, exciting things that I wanted to be able to do, right? Not only that, but with a full meniscus repair, I don't, I mean, like some of you might be like, that's not actually right. I'm just telling you what I think that I remember. But, like, it was like, I wasn't allowed to put weight on my left leg for an entire month, or at least a few weeks. I think it was a month. But like, think about how hard that is. I mean, like, for those of you who've never seen me before, you're already watching me. It's like, this is not a guy who sits. And so like, that was incredibly difficult for me. And then even after that month, I had lost all of the little muscle that I had to where any rehab and any weight was literally all I could do was put some weight onto my leg. And so for a guy who all I wanted to do was just play sports and play basketball and play Ultimate Frisbee and all that stuff, that was really difficult. And so I got that surgery right before I started at Greystone. And so through that time, I'm on crutches. And even when I'm getting off of crutches, I'm just like walking. And so I have all of, I have all of these students who play basketball and I wanted to play basketball with them. We have like Greystone. I know none of you guys have ever been there, but like there's this incredible outdoor basketball facility at our church, which is also like, I lived in the backyard of our church. I had 24 seven access to basketball that I couldn't play because of this knee injury. And so because of those facts, what I decided was when I came back, I was going to have the very best possible basketball shoes that were on the market. It's just the decision was made. I was like, I have to figure out something that I can control that has to do with basketball that actually doesn't get me hurt or injured again. And so I started to stream, and we've all been here. We've all been in this exact place where we just start really deep diving into basketball shoe performance review YouTube. We all know it. The performance, there's just, truly, I know I kid, but this is a very real thing that there are like this group of YouTubers that people that put videos online, basically as basketball shoes release, they get these shoes and they give you all of the specs. They give you all of the, this is the stack height and this is the fit and this is what the shoe is made of. And you know, all of those things that no one cares about, but that are true, I guess. They're saying like the specs of the shoe. But then what they also do is they tell you how they actually operate, what they're best for. Are they best for inside or outside? How do they cut? How do they feel? How do they measure up? All this stuff. All of these things that say, hey, not only is this what these shoes are on paper, but on feet, this is what they look like. And so I began to get a little overwhelmed because there's a lot of these people. They're all saying things. And a lot of them in their performance reviews are saying very different things. These people will be like, I love this shoe. It's great, whatever. And these other people are like, no, I do not love this shoe. It's terrible. It's an awful shoe. Never buy it. You should burn it if you did buy it, which not a good idea. But with that came me having to then do even more of a YouTube deep dive into this because it was no longer about the shoes anymore, and I had to figure out who to trust. Well, by doing that, what I had to figure out is who are these dudes? And so as I start going deeper and deeper into this, I start seeing some videos and some footage of some of these guys playing basketball. And so there's these guys who are awesome. They're super good at basketball. I'm like, these guys are great. You know, they're cutting, they're jumping, they're doing all the things that you want to do when you're testing out a shoe. I'm seeing other videos of dudes who look like they have never played basketball in their entire life, where they're just kind of like, you know, like doing this. And then if they catch the ball, they're shooting it, but they're not doing anything. And then even still, there are literally YouTubers who are giving performance reviews who do not play basketball, who do not wear the shoes, who did not do the performance aspect of the shoes. Instead, they are getting paid because they're YouTubers by these companies to say, hey, this is the shoe you need. This is how it performs. This is how it works. They might be saying things that are right. They might be saying like, hey, this is what the specs are, but they are doing so not because it's something that they've actually put the time and effort into, not because they're actually walking the walk. They're just talking the talk because it benefits them to get paid and to get to do it, even though they literally are not playing basketball. They are not ever using the shoes. And I know that this is a super random and specific example, but we all know the examples like this, right? Like we know and some of us know about the couple times that very famous people have tweeted about these new phones that they absolutely love and that everyone should buy. And then at the bottom of their tweet, it gives the little update that says tweeted from an iPhone, where it's like, oh yes, so you don't use this phone that you're telling us to buy in this ad now. But, you know, we have it. You know, you have the people who say like, hey, this five-minute workout, this five-minute-a-day workout absolutely changed my life. It is absolutely life-changing. Or this diet is life-changing. And I look the way that I look like a bodybuilder because I work out five minutes a day like this. You know, we hear those and we know those and we're like, okay, we know that maybe this is good, and maybe you're not necessarily lying, but you're telling us that something is good and great and life-changing when you're not doing it or when you're not using it in your own lives. Basically, they are people who are talking the talk without walking the walk. They come off as experts, but their life says something completely different than what they're saying in their mouths. This is what we enter into as we jump into Jude. This week we're going to be in Jude. As Nate has chosen a lot of different books of the Bible that are very hard to find in the Bible, I decided to be a good guy and to be your friend and to give you one that's very easy to find in your Bible. So if you want to open in your Bible, Jude is one chapter, so it's short, but is the second to last book in the Bible. So if you find Revelation, just go backwards until you find Jude. If you find Revelation 1, and it's the next page, over. But Jude is this guy who wrote a letter to these certain people. We're going to actually get into who he is, to what he wrote about in a second. But if you guys will go ahead and open, and we will actually jump in, and we will start reading, starting in Jude 1. It says, Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James. Before we continue, that already kind of tells us who Jude is. He is somebody who is a Christian. This is post Jesus dying and being resurrected. This is during a time where people have given their selves to Christ, given their hearts to Christ. And so as Jude refers to himself, he is a servant of Jesus Christ. And not only that, but he is a brother of James. Now, what makes this interesting is I know that we're all like, oh yeah, we know James is in the Bible. But what makes this interesting is that James is a brother of Jesus. And so what this means intrinsically is that Jude or Judah is one of Jesus's brothers, which makes it a little bit weird and a little bit interesting that he calls himself a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James. But we're going to get back to why that's interesting in just a second. So let's move on. We're going to keep going through one and then two. To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ, may mercy, peace, and love be multiplied in you. So who is he writing to? He is writing to these Christians. We don't have an exact area or exact place or an exact church that he is writing to, but what we know is these are people who love the Lord and who have given their hearts over to Jesus and given their hearts over to the gospel. And then we have a bit of a shift. As it goes, and if you're looking in scripture, you'll see that it's actually marked judgment on false teachers. And so we jump into for a second, he starts off by saying, Christians, you people who have given your hearts to Jesus, I wanted to write to you in celebration. I wanted to write to you to say what an amazing and incredible thing this gospel is. What an amazing thing that God has looked down on us and looked down on our imperfections and our failures and said, I want that person in my family. And so I will send my son so he can live a perfect life and die as a sacrifice so I can make them a part of my eternal family. What an unbelievable gospel that is. And I wanted to just be able to celebrate with you. I wanted to write a message of celebration and excitement. I wanted to just be able to love on Jesus. But it has come to my attention that there are these people within your community and there are these people within your church that are taking that gospel that we hold so dearly and they are perverting it and they are denying this Jesus who lived, who loved, and who served and then who died for us. How are they doing so? Not with their speech. They are people who are teaching, and as they talk, and as you hear them on a Sunday morning at church, or as you hear them and what they're saying, there's nothing necessarily wrong with it, but their lives are filled with ungodliness. Their lives are filled with them leaning in to unrepentant sin, leading into this selfish desire and ambition that they have. And by that, they are perverting the gospel. They are saying, Jesus, we understand that you made your sacrifice. And instead of allowing that to say, now I want to live a life that is marked by you and your spirit and your truth. Instead, I'm going to let that allow me to do whatever I want, whenever I want. And so as he writes this, he writes this to say, be wary of these people. Be wary of what they are able to do, of the strength that they can have and what they are able to do. And for that reason, contend for the faith. Contend for this faith that you have, that I have, that is in your heart, or else it is going to cause division, and it is going to cause strife. For the next 10 verses, he goes on to talk about different examples in biblical history where this has happened. He talks about the people being brought out of Egypt, the Israelites being brought out of Egypt, and they were barred from entering the promised land because as they were being cared for by God and as they were being led by Moses, these people had given themselves over to their personal passions and what they personally wanted and their personal convictions and seeking after their own ability to control their circumstances. They started turning to other things. They started turning to sin. They started turning to other gods because of fear, because of anxiety, because of worry, because of a lack of control that they had in their circumstances. They talk about Sodom and Gomorrah, and I think a lot of us have heard of them. They literally reached judgment and condemnation as nations because they were so enthralled, they were so invested into themselves and what personally drove them and anything that they wanted and anything made them feel good was okay and was right regardless of what the Lord said about it and they reached condemnation and death. He talks about that from as far back as Enoch, an eighth descendant of Adam, so a long time ago, all the way up to disciples of Jesus Christ, there had been people to say, look out for people. There will be people who rise up in this ungodliness and they will use, they might say the right things, but you can tell and they are marked by their ungodliness in their lives. They are marked by the fact that their lives look completely different than the gospel that they are speaking and the gospel that they are preaching. They're basically the shoe guys. They're the shoe guys who say, hey, I know all of these things. I know all the right things, but they're only talking the talk. When it comes to walking the walk, they were doing anything but. They liked the gospel and they wanted to use the gospel, but they wanted to use it for their own selfish gain and their own selfish ability to do whatever they wanted to do because they'd been saved by grace. And as I talk about these things, I think all of us in our minds probably have people in our minds and in our lives or that we know of whether like, you know, in our actual lives or that we know through social media or that we know through the news of these people like that, that they talk a big game, but their life is so far from anything that they're preaching and that they're speaking. We all know those people. We know what it means and we know what it looks like to have a false teacher in our faith. And so when I talk about this, I think most of us are probably like, yes, amen. We need to contend against those people. Yes, amen. These people bring strife, and we need to watch out, and we need to be wary of them. And all of those things are so true, and there certainly is a full sermon that can be preached on what to look for, and the ways to avoid, and the ways to contend for these things and for these people. But what really stood out to me is how he continues after he talks about these people. Because after he talks about these people, he turns back to talking directly to the Christians, to the people who are living their lives in faith and in the gospel. And he offers up and says, persevere in your faith. You need to continue to persevere in your faith, growing closer to God, growing closer to who he is. And I believe that not only is that so you can be wary and so you contend for your faith, but what I believe is that he realizes, what I realize as I read this scripture, is that these people that were marked by ungodliness, these people that he is writing against, have really fallen short in just some very small, unique ways that all of us are at danger of falling short. That these people's entire lives are marked by ungodliness. They are that way for reasons that they have fallen short that I believe that we fall short every day. And what I realized is as I was like, gosh, these people are the worst. We need to watch out for these people. I realized that it's a lot easier to point our fingers at the ungodliness in other people than it is for us to recognize the areas of our life and our faith where we fall short. It's a lot easier for me to roast these basketball guys than it is for me to, or than it was for me to admit back in middle school when I got really into skateboarding, but I was a huge wimp, and so I didn't actually want to skateboard, so I just got the clothes, and then people would call me poser, and I was like, and I was devastated by it, but then I had to realize, you know, I had to come, I had to realize, they're right, I'm a poser. I talked a good talk, I knew all the stuff, I wore the cool clothes, I had some sick brown etnies, but I wasn't walking the walk. And by walking the walk, I meant rolling the roll. But how often is that true, right? How often do we hear these things and hear these people who are marked by ungodliness and in our minds we immediately go to the people that we know that are marked by ungodliness instead of our minds going to the parts of our life that are marked with ungodliness, the parts of our life that are separating us and that are holding back to a full life marked by the gospel. See, I think that the root of these people's sins were simple. I think for one, they wanted to keep seeking after and striving after their own selfish ambitions. They knew that God was who God was, but they had these things that they liked in their life and they weren't willing to give them up. And even that is rooted even deeper in the fact that I think that they just wanted to have lives that were separate from their spiritual lives. They had their regular, they had their personal life, their weekday life, and then they had their spiritual life. That on Sunday, yes, let's celebrate the gospel. Let's celebrate God and let's worship because he's awesome. I get to spend Sunday celebrating my spiritual life in God so that for the rest of the week, I am able to live my life that is not my spiritual life, my regular or my normal life. And I think the third thing they did is they just misunderstood the gospel. When they heard that Jesus died for their sins, when they heard that there is grace offered because Jesus was a perfect sacrifice, that they just misunderstood what that meant. They felt like the people, like in Romans 6, Paul asks, does that mean that we sin so we can make much of grace? No. That means we lean into godliness, we lean into holiness, we pursue getting rid of the sin in our lives so that we can have the best possible relationship we can with Jesus. But they didn't understand that. They thought, if I'm saved and I'm redeemed, then why do I have to change anything about my life? They didn't get it. They'd forgotten what it says in John 14, what Jesus says when he says that if you love me, you will keep my commandments. If you love me, you will obey my teachings. Don't we all have those things? Don't we all have those sins that are in our lives, those sins that are in our hearts that we just don't want to give up, that we just want to be separate from our faith, separate from our spiritual life? Don't we all have those times where we say, okay, like, that was a great time of church or that was a great time of Bible study, now time to get back to my real or my regular life? Don't we separate the two at times? Don't we have sins and time commitments and ambitions and worries and plans and comforts and the like that we just hesitate wanting to give up to God because they make us feel comfortable or because we like them? And so the question becomes, how do we make sure that we don't fall so far down like these ungodly people? How do we persevere in our faith? How can we grow in our faith to where we can do our best to grow closer to God, to where we can make our hearts more and more like him every day, giving up those personal ambitions for these godly ambitions and these godly calls. Well, he talks about it. He writes about it. In verses 20 through 23, he says, What do we do? We lean into God. What do we do? We lean into our relationship and into our faith with God, ever more trying to build it up however and wherever we can. We read scripture so that we can better understand his heart. We pray, we pray so that we can give up those things and ask for God to mold and mend and to shape our hearts into what he loves and what he believes and what his call for us is. It means leaning into each other and building up each other and ever more encouraging each other and asking for encouragement from the people that are around us. As he says, going back to verse 2, he says, may mercy, peace, and love be multiplied in you. While I read that as a blessing, I also read that as a way to persevere in the faith is by leaning in to mercy and peace and love, the type of which we only know because of the gospel and because of who God and Jesus is. What is our ultimate goal? Our ultimate goal is that our identity is the same identity as Jude's. For that, we go back to Jude 1 where he says, Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James. Why did he walk around here to tell us that he was the brother of Jesus? He mentioned Jesus. He talks about his relation to Jesus. Why doesn't he just say Jude, a brother of Jesus? Why instead does he say Jude, a servant of Christ, also a brother of James, which actually does connect me and I am a brother of Jesus. Well, the best way that I've heard it said is this way by William Barclay, who wrote a commentary on Jude. And he says, part of it's gonna be on the screen, but we'll get to it in a second. The only title of honor which Jude would allow himself was the servant of Jesus Christ. That is to say, Jude regarded himself as having only one purpose and one distinction in life, to be forever at the disposal of Jesus for service in his cause. And then this part's on the screen. The greatest glory which any Christian can attain is to be one of use to Jesus Christ. The ultimate goal of our life, the ultimate goal as we persevere in our faith is that we are simply and utterly used by Christ and loved and found in his love. We are marked by Jesus, not only in our teaching, not only in our theology, not only in what we believe, but by the fact that he governs our hearts, he governs our actions, and his call is what we do. And how does that grow? It grows through growing closer to him. It grows through knowing him, through spending time with him, through building up our love in him and who he is. What the teachers failed to understand, what these people that he writes about failed to understand is that when we give our hearts to Jesus, it means we are giving our lives to Jesus. That giving our lives to Jesus means that we are trying our best to pursue holiness, pursue blamelessness, to rid ourselves of these sins, to rid ourselves of the things that separate us between us and Jesus, not so we gain salvation, not so we can earn God's love, but because salvation has been freely given to us, we turn around and we love God. We turn around and we love Jesus. We seek his calling. We live out his calling. We get rid of what separates us and we lean into him with the ultimate mission that my identity, my marker is Kyle, servant of Jesus. Connor, servant of Jesus. Doug, a servant of Jesus. So when you look at your life, what are those things that are standing in your way? Whether it be sin or your time or your comfort, whatever it may be, what is standing in the way of you fully being able to call yourself and refer to yourself as a servant to Christ? What do you have that's making a disconnect between your regular life and your spiritual life? And this morning I say, why not lean into him today? Why not trust him today to say, I am willing to give this up to you, God, because I understand the promise that comes on the other side. Because here's this, God wants your all. And he wants your all not so he can just take away the things that you love, but so that he can give you fullness of joy and utter, like, just overwhelming joy and awe and love that comes literally and only through being found in him. So will you pray with me? Lord, thank you for your gospel. Thank you for sending your son to die for us in our place. God, that you offer us grace and you offer us salvation. God, I pray that we don't, that we never pervert that. God, I pray that we never spit in the face of Jesus by making his sacrifices less than what they are. Let us daily press on towards you. And through that, God, let us daily grow closer and closer to you. Let our hearts grow closer and closer to being like yours, growing in our sainthood, growing in our holiness, one step at a time. And God, we thank you that not only do you offer us an eternal home in your kingdom, but you offer us a seat in your kingdom that we get to experience today, right now, because of your salvation. We love you. Amen. So I know this feels a little bit different because I'm still up here after I prayed. One of the beautiful things that writers do sometimes in the Bible is they write doxologies. Doxologies are basically just words of worship. And one of the cool things about them is that they're often found at the end of theology. They write about, hey, these are these things that are true, or these are ways that God is awesome, or in this, contend for these things and persevere in your faith because it can get hard. But within that, let us stop. And in light of these things that I'm talking about, I have to stop now, and I have to finish this letter, not with a period, but saying, now it's time to worship. It's similar, and I don't know if you guys know this, but it's normally why we sing another song on Sunday morning after the message, because it is a response to truth in worship. And so, if you will, I would love for you to stand with me, and on your sheets or on the, you don't have to read out loud with me, but let's just read this, because I love his beautiful words. I love his beautiful doxology saying, hey, all of these things have happened, all of these things are true, but let us not forget the joy for which we fight for these things To the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time, now and forever. 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.

Advent. The coming. The waiting for light to shine in the darkness. We light candles each week to remind us of the coming of Christmas. As the candles burn down, our anticipation grows. We hear songs on the radio, think about sales we want to hit, see the smiles and the well wishes of peace on earth, the bright lights and decorations and everyone talking about joy, joy, joy. Really? People are more cranky and stressed, more frustrated and depressed than ever. Tragic news pops up in our headlines almost daily now and around the world we hear the same story. We live in a world starving for joy. In the New Testament, Luke tells us of angels coming to announce the birth of Jesus to some lowly and defeated, depressed, and joy-starved shepherds. That night, there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord's glory surrounded them. They were terrified, but the angel reassured them, Don't be afraid, he said. I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. Lighting up night, the angel proclaimed, And we marvel as well that God would step into our mess, a broken world marred by our sin. And the knowledge that God is accomplishing something new, that he cannot be stopped or deterred, brings us great comfort and great joy. Yes, we still feel sorrow and pain, but God is ever redeeming, ever remaking, bringing joy from sadness, and we look forward to his return when he will make all things new, and we will live in the great unceasing joy that he has promised us. No matter what you go through, we can know this. Jesus is with us. Think about it. He is with you in your greatest victories and your most humiliating defeats. He invited us to come with him and he will give us rest. He has won the victory for us to relieve our frustration and stress. Our striving is over. Let us be overjoyed. Jesus is with us at all times, in all things. That is the beauty of meeting together around these candles. We light a new Advent candle each week to help us prepare for the coming of Jesus that we celebrate at Christmas. And this week we light the pink candle to remind us of the real, deep-seated joy that Jesus brings that we can hold onto no matter what is going on. This great joy is the startling realization that God has taken up residence in this world. Joy to the world! The Lord is come. Will you receive this king? to be here this morning talking to you about joy. I am also very sorry that I just made that wordplay joke. That was terrible. I can't promise you it's going to be the last one of the sermon, but I can promise you you're going to not enjoy any of them. But the truth is the same. I am so thrilled to be here this morning getting to talk about joy. As you just heard, we are in our third Sunday of Advent. We are lighting the candle of joy, the pink candle of joy, and for me, it is maybe my favorite one. I think maybe the reason for that is because I believe one of the major reasons why people love Christmas so much, why it truly is the most wonderful time of the year, or at least this is how I feel, is because I feel like Christmas is just synonymous with joy. That the purpose of Christmas, the purpose of all of the decorations and the lights and the giving gifts and the songs and just the super fun, joyful songs. All of this is just meant to bring about this joy of this Christmas season. And it's so cool because when you go all the way back to scripture and when you look at the very first Christmas, I think we see the same exact thing. When we jump into Luke 2, and we're going to actually read through some verses in Luke 2, when we look at the first Christmas, as we look at what happened when Jesus was born, I think we're just overwhelmed with the amount of joy that's coming out of it. As it starts, Jesus has been born and there are shepherds that are in the field. They're to Jesus, this angel comes. And so we pick a sign for you. wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth, excuse me, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. And so what happens? The angels go away and the shepherds immediately, I mean, it doesn't say this, but I imagine they sprinted to go find this baby because they're like, that was the most insane thing I've ever seen. I've got to figure out what they're talking about. And so they go and they see that what the angels had said was true, that this baby had been born. And I think they knew, they knew what that meant. And so after they see the baby, they see that it's legit. They run back and they want to tell everybody they know. They tell their families that it says they basically just recited what the angels had said to them. And then what did they do then? They hussled on back. They returned. They had to go see Jesus again. And we pick up back in verse 20, it says, I mean, there's just joy oozing out of every part of that passage. You start, you got the angels who come and they bring, quote, good tidings, good news of great joy. And then after delivering the message they have, they immediately start singing. It was essentially the world's first Buddy the Elf Christmas gram. And then after they get done singing, all of these shepherds in their joy and excitement run over. They see Jesus and then they're so excited that they take their joy elsewhere and tell other people about it. And then they bring them back and they're so overjoyed at just looking at God that they just have to turn to praising God because they're so overcome with this joy that they've experienced. And how incredible is it that now, today, this season, this December 25th, this Christmas time, we're celebrating that exact same joy. And I would argue that even the, excuse me, even the folks that celebrate Christmas that are more doing it just as a holiday, maybe because they aren't believers yet, that I don't think that they would even argue with you that Christmas is synonymous with joy. Because every part of Christmas is meant to push that agenda. But what we have the blessing of knowing is that the reason, the real reason why Christmas is synonymous with joy is because Christ is synonymous with joy and because Christ was born and Christ came and we have the gospel, we have the Savior who we know came and we know why that is a big deal and why that is important. And so we celebrate with everything we have. We have this childlike wonder and this childlike joy to just sing these goofy songs and to put up these goofy decorations and to do all of these things so that we can celebrate with the people around us this great and wonderful and awesome Christmas joy like none other. But as we all know too well, regardless of how soon, regardless of what date, even if it's like November 1st that we decide, all right, I'm going ahead, I'm getting my Christmas tree, I'm putting up my Christmas decorations as soon as possible, I'm immediately switching to only Christmas music for the next three months, as we all know, as quickly as Christmas comes, it goes. As quickly as we are just once again encapsulated by the joy of Christmas, we get on the other side of it. We get into the new year and we pack up all of our Christmas stuff and we kind of turn from that Christmas joy back into our far less joyful, far more mundane, boring, regular lives. Counting down the days until it's the next Christmas season so that you can experience that Christmas joy all over again. This is going to be weird to say, but just roll with me. I feel like our relationship with Christmas in this way is similar to my relationship that I had for a long time with the sport of disc golf. Yes, I said disc golf. It is not the same as actually as was said to me this morning, golf golf or real golf or regular golf or as us in the disc golf community like to call it, ball golf, but it is similar. Instead of there being a hole in the ground and instead of hitting a ball with a club, yeah, the form was good, I know. That was just a show off to you guys. But instead of that, it is played with a frisbee, or with different frisbees, so you throw it, and the goal is to get it down into a basket in a certain number of shots. You know, you've got your birdies, you've got your pars, bogeys, all of that stuff, and you play a round of disc golf. Now, for those of you who know me, this sport was basically tailor-made for me. One, because it's outside, and it's in these beautiful parks in nature, and you just get to be a part of that, and that's really cool. Another thing is, like, it's a sport in the sense of you're throwing frisbees, and throwing Frisbee is literally my favorite thing to do and has been my entire life. But it's not so intense to where you still just get to hang out with the people that you're with. Talk, mess around, and it was perfect during COVID because you could stay far away from people but still be around people. And you add an element of competition. And as much as I love disc golf, it was something that I very seldomly did. Basically, it was my times playing disc golf were reserved to the times where I was able to go visit home or we would go on maybe a once or twice a year, we would go on a family vacation when it worked out for the family's schedules. And so anytime we'd go on one of these vacations, my brother and my dad and I would look up and we would try to find these different local disc golf courses so that we could play. And it was awesome. It's so much fun. Like I said, it's right down my alley to play this sport. And so it became one of those things where like one of the things I most looked forward to about our trips and about getting to see my family was being able to look up these different courses and get to go and play these courses the couple times a year I was able to do so. Well, imagine my elation as I put together in my head that, wait, Kyle, you can play disc golf more than just a couple times a year. Because, Kyle, there's literally a disc golf course that's a quarter mile from your house that you drive by all the time. Now, as you hear that, I know you're putting it together in your head and you're giving me way too much benefit of the doubt as you think, oh, I bet what he did is say, I like disc golf. I wonder if there's any courses in Raleigh and realize that this one was close. No. Literally, this is a course that is very easily seen that I drove by, I'd point at people playing disc golf, and I'd be like, can't wait to play that in six months. I know, I was very obtuse to this understanding that this is something that was within my grasp this whole time, but thus, there I was, realizing for the first time this truth, that I could go and I could play this sport of disc golf, this thing that I absolutely loved doing, I could go and I could play it whenever I wanted to. Well, let me tell you that that is exactly what happened. I started playing all the time. I, I'd get done with work, and I'd go and play like two rounds every day. I'd hit up people, see if they'd want to come, or I'd go out there by myself, and I absolutely loved it. Because guess what happens when you really love something, and something brings you a lot of joy, and then you get to do it all the time. It brings you a lot of joy. And clearly I'm saying that to say the point of my message this morning is keep all of your Christmas decorations up all year. No, obviously not. And I mean, like you do you if that's down your alley, like more power to you. But obviously the point of that is not to say, hey, if Christmas brings you joy, then just celebrate Christmas all year. But what I am here to say is that the joy that is brought through Christmas is not brought because of the season. It's brought because of the truth of Christ. And there is a big and vast difference between the first time that these people celebrated Christmas and us celebrating today. And what that difference is, is that they were celebrating the birth of a baby that gave them hope. We celebrate not only the coming of Jesus, but the life of Jesus. And we celebrate the death of Jesus as he took on the weight of our sin, of your sin, of my sin, and said, I am putting this to death because I want the opportunity to have a relationship with you. And in that death, and in his resurrection, coming back to life, signifying that if we would put our sin behind us, if we would simply say, I realize that I am not perfect, I realize I deserve nothing but death, but I also realize what Jesus has done for me and has given me the opportunity to have eternal relationship with God, with our creator, with this perfect creator. And that is the joy that we celebrate on Christmas. That is the gospel. And put so beautifully, I think, by a musical group, Beautiful Eulogy, in their title song, they say, as long as the gospel is true, why do we treat Christmas as our quick fix, as our quick time where we are able to experience this great joy. Why do we use Christmas as the one time that we just celebrate Jesus and we're willing to be more childlike in our hearts? Being a little bit more goofy, decorating a little bit weirder, all because inside of us we're just joyful that it's Christmas time. Because the joy of Christmas and the joy of the gospel is forever. In Lamentations, Lamentations 3, 22 through 23. It's funny that I'm reading a verse out of Lamentations because lament is kind of the opposite of joy. But nonetheless, here we go. Lamentations 3, 22 through 23. It's funny that I'm reading a verse out of Lamentations because lament is kind of the opposite of joy,. Again, I say rejoice. I've got news for you. God invented joy. God sent his son to be born and created the joy that that brought to those people. He sent his son to die so that we could have joy eternally. He didn't create joy to say, man, when it comes to December, my people are going to be so excited. He sent joy so that literally every single day he could shower on us joy and he could shower new mercies on us every morning. God is giddy to bring you joy. He wants to celebrate with us. He invented singing. He invented dancing, both of which I'm eternally thankful to him for. Because they're great and I'm great at both of them. But not only that, but guess what happens? Guess what happened when I started playing disc golf a lot more? I got a lot better. As I played more, I started understanding more intricacies of the game. I grew this much greater love and appreciation for what was going on, from what I was seeing other people doing and trying to emulate that because I wanted to achieve those things, I started achieving goals that, like, I never even thought I could achieve, you know? I was getting my first birdies, shooting my first under par round, shooting my first 10 under par round. A few weeks ago, I think some of you guys saw on Facebook because I posted about it. I wasn't quite as joyful on my Facebook post because, you know, the putting was off. But I played in my first tournament, which is hilarious because I didn't even know that that's a thing that existed. Like when I used to just play a couple times a year, like I was like, oh, that's a thing people do. And hey, guess what? Yes, it's a thing that people do, including your boy Kyle. And I played in it, and it was so much fun, and it was so cool to just like unlock this whole new joy I didn't even know was a real thing. My putter was off, but hey, you know what that did? That just made me want to press in, because I didn't want to fall short on my putter again. The next round I play in a tournament, I want to do better. I want to see what it feels like to do even better than that. Hey, a few days after that, I went and played disc golf with my brother and with my sister-in-law, and that in itself brought me great joy. But hole 13, I got my first ace, my first hole in one. I mean, I like, you know, I put it, I got my stance. I ripped it up. Nice little Anheuser, little turnover shot up the hill, about 250 feet uphill. Smashed that thing. It's flying. It's going. Smashes into the chains. Lands in the basket. And I go nuts. I mean, like, you probably can imagine, like, you're watching me right now, and you're like, this guy's just talking, and he's going this crazy. Yeah, I'm kind of nuts. But I went insane. I was screaming, I was yelling, I was cheering. Like, literally, I wanted to make sure everyone on the course knew that I had just gotten an ace. I mean, like, I'm running around and yelling. Like, to the point that I turn around at one point, I see that my disc golf bag is here on my bench, and all my body can think to do is, I got to kick that. And so I just kick it, like, through the air. I mean, I was absolutely thrilled, and it was awesome, and I can't wait to get another one. But what was incredible to think about was the fact that that was a joy. Throwing a hole-in-one in disc golf is a joy I never even thought to be possible when I was just playing disc golf once or twice a year. Playing in a tournament, I didn't even know tournaments existed back when I was just doing it once or twice a year. Literally, as I kept playing, I've continued to unlock these greater and greater joys that I never even knew were possible or never even knew existed. And that's just a silly game. I love it. It's fun. Let's go play sometime. But it's just a silly game. Imagine how much more joy the Lord has in store for you if you will just say, I want to put that type of effort every day into seeking after him. I want my faith to be so important to me that instead of just waiting for December, I want every day to be a day that I'm seeking the same type of joy that I get to experience during Christmas time. Psalm 1611 says, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy, true, complete, 100% fullness of joy, may not be completely available until heaven, where joy, as John Piper put it, joy has no other competitors. I believe that this verse is making us, making it known that this does not start until heaven. I mean, excuse me, that this starts way before heaven. We get to experience this fullness of joy now. And guess what? Fullness of joy changes definitions because God continues to unlock joys we never even knew were existent. He has pleasures for us forever. He wants to shower on us a love that knows no bounds that we can't even comprehend. He wants to bring peace to us and hope to us that sustains us in every part and in every portion and in every circumstance of our life. And he wants to overwhelm us with joy to the point that as an overflow, we can't help but sing and we can't help but dance and we can't help but just be childlike and giddy because we're so overwhelmed with the blessings of God. And at the end of the day, I say all of this, but I don't say this to say that the gospel changes. The gospel remains the same. Every Christmas we're celebrating the same thing. And so I don't say this to say that if you spend more time with God and if you spend more time in scripture and more time growing in your personal faith, that that will change the facts of the gospel. Because the gospel is the root of our joy. The gospel is the reason why we're able to rejoice. But what I am saying is when we choose to pursue this type of joy, when we choose to pursue the joy of the gospel and the joy of salvation and the joy that is a relationship with God, when we choose that daily, and when we decide that we want to start taking that next step of obedience, whatever that looks like in our life, I can promise you that those joys that you experience through a growing faith will be far deeper and they'll be far sweeter and they will be far more profound and they will come so much more frequently than anything that you could ever imagine. So, what if next Christmas, what if instead of next Christmas being just the next time where we get to celebrate the joy of Jesus, what if instead it is a time where we get to take stock of what the Lord has done in our lives and in our hearts the last year, where we look back at the Christmas prior and then we see the ways that because we sprinted after and we pursued the joys of the Lord all year, and we said, oh my gosh, look at the unbelievable things that the Lord has done in my life this year. Literally, if I would have thought last Christmas that the Lord would have done this in my life, I would have said there's absolutely no way. So what if next year? What if next Christmas? What if this Christmas? What if from now until this Christmas when we look back from, what, a week, two weeks? We say, gosh, look at all the joys that the Lord has brought me and my heart and my family just in these two weeks. And I think that's the point of Christmas. Not simply to celebrate a birth of Jesus, but to celebrate his life in eternity. Everything that he did. Everything that that means for us. And because the gospel is true, and because the gospel is final, we do not have to wait for Christmas time to rejoice. But instead, we always have reason to rejoice. God's blessings, his joys, his mercies are new every morning and all he wants to do is shower them on you because all he wants to do is celebrate with you his creation and somebody who he has a relationship with that he loves more so than we can even grasp. And so let our joy of this Christmas be the beginning. Let it be the root by which our joy grows throughout this year. And I can't wait until next Christmas to hear what has grown out of that root of joy that started last Christmas. Let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you for creating joy. Thank you for Christmas, God. Thank you for even the holiday of Christmas so that we can be reminded of your great joy, so we can be reminded of the gospel and of its truth. But God, let us not forget once Christmas time is over that the joy of the gospel is final and is forever. But instead, God, let this be the nudge in the right direction to say, I want this joy always. Every day, I'm going to pursue it. I'm going to pursue you. God, let us pursue you always. And let us, let you do what brings you so much joy, and that is simply raining down blessings, raining down mercies, and raining down joy upon your children. Lord, we love you so much. Amen.

All right, good morning, everyone. As Steve said, my name is Kyle. I'm the student pastor here at Grace. And before I get started, not for nothing, when Aaron announced that we're starting kids back, your woos were very weak. So, I mean, I was just like, just sitting and just listening to a lot of weak woos. So you owe Aaron a much more hearty woo after the service is over. That's all I have to say. But I'm thrilled to be able to be up here this morning. I'm thrilled to be able to go through James as we are doing so as a church. I'm thankful to Nate who, you know, since I'm the student pastor, kind of tossed up the softball of being able to have the opportunity to talk about taming the tongue. I mean, certainly a very easy thing to be discussing and going through. Obviously, I'm kidding. But that's kind of as is the way of James. This morning, we're going to be going through James 3, mostly focusing on verses 3 through 8. If you have your Bible or if there's a Bible in front of you, I would love for you to grab that. I would love for you to go ahead and open up to that section as that is where we are going to be parked for this morning. As the video talked about last weekend that we watched in our introduction to James, the Bible Project put it as, James is a beautifully crafted punch to the gut. And I hate to tell you, but this is certainly no different. As we get into this, it's going to be pretty overwhelming to read, but I think we're going to get through it. So hopefully we can get through it together. Let me see some thumbs up. Yeah, good, good. Glad to hear it. Glad to hear you're with me. Let's go ahead and jump in. We're going to start with verse 3. Go all the way through verse 8 of James chapter 3. When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one's life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. So I'm just going to let us all take a quick collective breath as we just read all of those verses together. That is certainly strong language. Those are certainly incredibly powerful images basically saying that the tongue is like the small bit inside of a horse that steers the horse and makes it turn anywhere you want it to go. That it's the rudder, the tiny rudder on a ship that regardless of wind, regardless of sea, you can change the direction of an entire ship with this small rudder. It's like a small spark that creates a giant forest fire that it can corrupt every part of us and it can corrupt anyone else who's around to get burned. And it's funny because these are beautiful illustrations, but they're pretty heightened. They're pretty strong, but as I read them, and the first time that I read through this, my response wasn't, man, James is wilding out right now. My response was, yes, certainly this is a lot, but I don't see any hyperbole here. As I read that, I kind of just shrugged, nodded my head and said, yeah, he's right. The tongue has immense and incredible power to do evil. I imagine that you guys probably feel the same way as I just got done reading and as you just got done reading along with me. I bet that none of you were like, okay, that seems a little bit intense. I can almost guarantee you everyone in here fully agrees with everything he just said. Why? Because we've experienced it. We've experienced someone using just a few words to completely light us on fire. We've experienced being completely broken down to our core because of a simple phrase uttered to us. Even more of a bummer, we know we've done it to other people. That in a moment of frustration, in a moment of a lack of willpower, whatever it may be, we slip up, we say something that you probably have those things that ring back in your mind right now that you still regret that you said five years ago. The author William Barclay, who wrote a commentary on James, puts it this way. He says, Once again, that's a big and that's a bold claim, but I don't see any lies there. The sin that comes out of our mouth is something that can have dire consequences, not only in that moment, but for years to come. And as he starts it, and as I think is so beautifully put, there is no sin into which is easier to fall, right? Because when we're wronged, when we're angry, when we're upset, when something happens to us, we want, and so often our knee-jerk reaction is to respond. Setting ablaze a large fire by a small spark. So what do we do? I mean, with how heightened this language, with how heightened this diction is, it feels like the only thing that we could possibly do is just stop talking altogether, right? The classic, if my tongue causes me to sin, let me cut it off. And I'm going to walk over here, as Nate has taught me, I'm going to go over here to say that while this is certainly not the purpose and the point of what I'm talking about, I do believe and I do think that there is very distinct and very clear merit and wisdom that comes from all human beings, but especially believers, knowing when to respond in silence, when to simply be quiet, when to simply hold their tongue and respond in listening as opposed to responding with being the first to say something. I don't say that to put you guys on blast. I say that to put myself on blast. If you look around and find anyone who I've ever been in a small group with or who's ever sat in a staff meeting with me, you will see emphatic nodding because Kyle is at the top of that list of people slash believers who needs to learn sometimes how to just be quiet. Thank you for that amen in the back. I love being made to feel great by my fellow staff members. But obviously we can't do that, right? Obviously we can't stop talking, we can't just cut out our tongues because that would hurt. But obvious issues of practicality aside, there's other issues with that. There's other issues with simply stopping and abstaining from talking. The main one is that the tongue's immense power isn't limited to evil, but also to do substantial good. Paul reminds us of this in Ephesians 4.29 as he writes, What Paul encourages us to do here and is all through Scripture. Every writer and the Lord himself and Jesus, they are encouraging us not simply to give up our evil discussions and our evil talking, but instead to replace those with good. Instead to replace those with speaking life and speaking love and speaking encouragement to any and every one of us around, and that doesn't happen if we just stop talking. The same commentator, William Barclay, puts it this way. He says, I'll say that again. Abstention from anything is never a complete substitute for control in its use. Simply abstaining from speaking isn't enough. The goal is not to be quiet. The goal is to be able to control the things that come out of our mouth so that not only are we getting rid of the evil that comes out of our mouths, but we are replacing it with good and with love and with all great things. So the question obviously is how? Because I know, I'm 100% certain that every person in this room, every person watching at home, every person wherever you are, has done just as I've tried to do in trying to do it, in trying to tame the tongue, in trying my very hardest to hold back the things that I'm feeling and instead to change those and to still show love to people, still encouraging people even when I don't want to. Trying my best to speak humility even though I feel a sense of arrogance or ego. Trying my best to live by the old saying of if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. But what happens? We try to be silent or we try to replace our speech. We try to replace and hold back how we actually feel to instead be uplifting and encouraging, instead being loving. And that just builds up and it erodes our insides, it erodes our heart. And then at some point, whether it be the person who's actually causing you anger and frustration, or whether it just be the first person to look at you wrong that you just blow up on, right? Small words, huge fires. So what do we do? James in verse 8 literally says, no human being can tame the tongue. It would be incredibly unwise for me to stand up here and try to argue to you guys that he's wrong. It'd be unwise for me to say, yeah, you're the half-brother of Jesus, you wrote James, which is in the Bible, but I think, you know, like, I'm Kyle, I know more. But, what I will argue is I think that this statement, this claim that he makes is a bit more nuanced than how it sounds by simply reading it once. Growing up, if me, if myself, my brother, and my dad were all riding together in my dad's car, we were almost always listening to one of two cassette tapes. The first, License to Ill by the Beastie Boys. I think it probably won't surprise you that that's not the one that we're going to focus on this morning. We can talk about that afterwards. I'll pass you the mic and you can show me what you got. The other, probably the exact opposite, I guess, was this old sermon from 1995 by this pastor named Tony Evans that he gave at some men's conference. I'm sure anyone who's sitting here listening to me run my mouth, especially if you've never heard a sermon before today or like why in the world would anyone ever want to re-listen to a sermon? But I can assure you that this is a sermon to be listened to. This is a sermon to get excited about. Tony Evans has a way with illustrations and a way with both telling stories and connecting stories to this greater and larger point that I think is unparalleled and unmatched. This sermon is as entertaining as it is powerful. And as a three-year-old child, I'm sitting in this car just quoting along with Tony Evans this sermon. I'm hyping it up a lot. Reach out to me and I'll send it to you because I promise you I will not do this justice. But as I went through this and as I was preparing, I kept coming back to this story that Tony Evans opens his sermon by telling. The story starts off by him having a problem in his bedroom because he's got a crack in the wall of his bedroom. Can I get an aww? Yeah, that's a bummer, right? But hey, you know, easy fix. He reaches out to a painter. The painter comes. He says, my man, I've got a crack in the bedroom. Can you fix it? He said, yeah, of course. He does what he does to fix a crack in the wall. He replasters it. He paints it. It's all good. Beautiful wall. Zero cracks available. Everything's great. Pays him along the way. A month later, guess who's back? The crack. The crack is back. And so as he so eloquently puts it, somewhat evangelically ticked off, he calls the painter back. He says, sir, the crack is back. Can you please come fix it? So he apologizes. I'm sorry. I'll come and fix it. He goes, does his thing, replasters, paints it. Good to go. Month and a half goes by and the crack reappears. As he says, this time, this crack that is in the wall has been visited by all of its nieces and nephews. There are now a family of cracks living on his walls. So out of frustration, he goes, okay, clearly this painter has no clue what he's doing. Let me get another one. Calls another one. He's like, I've got cracks in my walls. Can you please come and fix it? The guy comes. He takes a look at the wall. He looks at him. He says, I can't help you. And he's like, sir, what do you mean you can't help me? You're a painter. He goes, yeah, but the problem is you don't have a problem with cracks in your wall. And to which Tony replies, to which Tony looks up quietly at the cracks in his walls. And as he says, he looks back at the crack standing in front of him, telling him he doesn't have a problem with cracks in his walls. And he says, sir, you see cracks. I see cracks. All God's children see cracks. How are you going to tell me I don't have a problem with cracks on my walls? And he says, I can fix this. I can replaster your wall. I can make it to where you don't have any cracks on your wall, but the problem is not with your walls. The problem is not with cracks. The problem is you have a shifting foundation. And until you fix your foundation, you will always be fixing cracks in your walls. Until you fix your foundation, you will always be fixing cracks in your walls. When it comes to our tongue, we try so hard. We try to edit our language. We try to replace how we feel with what we say. We try so hard to bury all of that down so that we can be as kind and as godly as possible when we have interactions and when we have conversations. We hold back our actual thoughts and our feelings. But the problem is that we don't have a problem with our tongue. And when we think we do, it's never going to be eradicated. You see, taming the tongue has nothing to do with the tongue. The tongue is simply a vehicle for the heart to speak. We attempt to tame our tongue through our own willpower and we focus so much on what comes out. We focus on the outside. We focus on the words that leave our mouths when our foundation, our hearts, are corrupted. If our hearts are harboring ill will, if they're harboring hatred, helplessness, negativity, arrogance, impatience, curses, and or doubts, we don't have a willpower that is strong enough to prevent the tongue from slipping up and expressing these things. If that evil rests inside of our hearts, at some point it's going to make its way out of our mouths. And until our hearts begin to reflect God's heart, we will never be able to control our tongues. And so the goal becomes our hearts. We have to fix our hearts or we can never fix our tongues. Taming the tongue is no longer about our speech. It's not about changing your speech. It's about allowing God to change our hearts. It's about allowing God to mold our hearts. It's about allowing Christ to come and to shape our hearts into what it should be. We give our hearts to Christ. We learn, we realize, and we continue to grow in our joyful understanding of the fact that God created every one of us. And even though we sin, even though we deserve hell, we deserve eternity in hell, God sends his perfect son to live and then to die in our place. All so that we can live forever with him in a relationship with him, our hearts are changed. And as our hearts are changed, they continue to be molded as we realize that this gospel truth that God created us, that God sent his son to die for me. That same gospel truth is also true of literally every single person you will ever make contact with. In the same way God created you, in the same way God loves you, in the same way that Christ died for you, he also did all of those things for every single person you will ever interact with. And when we start to look at people that way, as God's children, as our hearts are being molded into seeing people the way that God sees them, our tongues are going to respond in kind. No pun intended, because I think our tongues are going to also respond with much more kindness. And as we continue to read through the Gospels and read through Jesus's life and with the memory and with the knowledge that Jesus not only died for us, but he lived on earth to give us a measure of this is what it should look like for you to live. This is how you glorify God through your language. This is how you glorify God with the way that you see and the way that you treat people with the openness and with the grace that you show people and the love that you show each and every person. And our goal becomes just trying to be more Christ-like. And that starts at the heart. And it all culminates with constant prayer. As Nate talked about, what, two or three weeks ago, that we continue to keep God at the center of our hearts and we continue to think through and pray with him and have him on our minds, meditating in scripture and meditating in prayer so that God is always at the forefront because if God is at the forefront of our hearts and if he is at the forefront of our minds, I think it means we are going to speak differently. And when we allow God to change and to mold and to shape our hearts in this way, we are able to replace both in our hearts and in our speech, ill will and hatred with love, helplessness with hope, negativity with positivity, arrogance with humility, impatience with patience, curses with blessings, and doubt with faith. And most importantly, when our hearts have been transformed by the gospel of Christ, our tongues have no choice but to rejoice and to proclaim that gospel. Will you pray with me? Lord, I pray that as we try to glorify you in our words, in our actions, as we try to glorify you through our prayers to you, but God, also our words and our prayers, our words and just the way that we interact with any and everyone. The way we talk to people, the way that we talk about people, the way that we talk about ourselves. Lord, I pray that we put aside and we stop worrying about and we stop trying to fix our tongues by simply our own power and our own willpower because, God, we know it's never going to work. God, instead, allow us to come to you. Allow your heart to shape, mold, impact our hearts, God. Allow our hearts to look more like yours so that our speech can do the same. We love you. Amen.