Sermons tagged with Outreach

Grace, good morning. This is a really special morning because we have the founding pastor of Grace, Craig Holliday, who's going to be sharing with us for the sermon. In 2017, when I came to Grace, I reached out to Craig because he was the founding pastor and I wanted to learn more about his experience and his relationship with Grace. And from the very start, he's been so gracious to me and so kind. He began to come back to Grace and refer to me as his pastor, which is incredibly flattering and generous of him. He said he wanted to help in any way that he could, served as a greeter and an usher, and I've always been so humbled by his participation in Grace. Back in March of 2020, he was scheduled to share with us and preach his first sermon back since leaving Grace, and I was so excited for that, and then COVID hit, and then the son of a gun moved to Costa Rica, which wouldn't we all love to move to Costa Rica? And several weeks ago, I was talking to Craig, and I realized that I was going to be out of town this weekend, and there would be an opportunity for someone to to speak in my stead and I thought it would be a great chance for Craig to come back and share his heart with us. So I've asked him to share his heart for Grace and his experiences that he's had and his heart for what he hopes happens at Grace in the future. So I'm really excited for you guys to get to hear from Craig. I'm excited to watch it. I hope it blesses you. I know it will bless me. Let's welcome Craig. All right. Well, to say I'm excited is an understatement. I remember back 27 years ago was the first time I stood to preach in front of this congregation, and I was excited then, and I'm just as excited today. Nate asked me to speak a couple of weeks ago. He said, you know, we're not in the middle of a series or anything. I don't need you to cover a certain topic. So what I'd really like to hear from you is, why are you excited about grace? Why have you been excited? Why are you? What are you expecting and looking forward to about grace? And that was an easy one for me. It took me straight to the mission statement of this church. And we'll go into that in just a moment. But Nate has been very generous to me. We've had a great relationship. Actually, he didn't give you the full story then just a moment ago. I've been offering to preach for quite some time now. Yeah, been offering to preach. And, you know, he first got in town, and the church was smaller and didn't have the full staff. I was like, Nate, you know, I want to help you in every way I can, any way I can. I'd be glad to be a greeter, be glad to preach. And Nate thought about it, and he said, well, that's very generous of you, but I know that you haven't been preaching a whole lot lately in these last years. Well, they went through some times with other associate pastors and interim pastors, and now I've been here. Craig, to put it bluntly, they've gotten used to a certain standard. And I'm just not so sure after all these years you're quite ready for it. But, you know, maybe you can go preach some other places and get it back under your belt, and then we'll have you back. And I said, great, great. So a couple of years go by. I have another chance to meet with Nate and let Nate know, you know, hey, Nate, I have been getting to do some preaching in some other places and been really good. I'm feeling pretty good about things. I would love to fill in some time for you. Surely you need a vacation or a break or anything else. He said, well, I'm sure that you have probably gotten a little bit better. It's come back to you a little bit, but we've got this really, really high standard. See, it's not just me preaching now, but Erin Winston's come in, and she's been preaching, and well, I mean, you know, they expect a lot, and I got the picture. Got the picture. You know how this goes. Came along a couple of years later. Nate, I know I'm ready now. I'm ready. Don't you think I'm ready? He said, well, now I got Gibby. And so I just don't need you, Craig. I just don't need you. I mean, we've got three really high standard people. And, you know, I don't want you embarrassed in front of the church that you started. And I said, well, Nate, think about it this way. If you give me the chance to preach, at least then the congregation's going to realize just how good they do have it with you. And he thought about it for a second. He said, you know what? You got a point there. You're ready to preach. So here I am. Well, of course, none of that's true, but what is true is how gracious Nate has been to me. Many times when a pastor leaves a church for whatever reason, they go on and are at other churches because they don't want to get in the other pastor's way. And I had done the same thing for a number of years after having to leave Grace. And when Nate arrived, one of the very early things that he did was to have me to lunch and said, Craig, you know, enough time has gone by. If you want to come to Grace, you're more than welcome. And I can't tell you how much that meant because this is home. Always had been. No matter where I was, this is home. And so I'm glad to be back again, and I'm so thankful to Nate, to the church, to the elders, and to all of you for having me today. So what's so good about grace? As I said, I could start listing a whole number of ministries I could go through. I could talk about the children's ministry. I could talk about what happens up here in worship. I could describe for you a week of one of the mission trips. I could tell you about the Bible studies. There's so many things and people and events that I could tell you that excite me about grace. And of course, there's one hanging up on the wall out there, a picture of a new facility. What excites me about grace? I'm glad grace is going to a home. And by the way, just let me remind you briefly, you're not building a church. You're building a home for the church. That's just going to be the facility. You are the church. We all got fooled as kids in Bible school when they told us that thing, here's the church, here's the steeple, open the doors, here's all the people. That ain't the church. That's the church. You are the church, and you're just going to be blessed by the chance to be in a new space to do ministry. What really excites me about grace is the right focus. Always has been, always will be, and that focus is Jesus. Is Jesus. Keeping our eyes on Jesus. And all the decisions we make and all the movements we have and all the things that we plan, keeping our eyes on Jesus. And in doing so, this church has made it a priority to see that first we want a commitment to Jesus from each individual person, for everyone to make an acceptance of Christ into their hearts, to grow deeper in that relationship with Jesus, not just to get saved, but to continue to grow and mature and learn as a disciple of Christ. And finally, in that same statement of connecting people to Jesus, we't help all of the members learn how to bring others to know Jesus as well. Whether that's directly telling the gospel story, whether that's inviting people, any number of ways, it's the entire church's job to multiply those who know Jesus. That was the Great Commission. Go into the world, make disciples of all nations. So our mission is connecting people to Jesus and connecting people to people. I want to take you through two Bible stories today of people connecting with Jesus and connecting with each other and see how they might apply to us. And the first one comes to us in the book of Luke. And I've got this up on the screen because for this, I'm using the New Living Translation. I usually use the NIV, but the New Living Translation. Let me just read it to you. A woman in the crowd had suffered for 12 years with constant bleeding. She could find no cure. Coming up behind Jesus, she touched the fringe of his robe and immediately the bleeding stopped. Who touched me? Jesus asked. Everyone denied it, and Peter said, Master, the whole crowd's pressing up against you. But Jesus said, Someone deliberately touched me, for I felt healing power go out from me. When the woman realized that she could not stay hidden, she began to tremble, and she fell to her knees in front of him. And the whole crowd heard her explain why she had touched him, and that she had been immediately healed. Daughter, he said to her, your faith has made you well. Let's step back and take a little deeper look at this passage and understand about this woman who comes to an intimate, deep connection with Jesus. She suffered with bleeding, probably some menstrual issues for 12 years, and we learned in some of the other Gospels that she has been to multiple doctors. She's probably used up all her financial resources, and she can still find no cure. And for this woman in that day, it goes far beyond the physical issues that she's dealing with. It becomes a social issue. It becomes a spiritual issue as well. Because you see the law of Leviticus that was being lived out in those days was that if any woman going through that time was not to be around others, they were considered unclean. And so this woman, instead of being unclean for a few days or unclean for a week, had been unclean for 12 years. You can imagine what that means for her life on a daily basis, walking down the street with everybody knowing, moving away from her, no one to say hi to, no one to interact with. You can imagine what that does to her faith, feeling, Lord, you've left me in this position. Why? Why? And yet she still believed in Jesus. She had heard that Jesus was coming to town. The news had gotten around about the healings that he was doing, and he was probably coming to do more, and she was intent to be one of those out there to be healed. It says, coming up behind Jesus, she touched the fringe of his robe. She knows the power of Jesus so well from what she has learned and heard and experienced that she doesn't even need to meet him. She doesn't have to have a hug. She doesn't have to even talk to him. She says, if I can just touch the hem of his robe, I'll be healed. Perhaps he's not wanting to get Jesus unclean either by touching him. If I just touch the hem of the robe, I'll be healed. What faith. And immediately the bleeding stopped. And when it did, Jesus says, all of a sudden, in a big crowd who have been following him around everywhere he's been going, all of a sudden Jesus stops and says, who touched me? One of the other disciples are like, come on. He says, look, we're packed in here like sardines. Look at all these people around. What do you mean, who touched you? Lots of people have been touching you. He says, no, someone deliberately touched me. It wasn't a casual bump. It wasn't an accidental. It was something that had been planned out, thought out. She, with purpose, had touched him, and I felt healing power go out from me. She'd heard about Jesus. She'd thought about Jesus. She'd acted on what she'd heard and thought and knew by reaching out to Jesus. When the woman realized she couldn't stay hidden, she began to tremble, fell to her knees in front of him. Here's the unclean woman that's been ostracized by the community. And Jesus not only heals her, but he goes one further step. He says, I'm not only going to heal you, I'm going to use you to minister right now. As the whole crowd heard her explain why she had touched him and had been immediately healed. And then Jesus does something beautiful here. He looks at her and he says, daughter, daughter, you won't find that word used anywhere else. It's not woman. It's not child of God. It's not Mary. It's daughter. It's that intimacy of you are mine and I am yours. We are one together. Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go. Go in peace. See, folks, when Jesus enters into our lives, he is about so much more than simple salvation. Well, I shouldn't say simple. He's about so much more than salvation. Jesus wants to be a part of every aspect of our life. His care for us goes into every aspect of our life. All the joys that we have, all the lows that we have, the highs that we have. Let me ask you a direct question. If Jesus were here sitting next to you and looked over at you, would he call you daughter? Would he call you son? Too many times we find that churches are filled with people who know all about Jesus but don't know Jesus. And if that mission statement of this church is going to be true, connecting people to Jesus, it has to start with the people who are sitting right in this room, the people who call Grace home, the people who are partnering and even watching online right now. It has to start with your personal relationship with Jesus. As I said, the woman in the passage had heard, she decided, she accepted, she acted. Now, I'm not going to go into all of this right now, but there's so many different stories and ways of how we come to know and accept Jesus. Some of you can't remember a time you didn't love Jesus. You grew up with Jesus in your family, and Jesus is just part of it. Some of you, like myself, had a dramatic experience where you're off at a camp, and there's an altar call, and you raise your hand, and it's a specific moment in time, and you get the goosebumps and all the things that goes with a dramatic story. Folks, neither one's better than the other. The question simply is, if asked right now, is Jesus your Lord and Savior? Have you made that known to him? I choose you, Jesus. Grace's church mission to connect people to Jesus has to start with us. That we don't just memorize the menu of what it looks like to be a Christian. We actually taste the feast and participate in what it means to be in that relationship. And then we have to connect deeper. We have to continue to grow that faith. The mission of grace about Jesus is not just to connect people to Jesus. It's also connecting us to each other in our deeper relationship. And there need to be ways and parts and programs of the church that help us do that. Because as we connect with other Christians, we're growing deeper in our own faith. My challenge today is for you to grow in seeing that your life needs to influence others to grow in Jesus. Whose life has changed because they bowed you? Whose life has been influenced to draw closer to Jesus because of you? I'm seriously asking the question. And for grace to be healthy, not only as it is now, but moving into the future. That's continually got to be one of the questions that is part of this mission. How is that happening? How are each of us doing it? If we asked your coworkers, would they even know you're a believer? If we asked the buddies down at the golf club, would they recognize that Jesus is in you? Whether you verbally shared it or not, Jesus needs to ooze from everything we are. Jesus needs to just be part of our being. So we needed our mission, as it says, to connect people to Jesus. The second thing that we need to do as a church and seek to do is we seek to connect people to people. As I've said to you, we grow deeper in our faith often when we're growing with others. There's so many ways in which being with other people is so important, and I'm going to give you another story from the Gospel of Mark about how important other people can be to our faith. Mark 2. When Jesus returned to Capernaum several days later, the news spread quickly that he was back home. Soon the house where he was staying was so packed with visitors that there was no more room even outside the door. And while he was preaching God's word to them, four men arrived carrying a paralyzed man on a mat. They couldn't bring him into Jesus because of the crowd, so they dug a hole through the roof above his head. Then they lowered the man on his mat right down in front of Jesus. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, my child, your sins are forgiven. But some of the teachers of the religious law who were sitting there thought to themselves, what is he saying? This is blasphemy. Only God can forgive sins. And Jesus knew immediately what it was they were thinking. So he says to them, why do you question this in your heart? Is it easier for me to say to the paralyzed man, your sins are forgiven or stand up, pick up your mat and walk? But so I will prove to you that the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins. Jesus turned to the paralyzed man and said, Stand up and pick up your mat and go home. And the man jumped up and he grabbed his mat and he walked out through the stunned onlookers. They were all amazed and praised God, exclaiming, we've never seen anything like this before. We'll go verse by verse, but let's pick up some of the highlights through that passage. As Jesus has returned home, it says the news has spread quickly and the crowds were continuing to grow around him. He's at a house teaching one day when this event takes place. He often was. He would be in people's homes and he'd be in common areas. And he's at somebody's house to preach. And the crowd has gotten so large that they don't all fit in the room. They don't all fit in the house. There are people outside the house as well. And in those days, the homes were made of stones on the walls, but the roofs were mainly thatch and mud. They weren't nearly as solid as the sides were. They often also had a set of staircases going up to the roof area as if it was a terrace or a big porch up top. So that's the setting where we find that this is taking place. And Jesus is preaching God's word to him. Now, off somewhere else is a paralytic. A paralytic who needs what's happening over there, but can't get there. Now, there's a part of the story that's here I don't know the answer to. I wish I did. I don't know whether he willingly went or whether he was being taken there against his will. But for however it happened, these other men knew what he needed and knew that what he needed was Jesus. Knew that what he needed was Jesus. And so they've picked up this mat and they've carried them over to this home where Jesus is teaching. They've likely gone up the stairs and then it says they lowered him through a hole in the roof. That had got to be some kind of scene. Jesus sitting there teaching and crumble, crumble, crumble. Jesus teaches a little bit more, and that side caves in. I wonder how many people started moving out of the way, thinking maybe this isn't the right teaching going on here. But eventually the hole opens, and they lower the man down to Jesus, where he says, your sins are forgiven. See, the man needed to be healed from his paralysis, and he was. But the greater thing that Jesus came to do was to forgive him of his sins. He needed to give him the full treatment. Jesus wants to enter into our lives and give us the full treatment and be involved in all the aspects and areas of our lives that need help. This is one of the few places where Jesus in this gospel is called son of man as a title for himself. Usually when healing is taking place, it's the son of God to say, you know, God has these miraculous powers. But they wanted to also emphasize that here, this person who empathizes with humanity because he is one, the son of man, the one who knows what it is to feel bad, the one who knows what it is to come up against struggles, he is the one also who is forgiving you and taking part in that with you. Our faith is not meant to be lived on a solo basis. Can you be a Christian on a solo basis? Absolutely. Should you be? No. That's not God's intention for us. God's intention for us is that we live out our faith in community. And there's so many obvious benefits of living out in community and reasons we would want to connect people to people. We learn from one another. We encourage one another. We may challenge someone. We may even feel led to convict someone where we see something going wrong in their lives. We're there for each other in a number of ways, and that happens in life without Christ, but even more so is it important with Christ that we interact with each other. Let me give you just another simple example of why connecting us with each other is important. I think worship's a lot better with people. Now, the singing gets better and better. I would take a guess that those of you watching at home online probably are not singing out with gusto during the songs. Anybody been at home and done that? I would bet that those of you watching online, and I'm not saying that's not a good thing sometimes, but I bet some of those of you who are watching at home, when there's a prayer time, that's a time you're shuffling around or grabbing something else. You're not really engaged and focused in. But when we come together as a community, worship is better. The singing's better. The praying's better. We feel better being around other people and other believers. COVID exploded online worship. And at the time, it was a great thing. So thankful we had it. But since that time, across the country, church attendance is down 30%, in large part because of people continuing to worship online. And what I want to say very directly to you, those of you who are here and those of you who are in that camera, it's time to get your butt back in church. Online is when there's something that prevents you from getting here. It's not the easy out, the easy choice. Come back and be a part of this fellowship. One thing that I want to highlight for you as what I see is the best way for us to connect to people and within our community is small groups. Small groups. I cannot say enough good about small groups. Those of you who have been in one or are in one know what I'm talking about. Small groups where you intentionally are getting together with a smaller group of folks and you're intentionally sharing the faith, you're intentionally sharing scripture and prayer, but you're also intentionally sharing life. That's when we can influence and mold and meld with each other. And I will tell you that this church is going to get bigger and bigger. Not only is it growing because of the health of the church and the great ministries that are here. When you open up the doors just up the street, people are coming just because they want to see what's there. This church is going to be growing. And that's nothing to be scared of. In fact, be encouraged by it. Because here's the truth, folks. In a given church or any community, you may know at best, I'm going to be generous and say you might know a hundred names. You might have a casual interaction with maybe 50 people. No matter the size of the church, you've probably got about 20 that you would call, yeah, they're pretty good friends. No matter the size of the church, you've probably got three to five people that you would say, yeah, that's who I'm tight with. That's who I'm tight with. Are you tight with three to five people from this church right now? If not, you need to be. Are you not only getting that for yourself, but are you giving of yourself to three to five people in an intimate relationship? If you're not, you ought to be. Our mission is connecting people to Jesus. Our mission is connecting people to people because people connect Jesus to other people. Life can be so fun sometimes. It can be so difficult at times. I've asked this question in years gone by, and I'll ask it again. If something, a tragedy comes, there's an emergency that happens in your house tonight. There's somebody who's had something they need to go to the hospital for. Who from this church are you going to call at 4 a.m.? And it can't be Nate. Who are you going to call? Who have you developed a relationship with that you can say, I need you to come over and keep the kids because I've got to take Lucy to the hospital? Who have you developed that kind of relationship when there's been a death and you need to say, I just need somebody to be with me. Can you come over? Who are those three to five that are yours? If you're not that tight with others, you need to be, you need to get involved and connected in small groups. Bible study is great. Mission servant teams, great. Worship teams, greeters, all those great. Do they make connections that are deep? Not usually. And that's why I'm saying to you, in addition to all that, small groups is where it's at. The paralytic man found himself in a position where he couldn't do for himself what needed to happen. He needed other people to get him to Jesus. I share with you this part, and I chose that parable because being a Christian does not take away all life's problems. But scripture says in your life you will encounter many problems. And I can think of several events in my own life. I had to leave grace when I became disabled from a neck injury and had some personal issues going on as well. It was not long after that that I went through a divorce. Add to that depression. Boy, was I in a whammy of a space. I couldn't get myself where I needed to be. But thank God I had a group of tight friends and believers from the church community who were there with me. Said, we will get you through this. We will carry you. And I'm going to tell you, it didn't make those things go by quickly. But I can't imagine having to have gone through those without a group. Part of my story that some of you know, some of you don't, is that I lost a son in 2019. He just turned 17 years old. People ask me, was that a crisis of faith for you? And I say, no, actually. From God's mercy, it was not a crisis of faith, and here's the reason it wasn't. Number one, I knew my child was saved. We'd had a direct conversation about that less than a month before. The second thing was that I know God's got the big picture and that he's going to get me on. But the third reason that really got me through that time, and you never get over it, you just get better, got me through that time once again was my community of friends and believers who were there whatever I needed. Sometimes even when I didn't know I needed it. They were there to pray. They were there to bring meals. They were there to let me cry. They were there to help me have a fun time and learn that it was okay to be enjoying life again. I don't want to end on such a downer, but I use it to say to you folks, this connect to people to people is real. Take hold of it for yourself and want it for others. Want it for the people who are already here amongst you. Want it for the people who are yet to come. Keep Jesus the focus. And this church is going great places, greater than it's already gone. What's so great about grace? Jesus. Let me pray. Father, I'm thankful for this church. I'm thankful to be able to call it home. I'm thankful for the brothers and sisters here who also call it home. It is a great church. But we know that before we can give ourselves any credit for that, it first and foremost goes to you, the glory and the honor and the praise. Before we can say it's because of this or that that we get good or accomplished or any particular program, we have to know it's because of Jesus. You've kept that the focus in the years gone by. I pray your blessing on the years ahead that'll be one no less than one that focuses on Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm making grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you're watching online, wherever you are, whatever you may be doing, thank you for joining us in that way. We are beginning our new series, or we're continuing in our new series, called You'll Be Glad You Did. And the idea is to take the wisdom of Proverbs, proverbial wisdom, written by King Solomon, who the Bible claims is the wisest man who ever lived, and to look at some of his wisdom and say here at the top of the year, if we confront ourselves with it, if we listen to it, I bet, I bet that by the end of the year, you'll finish 2026 being glad that you listened to the wisdom of Solomon here at the top of the year. You guys will have to forgive me. We've got a small contingent of Bills fans in the church, and they're all sitting in the front row with, I even forget the name of those pants, but there's a particular, what's the name of those kinds of pants, do you know? Zubas, yes, that look like zebra stripes, and then Susie's got on the best fan shoes I've ever seen in my life, so I just need to say that out loud before I can continue as if there's nothing happening right in front of me. But we're looking at this proverbial wisdom, and one of the reasons I wanted to do it, and one of the reasons I wanted to spend a month looking at the wisdom of Proverbs is because one of the best things I've ever done is to take very seriously reading the book of Proverbs. You've heard me say, hopefully multiple times, that the greatest habit anyone in their life can develop is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and time in God's presence through prayer. And I still believe that to be true. And there was a season where for three years, every day, I read a Proverb dated as just read a chapter. It's a great place to start. And if you want to read your Bible and you don't know where to start, you don't know how, that's where I would encourage you to begin. If you are someone who reads your Bible, I will tell you that most days for three years, I read whatever proverb was commensurate with that date, that day, and then read whatever else from the Bible I wanted to read that day. And those were some of the richest three years of my life. I immensely enjoyed it and never got tired of reading those Proverbs. So that's a good place to start. And if you hear nothing else from me today of any value, but you leave here and you go read Proverbs every day for the next year, I promise you, you'll be glad you did. This morning, we're going to look, did you like that, Tom? This morning, we're going to look at a proverb about generosity. And I said this in the Gracevine this week. I send it out. And if you're here and you don't get the Gracevine, you don't know what that is, and you would like to receive it, just please fill out a connection card or email me, and we'll get you on that distribution list. But I said in the Grace Find this week that we were going to be talking about a proverb on generosity. And those of you who are my church friends and church people, you know that generosity is pastor code for give us some money. Generosity is code for I'm going to preach a sermon compelling you to give to the church because we need to get some stuff done. And I want to ally that fear this week. Maybe that's why it seems a little bit more thin this week than last week is because I sent that email out. Those of you who have been here for a long time can attest to this. I've never preached a sermon trying to get you to give to grace, nor do I think that the New Testament teaches that you need to give 10% to your local church. I don't even think the New Testament teaches you need to give 10%. I think it just is a good marker based on something that happened in Genesis with Melchizedek and Abraham that we'll talk about later. But I don't even think the New Testament teaches you that. So you'll never hear me preach a sermon trying to compel you to give to grace. So that's not what we're doing this morning. But what you will hear me do, hopefully, repeatedly, is preach sermons on generosity. And the sermon on generosity would make particular sense this morning as it relates to the strategies and desires of grace, because you guys are well aware, we just had a big push towards this building campaign, and we're're hitting go and we're going to try to be in there by the end of next year. So that's particularly relevant to our church. But that's not what I'm preaching about this morning. I can tell you that next week one of our elders, David McWilliams, who's faithfully operating the camera back there, is going to give us an update. We had end of the year giving. We have some very good, exciting news to share. He's going to give us an update. We just want another week to get all of our numbers together so that what we present to you will be the most accurate thing possible. We don't want to talk in what ifs and hypotheticals. We want to talk in precision. So David's going to do that next week. By the way, David has been serving with Jim Adams for a year now as elders, and we still have yet to bring them up here and pray over them because I'm not good at planning things like that. Also, just while we're here, Wes and Doug served for six years, and I was supposed to bring them up here and pray for them too. I've not done that yet either. So Wes, David, Doug, Jim, sorry. But as we think about generosity this morning, I think this proverb allows us to frame it up in a very robust, encompassing way so we can think about the idea of generosity from a more holistic view. So let's look at Proverbs chapter 11, verse 25, which simply says this, a generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. I don't think that we think about generosity the way that Solomon frames it up here. First of all, he says, a generous person prospers. And we should be careful there because we're tempted to kind of fall into a health and wealth gospel that says, the more that I give, the more that will be given back to me monetarily. The more money I give away, the more God will bless my bank account. And that's really terrible teaching, and it ends up making poor people poorer. So that's not what we want to do. So we have to understand what prosper is. And we have to open ourselves up to maybe it means more than just prospering financially. And one of the ways that we prosper is what follows. He who refreshes people will be refreshed. The people who refresh others will be refreshed themselves. I think that opens us up to what prosperity there actually is. But I like this verse because it doesn't tell us how to be generous. It just tells us to be generous. And that the more you give to other people, the more you refresh others, the more you restore the souls of others, the more you look out for others, the more you care for others, the more your soul will be refreshed. And I think that's a really helpful and valuable way to think about generosity. And the truth of it is, God has always wanted his children to be characterized by generosity. God has always wanted his children to be characterized by generosity. All the way back at the beginning of the Bible, beginning in Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, where the laws are meted out for the ancient Israelites, for the ancient Hebrew people. God is very diligent and fastidious about making sure that his children are generous people. He says, care for the widows and the orphans and the aliens and the sojourners, which means care for those who can't care for themselves. Care for the widows because they have no way to make money and no one's paying for them. They need your help. Care for the orphans because they have no way to take care of themselves. Take care of them. Take care of the sojourners, the aliens, the people who are foreign, who are coming to your country from other places. We should always have a heart for them and their plight. So take care of them. And God gets so specific as to give this law in multiple places in the books of Moses. When you harvest your fields, leave the corners there, healthy, ready to be picked. For who? For the widows and the orphans and the aliens and the sojourners. Leave that there so that they can wean from your crop. That ethic, that ethos is there from God at the very beginning of the Bible. And then we see again, Abraham meets the king of Salem, a mysterious figure, the most fascinating figure in the Bible to me, Melchizedek. And he, upon meeting him, gives Melchizedek 10% of everything that he has. And this 10% law becomes called the tithe, and it gets written into Jewish law, Hebrew law, which we inherit in the New Testament. And it was so extensive that they gave, those who were being as righteous as possible, would give 10% of everything that they owned. They would literally empty the pantry and give 10% of the cream of mushroom soup can that they had and give 10% of the spices. They would give 10% of everything. That's how important it was to God to write it into law to do in that way that his people would be generous. Then we get into the New Testament and we see Jesus teach generosity over and over and over again. And listen, almost every time it's taught, it's taught to be generous in order to care for the have-nots. It's almost always taught as don't tithe to be obedient, don't tithe to be blessed, but give what you have to give to take care of the people who don't have something to give. This is the story of the widow's mite, where the rich man gives a bunch and the widow gives all she has, and it's two pennies. And Jesus says she just gave more than he did to the kingdom of God. We cannot argue with the idea that our God has always wanted his children to be characterized by generosity. With that in mind, I would like for us to consider how we can be generous. We're going to swallow the frog and do the obvious one first. We can be generous with our finances. We can be generous with our finances. This is the obvious one, and this is where our brain goes when we think about generosity. And so I'd like to talk about this, but then spend the rest of our time on other ways to be generous. But I was listening to a book recently, and some of you guys like to judge people for listening and not reading, because you're stuck up. And it was by an author named Scott Galloway, who is, it's difficult to define what he does. He sits on boards, he runs companies, he's a professor of economics at NYU, and he's someone that I find interesting and thoughtful. And he wrote a book called Notes on Being a Man, and that's something I've thought about a lot is I've got a son named John who's four and a half. And I don't know why the half matters. He's four. I'm a grown up. And then I have a daughter named Lily who's going to turn 10 here in a week. And I think a lot about what is it that I want to teach to John that I don't want to teach to Lily? What is it that Jen, my wife, should teach to Lily that she doesn't teach to John? And I don't have a good answer for that. And I would invite this, if any of you have answers for that, I want that discourse. Particularly if you're a little bit longer in the tooth than me. Then I really want to hear that. If you're shorter in the tooth, maybe just relax. But he wrote a book, Thoughts on Being a Man, and I would, the only criticism I have, I'm not recommending it to you. There's cuss words, so as a pastor, I cannot recommend it. But the only critique I have is I really think it would better be titled Thoughts on Being a Human. Because the things that he was espousing in there didn't feel to me like things that only men should think about. I think women should think about these things too. And Scott is a devout atheist. He has respect for people of faith, but he's not a person of faith himself, and he's open about that. But in his book, and he's become, by any stretch of the world's measure, very successful, all right? He's in his mid-50s, really successful dude, flying on private jets when he goes places, that kind of thing, all right? But here's what he said, and this is what I thought was interesting that I wanted to share with you. He said when he started his career, it was all about accruing for himself. It was all about what he wanted to get. It was all about getting rich and getting more for himself and just build, build, build, build, build. But that one day, once he felt like he had enough, there was this seismic shift in his mindset. And he became a lot more interested in being a generous person than being an accumulator. He realized it made him feel good. This is wild. It made him feel good to buy dinner. In his words, it made him feel like more of a man. In my words, I would say it made you feel like more of a grown-up. But the way that he phrased it was, it made me feel like more of a man to buy dinner for my friends, to take my friends on trips that I could afford and let them come. It made me feel like more of a man to give things away. And again, I'm not trying to be over-masculine here. I think it really makes us feel like more of a responsible human. But he said that there was this shift, and after that shift that he made this decision, that he made it his goal to give away more money every year than he spent. Not more money than he made, but give away more money than he spent on himself. And he said, in doing this, it makes me feel better about myself and about who I am. Makes me feel like a better human. This, to me, and if Scott were here, he might push back on this, but this, to me, is an atheist nodding towards the way his creator inclined him to be. What he was saying in his book was, when I refresh others, I am refreshed. And I realized it made me feel better to give away my resources than it did to accrue them for myself and my own selfish ends. And my challenge or my thought to the church this morning, because this is a room of largely church people, is if an atheist can stumble upon the simple joy of generosity and find in his own experience that he is refreshed by refreshing others, then can't we as Christians learn from that lesson and be people who seek to be generous? I told you the story a few weeks ago of the former student that I have, a kid named Alex. He's not a kid anymore. He's in his 30s. He graduated in 2010, and he and I haven't had a ton of contact since then, but I've always thought very highly of him and been glad that he's been in my life and that I had the opportunity to be in his. And he had a tough story and ended up not going to college. He had to watch his brothers when he was 19 years old. But he found a way and he became a general contractor. And some of you know the story, but just by way of refreshing, he reached out to me a month or two ago, and he just said, hey, I'm making good money now. That's not what he said, but that's pretty much what he said. I'm making good money now. I want to be generous. I want to give. I want to honor God the way that he's blessed me. I want to bless others. What can I do? And he, to answer that question, drove. He had a job in Charlotte. He lives in Atlanta. So he drove the day before the extra two and a half, three hours from Charlotte to Raleigh, met me, took me to Sullivan's where I got a bone-in filet, which is really great. And then we met in my office and I said, hey man, here's six nonprofits that I know of whose founders I know very well, who I trust and love. Let me just tell you what they do and you tell me where, and then you just do whatever you want. I don't need to know, but then you can kind of figure out where your heart's led, which ones of these capture you, yeah? And that conversation led to him having breakfast the next day with the founder of one of the non-profits and then giving that founder the largest single donation they've had in the history of that non-profit. That's cool, isn't it? Now listen, Alex also told me in that conversation, in our discourse about wanting to be generous, that out of this desire to simply be generous, he had a job in downtown Atlanta. They were building a building or they were refurbishing one or whatever. There was a job with a fence and the things and all the stuff. And he would go there every day. And he said on his way there, he would go to the ATM and get out cash. And keep it in his truck. Because there was homeless people surrounding this job site. And he would make sure to go around and give money to every homeless person that was there. Because he felt like he had the opportunity to do that and he wanted to do it. Now here's where our brain goes. Okay? And here's where mine went. Dude, that's not wise. There's a better way. I love your heart. There's a better way to give money than to do that. And that's why he and I were having the conversation. Let's think about a wise way to do it so we can make sure that that money's going to God's kingdom. We can make sure that's an effective expenditure. But here's why I tell you this story this morning. It's to say that what I truly believe, and this is just my opinion, you may disagree. What I truly believe is the spirit of generosity that led him to give in both situations, whether it's a large donation to a responsible nonprofit or smaller multiple donations that we really don't have any control over, in God's eyes are the same. Because it's not about what we give. And I don't even think, and I'm careful when I say this, because I do think we need to give to God's kingdom. But it's not about what we give, and I'm not always convinced it's about where we give. It's about the fact that we just give. So we should be generous financially, whatever that looks like for us. We should also, I believe, be generous with our time. This is not a way we think about generosity, but it is a way we think about our days. And the story that I will share about being generous with our time is actually critical of me, which is what I would prefer. I'd much prefer a story where I look bad than to tell you a story where I'm the hero. So I'll tell you a story where I look bad. In November, we went home for Thanksgiving, and I needed to preach that upcoming Sunday. My dad is a CPA. He has his own firm, and he was going into the office on Tuesday morning, and I said, hey, dad, can I come into the office with you? Excuse me. I said, can I come into the office with you on Tuesday? I need to write a sermon. I've got a couple things to do, and I'd like to get that done and be done with it so I can just focus on family this week. He said, sure. So we rode to the office together. And on the way to the office, I'm thinking about, and I think some of us can relate, I've got a lot of work to do. I have a very important task to write a sermon for 145 people to listen to. This is the most important thing happening in the whole world. Thank you for the laughter over there. That was what was intended. But that's where my head's at. I have to get this done. I have to do this. And there was some other things I needed to do. So I was really focused and I was in what we call in my family task mode. Like I'm not interacting, engaging. I'm just trying to get stuff done. And so we get to the office and we're walking in and dad stops. There's a car pulling in and he stops and he says, oh, that's so-and-so. And he kind of steps back. Like he's going to wait on so-and-so to get out of her car and come see us. And this is where, if you'd like to be disappointed in me as your pastor, this is a great place to start. I looked at dad and I said, what difference does it make? And he went, okay. And we went inside. Because my thought was, dad, this is just practical brain, okay, I'm sorry. Practical brain. I'm never going to talk to this lady again in my life. I don't know who she is. She only knows who I am because I'm your son. I don't want to talk to her. I have a job to do. I need to get done quick because my wife has the kids with her mother-in-law out on the town. And she'd really like me there as a buffer, frankly. She'd like me to be there. I need to go. So I need to get this done as soon as I can. I need to get in the car. I need to drive to Monroe and go to some stupid store I don't care about so that I can hang out with my family. That's what I need to do. That's the pressure that I feel. So when dad says that so-and-so, I think, who cares? What's it matter? And so he's like, okay. So we go inside. My sister works for dad and she had brought us Chick-fil-A biscuits that morning, which are the worst of all the biscuits. And they really are. They're the worst. And she has the Chick-fil-A biscuits, but I am grateful it's free biscuit, fine. And I said, Dad, where can I work? What conference room or cubicle are you going to tuck me into? And he says, well, you know, you can, one of those down there. He goes, but don't you want to eat first? And I said, again, practical brain. No, Dad, I'm visiting you for three days, all right? I don't need to have breakfast right now. I'm going to go eat the biscuit while I write the sermon and get my important work done. And so I said, no, Dad, I'd really just like to get to work. He's like, okay. So I go get to work, and I write the sermon. I text Jen. I'm done. Where are you guys at? I go to the thing, and we do the things. And then, this is why I'm telling you the story, that evening, Dad snaps at me about something that was pretty innocuous. And those of you who, I have a good relationship with my parents, but Dad and I can get on each other's nerves. And those of you, Kristen's nodding her head as she sits next to her dad. All right, perfect. Let's just unpack this right now, Sartoriuses. If you have grown kids, you know you can get on their nerves. If you still are fortunate enough to have your parents, they know how to get on your nerves, you know how to get on them. We got on each other's nerves. And I thought it was silly. And I finally, I didn't snap, but I just kind of said, I don't know what you want me to do. You know, we were talking about whatever. And I just, like, I needed to go. So I stepped away. And I came back after a calming down period of 72 hours. And it was like 15 minutes later, I said, hey, Dad, I'm sorry. That's not how I want to handle that, but here's what's upsetting me. And he said, I understand. And we started talking. And here's what I learned, and this is why I'm sharing this story. He said, son, essentially, you matter a lot to me. I talk to you a lot. I talk about you a lot to my employees. And it would have meant a lot to me for you to have taken the time to have met them and to be gracious with them. But you were too self-important and you couldn't. And that's why I'm upset. And I went. What a lesson. What a lesson. I don't like saying this, particularly on a permanent record. But he was right, and I was wrong. I was so focused on my tasks and what I needed to get done that I couldn't see the value in investing my time in people. And so I missed a chance. How much better would my afternoon have gone if I would have simply been generous with my time and honored my dad? How much more refreshed could I have been by taking the time to meet the different people that he wanted me to meet. How arrogant of me to think that I have nothing to benefit from small talking and exchanging pleasantries and shaking hands and learning names. What, honestly, what a jerk. And so it was a lesson. Be generous with your time. How many of us have opportunities throughout the week when someone imposes on our time and we have a task or we have a thing that we want to do, but this coworker has texted us, this coworker has popped in, this person has emailed us, this person has called us, this friend needs us. It might be dinner time, but they don't normally call at this time, so what are they calling about? How often do we have opportunities to be generous with our time that we miss for whatever reason? Maybe your reason isn't task-oriented self-importance like me, but maybe it's something else, but how often do we have the opportunities to be generous with our time that we miss because we don't think of those times as opportunities for generosity. We just think about them as impositions on our schedule and on our tasks. I'm reminded as I think of this, every time I read through the Gospels, I am amazed at Jesus' generosity with His time. Those of you who have read through the Gospels, can you recall the amounts of times that Jesus finishes an arduous day or week of ministry? Does the Sermon on the Mount, heals people, speaks to people, casts out demons, teaches, combats with the rabbis, and then once that's done, it says Jesus went off to a quiet place to pray. He went off to be by himself and to rest and recruit. And here's what stuns me is how many times in the gospels it says after finishing a day like that or an event like that, Jesus goes off to pray by himself and on his way to do that, someone says, Rabbi, can I talk to you? Will you talk to my mom? Will you come meet my son? They need you. And Jesus always, sure, what do you need? Yes, I would love to. Yes, let me talk to you. Yes, let me pray to you. Jesus is the greatest example of someone who is generous with his time. And I think, I suspect, that we can probably all be more generous with ours. The last idea about generosity I want us to consider is that we can be generous with our spirit. We can be generous with our spirit. We can be generous with our disposition towards others, with our assessment towards them, with the benefit of the doubt we are willing to give them. I had a friend in college named Paul Honeycutt. Paul Honeycutt and I, we played on the soccer team together and we did the landscape crew together. We were in charge of keeping the grounds of Toccoa Falls College pristine and we did great. It was a fun job. I got to do the zero turn mowers and the weed eaters every day and I loved it. And Honeycutt was this really interesting guy because Honeycutt was cool. Everybody liked Honeycutt. Everybody did. He had all the friends in the world. And at this stage in life, try to remember, you know, I've been in high school and now college and cool people are cool. Cool people, they make friends easily. They make friends well. And they tend to be a little bit exclusionary in the way they move through the world. If you're not as cool as them, they're not going to give you their time. They're not going to be as nice to you. It can get to be exclusive, right? And so that was my experience of cool people. And Paul was cool. Everybody liked Paul. But Paul was unique in that he was kind to everyone. We ran in the same circle, and I watched some people try to get into the circle, and other guys in the circle would kind of hold them in arm's length. I don't know if you're going to cut the mustard. I don't know if I like the cut of your jib. What a great phrase that is. But I don't know. So they kind of hold them away. But Paul was always the first person to welcome them in and to make them feel like a part of things and to be a good host and to be a generous person with his spirit. And I remember asking him one time, this is now 25 years ago, I think, and I still remember the conversation. I asked him something to the effect of, Paul, you're so nice to everybody all the time. How are you this nice to everyone? And Paul said this simple phrase to me, and I'll never forget it. He said, Nate, if they're cool to Jesus, they're cool to me. Isn't that great? If they're cool to Jesus, thanks Jeff. If they're cool to Jesus, they're cool to me. If Jesus likes them, I do too. And here's the problem for us Christians. Jesus likes everybody. How inconvenient is that? I don't know. I've thought about this over the years and I'm not going to make any declarative or definitive statements this morning. I really don't know how much space there is for us to choose to not like somebody. I don't know how much space there is for that. I don't know how much space there is for us to just hold a grudge against somebody. I don't know how much space there is to think the worst of somebody and write them off. Now listen, I want to be very careful. I'm not asking us to trust everyone and to make ourselves vulnerable to everyone and to return to painful relationships when they've burned us in the past and it's hurt so much. I'm not asking you to be unwise. Scripture says that we should be as innocent as doves and as shrewd as vipers, and I think that that absolutely applies. But what I am saying is, I'm not sure how much space we have to just choose to not like someone and write them off. If they're cool to Jesus, they're cool to me. And unfortunately, Jesus likes everybody. So I think maybe you don't have something to learn from my buddy Honeycutt, but I still do. And here's where I would say this too, and I say this carefully. Our country is very divided right now. We know that. By simply saying that statement, everybody in this room just tensed up about 25%. Here's my estimation of part of that division. Is that we are not generous in spirit towards the people who don't vote like us. And what I've noticed is our tendency is to think and assume the worst of them. But what if we would be more generous in spirit and assume the best of them? Not just politically. People who think differently than us. People who don't share the values that we do. People who don't root for the bills. What if we started to view generosity as being a way to assume the best of others, to believe the best of others, and to give them the benefit of the doubt whenever we could? Let me tell you what would happen. Not just on a church level, but on a personal level. It is refreshing to refresh others. This series is called You'll Be Glad You Did. If you will listen to the wisdom that Solomon wrote down, you'll be glad you did. This week, we have an opportunity to consider what kind of people we are in regards to generosity. And my main point is, how refreshing would it be to spend this year being more generous with your resources, with your time, with your spirit, with your demeanor towards other people. And here's what I would challenge you with. If you think about these things, and there's other ways to be generous as well, but if you'll just think about these things. How can I this year be generous with my finances? How can I this year be generous with my time? How can I this year be generous with my spirit towards others? I highly doubt you'll finish the year and think, I wish I'd have kept more of it for myself. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for this church body, for this family. Thank you for the love that we share and the community that we have. God, all of us in this room have been given resources. From your fullness, we have received grace upon grace in different ways. And I pray, God, that you would increase our heart and increase our desire to be people who are characterized by generosity. May we be people who are happy to give, who are happy to refresh others, and in so doing find that you refresh us as we do. Give us the eyes to see and the ears to hear opportunities for generosity. And give us the willingness to step into those. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making grace a part of your Sunday. If you're watching online, wherever you are, whatever you may be doing, thank you for doing that and joining us in this way. This morning, we continue in our series called Gentle and Lowly, where we're looking at the character of Christ. Is that Kyle and Ashlyn back there? They're here. Look, with the new baby. Hey, guys. We continue in our series called Gentle and Lowly. I was going to say that we have more books on the information table. We do not. So if you don't have a book and you still want one, first of all, that makes no sense to me because we've been talking about this for three, four weeks. But if you don't and you want one, reach out and we'll tell you where to find one. Okay. But in this series, we are looking at the character of Christ. We are marveling at and learning about and from who Jesus was. And the second chapter of the book points out that Jesus was characterized by his compassion. Jesus was a man of compassion. And that's where I want us to focus this morning. And I want to do it in such a way where we kind of build a case for the compassion of Christ, because I want you to see just how prevalent it was in his character. And to me, the most prevailing instance of his compassion is found in the shortest verse in the Bible. Many of you know what the shortest verse in the Bible is. You may not know its address, but this will not be unfamiliar to you. It's John 11, 35, and it simply says, Jesus wept. Now, I meant to do the research this week and forgot, but syllabically, from a standpoint of syllables, it is not the shortest verse in the Bible. There is one verse with three words that are all singularly, they have one syllable, and it's actually shorter technically speaking. But this we acknowledge as the shortest verse in the Bible, Jesus wept. Without the context of it, we might not know why that is profound, or we might not know why I find it to be the greatest example of Jesus's compassion. But here's why. Let me give you the context for it. Jesus, in his life, had what many theologians and scholars believe were some besties. He had his very good friends that were not the disciples, that were not a part of the 100 to 120 people that would travel around with them, with him and his disciples. But it was Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus. These were, a lot of people presume, some of Jesus's best friends. It was kind of home base for him, and they lived in a city called Bethany. And this is, some scholars say, Jesus's favorite place on earth. These were his dear friends. I don't know if you're fortunate enough to have good dear friends, but when you're with close friends, you can be your complete, total, vulnerable self. That's what friendship is. And many people believe that that's what he had with Mary and Martha and Lazarus. And so one day, word comes to Jesus by way of Mary and Martha. He was two days away by foot. And they said, hey, Lazarus is dying. Can you come heal him? And Jesus said, yeah, I'll be there in a minute. It's a loose paraphrase. He waited two days, and then he began the journey. In the time of his journey, Lazarus passed away. So as he's approaching Bethany, they hear of his approaching, and Mary runs out to meet Jesus. And when she meets him, she asks the question that we would all ask. Why did you wait? You could have prevented this. My brother has died. What are you doing? Why didn't you come sooner? What was so important that you couldn't come do this for us? It's the question we would all ask. And that through history in different ways, we have asked at different times. And then after asking the question, Mary begins to weep. And Jesus' response to this question that makes sense to every generation was John 11, 35. Jesus wept. And here's where the profundity of this passage struck me for the first time. And I've told you guys about this before. You may remember this story. There's a pastor in California named Rick Warren who's been very successful, sold a lot of books, and his church does very well. And even amidst that success, his son at the age of 27 took his own life. And when he did, he stepped away and took a leave of absence for either six weeks or six months. I can't remember. And when he came back, he preached a series called How We Got Through What We Went Through. And I watched that first sermon back and he highlighted this verse. And he said, I'd love to understand why Jesus lets things like this happen. But he doesn't explain it to us because we're not capable of understanding it. And even if he did, it wouldn't take my hurt away. So what we have in Jesus is a Savior who doesn't offer us explanations. He offers us his presence and his hope, and he kneels and he weeps with us. And I found that to be an amazing point. And in this instance, when Lazarus dies, Mary weeps, and so does Jesus. But here's what makes this further compelling to me. Jesus knew the rest of the story. He wasn't wondering if he was going to go resurrect Lazarus, which he does. If you haven't read the story, I'm sorry, I just ruined it for you. But he goes and he resurrects Lazarus. He says, Lazarus, come forth. And he does. He comes out of his tomb and he resurrects him. When Jesus meets Mary on the road, Jesus wasn't wondering about what would happen. He knew that he was going to raise Lazarus. He knew that Mary and Martha would be overjoyed. He knew that he would have his friend back. He knew that. So listen to this. When he's weeping with Mary, he's not weeping because he is sad. He's weeping because he's moved with compassion and his friend is sad. That's the Jesus that we worship. He was so moved with compassion that because his not shed a man tear. The older I get, the more I cry. I cry so much that when I'm watching a show with my nine-year-old daughter Lily, and we're watching a kid's baking championship, and a kid has to leave once we get to the final four, she looks at me to see if I'm crying. And I am. I can't help it. We watch Hometown, which is a great show. I highly recommend it to everyone. Ben and Aaron are the best. We watch Hometown. When they do the home reveal and the people are thrilled at their home, do you know what I'm doing? I'm crying. But I'm not inconsolably crying. My nose isn't running. I've just got a couple man tears and I wiped them away. It's fine. And forget you if you judge me for that. I emit this salty liquid from my eyes and I'm moved by emotion. Those are not the tears Jesus was crying. He was weeping. His shoulders were heaving. His nose was running. He was a mess. And he was not a mess because he'd lost his friend Lazarus. He was hurting because Mary was hurting. And Martha was hurting. That's what compelled him. And I think that is remarkable about our Savior. To further my case about compassion being personified in Christ and him being a man of compassion, I have a litany of verses to go through. We're going to go very quickly, okay? But here's what we have. And me and Lynn, we worked on this before the sermon. We'll see how we do together. But here's the verses very quickly to show you the compassion of Christ. In Matthew chapter 9, what we see, when he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. In Matthew 14, when Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and he healed their sick. And Matthew chapter 15, Jesus called his disciples to him and he said, I have compassion for these people. They have already been with me for three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry. And Mark chapter 6, verse 34, when Jesus landed, he saw a large crowd and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. In Mark chapter 8, I have compassion for these people. They have already been with me three days with nothing to eat. In Luke chapter 7, when the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, don't cry. There's more. Jesus at every turn was a man of compassion. And here's what strikes me about the compassion of Christ in those instances when he chose to heal and he chose to feed the 5,000 and he chose to spend time with one person. I think one of the more interesting questions about the life of Christ is, why did he not go around healing more people? If he had the capacity to heal and to make illness go away, why didn't you just teach them to wash their hands? Just basic science. Why didn't he go around healing more people? Why didn't he do it all day, every day? The only compelling answer to that question is because it's not what he came to do. What Jesus came to do was to live a perfect life, die a perfect death, and train young men and women to run the church that he was establishing. That's what he came to do. He came to live a perfect life, to die a perfect death on the cross for us, and to train people to run the kingdom that he was establishing with his ministry, which is what we call the church, which is where we sit now. That's what Jesus came to do, which means, and I know that this is a weird thing to say, especially for a pastor in this spot. It's not inconceivable to think about every miracle of healing as a distraction from his purpose. It's not altogether unfair to consider the feeding of the 5,000 a distraction from what he actually came to do. It's not unfair to think that the widow that he healed that was bleeding was a distraction from whatever his real mission was that day. And yet, being moved by compassion, he feeds the hungry. And yet, being moved by compassion, he heals the sick. And yet, being moved by compassion, he preaches to the masses. When we see Jesus perform these miracles, when we see him heal and we see him feed, I think it's fair to see those as times when he veered off the point of his ministry because he was so moved by compassion in his heart to help others, to serve others, to be distracted because his heart moved so much for the people around him in need. This was who Jesus was. If you don't yet believe that Jesus was a man of compassion, I would simply make this point. Jesus' dying words were words of compassion. We did a Good Friday service this last spring, and we focused on the seven things that Jesus said while he hung on the cross for you and for me. And one of the things that he said was, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. The men, putting a spear in his side, driving nails through his feet and hands, putting a crown of thorns on his head, whipping him, blindfolding him and saying, you're a prophet, tell us who hit you. He said about those people, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. His dying words were words of compassion. And so here's the truth about Jesus. And here's what I want us to understand about his character and seek to emulate in ours. Hurt people hurt Jesus. Hurt people hurt Jesus. When Jesus sees people hurting, he hurts. When Jesus sees people suffering, he suffers. He suffers so much that he weeps, even though he knows the end of the story. He hurts so badly that he allows himself to be distracted from his divine purpose to execute this one. Hurt people hurt Jesus. And so, we talk a lot here about what the word sanctification means. And sanctification, as we understand, is the process between when we're saved and when we're glorified. When we accept Christ as our Savior and when we exist with Him in eternity. It's life. And through life we go through the process of sanctification. And sanctification, the easiest way I've ever found to understand it is to become more like Christ in character. And so, as believers, and some of you here are not, and that's fine. But this is a peek inside the curtain. If you are here as a believer, what God wants for you is to become more like Christ in character. Not in nature, because that's not possible, but in our character as we go through the years. And hopefully those of us who have been believers for a long time are slowly moving to be more like Christ and for our heart to beat with his. But if our goal is to be more like Christ in character, then we cannot do that without being people of compassion. We cannot do that without being moved by the hurt of others. So much so that we don't simply go, oh, that stinks. I hate that for them. But that we are compelled to go and do. We cannot be like Christ in character if hurt people don't hurt us to such a degree that we are activated to some action in service of God's kingdom for people who are hurting. How can we possibly, church, claim to be Christ-like if we are not people who are moved by compassion? Not just empathy. Not just seeing the floods and hurting for the people affected by them, but actually buying supplies or driving them out there. And that's just one example. And I'm not telling anyone that you should do anything except allow yourself to be moved by compassion. And we have stories in grace that I'm very proud of, of people being moved by compassion and doing great things. So here's the question for you this morning. How might we employ our compassion? How might we employ and deploy our compassion? We all have the capacity to be stirred. How might we employ it? Here's one of the things I'll tell you. When we think about compassion and being so stirred by the hurt of others that like our Jesus, we serve them and we help them because we can't stand it anymore. Here's one thing I'll tell you, and I can't presume or project my life upon you, but let me tell you about my day-to-day, okay? And you'll see if you relate. I wake up every day. I was going to make a joke there. I'm not going to make it. I'm going to be disciplined. I wake up every day. Most days take a shower, unless I don't have any meetings. Then I dress in basketball shorts and Crocs. But most days I take a shower. And then I take Lily, my daughter, to her private school. And I'm in the carpool line with a bunch of other people taking their kids to their private school. And I can only say that the car line at NRCA is not a place that moves me towards compassion. I don't weep for the people that I see. I'm in my ensconced, nice, safe bubble, right? And then I drive to church. And I get in the office. And I have this glorious hour where no one else is in the office. And I have it to myself. And then I loathe the first person that shows up and ruins my solitude. Usually it's Kyle. He's been mercifully on paternity leave for three weeks. Sorry, Kyle, I love you. And then I sit in my office and I have calls and I have meetings and I and I go to lunch yeah three times a week with someone and then Jen Jen jokes with me must be nice it's a nice life this last week I played in a golf tournament and I went to lunch twice look at me and then I go home or I go to soccer practice with a bunch of kids that whose parents $650 to play that season. That doesn't move me towards compassion. And then I go home in my ensconced little area. And we have dinner, and we watch Hometown, and I cry and my daughter makes fun of me. And then we go about our day. And I wake up the next day and I do the same thing. Here's my point. There's not a lot of spaces in my life where I encounter people who engender compassion. If your life is like mine, then you have to make a choice to go outside of your comfort zone and encounter people who engender compassion in you. You will not, most likely, come upon them honestly. You will not experience compassion if you do not choose to expose yourself to those who deserve it most. So if we want to be people of compassion, and if you're sitting here going, that is who my Jesus was, and I recognize that's what I need to do, then we need to be people who expose ourselves to being able to be compassionate and stirred towards hurt for others. If in our life, if what I'm saying is true, hurt people hurt Jesus, and in our life we have elegantly navigated a path to never encounter genuinely hurt people, then how can we possibly be hurt by their hurt? So we have to choose to engage outside of our bubble so that we might be moved as Jesus was. A great example of this in our church, and I've told this story many times. I'm so proud of it. I'm so proud that they call Grace home, and they predate me. They allow me to continue to be their pastor. But Suzanne and Wes Ward, some of you know their story, some of you don't. Suzanne was in youth group here. She grew up at Grace. And at some point, gosh, it's got to be six, seven years ago, if not longer than that, she went on a mission trip to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, with her friend Cindy. And she saw in Addis an orphan crisis where families literally can't afford to keep the children that they're having, and so they have to give them up for adoption, and those children end up in orphanages. And she saw with her own eyes that the young girls, 17 and 18, who age out of those orphanages, not educated, not eligible for college, have very few choices about what they can do in life. And most of them ended up in the kind of work that you're assuming right now. And they were moved with compassion. And so they started a ministry called Addis Jamari. We partner with them. They were moved with compassion for the plight they saw in the Ethiopian, so much so that they did something about it and they started a house. And it was a house for the girls who aged out of the orphanage to come and to live in, where they're taught life skills and they're discipled and they're taught about Jesus and they're launched out of there going to college or having the capacity to get a job so that they can avoid the life that they would have lived had not Addis Jamari stepped in. And then to further it, they realized, you know what, if we can get ahead of this on the front end, we can prevent orphans altogether. And so they started what they call the FEP, the Family Empowerment Program, where for, I think it's $80 a month, you can donate that to Addis Jamari. And those $80, listen to this, this is amazing, allow a family to keep their child at home rather than having to give them up for adoption. How simple is that? That's like, what, eight lattes? That's easy. Also, Starbucks is stupid, okay? Germaine to nothing, sorry. And so they started doing that. And now, instead of just a home with three or four girls occupying it post-orphanage, they have what amounts to a daycare with 80 children every day, with programs for moms to educate them, to feed them, to take care of their kids, with counselors, like degreed counselors to work with their children and with the moms and with the dads. Compassion drove them to do that. So that's a big one. I don't think all of you need to go start a ministry in Africa. Actually, you probably should. But that's not the point. That's a big step. And in life, sometimes God moves us to make big steps. And we get moved and it changes the trajectory of our life. Suzanne is one of my heroes. She does not yet take a paycheck from Addis Jamari. And she works tirelessly for them. Every day. All the time. Because she's moved by compassion and believes in this. And some of us, God wants us to take steps like that. Others, first time I went to Addis Jamari, was in January, was it 2020 that we went, Karen? I think it was. I think it was. January 2020. Yeah, Andrea was there too. And we went over and Suzanne told me a couple weeks before, she was like, hey, it's just you and a bunch of ladies. So maybe invite somebody. And I had to think of the retired people that I knew that might be able to go. And so I invited a buddy of mine, Emil Lasavita. And I was like, hey, come to this. He goes, what is it? And I was like, it doesn't matter. Just please come with me. And he did. But when he saw the ministry, he was so moved by compassion that he got involved too. And now he sits on the board. Now he serves. He and I had a conversation last week where he called me about the future of Addis Jamari, and we talked about it. He was moved by compassion, so he acted. We have people who have been going to Mexico for 20 plus years to build houses for people less fortunate. Because when they went down there for the first time, they were so moved by compassion that they go back every year. We have people who have been doing that for 20 plus years. My buddy Keith right here, who, trust me, I do not like saying nice things about. The stupid Steelers jersey in church and the whole deal. Keith went years ago and was so moved by compassion that he's been a grandfather to someone who's grown up in that ministry. He's sent baby pictures. He's sent wedding pictures. They reunite every year. He's watched him go from this kid volunteering to this man who's in charge of all the construction of the houses now. He's the project manager. What happened was Keith went on a trip that he didn't want to go on very much, but his heart was moved by compassion and it changed the course of his life. There's at least one good thing you've done, Keith. If we want to be like Christ, we have to allow ourselves to be moved by compassion for others. And if we're going to be moved by compassion, then we have to make choices to expose ourselves to something that can move us in that way. So where I want to finish this sermon this morning is to simply challenge you with this. What step can you take towards compassion? What step can you take to expose yourself to hurt people that might hurt you in such a way that you begin to take steps of compassion as a result of that? And maybe you're already doing it, and that's wonderful. Lean into those places. But if you're not experiencing that, and you're not serving anybody outside of your bubble, and you haven't been moved by compassion for a long time to help and to sacrifice. Maybe the next step is to just think about how can I expose myself to portions of our society or our world that will compel me to do that. So let's think about that this morning.

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

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