Sermons tagged with Persecution

All right, good morning, everyone. Happy Palm Sunday. Somebody asked me before the service who's got a Catholic background, they said, do Christians still do Palm Sunday or is that just a Catholic thing? Which I found to be a wonderful question and yeah, Christians do Palm Sunday. Okay, so just so we're all on the same page, it's Holy Week for us too. And we've been doing this whole series through Mark, asking God to prepare our hearts and minds to celebrate Easter and to reflect on and properly value the resurrection. And so this week we prepare to do that. We have our Good Friday service on Friday evening. If you are able to come, I would really encourage you to do that. That is on Friday. We intentionally sit in the heaviness of the crucifixion. We intentionally focus on the cross and on the reality that Friday was believing that when we do that, our hearts are prepared to celebrate the resurrection better on Sunday. So Friday, I will just tell you, is a heavy service. I would not recommend bringing children to it. We are somber and sober on purpose because it helps us appreciate Easter Sunday better. This morning, as we do celebrate Palm Sunday, we will focus on the reality of Jesus on the cross, and we'll finish with having communion at the end of the service. But this is really a continuation of the sermon I preached to you, or I even said that Sunday that it wasn't a sermon, it was me sharing. This is a continuation of what I want to share from Istanbul. Okay. When, when I was sharing about Istanbul and somebody said that they just listened to the sermon, uh, from that morning on the way over, um, which I'm so glad that people are doing that and keeping up. But I shared with you my two takeaways from the experience that I had in Istanbul. And for those of you who maybe this is your first time, this is totally out of context for you. A few weeks ago, I had an opportunity to go to Turkey and sit in a room with persecuted Iranian pastors who were being trained by a friend of mine. And it was a really impactful week, such a privilege to be there. And so when I came, I got home on a Saturday and then I had to preach on a Sunday. I didn't even know where I was in space or time, and I thought, I'm just going to share what I took away and hope that that works. And you guys were gracious with me and said that that counted, and I got paid that week. But there was two things. There's two things that I took away. The first was just the chasm of difference in how the persecuted church thinks about church and how the secure church thinks about church. And there may be a series coming on that, which I'm sure you guys will be really thrilled about to come in every week and be made to feel terrible for how we think about church. But that may just be what we need. So I'm thinking about that. The other point that I made was out of this verse in Mark. This is the quintessential Mark verse. If you were to say what verse encapsulates the book of Mark that we've been going through all spring, it is this verse, chapter 9, verse 36. I'm sorry, verse 35. Sitting down, Jesus called the twelve and said, Anyone who wants to be first must be very last and the servant of all. That is the quintessential Marconian verse. That's the gospel of Mark. Whoever wants to be first must be the servant of all. It's a book about service. And I talked with you guys about a man that I met named Yahya who personified this type of service. And I described him as capturing the essence of that Colossians verse, that we are led by Christ in triumphal procession and through us spreads the fragrance and the knowledge of God. That was the sense I got with him. And so the other takeaway was, let's lead and serve like Jesus does. Let's be inspired by the model of Yahya and lead and serve like him. But here's what I wanted to say after that. I wanted to make another point, but as I wrote that point in my notes and I was going through it that Sunday morning, I thought I can't just drop that at the end of a service and not talk about it and not give it adequate space. We need to be able to develop this idea and talk about this idea. That's like a whole separate sermon. And then I went, huh, I'm in charge of the sermons that we preach. I can just do that one later. So this is later. All right. I wanted to talk about what we talked about last week. Last week, I wanted to talk about this on Palm Sunday. I felt like it was more appropriate leading into communion, but this is really part two of that. This is what I wanted to say. When I say we should lead and love and serve like Christ. We should be inspired by the examples of holy people who lead and serve and love well. The point that I wanted to make is this. We cannot love and serve others until we allow Jesus to love and serve us. I'm going to spend the rest of the day talking about this so that I can make sure we have an adequate understanding of it. But we cannot love others as Jesus loved. That's a quintessential. I said Marconian, so now I will say Johannian. That is a quintessential verse in John to sum up that gospel is when Jesus says, go and love others as I have loved you. That is the gospel of John encapsulated. And so we take the gospel of Mark and we take the gospel of John and we say, yes, Lord, this is what we want to do. is we cannot love and serve others until we allow Jesus to love and serve us. And here's what I mean when I say that. We all have a sense of identity and value and worth that we get from something somewhere. This is universally true. We all have something that we measure ourselves by that makes us feel valuable or not valuable. We all have a sense of identity. I am blank. I am this. And this identity and our sense of identity and where we get our worth evolves over time, right? I remember when I was a kid in elementary school at Camp Creek Elementary, that my value and worth was based on my knowledge of SportsCenter that morning. Like when I would watch Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann. I would watch Stuart Scott and Scott Van Pelt. I would watch them and be ready with their catchphrases that morning at school. My ability to talk about sports and to argue with you that Georgia Tech was better than Georgia, that's where I grew up. Here, you don't really argue about anything. No one's good at football here at all. So it doesn't really matter. Oh, also I wanted to say this, uh, this is just an aside. This is just me for fun. Uh, I would never, ever use this platform to pray for a sports team or an athlete. But if I were going to, I would invite us to join in prayer for Rory McIlroy today. If you, if you need more reason to root against Bryson DeChambeau today, Alan has money on him. He told me before the service. So let's just double down on Rory today. Yes? Good. But when I was a kid, my ability to do that, to talk about sports, is where I got a sense of value and worth. And how fast you were is how valuable you were. How hard you could kick a ball, how far you could throw it, how good you were at sports. If a dude was better than you at sports, he was a more valuable human than you. That was just the nature of the beast. That was the jungle when I grew up. Then it evolved. In high school, I started learning that I could also get value from making people laugh. Every now and again, I could convince a girl to like me. And that makes you feel valuable. And then in college, it develops. Then I began to get a sense of value and worth out of my ability to be a pastor. And then I got hired as one. And my sense of value and worth came from my job performance. And God, in his goodness, has redeemed this. But anybody who would try to argue with you that they don't get a sense of value and worth from extrinsic things, from things on the outside, isn't being honest with you. And so I think we all have this sense of value that evolves over time. And what I want to press upon you this morning is for the Christian, the natural and right evolution of our identity is to rest in our identity in Christ. For the Christian, the natural and right evolution of that identity, as you progress through the years and you land in a place, is for that place to be rested in Christ. It's for us to find our identity in him. Because the world has all these messages about who we are and what we should do. But Christ does too. And I think one of the hardest things about being a Christian is to listen to that voice of Jesus that tells us who and what we are. Because the world is so loud and it is so convincing and it is so ever-present that you begin to listen to what the world says about you more than you listen to what your creator says about you. And we forget, I think, who we are in Christ. And we start to believe what the world says we are. So this morning, I want to remind you of who you are in Christ. I would encourage you to look, to Google who I am in Jesus. Look up all the verses that proclaim who you are. I don't have enough time to go through even 10% of them this morning. There's so many ways the Bible affirms you and who you are. But I've got four for you that I want to read to you this morning. The first is Romans, I think 15.1 or maybe 5.1. It says, you are accepted. Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We've been justified by Christ. We are accepted. We are accepted by him. And when I say this, I think that we just kind of mentally go, yeah, I know. But think about how hard you struggle for acceptance in your life. Think about how much you want the approval of others. Some of us can readily admit, yeah, the opinion of other people matters to me. Others of us like to say this stupid thing. I don't care what other people think. Yes, you do. You just care what some people think. But you don't care what nobody thinks. All right? Tough guy? I'm talking to me. We all of us struggle to be accepted. And what Jesus tells us is, you are accepted. You're never going to be more accepted than you are. You're never going to be more desired than you are. He tells us that we are chosen. John 15, 16, you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go bear fruit, fruit that will last. And so that whatever you ask in my name, the Father will give you. This is my command, and I'm including it because I mentioned it earlier. Love each other. That's what Jesus says. You didn't choose me. I chose you. You were accepted by Christ. You are chosen by Christ. We've all had times in our lives when we didn't feel chosen. When we didn't feel picked. When we felt looked over. When we felt passed over. When we felt inadequate. Like maybe we didn't matter. And Jesus says, no, no, no, I accept you. And I choose you. 1 Corinthians 3.23 tells us that you belong to Jesus. Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours and you are of Christ and Christ is of God. You belong to Jesus. You are of Christ. This is what the Bible says about you, and this is my favorite one. You are safe. Romans 8, 38, 39, the crescendo of the greatest chapter in the Bible. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. You are safe. You are kept. We're doing a series that we just got done planning. The next series coming up is FAQs. And we've sussed out some questions from our small groups to see what kinds of things y'all are thinking about and wondering about. And one of the questions that came up a couple of times is, once you're saved, are you always saved? If you ask that question, read Romans 8, verses 38 and 39. Read it to yourself again and again and again, and know that you are held in God's hand. And know that if Christ has saved you, Christ will keep you. If Christ has chosen you, he will protect you. If he has redeemed you, he will glorify you. Guys, I don't think that we sit in the reality of... I don't think that we sit clearly in the reality of these things, that we are accepted and that we are chosen and that we are loved and that we are safe. I don't think that we do that. I think that we still continue to trust what the world has to say about who we are. And here's the problem. These identities that we've built for ourselves, these ways that we gauge ourselves and our value, when they are not Christ, they will all fail us. They will all fail us. Every identity you build for yourself will eventually fail you. And sometimes it fails you because you've chosen to gauge your worth on a thing you're not good at. I have friends who are not, they're not career driven men and they feel like failures all the time because they get a sense in our society, men have to achieve. We have to do, what do you do for work? What's your next step? Where are you going? How many direct reports do you have? Or are you starting a company? How is that going? We get our sense of value and worth from how we are as professionals. But some of us are not wired to be professionals. And some of us are not wired for success. And we don't want to climb the corporate ladder. And we're very happy to put the thing down at 5 o'clock and go home and be with our family, and that's really what we want. But the world has told us that we are how successful we are, and so we walk through life feeling bad about not meeting a goal that we never wanted to meet. I talked with a mom this week who gets her sense of worth and value from her kids' behavior. And it made me sad because I know some moms, even in this church and in my circles of friends, that have uniquely challenging children. Not because those children are bad and not because they're bad moms. Because they have severe ADHD. Because they have different pressures on them that we don't understand. Because they have sensitivities to things that are hard. And these moms beat themselves up because their kids act out in church or at school or because they're the one to get the phone call. And when that is our sense of worth and value, we just get beat up over and over and over again. When we listen to what the world says we need to be, when what's true about those moms is they're incredible moms. They're wonderful and they love their children very much. But we let the world beat us up and tell us that we're not and that we're not valuable because we forget who we are in Christ. And we let that voice drown us out. But many of us in here don't feel as worthy as we should because we're not listening to Jesus. We're listening to the world and we've allowed the world to put us in a game that we can't win. That's not where we should get our value from. And here's another way that your identity will fail you. Maybe you've been fortunate in your life to move the target of your worth to something that you can actually hit. Maybe you've been fortunate and wise enough to go, you know what? I'm not really going to listen to the world. I'm going to choose my own path, and this is what's going to make me feel valuable. But even when you choose something you're good at, that will fail you too. I pride myself very much on being a good friend. I have told people on my tombstone, I simply wanted to say Nate was a friend. Friendship is so important to me. And I've always placed a high value on my ability to be a good friend. And in the last couple of months, I failed a friend. I was a bad friend to someone I love a lot. And when I realized that, it shook me for weeks. And I realized, my goodness, I've idolized this sense of my value. I haven't been finding it in Christ. I've been finding it in my ability to do this for other people. And this is actually a good thing. It's shaken me and helped me realize that I hold this in a disproportionate way. So even the things that we build in our life that we're good at, eventually that will fail us too. And we'll have to repent of that. But here's what I know is true of you and why we build our identities in this way. Because we, all of us, we all want to be accepted, chosen, safe, and to belong. We all want that. And I'll be honest with you. When I write sermons like this, they're a little touchy-feely. We all want to be safe and chosen. Sometimes I speak to this part of the room because this is where our young families are, and sometimes I talk to parents here. Today, I'm going to talk to that portion of the room, because that's where our stubborn, crusty men sit. And when they hear me talk like this, everyone wants to be chosen and accepted and loved. I always, in the back of my head, I think, how are they processing this? Because they probably think I'm a sissy, right? But even you guys want this. Even you guys struggle for this. Everybody wants to be accepted and chosen and loved and protected. And we have that in Christ. He gives it to you. He tells you through his word. He preaches it to you. He reminds you of it. We sing about it. And yet some of you will go from here and you will walk out those doors and choose to believe what the world says about you instead of what Jesus says about you. So I just want to remind you of it this morning. And we come full circle to what I said at the beginning. And hopefully now it makes sense and carries a weight for you. We cannot love and serve others until we allow Jesus to love and serve us. Do you have any idea how well you will love other people when you let Jesus love you? You'll be able to celebrate their success. You'll be able to celebrate their rise. You'll have an equanimity and a calmness of demeanor because you know who you are in Jesus. And you wake up every day knowing I am fully loved. I am fully protected. I am fully safe. I am fully chosen. The world can do to me what it wants, but I have Jesus and I have his love and I'm good. Can you imagine walking in that level of help? Walking in such an awareness of the love of Christ that he has for you. That from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace and now God's grace overflows from you onto the people around you. Can you imagine being an agent of that kind of love where you know every day God loves you so much that it literally oozes out of you onto the people around you that they feel God's love because you are present in their life. Can you imagine that? It's only possible when we let Jesus love us first. Grace, Jesus loves you. He died on the cross for you. This week we celebrate Holy Week. This is Palm Sunday, where they laid down the palm branches and the children said, Hosanna. And Jesus knowingly walked to his death for you. So please, when you go out these doors today, do not listen to what the world says you are. Do not listen to what you say you are. Listen to what Jesus says you are, to who he says you are, and how much he loves you, and how he has chosen you. And let's walk in that love and see how God uses us. Can we do that? Let me pray for you, then we're going to celebrate communion. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for how much you love us. Thank you for who you are and how you've provided for us. God, I pray that we would hear you, that we would accept and receive you. I pray that we would love and serve others well because we allow you to love and serve us. Help us to exist in the reality of your overwhelming love, of your acceptance and your affirmation. Father, if there's anyone here who doesn't know you, I pray that they would. If there's anyone here who has not received your love, I pray that they would receive it today. Help us to walk in light of the fact that we are chosen and accepted and safe. Help us to walk in light of your love. In Jesus' name, amen.

I'm laughing with Aaron because after the last week, my name is Nate, I get to be the pastor. After the last week that I was here, I went to him and was like, hey dude, we're using that bumper a lot, can we get that shortened down to maybe 15, 20 seconds and go ahead and get to it? And he was like, yeah, I'll work on that. So I came up here and I was kind of getting ready and obviously obviously I'm jet lagged and stuff. I've been in Istanbul for a week. And I looked up and there's 10 seconds to go. And I go, this is the week you shorten it? And he goes, yep. And just smiled real big at me. Like it's his personal joke on me this morning to be caught off guard. But excuse me. Like I said, I spent the last week in Istanbul working with some Iranian pastors, and I'm going to tell you all about that, but I've had a lot of people ask about my safety. I'm so glad that you're home safe, which is a kind thing to think and to say. There was no real danger in Istanbul. As a matter of fact, for those of you who don't know, the president arrested the mayor of Istanbul. That's his biggest political rival, and so the youth took to the streets to protest and demonstrate and riot and there's a pretty heavy police presence I was just hoping that Jen didn't stumble upon the New York Times while I was over there luckily she did not but the second night of the planned demonstrations they were going to be in this place called Taksim Square and so we went down there early in the afternoon just to see it there's police barricades and SWAT vehicles everywhere with like crowd deterrent guns on top and things like that. And we thought that's pretty cool. And so then we went and we had dinner and it was probably about nine o'clock at night. And I looked at my traveling partner, Rue, and I said, Rue, do we do this smart? We're about 20 minutes south of Toxum at this point. And I said, Rue, by walking, should we do the smart thing and get on the subway and go back to our hotel? Or should we do the fun thing and go watch democracy die in Toxin Square? And he was like, he got his twinkle in his eye and we walked to Toxin. I was really hoping to grab a sign and protest as well. But apparently protesting and riots are a young man's game because it was like 930 and there was 20 people in the square and some getting off the subway. They were all younger than me. So I went to bed and I think the thing got really fun at about 11 o'clock. So I missed it, but I tried to go see it while we were there. But safety was never really an issue. The reason that I was there was through a friend of mine named Anaruda Sin. who goes by Ru. And so what I'd like to do this morning is rather than preach to you a sermon, what I'd like to take the morning to do, if it's all right with you, if it's not all right with you, tough. I mean, you can leave, but that's it because that's what's going to happen. But if it's all right with you, I'd like to just share about my experience over there and give you guys some takeaways of what I took away from it. Because I've just come back feeling incredibly full and incredibly blessed and profoundly humbled. And so I thought it would be better than preaching to you. And preaching, the point of preaching is to inspire and convict a change in hearts and minds for a change in that person. That's why you preach. But sharing is just to say, hey, I had this experience and I want you to hear about it. And I know that many of you will ask and many of you will want to know. And many of you did ask before the service, hey, how was the trip? And so I said, it's great. I'm going to tell you all about it. So if you have any questions for me after the service today, if you want to know more about who I went with or you want to know more about what's happening there, I would love to talk with you about that. And if it's too much for a lobby conversation, let's go out to lunch and we can talk about it more because I feel a tremendous passion for what I got to participate in. But a few years ago, I got to be friends with a guy who was introduced through a mutual friend to Roo. And Roo trains church pastors across the world in underdeveloped countries. So where I was exposed to him first was when he was training pastors who have churches in sub-Saharan Africa. There was a room full of about 60 pastors from about 10 different countries, and Roo was training them on how to build disciples and send them out to plant churches. And when you're talking about planting churches in underdeveloped countries, particularly in persecuted countries, which is who we're working with now, what you, what, how we would think of those churches is small groups. They meet in the home. The leader is considered a pastor. Some pastors can have two or three or four small groups. Tom Sartorius would be a remarkably successful pastor in underdeveloped countries because he has about eight small groups that he's in and lead. So he'd be great at that. But that's kind of the setup there. And so it's not quite the same as training up someone to go get hired at a church or to go plant a church the way we think about it. It's train up someone who can be a spiritual guide for 12 to 20 people and their children. So that's the process. And through that process, Roo, his network of churches plants three to 500 churches a year in India now for work that he started 10 years ago with no churches. So it's a remarkably effective way to spread the gospel in God's kingdom in these unreached people groups. And so a few years ago, Roo left the organization that he was working with to start his own organization to plant churches, not just in underdeveloped countries, but in persecuted countries. So now he works exclusively with pastors who lead churches in countries in which it is illegal to lead that church. And so a few weeks ago, he told me that he was going to fly to Istanbul and he wanted to bring me with him just as an exposure trip, just so I could see it and be blessed by it. He wanted to bring me with him. And so I had the opportunity to go and not help train. That's way too, that gives me self-aggrandizing. I did not help do anything. I was able to watch them get trained. And it was a group of seven Iranian pastors. Four of them brought their wives. Two of them brought their moms. We called them the grandmas and they were incredibly wise and incredibly wonderful. And so I had the opportunity to go over and watch him work with these pastors. And by the way, this is a ministry that is led by Summit Church. So there's a guy named Nathan, and I think his story is amazing. At the end of the service today, I'm going to show you a video, a message from one of the pastors to us that's translated by Nathan. I will not be able to show that to you online. We're going to actually cut the feed for the safety of the pastor in the video, and then we'll show it just here in-house. But in that video, you'll see the Iranian pastor, a guy named Yahya, and then you'll see Nathan. Nathan fled Iran when he was 19 years old due to religious persecution, came over to the States, and began a social media account and has a huge social media presence in the Persian world where he spreads the gospel to Iran and to the Iranian diaspora all throughout the world. And he has a huge following. And at one point or another, he moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and he began to, he was a part of Summit Church. And then he loved J.D. Greer's sermons. That's a pastor over there. He loved his sermons so much that he started to retool them in Farsi and make the illustration something that Iranians could relate to and then preach them online and develop even more of a following doing that. And so then he went to Summit and he was like, hey, I'm doing this with your sermons. Is this okay? And they said, yes, of course it's okay. And he goes, by the way, I know a bunch of pastors that I'm still networked with, but they really need training. What can we do for them? And so they brought him on staff to help solve that problem. And then him and his boss, a guy named Chris Watkins, one of the missions pastors over there, started looking around for people who knew how to train pastors in underdeveloped, persecuted countries. And they found Roo. And now Roo has partnered with them to do what they're doing. And I got to tell you something. After being exposed to what Summit is able to do on a global scale, I've never cared about church growth. Not my thing. I care about church health and doing it the right way. But now I'm coming back and I'm like, y'all, we got to get in the building. We got to grow because we got to make a bigger kingdom impact. Invite your friends. Send out mailers. Let's make a video. Let's go. We've got to make a kingdom impact. Let's move it. I'm all about church growth. We're going to do some stupid Father's Day giveaway this year with a four-wheeler and a grill or something. So that's who I was with. So the first morning, I go into the room and I meet these pastors. And it was an incredibly humbling experience. Because every single one of the people in that room are risking jail time to do what they do. If their local authorities find out that they're having underground Christian services in their home, they can be arrested. If the wrong group of Muslims find out, and this is not a big if. This is not like me taking a chance going to Toxum Square on the 1.5% chance that somebody gets mad and punches me. It's not that kind of risk. It's a legitimate risk that if the wrong group of Muslims find out in their neighborhood what they're doing, they will beat them repeatedly until they stop. Or they will just murder them. And no one will care that that's why they were murdered. One guy told a story, Mikael. He said that they were talking about times that the Holy Spirit had guided them. And Mikael said that he had a neighbor that was harassing him and his family and his kids so bad, his wife and his kids so badly, that in the middle of the night he had to move away because he was fearful of what this neighbor might do. And he's so grateful that the Holy Spirit moved him to move on that night because the very next night, a lynch mob of Muslim men within the community stormed his house and burned it down in an attempt to kill him and his family. That's a real story that happened. And he told it like I would tell you I'm going to McAllister's for lunch today. And nobody in that room batted an eye. Nobody in that room said, oh my gosh, man, are you okay? I didn't know that. Like, if we share that story in an American small group, like the rest of the night stops and that's what we focus on. You share that in a group of Iranian pastors and they just go, oh, yeah, same. One guy made a joke. I couldn't believe this joke. And it crushed in the room. Everybody's laughing. This guy, Farh, was really funny. He said that he was sharing the gospel with somebody and the guy showed up at his house one day and was angry and he said, if God is real, how come my dad is dead? And Farood said, that's no problem. Mine's dead too. What else you got? It's just a joke he made. And it crushed like the whole room was dying laughing. They just live in a different world than us. Every one of them. They wake up every day. They kiss their wife and they kiss their kids. And the husband and wife don't know if they're going to see each other again for a while. Every day they could go out and the wrong person could find out what they've been up to and they will get arrested. And they'll be in prison for six to 18 months. And when they're in prison, they're away from their job. They're away from their family, they're away from their kids, they're away from their wife, they're away from their life, and they don't know what's going to happen to their family. And if you're an elder, there's three elders. If you're an elder and they find out, the Iranian government finds out that you're running a network, that there's other pastors underneath you, I was told that what tends to happen is you serve your 18 months and then within a year of your release, an accident happens and you're not there anymore. These men face beatings. They face arrest and ultimately they face martyrdom for their faith. So I was already prepared to be tremendously humbled when I walked into that room. And I had already thought about how ashamed I am of some of the things I complain about, having to sacrifice to build God's kingdom and to be a pastor when it isn't a fraction of what those men risk every day to build God's kingdom in Iran. So I already went in incredibly humbled by that. And then when we get there, it was pretty close to start time for session. And so we kind of say some hellos and we sit down. And then in the break between sessions, which those guys were getting it, we did four 90 minute sessions a day. It was a lot. In the first break, I'm walking down the hallway to find the restroom. And there's one, one of the hallway, and he's on his phone, and he looks at me, and he goes, and he walks up to me and gives me a huge hug. And while he's hugging me, and it wasn't like an American, like, how you doing, bro? It wasn't like one of those hugs. It was like how a grandfather hugs a grandson. Like, he just engulfed me, and I'm like, I guess this is what we're going for now. I guess I'm just settling into a Persian hug. While we're hugging in my ear, he says, my brother, my brother, every one of them came up and hugged me and learned my name and called me their brother, my brother, my brother. And it was so moving that by the time they were done, I had to get to the bathroom so I could close the door in a stall and just let myself gain my composure. Because I do not feel worthy of being their brother. Because what they do is so much harder than what I do. And those people that they pastor are your brothers and sisters too. And you'll meet them in eternity one day. They are our family. And it was incredibly moving to know that they so quickly regard me as their brother and you as their brothers and sisters. I was already ready and postured to learn from these pastors. As a matter of fact, that was the biggest thing that I went over there to do. My friend Rue had told me, which was very good for me. If you know me, you know this was an excellent exercise for Nate. He had told me as we were preparing, he was like, hey, listen, we're going to be in these sessions. I've got a translator. There's only one translator. He's working very hard. I've got a lot of information to get in. So, you know, just try to be really limited on interjecting or asking questions. Like, this is really not for you. It's for them. Like, you're an observer. And I said, got it. Speak when spoken to. And he was like, wasn't going to say it like that, but yes. And it was so, it was, y'all, I've never been around that many people for that long and used so few words. It was, I felt like Jonathan Poston. I just didn't say, I just didn't say anything at all, ever. It was crazy. You have a lot of time to think, dude. Like, I got to tell you. And so what I set myself about doing, because all I wanted to do is learn from them and their experience, is I had my laptop out and I wrote down every word they said. Every time an Iranian asked a question, every time they spoke up, every time they made a point. I wrote down the prompt that Ru had given so I would have some context for it. And then I wrote down their name and I wrote down a summary of what they said. Every single one. I've got a 9,500 word document on my computer of everything that they said all week long. So that I could listen to them and learn from them. And hear their hearts about ministry and how they do it. And here's my biggest takeaway from my time with those pastors as a group is just the vast difference in how the persecuted church behaves versus how the secure church behaves. There is a gulf of understanding and commitment between us, between American pastors, and the way that Iranian pastors think about their church and their mission. They use military language over there. The elders consider themselves the captains. The pastors, the foot soldiers. They have contingency plans in place. They are fighting a war. Discipleship over there isn't optional for them. It's urgent and necessary for them because Ruth would tell them, you are going to need to get beat up for the faith. And when you do, consider that suffering a gift from Jesus himself because nothing will spread the news of the gospel more quickly in your community than how you handle that beating. That was never said to me in seminary. They view themselves as soldiers in enemy territory trying to bring about a change as they build God's kingdom. They sincerely want to change the face of Iran. And I've said before that as you look through history, whenever you see a church in a persecuted area, that church is always thriving and always vibrant and always filled with the holiness and the fullness of God. And whenever you see a church that exists in a country or a culture where it's been allowed cultural primacy, where it's been set aside as this is our default setting. Think about Catholicism in the Middle Ages. Think about evangelicalism in the United States for the last 200 years. Whenever you see the church elevated to a place of cultural primacy, in walks corruption, in walks doctrinal issues, in walks power-hungry people, in walks greediness. In walks laziness. In walks the uncommitted. In comes the cultural faith that doesn't really mean it. When you are persecuted, you are lean and mean. And when you're risking your family and your reputation to step into that small church, you have to think twice before you do it. The bar of entry in American churches is so low that you can do it socially for your whole life and it not mean anything. So when I come back from seeing them and hearing them and writing down everything they said for five days, my overwhelming impression is just the gulf that exists between churches in persecuted countries and churches in secure countries. Which means that at Grace, it's our job to acknowledge that historical trend and to figure out how to be a church in a secure country that understands that our cultural Christianity is dying and should, but we want to rise from those ashes and taking on the mentality of a persecuted church. How do we do that? I don't know, but I know that that's our responsibility and I don't know what I'm going to do with that. I don't know if there's going to be a series or a training or just small things along the way. Or I don't know if I'll lose that conviction and just fall back into being fat and lazy and comfortable. I hope not. But we've got to do something with that. That's my takeaway from my time with the pastors as a whole. Now there's one pastor in particular that I want to tell you about this morning. And he actually illustrates the passage I knew I would be speaking about this morning. So if you have a Bible, turn to Mark chapter 9. We're going to be looking at verses 30 through 37. If you don't have a Bible, I would encourage you to pull out the one in front of you because I'm not going to have anything on the screen today. If you're using one of the blue Bibles, can you tell me what page this is on? Can you find it fast? And somebody just yell out the page. 1,000. I knew it. Perfect. All right. So page 1,000. Thanks, guys. That's the passage where we're going to be. This is the quintessential Mark passage. Okay. And I knew that I didn't want to prepare a sermon on this passage. I didn't want to prepare a sermon on this passage and not, do we have a different verse in the bulletin? Is that why you guys are laughing? Okay. I'll find out later. I didn't want to do a sermon on this passage without having that experience in Istanbul with the Iranian pastors, because I knew that if I were to write this sermon and then go over there and have that experience, I would want to change the whole thing. So I decided to wait until I'd have that experience and then come back and share with you what I learned. And so this is the quintessential Mark passage. The last two verses say that whoever wants to become great must be least, whoever wants to lead must be servant of all, okay? And so that is really, but there's one verse that summarizes the gospel of Mark, that's it. But I wanted to wait until this morning, and I'm waiting until now to bring it up in the sermon because there was one man that I met that personified this maybe better than anybody I've ever seen in my life, and that was the leader of their network of churches, a man named Yahya. I'm going to call him Yahya because that's what we called him. And to say Yahya sounds a little bit like an American going, I was in Colombia the other day. So I'm not going to do that crap. I'm just going to call him Yahya, okay, even though it's wrong, but we're going to agree to be wrong together. When I walked in and Ru introduced me to Yaya, and Yaya is probably in his early 60s, I would guess, maybe late 50s. When I saw him, he immediately looks at me, and Iranians have this thing they do where they go like this, my heart, my heart, I'm grateful for you. And he goes, like so many kind gestures. And he introduces himself, he holds out his hand and I shake his hand. He said, my brother, it's so good to have you here. Thank you so much for coming. And I'm like, are you kidding me? This is how many people get to sit in a room with persecuted pastors outside their own country and then get to meet the one that started this 20 years ago by himself? And this is only one network that Yahya leads. He has four or five groups of pastors that come to him for encouragement, for training, and he has his own churches that he leads. And the man runs a restaurant that's been in his family for generations. He's busy. Often, I put in front of you guys this verse from Colossians that says that we are led by Christ in triumphal procession and that through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. I have met maybe four people in my life, Yahya being the fourth, that is the very second I meet them, that's the sense that I get. This man is full of the Holy Spirit. I've never met this man in my life, but I know that he loves me. And I know that he loves everybody in this room. And I know that he knows God in a way that I have never approached. And I'm lucky to be in his presence. I think sometimes about the heroes that we'll meet in heaven. Those faithful believers who just quietly did God's work their whole life in far-flung places where they can't write books and they don't do podcasts and there's no conferences and we never hear about them. But they quietly and faithfully and humbly and lovingly did the work of God their whole life, built his kingdom. Yahya is one of these men. And it is one of my great privileges to have met him. And so as soon as I met him and got that sense of him, I watched everything he did. Like almost like a weird stalker, like I was locked in. I watched how he interacted with his pastors. I watched how he interacted with his wife, Vicki, and with his daughter. I watched how he caught food and made tea and let everyone else go first. I paid attention to when he raised his hand and when he didn't. I paid attention to where and why it seemed like he chose to chime in in the conversation for a man that knows all the answers to the questions that are being asked. And most people would use that as an opportunity to show off and to know the answers and to say the right thing. And maybe I'll let my staff talk for a little while, and then I'm going to come in and I'm going to give the really wise answer. He never did that. As a matter of fact, most of the time when he chimed in to talk, it was to repent in front of his other pastors and to say, we don't do this in my churches, and we need to, and I'm sorry. I watched the way that man holds leadership, and it is the personification of the verses that we have in Mark chapter 9. So let's go there and read them and then we disciples did not yet have a full perspective and understanding of who Jesus was and what he came to do. They expected that the Messiah was going to come, that he was going to rise into a position of political prominence, establish an earthly kingdom in Israel, and rule over all the world from Israel. Their vision was too small to understand that Jesus came to die and reconcile us back to the Father and establish a heavenly kingdom to exist for all eternity. Their imagination for who Jesus was and what he could do was too small. And we see that all through the Gospels. Okay, that's just a little sideline that I wanted to bring your attention to because when we start talking about Easter and the resurrection, that becomes really important. Verse 33, He took a little child whom he placed among them, taking the child in his arms, and he said to them, Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes by Yaya, so I brought this up with me. Now we're going to go back and we're going to look at this idea of whoever wants to be great needs to serve. Whoever wants to be first must be last. But before we do, just as further proof that Yahya is the personification of this. Look at those last two verses. He took a little child and he placed it among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to him, whoever welcomes one of these children in my name welcomes me. During the second break, Yahya was near me again and I said something to him, and he says, Yaya, John. And I go, John? And he goes, yeah. And I joked with him, and I said, Yaya is way cooler. And he laughed and whatever. But then I thought, he seems like a sweet man. He'll probably like to know that my son is named John. So I went, do we have the picture? Okay, I went up to him, and I said,, yeah. And he looked at me and I said, I put my hand on his chest. I said, John? And he goes, yeah. And I said, this is my John. And I showed him John. I showed him this picture. And yeah, yeah, it goes. And I kind of pulled it back. He goes, oh my God, let me see that again. And I pulled it back up and he zooms in on his eyes. And he goes, he has the most beautiful eyes. What a blessing. Oh my God, John, that is so lovely. Praise God. What a blessing. And he says, I will pray for him. I said, thank you, Yahya. Three days later, I got to a session. You can take that down. That's just going to be distracting because he's so precious. Three days later, I got to a session early. I'm the only American in the room, and the pastors are all talking, and they start kind of laughing. And Yaya's daughter, who apparently has worked on English, says, they're all talking about your son, John. They've all been praying for him every day this week. It's just humbling. Let me just be honest with you. That is not how I respond to pictures of your children. Okay? That is embarrassingly far from my character. And they meant it. They meant it. And those men who have so much to be concerned about. I asked Nathan, the refugee, I said, what's their level of concern when they fly back into the country? What's their stress level when they're going through customs just to get home? And he said, as high as it can be. They know that one of these days they're going to fly back in country and one of them is going to end up in a security office. And I said, can I please get a text to know that they all got home safely? And when I landed yesterday, I had a couple of texts on my phone telling me that they had. So we praise God for that. They have so much to worry about. And they choose to spend their time in prayer, praying for my son. And I was told, Nathan told me, he goes, you're lucky. He goes, they're not kidding around. There's people that we dealt with three years ago and they committed to pray for them. And whenever I see them, they still ask me about those people. They will ask me about John for the rest of the time I know them. That's what it is to be the servant of all. Whoever wants to be great must be least. And I watched the way he held his authority. I watched the way he held his authority with those men and women in that room. How he supported them and put them first, and how very different it is from most of the pastors in underdeveloped countries that I've been to. This is a very sad truth, but most environments like that, these men get really competitive and they make the church about their ego. They even come up with titles. If you're a church pastor, if you have one church, you're a pastor. If you have more, if you have two churches, you get to be a priest. And if you have multiple churches, you're a bishop. And, and if you're, if you're a priest and not a bishop, you can't talk to a bishop. And if you're a, if you're a pastor, you can't talk to a priest. And if you're a pastor and a bishop is talking to you, you better listen or you'll be out of the church. It's very territorial and it's very sad. But it's not too different than how Americans hold authority either, is it? When we get positions of authority, we think about the rights and privileges that will be afforded to us by that authority. We think about what sort of things can I get to do. I remember vividly when I was 27 years old, I got hired as a Bible teacher and school chaplain at Covenant Christian Academy in Loganville, Georgia. And I remember after I got hired, it was the summertime and I had to ask, can I go begin to get my room ready? They said, sure. And I walked into my classroom for the first time. And I remember looking at it thinking, this is mine. I get to do what I want to in here. I'm going to, I think I have to design a bulletin board. How much can I, what's the least amount that I can put on that and not get in trouble? I was excited to come up with my own class rules. I'm the authority here. I get to, what I say goes. And so I sat down and I tried to generate some class rules and I landed on one class rule. This will surprise none of you. The one, the one class rule I had in my classroom was don't be dumb. That was it. I had it on the bulletin board and those stupid teacher round letters that you staple on. I had don't be dumb on my bulletin board. That was the one class rule. This made discipline very easy because when Aaron is in my class and he does something, he shouldn't, he cheats or he throws something at someone else or whatever it was. I pull Aaron outside and I say, Aaron, is what you did dumb? And he goes, yes, Mr. Rector. And I go, okay, so I'm going to have to punish you. Yes, Mr. Rector. All right, great. Let's go back in. It was very, very simple. But all I cared about in being an authority was what I got to do. And often this is how we hold it. Different than Jesus. Different than Yahya. When we get positions of authority, we think, oh, what do I get to do with this? What good things happen to me? How can I leverage this to continue to grow my authority? And when Jesus gives authority, and when Yahya receives authority, the primary question he is asking is, Father, how can I use this position to serve the people that you've entrusted to me? How can I use this authority to build them up? If we understand leadership to be intentionally deployed influence, which is how I understand it, then how do we use our influence to give away more influence to the people who follow us so that they can rise above us? This is how he holds his authority. Next week, I'm thinking about preaching about how that is possible. But for now, I'm going to leave this there. I told you I wasn't preaching to you this morning. I'm not driving to a single point. I'm sharing with you what I took away from this experience. And those are the two things I took away. First, we must learn what it would look like to behave as a persecuted church in a secure church culture. We must learn to behave more like them if we don't want to die on the vine like the rest of American churches. B, we must learn, I must learn to hold my authority the way that Yahya does. I must learn to hold my authority the way that Jesus tells us to, with an open hand, seeking to serve the people that we are in authority over, not seeking selfishly to make that authority about ourselves. We need to be more like the Iranian church and our leaders need to be more like Yahya. Let me pray and we're going to do a song and then I have a really special treat for those of you that are here in person after that. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you for the experience that you gave me. Thank you for impressing upon Rue to invite me. Thank you for the way that it's enriched me. And God, I just pray sincerely that grace can be enriched through my enrichment. That from your fullness flows grace upon grace. And from the fullness that you've given me, God, let it flow onto grace. That we might be a church that behaves more like there's something to do here, like there is a war to fight, that there is a battle to be won. And let us start that by holding our authority and loosely holding it like Jesus tells us to, holding it like my brother Yahya does. Make us more like them so that we might serve you better, so that we might reach future brothers and sisters and bring them into your family. Thank you for the week that you gave me. I pray that I would allow it to change me profoundly and that that change would be communicated and connected to this church at Grace and that we would be exactly who and what you've called us to be. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, Grace. Oh, look at that. See, they clap and they answer. I don't know how I did that, but thank you all for being here. As Nate said, I'm Erin. I am the children's pastor, so I'm very excited to be out of little church and part of big church this morning. It's kind of a fun place to be. I'm also a little apprehensive to stand up here for a couple of different reasons. One, there's people in the audience that I didn't expect to be here, so that one adds a whole other layer to my morning, which is fun. But the other one too is that the book of Philippians that we get to talk about today is a really cool book, and it's a lot of fun, but it's also a very personal book. And I found it to be very personal for Paul as well as for me. So as I jumped in and started to study, I came very quickly upon the area that I felt is where I wanted to land. And so I continued to study. I continued to do my research. And then on top of it, I met with Nate, who helped me to even narrow my focus a little bit more. Because you guys know me. I have lots of words. He does not. And so the two of us hopefully could, yeah, pare it down just a little. But I got all of that together. So I now have my outline. I'm so excited. And I sat down to try to write, and I had no words. Zero. And again, if you know me, that's a rarity. And so I struggled for a long time, and there was one night after a particularly hard day of no words, I came home and I was talking to Harris, my sweet husband, lamenting the fact that I had no words. And he stops me in my tracks and he says, hey, Aaron, have you ever thought about the fact that you have no words because you're trying to protect yourself? And I said, what? No, I don't do that. And he said, well, yeah. He goes, you have been trying in all of your power to live out what you want to talk about for the last two and a half years. And he said, maybe it's time for you to break down the walls that you're using to protect yourself and put your words on paper. And so I took his great advice, And I must admit he was right. It's hard to say that. No, I'm kidding. But seriously, I took his advice. And the next day I looked at the passage with new eyes. And the words began to flow. So to you, Nate, a small apology. Because this may not be exactly what we talked about, but I hope that what I do get to present today is honoring to Paul and Paul's message to the Philippians, which I think is also very relevant to us today. So, let's jump in. One of the things about me that you may or may not know also is I am a huge history lover. I actually went to school to teach history. I never actually did that officially, but that's okay. But I believe that in history, in order to completely understand it, sometimes you have to get a full, like the back story. And then it all starts to make a whole lot more sense. So in our morning this morning, you're going to hear some of the backstory about the book of Philippians, so hopefully we understand where Paul is writing from. So we'll start though with the book of Philippians. Paul, it's AD 62. Paul is in a prison cell in Rome awaiting trial. This beautiful trial is going to basically allow, tell him whether he's going to live or die. That's kind of what he's waiting on. So in order to pass the time, he is ministering to those people who are visiting him. He is writing letters of correction and encouragement to his churches. Now, the prison cell that he sits in is not like anything we would understand today. He's in shackles all of the time, most likely shackled to a Roman soldier. And then the Roman penal system required him to provide his own room and board. So he sits in a prison cell, can't go anywhere, can't do anything, but they expect him to be able to pay his way. So he is completely and totally reliant on people for his care. This is where the sweet church of Philippi actually comes in. So now if we back up 10 years, we find Paul and Silas and Timothy and Luke all heading out on their second missionary journey. And as they have gone to left Antioch, they're in Galatia, they're running around Galatia, they've done their thing. They say, I want to move west. And so they try to go westward. And every time they make that trip towards the west, which would be Asia, they run into these roadblocks. And if you go into Acts 16, which is where this story is, you find out Paul attributes every single one of those roadblocks to the Holy Spirit, saying it's not time for you guys to go to Asia yet. And so like every good southerner, Paul and his friends decide to regroup and they head to the beach. They head to a little town called Troas, which sits on the Aegean Sea. And they camp out there for a while to try to discern what their next steps are. And then one night, Paul has a dream. And in this dream, there's a Macedonian man who appears to him and begs him to come to Macedonia. So you know where this is headed. He tells his friends. They get into a boat. They cross the Aegean Sea, and they head to Macedonia. The really cool side note to this is Macedonia is present-day Europe. So what we're talking about now is the first time the gospel has ever reached Europe, which I just think that's really, really cool. So they end up on the coast. They get off. They jump on what's called the Ignatian, if I pronounced that right. Who knows? Way. Which was a road that was constructed by the Roman Empire to connect all of the Roman colonies. One of those Roman colonies was Philippi. Philippi had become a Roman colony at the end of a civil war. The winner of the civil war had then become emperor. And he chose Philippi as a colony because it was rich in gold. It had fabulous location to the coast. And he'd also then decided that it was a great retirement location for all the Roman soldiers. So kind of like the villages in Florida. So this Philippi that Paul and his friends would have been walking up on held great prominence in Macedonia. They would have walked up to these amazing walls that were there to protect the city and a spectacular road system, which was all testimony to its strategic importance and all of the Roman influence. And then as they walked down the city streets, they would see this amazing Roman architecture. There would be temples to the Roman gods. There would be a bustling city life. And on top of that, the population would have been pretty diverse. You would have had the retired Roman soldiers. You also would have had other Roman citizens that had come to Philippi because, you know, it's kind of a cool city. And then on top of it, you're going to have the local Greek population. The one thing, however, that there were, I guess I should say, there were a few things that were missing. So as Paul and his friends are in the middle of Philippi, it becomes the Sabbath and they go to look for a place to worship. Now, Paul and the previous places that he would visit, they would always head to a synagogue as a place of worship. There was not a single synagogue in Philippi. And so the interesting part to this is it only takes 10 Jewish men in order to be classified as a synagogue. So there's a whole population of people that would have been familiar to Paul and his friends that are completely missing. So Paul leaves. He heads outside the city and goes to the river to worship. When he gets to the river, he meets a woman by the name of Lydia and some of her followers or her friends. They were all followers of God. He had a moment with them. Their hearts were open. He was able to preach the gospel. Lydia and her entire family are baptized. They come to know Christ. They are now officially the first recorded believers of Christ in Europe. I think that's just really cool. And so then you have this moment. Lydia says, okay, you guys now have to use my house. It needs to be your headquarters. You can just come and rest and eat and do all that stuff and travel and whatever you need to do. This is where you need to go. So they did. They used her house as headquarters. They ran back and forth. They continued to preach and they teach. They managed to get themselves in more trouble. Paul and Silas end up in jail again. Paul seems to like jail. It's just a good thing for him. But he ends up in jail again. Something about a slave girl and a demon. He cast them out and made people mad. I don't know. They ended up in jail. But while he's in jail, there's an earthquake. And because of that earthquake, the jailer and his whole family come to Jesus. So now all of a sudden we have two groups of people that are going to come together to form this beautiful church of Philippi. And so at this, he is released from jail and he decides it's probably a good idea if he leaves Philippi. They're not sure that they really like him there. So as they pack up to leave, he leaves Lydia and her family and the Roman soldier and his family to form this sweet church of Philippi. And so it's a church that sits in a city of prominence. It's a church full of believers that are now going to face a great deal of resistance and a great deal of persecution. If you go back to what we're looking at, Roman soldiers who believe in the Roman Empire, they believe in the Roman Emperor as God. There's going to be a lot of resistance. There'll be a lot of persecution, but they're in it. So here we now find Paul sitting and writing letters, and he picks to write a letter to his friends in Philippi. But the really cool thing about this letter is that it's really, really different from all of the other letters that he's written. You heard from both Aaron and Doug on Galatians and Ephesians, and there was moments of correction in there. He had heard that there were things going wrong in these churches, and he needed to correct it. That's not what this letter's about. This letter, Paul's basically, it's like you would sit down to write a letter to a friend. How are you doing? This is what I've been up to. What have you been up to? I hope you are well. Thank you so much for the gift that you sent me. It's done X, Y, and Z to help me. And that's what he does here. Because see, the church of Philippi had been a partner with Paul from the very beginning in his spread of the gospel. They had supported him in every way possible, whether it was people, whether it was money, whatever Paul needed, the Church of Philippi was consistent in their support. And so this letter shows that as he writes to them. You can also tell through the words that he uses and the way that the letter is phrased that he knows that he's writing to a mature group of Christians, a group of Christians who totally understand who the person of Christ is, the sacrifice that he made, as well as understanding that their citizenship is not quite here. It's in heaven. But also knowing that they have to figure out how to live in the here and now, in the city where it's full of the struggle of temptations of the flesh, its struggle with the constant fears of persecution. And so I can also say it kind of sounds like the world we live in today, right? We're believers. We sit knowing who Christ is. We sit understanding what he did for us, but also knowing our citizenship's in heaven. But how do I live right here and right now? We live in a world with a 24-hour news cycle. There's a little fear there, right? We live in the world with social media that can make us feel so often about that we're just not good enough. We've lived through a pandemic. We've come out the other side. It may have given us a few layers of fear now. Also can it happen again. And what's it going to be like if it does. And then if you're a parent or a grandparent. There may be a whole other layer of fear that you have. Because you are talking about your kids. Or your grandkids. And what the world is like. And the things that they have to face. So in this thank you note, Paul says to them as well as to us, it becomes this letter of an encouragement. And he says, you need to hold fast and hold strong. And you need to be there with a mindset like Christ, because he knows if you can control, if they can control their thoughts, that they can change the direction of their lives. He knows that the renewed mind leads to a life transformed. And this is what he actually says that the Christ-like mindset is. If you look at Philippians chapter 4, verse 8, it states, Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things. So Paul says to him, you need to shift your focus and fill your thoughts with the truth of God's word. You need to look at the world with the eyes and the lens of humility, of justice, of finding ways that your thoughts and your actions are attractive to others, that they're filled with gratitude and praise, and that you're grounding yourself in this present moment that we live in and finding God in the circumstances. I believe Paul knew his audience exceptionally well, because as I read this, and I imagine the Philippians heard it as well in his letter and went, hmm, that might be easier said than done. And it's true. This is not easy. But I believe Paul then gives us an action plan to help us learn how to renew our minds. And it's important to note that like any other action plan that you may have in your life, like to lose weight or to exercise more, whatever it may be, if you're not consistent in it and if you don't put in the time and the energy and the work, it's not going to do anything. So we need to be focused on it. So if you want to renew your mind so that you live a transformed life, the first thing that he talks about is that we must learn to choose joy. And if you look at Philippians chapter four, verse four, he says it, rejoice in the Lord always. I say it again, rejoice. And like any good pastor, if he wants you to remember it, he says it twice. Rejoice. I say it again, rejoice. I was in a small group leader for many years for a really cool group of girls. And from 6th grade to 12th grade for them. And when they graduated, they gave me a ring, which I still wear periodically. Inscribed on the ring, it says, choose joy. Come to find out, this may have been one my favorite phrases for them because, you know, sixth to 12th grade is the crazy time anyway. And what I wanted them to understand, and that's what Paul talks about in this passage, is the fact that you don't always have control over your circumstances. Circumstances change all the time. We may not be able to control them, but we do have control how we choose to respond to that circumstance. So, you know, we'd hear it from them. But, you know, I can't have joy because so-and-so broke up with me. Or I can't have joy because I can't go to the party next week or in our situation it may be more things like I can't have joy because I just got that medical diagnosis. I can't have joy because I lost my job. But my response to that is this is where we get to choose to have joy. I can't, I can't help the medical diagnosis, but I can shift my focus and choose to have joy in that moment. And what this comes down to is that we change our thinking from the what, which is very temporal, to the who, which is very internal, our joy abounds. I can have joy in that situation because he is the author and perfecter of my faith. I can have joy in that situation because he says he will never leave me nor forsake me. So, choose joy. The next thing he says that we need to do is we need to learn to release it. And I'm not talking about releasing your joy. We want to hold on to that joy. What he's talking about here is releasing your control. Let me, let me expand upon that. Verse six in Philippians four says, So we walk in a world today where we face stress, we face anxiety, we face fear, we face worry. It's all very normal. The thing that isn't is when it has control over us. And I think as a side note I need to put in here is that this anxiety, this fear, this worry that I speak of is the stuff that we just normally have as a human being living in the world, the fallen world that we live in today. There are other people who fear, worry, and anxiety are actually part of a mental health situation. And to them, I say, what we talk about today, it helps. But your medication and your therapist and everything else that you're doing helps also. You bring God into the situation, but you don't. I'm not going to stand up here and say you're praying away anything because that's not true. Okay. So now I come back to where I was. So fear, anxiety, et cetera, the world we live in, it causes it. It's normal. We don't want it to have control over us. That's just what we don't, we don't want to do it. Um, and when it starts to have control over us, what we start to see is because we're humans and because we hate pain and we want to do everything in our life to avoid pain, we will try to control or we will try to fix the situation that we're in. Because that pain of failure, that pain of loss, that pain of rejection is too much. So we choose to hold on super, super tight to it. Because then that way it's safe, right? I'm safe. I'm not hurt. But guess what? I'm exhausted because I'm working so hard not to release it, but to control it and to hold on to it. And, you know, it also states in Scripture, God says, cast all your cares on me because he cares for you. And so he cares so much he sent Jesus to die for you. So why are you still holding on to it? And if you look at verse 7, and then it puts up protectors around your heart and around your mind. So the next time you walk into the next situation, that peace is there if you're willing to let go of the control and stop thinking that you can hold on to it. So what circumstance is it that you are holding on to and refusing to allow God to work in it? What situation keeps you up at night? Who's had that 3 a.m. wake up call? I know. Go ahead and nod your head because it happens. But what are you holding on to so tightly that you can't allow God's peace to enter into it because you want to control it? Think about what would happen if you gave it all over to him. Because here's the thing, when we're in those situations where we're stressed, we're worried, we're anxious, etc. How are you as a person? How do you respond to your family? I don't know. Harris has seen it before. The more stress I'm under, the shorter I am, the grumpier I am, the angrier I can be. But yet if the peace comes in, now what happens? Then I'm hopefully responding to situations where I'm annoyed with a little bit more patience. Or maybe some more joy or love or gentleness or kindness or whatever it is. So when we talk about renewing your mind to transform your life, this is the kind of things that we're talking about. The change that can happen inside of relationships just because. You may not realize it, but that angst that you have, that stress that you're carrying is affecting those around you. And so by accepting God's peace and walking in it, it changes that. So this also then brings us back to where we started in verse 8. Because here we are. We now know that we want to choose joy. We now know that we want to release it all. But that still does not really help us out with, again, that mindset and how to live directly in the here and now. Because, again, we live here. You're going to have thoughts, right? The world that we live in today, there are a thousand things vying for your attention and your thought life. But guess what? I'm going to tell you again. You have control over your thought life. Huh? And I know that one seems big, but you really and truly do. You get to choose and decide what takes up real estate in your brain. You get to choose and decide what it is that you want to focus your thoughts on. The thing about the human brain is the way that it's actually wired is to conserve energy. So if your normal thought pattern is kind of negative, goes down that what-if trail often, so every time thoughts come in, that's where they're going to go. So this is the renewing of the mind part is that we don't want it to go down a negative path anymore. We want to renew it so it has the mindset of Christ so that we're now, when the thoughts come in, they take a different path because that's become the easy path. So what's that filter? That filter again is verse eight. You think about these things. You run all of those thoughts through what verse eight says. The truth of God. You have the truth of God in your hands. If it doesn't meet up with the truth of God, throw it away and don't give it time in your thoughts. If it isn't lovely, if it isn't pure, if it isn't honoring, if it isn't praiseworthy, just don't even give it your time or your attention. Is it going to be easy? No, it's not. Because again, what's the easiest thing for us to think on? Right? Where's your brain? The easiest place to think on quite often for us is the what ifs and the oh noes because that's where we've been. Another way to possibly think about this that I love is we are our own worst critic, right? So we have to stop listening to ourselves and start talking to ourselves instead. Quit listening to the lies that the world tells us. Quit listening to that little voice inside your head that tells you you're not enough, you're not good enough. You can't stand up in front of all those people. Like whatever it is that that little voice is telling you, you got to push it aside. And when I say you start talking to yourself, start talking to yourself through the lens of 4-8. Start talking to yourself like a coach. Yeah, we messed up this time. But guess what? We're going to get it right next time. And soon, you'll be hearing the words of God reiterating who you are in him. That you are capable. That you are lovely. That you are worthy, that he loves you. And that you can trust him. That even though my circumstances stink, he's right here with me. And then eventually we begin to interpret our circumstances through the goodness of God. And as we step into truth, we hear his voice and the words of scripture and we learn to trust. A few years ago, my circumstances changed. My parents were living part-time lives halfway in Florida, halfway in North Carolina. They were in their 80s and very independent and doing exceptionally well. Then one summer when my mom was home, we had some health issues. There was a fall,ed up with a little memory issues, kind of hiccups, whatever you want to call them. They made the decision not to go down to Florida that summer. And instead, or that winter, I should say. Instead, hang out in North Carolina and see if we could see where we were headed, right? Needless to say, her health continued to decline some. Dad made the decision, we're done, sold the place in Florida. They're now in Pinehurst full-time. It's fabulous because they're close, and we get to run back and forth. We get to hang out together, and the world is really good. But my mom's health and her mobility continued to decline over this time. And then in my dad, I began to see a lot of what we talked about today. His circumstances were not ones he wanted to be living in. And the fear of losing my mom did this to him. And he tried to control and fix all the things. Because, you know, she was his best friend. She was his soulmate. They had been together at this point like 62 years. And so he's holding on like this. And what he was doing by holding on like this, he turned into somebody who, for us, was hard to deal with sometimes. He got kind of, there were moments of anger. There were moments just pure frustration. We also had anxiety. It was all there, all the things that we've talked about. And he was grumpy, which if you've ever met my dad, grumpy was not a word that you would have used to describe him. So he's holding on for dear life. And in turn, I'm caught in the middle because I'm dealing with my mom as well as my dad and all of the frustrations that come trying to not choose sides. I can see his side. I can see hers. I'm trying to, you know, all the things, right? And the other thing I was trying to do too was fix it and control it. There were days that I will stand up before you and honestly admit I did not choose joy. There were days that trying to think about that which was true and lovely and pure and honest, and that just was not thoughts that crossed my brain. I tried, but it's not things that always came easy. Stress levels continued to increase. Then my dad had some health issues. We go down that rabbit trail because my mom's of no help, so it falls on my shoulders to help manage his care as well. So lots of running back and forth, lots of doing all that. The end of 2022 is the beginning of my mom's major decline. We end up in the hospital for many days. The hospice is called in. And then my mom passes away at the beginning of December of 2022. My dad was wrecked. The grief that hit my father at that point in time was beyond anything I'd had experienced. His wife of 63 years, it was hard. And again, he still had hoped so much to control, and that control just didn't work. So as you can only guess, I jumped in because he's a mess and he needs somebody to take care of him. So I went immediately into caregiver mode. I took off. We had to find him a place up here because, you know, he can't be in Pounders by himself. So thankfully I was gifted with, right? We found a really cool independent living community. He's actually across the street from me. We get him up here. We get him settled. And it is good. So I call this kind of our year of temporary peace. His veil of grief lifts a little. He makes friends. He's hanging out. He finds his new routine. He misses my mom every single day. But he's enjoying his time with us and we're loving having him with us. He's there for all of the birthdays and the holidays. We got to celebrate his 90th and it was fantastic. He was here when Haley and Zach got engaged. It was just an amazing year together. I think at this point in time for all of us, joy became a little easier to choose. We may have let go of control just a little bit. Because the one thing that I probably didn't mention about me and my control was this, to me me became my lifeline. Because the one thing I knew in dealing with both my mommy and my dad was that if I let go of this in my heart, in my brain, I felt I would drown. And so I held on with everything that I had because I, yeah, I was scared to death to let go for fear of not being able to come back up. And so last, this past April, my dad had a fall. So my temporary peace has now gone to here. It wasn't a big fall. It scared us all a little. It wasn't a big deal. We moved on. Harris and I are going out of town. We came back from out of town. My dad is in basically excruciating back pain. There's no explanation for it. So we spent the next week trying to figure out what's going on. Thought we were headed towards some answers and then we had another fall. Ended up in the hospital because of the fall. That was on a Monday. That Wednesday evening and the hospital stays were something that's for a whole other sermon. But that Wednesday evening, we finally got him to a place of rest. I kissed him on the top of his head. I told him I loved him, and I said, I'll see you tomorrow. Remember, I've got you. I went home. I went to bed. Middle of the night, I got a phone call. Your dad's taking a turn. We need you to come to the hospital. I'm holding at this point in time. Still holding on as tight as I can. But y'all, I got into that car and said, I can't do this. And I let go. And the whole way to the hospital, I just prayed, Lord, your will, not mine. Lord, I need you to be my rock and my strength in this moment. Your will, not mine. Now, come to find out, I pulled into the parking lot at Wake Med. And I know now that that was when my daddy went and met Jesus. And so when I walked into his room, y'all, he had a smile on his face. And I know in my heart that daddy came to his peace in the arms of Jesus. And he saw my mama. And the thing is, I found my peace too. I released it. I let it go and I let him have it. And that one moment of release was what I needed. Now, my circumstances are, I don't know that they've changed. I can't say that they've changed. They're just different. I now stand before you. I've lost both of my parents in the last 17 months. I'm dealing with all of the things related to dad and what's left behind. But the one thing I do know is that I live each day now in the moment. I don't focus on the what ifs. I don't go to those things that I can't, I have no control over. I try to stay grounded, choosing my joy, choosing to come at it with prayer and open hands and trying my very best that when those thoughts and those what ifs and all the things try to come into my brain, that I don't let it take up real estate and I push it aside. It's not easy. But the peace that I have when I do make those choices, I want more of. And so the daily, the hourly exercise of doing that, I will continue to do. And so here we have five little verses tucked at the back of this beautiful letter and thank you note that Paul wrote that act for us as an action plan so we can renew our minds to live a transformed life. Sounds easy. It's going to take lots of work. That day-to-day commitment about choosing joy releasing it and then I'm being very intentional about what comes into our thoughts so I want to ask you Grace Raleigh as we close it all up today where are you stuck in your circumstances so stuck that you've lost your joy or that you're finding that you want to control or hold on to your situation so much so that you're exhausted and you don't know what to do with it. Where are you allowing the world to influence your thoughts, to allow your thoughts to become that vicious cycle of fear and worry and anxiety? So can you instead release it knowing that when you release it, you will find his peace, a peace beyond all understanding that will guard your heart and guard your mind as you walk into your next circumstance. Will you all pray with me? Lord, thank you. Thank you for today. Thank you for your peace. And for Paul knowing that a renewed mind leads to a transformed life. So Lord, thank you that we have your words and that we have you by our side to know how to choose your peace, to choose your joy, and most of all, in all situations, to choose you. We just ask that you help each and every one of us, Lord, to be able to walk this action plan with intentionality and to live in your peace. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

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

Well, good morning and Happy New Year. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for making grace a part of your New Year. For those for whom this represents a New Year's resolution to come to church with more consistency, I will try my best to not make you regret that while I'm preaching this morning. I've also, I feel like I should just address this, I've been told this morning that I look like I'm going on a ski trip, that I look snuggly, that I look like an author. And then Keith back there in the hat, he's wearing a hat in church. He's sacrilegious. He told me that the white balance was off and asked me if I could change my sweater. So this is, I'm going back to the quarter zips next week, but start off the year with a sweater. Here we are. Speaking of starting off the year, I wanted, I thought a lot in the fall about how to start 2024. What was the best way for us as a church to launch into a new year? And the passage that came to mind is maybe my favorite passage in the Bible. And I know that if you've been coming to Grace for any amount of time, you know that my favorites mean nothing. Because I play it pretty fast and loose with favorite. But this one is so favorite that when we moved into our house, we moved into a new house in July of 22. And I first time in my life, I had a committed space for my own office at home. The first thing I did is reach out to Jen, my wife, her cousin, who is a wedding calligrapher, or I guess just calligrapher in general. I got her to write this out for me. We framed it, and it's in my office. It's that favorite. It's a prayer that we find in the book of Ephesians. So if you have a Bible with you, I would love for you to open that up, turn to Ephesians chapter 3. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. Our worship pastor, Aaron Gibson, asked me if I could start to preach. Well, he said, can we buy new ESV Bibles for the church? Because you always preach from the ESV and it's confusing because you read from your Bible and it doesn't match anything anywhere. And I said, how about instead I'll just use my old NIV Bible and I'll preach from that. So you should be able to read along with me this year, which is a welcome change, I'm sure. So turn your Bible to Ephesians chapter three. What you'll find in verses 14 through 19 is a prayer. This is, this prayer has shaped almost everything about the way, and I'm tempted to say the way that I do ministry, but that's not really it. It's really the way I live life, the way I think about others, the way I pray for others. This prayer is what I pray over every new baby that's born to friends or to people at church. This is what I pray over people who are getting married, high school graduates, college graduates. This is what I pray over my children. It's what I pray over the church. It's what I pray over you when you're sick. It's what I pray over you when you are in times of plenty. It's what I pray over you when you are in times of need. This color is how I pray for everyone in my life. And so I wanted to start the year off by going through this prayer with you. So for the next four weeks, all the Sundays in January, we're just going to stay right here in Ephesians chapter 3, verses 14 through 19. It gives us a lot of time to pull it apart and look at it and understand it. Now one of the things that I think is really interesting about this prayer is you can find a prayer pretty similar to this in a lot of Paul's letters. This prayer is not dissimilar from what he prays for the rest of the churches. Now for those of you who don't know the Bible well enough to know Paul's letters, that's what I'm referring to, a significant part of the New Testament, two-thirds of it, is letters from Paul to churches. Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and 1 and 2 Corinthians. Those are letters to churches that Paul started on his missionary journeys, and then he writes a letter back to them for whatever reason, to admonish them, to encourage them, to convict them, to whatever, different purposes for different letters. And so in the middle of his letter to the church in Ephesus, he says, he prays this prayer. And what captures me, well there's a lot that captures me about the prayer, but one of the things I notice first when I read this prayer is the opening line. We're not going to read it just yet. But the opening line, we do read it, you'll notice. He says, for this reason, I bow my knees before the father from whom every family on heaven and on earth is named. So what he's saying in that first sentence is this. For this reason, I bow my knees. This is why I pray for you when I pray for you, which I do. This is what I pray. And if this is what Paul prays for all of the churches that he started, and if this prayer shows up in other letters, then isn't it worth examining the prayer and praying it over people in our lives? We're actually making this the prayer for grace in 2024. I believe there are some magnets involved. Are there magnets involved? Are we doing those? Yeah, yeah, we're going to do some magnets. In the next week or two, we'll have magnets with the verse printed on it so you can put it on your refrigerator, wherever you want to, so you can see it. And we would invite you to, along with us, make this your prayer for you and your family and the people you love and for grace in 2024. But when you think about what the prayer is, one of the things that stands out to me is what Paul does not pray for. I think almost as powerful as what he does pray for are the things that he leaves out. And this is what shapes the way I pray for people a lot. I want you to think with me, and I mean this. Do this exercise with me. Put yourself in Paul's shoes. The church in Ephesus is a church you started. You know the people there. You care about them. You spent time with them. You write them in other letters that you want to go there. But there's a wide door open for a great work where you are now. You can't go there now, but you long to be with them. And then you're writing them a letter. And you say, hey, when I pray for you, this is what I pray. What would you pray for them? We would probably pray for safety, right? Because persecution was rampant in the ancient world. So we'd pray for safety. We would probably pray for circumstances. I hope you heal up. I hope this works out. I hope God shores up your family. We'd pray for different situations going on in there. I think we would probably, if we're the leader of the church, pray for success. May God add to your numbers day by day, those who are being saved, that kind of prayer that we see in Acts. I think that we would pray for those things. And when we pray for people we know, what do we pray for them? Don't we pray those things for safety and for circumstances and for success for them? So it's interesting to me that Paul does not pray for safety, circumstances, or success in this prayer. You will not see those things in this prayer. And it stands out to me because I don't know if I have the right to call myself a history nerd, but I read a lot of it, and I listen to history podcasts, so do what you want with that. Thanks, I'm a nerd, Jeff says. But the ancient world knew what suffering was in a way that is totally anathema to us. Birth rates, infant mortality rates, most children, I mean a good number of children just dying in infancy or as really, really young kids. The average age is significantly down, suffering rampant across the board. And yet Paul does not pray for safety or for circumstances or for health. He's a church planter. He's ambitious, uniquely ambitious in the scope of human history. He wants this church in Ephesus to succeed. I know he does. I know he wants it to grow, but he does not pray for that. Look, look at what Paul prays for. And I think you'll understand why we're going to spend four weeks in it. I'm going to's the whole prayer. This morning, we're going to narrow down our focus to the first thing that he prays for. So there's a bit of an introduction. He says, this is when I pray for you, this is why I pray. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father from every family on heaven and on earth is named. And then the first thing that he prays is that according to the riches of his glory, that you would be strengthened with power through the spirit in your inner being, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. The first thing that Paul prays for is salvation. The first thing that he prays for, for his church, is that they would be what we would call saved. That they would know Jesus. And it's interesting to me theologically, it's not much of a point, but I thought it was worth pointing out, the threefold involvement in the salvation process of salvation, what happens in salvation and how the Trinity, the God, the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit, the Godhead are all three involved in the salvation process. If you're a note taker, this is down in your notes, but I've moved it up to this point in the sermon because I felt like it fit better here. But just notice in the salvation process that salvation is the result of the Father's riches, the Spirit's power, and the indwelling of Christ. We see all three parts of the Godhead involved in the salvation process according to the riches of His glory, God the Father. That you'd be given power through the Spirit. That you'd be indwelled with Christ the Son. So it's interesting to me that the Trinity shows up in the salvation process. And it's interesting to me that the first thing that Paul prays for is that they, church in Ephesus, you, global church, would be saved. Now, we're going to talk about why I believe it's so important that this is the first thing he prays for. But before we do that, I want to stop and I want us to understand what it is to be saved. Because I've been in church world literally my whole life. And I've been in ministry world for over 20 years, which is crazy to think about. And I've had enough conversations with enough people who I know are good church Bible-believing people who in that conversation betrayed to me a lack of understanding around salvation and what it is. So while I know that it could seem rather elementary to start the year with these two fundamental questions, how do I get saved and what happens when I am saved? I also know that if I were to talk to all of you and ask you those questions, that the answers would probably not be clear and concise and unilateral. So I think it's worth defining those things here. So what does someone have to do to be saved? And when I say saved, what I mean is to exist in right relationship with God. And actually, we're going to define this in a little bit, what happens when we are saved. So I'll leave it for that. But what does someone have to do to be saved? Well, Paul answers this in the book of Romans. Romans is the most thick theological, densely theological book in the Bible where he goes to great lengths to explain what salvation is. For the first eight chapters of Romans, he is building a systematic argument, an understanding of what it means to be saved. So if it takes Paul eight whole chapters to help a church arrive at a fluency with salvation, then certainly we can say what I'm going to give you this morning is the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot more questions around salvation than I'm going to answer today. And if you have those questions, I would highly encourage you, talk to your small group leader. Talk to a friend who knows scripture. Come talk to me. Talk to someone you trust. Ask those questions. These are good questions to ask. But if we look at Romans chapter 10, verses 9 through 10, we can let Paul tell us what we have to do to be saved. Look at this with me. If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. So, what do we need to do to be saved? We are saved when we confess and believe. That's what it is. We are saved. We become a Christian when we confess with our mouth and we believe in our heart that Jesus is Lord. This is a more concise way of saying what I say often. Often, you can probably complete these sentences, I hope that you can by now, but I say often that to be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, that he did what he said he did, and that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. A shorter way to say that is Jesus is Lord. Just within that is all that context. So we are saved. We are a child of God when we confess with our mouth and believe in our heart that Jesus is Lord. It's that simple. It's also worth pointing out, because of conversations I've had, what doesn't save us. Because I've been around church people long enough to know that we're not always trusting in the right thing to save us. Some of us put our faith in things that are ancillary, auxiliary to the salvation process. I know if you grew up in my tradition, it was really, really important that you nailed the prayer. You had to get the prayer just right. Anybody grow up praying the prayers? Yeah. And then you look at that as my salvation moment. This is when I asked Jesus into my heart. And then I'm saved. And then if you have a background like me, you're in church all the time. And so multiple times, I prayed that prayer for the first time at four and a half. I was at Sunday school. They told me about hell. That place seemed pretty bad. I was like, what do I have to do? You got to pray this prayer. I'm like, I'll pray it. I'm in. Seems easy. And then I told my parents about it. And my dad, who graduated from a Bible college, quizzed me. I passed the test. We went out for Butterfinger Blizzard. I was way more excited about the blizzard than I was that I was an adopted son of the king of the universe. So it's actually useful to point out that our understanding of salvation changes over our lifetime. What salvation was really clicked with me when I was 17. And I have a fresh and new depth of understanding of what it means to be a child of God every year that I walk with him. I think that's why Paul tells us in Philippians that we should work out our salvation with fear and trembling. When you're walking with God, your understanding of what it means to be his child and a citizen of heaven evolves and grows along with your faith. But I can remember, subsequent to praying that prayer when I was four, I'd be in other gatherings and there'd be a speaker, a youth event or a kids event or whatever. And at the end, he would do this thing. It was always a he in those days. He would do this thing and he would say, everybody bow your heads. Every head bowed, every eye closed. And then he'd say, if you don't know Jesus, would you just slip up your hand? I heard somebody over here say slip up your hand. We know slip up your hand. We know that. I have PTSD from slip up your hand. And then you're down and then the speaker would be like, I see that hand. Bless you back there. I see you. Do all that stuff. And who knows if hands are really going up or not. Some guys, I know for a fact, some guys fake it. Nobody's raising their hand. They just do it anyways. But you can't look, because if you look to know nobody's raising their hand, then it's like double whammy. You just sinned too, so you've got just trust the guy. Slip up your hand, and then he says, repeat after. If you just raise your hand, repeat after me. And so you repeat this prayer. And I can remember sitting there, and I would hear elements of that prayer that I didn't pray in my prayer. And I'm like, oh no. I'm damned. Like literally. This is a problem. So then I would pray that prayer just to make sure I was good. I've prayed the salvation prayer a bunch of times. I've gotten all the elements. Now here's the funny thing. The power of what saves me is in my desire to get the prayer right. It's confessing with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and believing in my heart ardently, oh no, if he's not really my Lord, I need to say the prayer right. The belief and the confession is what God is working in to save my soul. I believe, I really do, my daughter Lily is almost eight. She's confessed with her mouth that Jesus is Lord. She believes in her heart, I know that she does, that Jesus is Lord. We've never sat down with her and prayed a prayer. I'm sure we will at some point. And that to her can be the marker of her salvation. That's fine. But Lily's as saved now as she can be because she's confessed and believed based on that passage in Romans. I'll tell you what else doesn't save you. And I don't say this lightly because I know that we have a lot of different traditions in here. And it's one of the things I love about our church, but baptism does not save you. It is not something that saves you is described as salvific. Baptism is not salvific. If,, and I say this very gently, if you are one who is sprinkled as a child, or you had your child sprinkled or baptized, and you're trusting that as what has saved them, I don't think you'll find that in Scripture. I don't think that's what we can cling to. We believe that baptism is actually, we teach that baptism is actually for people who have articulated a faith, who have articulated a confession and a belief, and that we baptize by immersion. I would stop here and say, if baptism is something that the Holy Spirit's been gnawing at you about, and you're hearing this at the beginning of the year right now, and you're going, oh shoot, he's talking to me. I am. I am talking to you. You should do it. Let's talk. But baptism doesn't save us. Baptism is a public profession of a private prayer. It simply declares that we're a child of God. Another thing that doesn't save us, and I bring this up specifically because I've been in conversations where parents have referred to this. And forgive me if I'm wrong on the wording. I did not grow up in a Presbyterian tradition or a tradition with this, but I believe somewhere around the age of 13, you take a confirmation class. Is that right, Lane? You nodded your head. Okay, good. You go through confirmation. And I've talked with parents before who are saying, how can my kids act like this? They went through confirmation. I know they're saved. And I had to say, to be saved, you confess with your mouth and you believe with your heart and isn't it possible as a 13 year old kid to be in a group of your peers going through class with the teacher that you respect and saying the things back to them that you're supposed to say and signing the papers that you're supposed to sign and being paraded up on stage like you're supposed to be paraded without ever actually believing what you're being taught. Doing it because this is what your peers are doing, this is what the teachers expect, this is what your parents expect. So that's not something I would cling to as evidence of salvation. We are saved by confessing and believing. That's what saves us. Now, what does it mean to be saved? When I say this word saved in right relationship with God, becoming a Christian, a believer, all the words, what do we mean? Well, Jesus tells us what he means in John chapter 5, verse 24. Look with me. These are the words of Christ. He tells us what it means to be saved. Very truly, I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged, but has crossed over from death to life. When we are saved, Jesus himself tells us we will not be judged and we will cross from death to life. What it means to be saved, the simple way to think about it is being saved means I am a citizen of heaven. That's what it means. Simple way to say it. And it's such an important concept. That's why I chose it, that we're a citizen of heaven. Once we are saved, we don't belong here anymore. Earth is not our home. We are aliens and sojourners in a foreign land. And one day, God will take us home. But right now, we are aliens here. And our job as aliens and sojourners is to take as many people as we can on our way home as humanly possible. That's what we're here for. But it means that this place isn't our place and it's a really important concept, but I'm going to get a chance to preach about this concept in the middle of March, so I'm not going to belabor it here. But that's what it means to be saved, that we are no longer judged. We are no longer judged for our sins. Scripture teaches us that when God looks at us, once we have confessed and believed, once we have become a Christian, that when God looks at us, we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. That when he looks at us, he does not see our unrighteous deeds. He sees us covered in the sacrificial righteousness of Christ. The way it's phrased in Isaiah, and we're going to be in Isaiah after Easter. We're going to do a series called The Treasury of Isaiah, and I get to preach out of Isaiah 1, verses 10 through 18, and surprise, surprise, one of my favorite passages. The way it's phrased there is God says, though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow. So when we are saved, we are no longer judged. We are no longer declared guilty for the things that we've done. And listen, this is, I know, I would say heady, but it's not, I don't know. I don't know how to describe it. This is esoteric. God does not exist in time. He exists outside of time. We think. Who knows? Because I don't even think anyone understands that sentence. But because that's true when we become Christians, when he brings us into the fold, he forgives us of our sins past, present, and future. He forgives you of all the dumb stuff he knows you're going to do 10 years from now. We act like it's just from this point back, and it's all points. He covers over you with his righteousness and does not judge you. And then it says we pass from death to life. Death, whenever we see it in scripture, is always descriptive of an eternity absent of God. Just being dead, being cut off from God. So we pass from death to life. This is the punishment and the curse in the Garden of Eden. In the first couple chapters of the Bible, in Genesis chapter 3, we see the fall of man. And because Adam and Eve chose to sin, God says, you will now experience death. You will now be cut off. I think of it this way. I think of a tree and our sin, we're a branch on the tree, and our sin cuts us off of the tree and we fall to the floor helpless and essentially lifeless. Because we might not be dead yet, but we're going to die pretty quick. And then when we're clothed in the righteousness of Christ, we confess and we believe God and His goodness picks that branch up off the ground, grafts it back onto the tree, connects us to our source of life. We pass from death to life. That's what it means to be saved. We are now citizens of heaven, children of the King of the universe. So, if you didn't know that, now you do. If you did know that, then you just got to check the boxes. I'm good. Okay, I understood. Either way, that's a good outcome. Now, where I want to press us as a church in 2024 is thinking through the reality of where Paul chooses to put this prayer. This portion, this particular petition within the prayer. It's the very first thing that he prays. He prays for other things. He prays that we would be along with all of the saints. He prays for community. We're going to spend a week on that. He prays that we would know the surpass, that we would feel the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. We're going to talk about that. He prays that we would be filled with the fullness of God. We're going to talk about that. But before he can pray for those things, he has to pray for this thing. He prays for their salvation. I pray that you would know Jesus. It's the first thing that he prayed. It's the most important thing that he prayed. And it's interesting to me that he prayed it to a church, to a church full of people who very presumptively know Christ already. You don't just casually go to a Christian church in ancient Ephesus. It's not what the cool kids were doing. You don't just wander in there to try to make a sale. Like you go because you mean it and yet he prays for their salvation. I am deeply convicted that salvation was Paul's first priority and prayer for all he encountered. Salvation, that they would simply know God, that they would know Jesus, that he would dwell in their hearts through faith, was his first priority and prayer for every person that he encountered in his life. And it makes sense, doesn't it? Why would I pray anything else for you if I'm not praying that you know Jesus? Nothing in your whole life matters if you don't know Jesus, and everything after that matters in a completely different way once you do know Jesus. So why would I ever pray anything for you except that you would know Christ? And I said, this prayer shapes the way I pray for people. It shapes it in this way. Now when I pray for people, and some of you probably have heard me pray this, whether it's success or difficulty, I pray that all the events and circumstances in that situation would conspire to bring you closer to God, would conspire to bring you to a depth of Christ that's more full than you have now, that everything in your life would be, would conspire to bring you closer to Jesus. That's how this prayer color is my prayers. And I think it's incredibly important that Paul's first priority in prayer for every person that he meets is that they would simply know Jesus. Convicted of this, after I wrote the sermon this week, I emailed the elders. Every week, I come up with a prayer schedule for the elders. A little while ago, last year, I think sometime, we agreed. It's the dumbest agreement ever, because it's right there in Scripture, that one of the purposes of elders is to serve the church through prayer. So we said, how can we better do this? And we decided that every week I would make a schedule Monday through Sunday of here's what we should all be praying for today. Here's the one thing to include in our prayers as we pray for grace this week. And I write those on Mondays. And so when I finished writing the sermon this week, I wrote to the elders and, and it was the, you elders don't know, sometimes I sit there and stare at my screen for like 30 minutes. There's a huge hassle, but they're important to do. I did this in five minutes. And I don't remember the exact order, but it was Monday. Pray for your children that they would know Jesus. Just pray for your children that they know Christ. If you're sure that they already know Christ, pray that they would know him more deeply. Tuesday, pray for your small group, by name if you can. Pray that everyone in your small group would know Christ. If they already know him, pray that they would know him more deeply. Wednesday, pray for your service teams, the people that you serve with, including other elders, by name if you can, that they would know Jesus, that those who know Jesus would know him more deeply. And then it was community and neighbors. And then it was extended family. And then it was the people of grace, as many people as you can by name. And then the staff on Tuesday came in here and we went through the church. And one of the things I like to do sometimes, I don't do it as much as I need to, is I just sit in seats and I pray for the people who come to mind. Because you guys are creatures of habit, although the Morgans, you all are messing me up today. You guys are creatures of habit. You sit in the right seats. And I sit in your seats and I pray for you. And I go over there and I pray for you. And we pray that you would know Jesus. That's the prayer. Now here's the conviction. If that's Paul's first prayer and priority for everyone that he meets, shouldn't that be ours too? Shouldn't our first prayer and priority for every person we encounter be that they would know Jesus? What else are we praying for them if we don't do that? And then I started to think about this. What would happen if I shifted my perspective to Paul's perspective, and every person I encountered, the first and primary focus I had for them was I hope you know Jesus. How would that change my countenance? How would that change my life? How would that change my day to day? How would that change how I parent my children as they interact with others? How would that change my level of frustration in traffic? Think about that. If your first prayer and priority for everyone that you met, I think it's we did that, that what we would find is that we would begin to see people as objects of God's affection and not obstacles to our progress. We would begin to see people as objects worthy of God's affection, worthy of that reckless love that chases people down that we just sang about. And we would quit seeing them as obstacles to our progress. Now, I wrote this point specifically for me. So if it's helpful to you too, great. But I don't do so good with that sometimes. I was going to tell you guys a story about an interaction I had over the Christmas break, but the sermon's gone long enough, and I don't really have time to, and I don't really need to give you all the details. Just if I give you the premise, you'll fill in the blanks from there, I promise. I went to an AT&T store over the break. That's fun. I didn't say anything. Like if you just looked at the script, if it was a court transaction, and you just saw the words that I used, you wouldn't think I was being a jerk and that I had totally lost my patience. But if you hear them in a certain tone with a certain look on my face, you would understand that I was less than kind. And as I thought about this, I just deeply regret that interaction. And interactions like that that happened in my life. Where this person that I'm seeing is not an object of the Father's affection. This person that I'm seeing is an obstacle in the way of what I need to do. They're an annoyance. They're an obligation. Whatever word you want to fit in there. And so here's my encouragement to you. Make that your goal in 2024. That everyone you encounter, you would first think of as an object of the Father's affection. That your first priority for them would be that they would come to know Jesus. Pray that for your children. If they know him, pray they would know him more. Pray that for your coworkers. Pray that for your neighbors. And consider what would happen in your life, how your year would look different than 2023. If every person you encountered, your prayer was, God, I hope they know you. And if there's a way to move them towards that right now, I pray that you would use me to do that. How would that change your year? How would that begin to change your heart for others? So that's the challenge to you in 2024. As we make this our prayer for our families and our church and ourselves, we'll talk about the rest of what it means. But as we think about others and as we encounter others, let's let Paul's priorities be our priorities and make our first prayer and only priority for them be that they would know Jesus. As I finish, I'm going to pray. But before I do that, I'm going to leave some space for you to pray as well. I would encourage you right now to pray for the people that God's been bringing to your mind. Pray for the people in your life who might not know Jesus, that they would come to know Jesus. Pray with boldness and with faith. I love that we opened up the service with the song, There's Nothing That Our God Can't Do. Because some of us need to be reminded of that if we're going to continue to pray for that person to know Jesus. I have people in my life that I go through, I go through droughts of praying for them. Because sometimes I just don't think it's possible. But that's a faithless thought. Take a minute. Pray for the people in your life who don't know Jesus that they would know Jesus. If you're a parent, pray at first for your children. And just go out from there. And after a minute or two, I'll pray to close us up and Kyle's going to come up and we're going to have communion together. Heavenly Father, we just want to know you. Lord, would you give us your heart for those who don't know you? Would you give us just a portion of the desire that you have for us that we might feel that desire for you? God, for all the names that just got lifted up to you, we pray with faith and hope that they would come to know you. Lord, if there's a way to use us to bring others into a saving faith in you, I pray that we would open ourselves up to that. That we would be courageous, sensitive, bold, and caring. And we would share you with others. God, if you have an opportunity to use grace to bring people closer to you, we pray that you would do it. We offer you this space in our lives and ask that you use us in your plan to bring people into a saving faith with you. God, we thank you that you make it possible for us to know you. And we pray that you would give us the heart that you have to reach the people who don't. In Jesus' name, amen.