Mark 4

I wonder, pals, how long's it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids' stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along. And that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks, mailman Kyle. Today, Jesus calms the storm. We'll be right back. here, and I would love to get to meet you after the service. I'm so glad that you guys chose to make Grace a part of your Sunday, whether you're watching online or here in person, braving the elements. We are very, very grateful for that. We've got two more parts of this series, Kids Stories for Grownups. Today is Jesus Calms the Storm, and next week is Moses and the Ten Commandments, and I'm really excited to share that sermon with you that God's laid on my heart for next week. But this week, we look at what is one of my daughter Lily's most favorite stories in the Bible. I've told you guys before, sometimes at night, she'll ask me to tell her Bible stories. And I love to do that. And this one, Jesus Calming the Storm, is one of her favorites. And, you know, I'm not really sure why that is. I think that this story, if you know it, is one that captures your imagination from the very beginning, from a very young age, the idea of this Jesus, this man who was 100% man and 100% God at the same time was able to calm the wind and the waves. The sky and the sea obey him. And that just captures our imagination, I think. And so it's fun to revisit that story and reflect. And as we do and as we go through that story and we reflect on what we can learn from it and what Jesus has for us in this story and maybe hopefully what he would have us glean from that story. I just wanted to impress upon you that I kind of feel bad every week when I get up, when the worship stops and then you have to start listening to me because I just want to keep worshiping. And one of my favorite things to do is to lay out and listen to my church worship. And as I hear all of you cry out, it's your breath in our lungs. So we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise. And you say, great are you, Lord. I'm reminded that you are God's children and he is in pursuit of your hearts. And so let's let this message and where we go and where we lean into, let's make space for the Holy Spirit to speak to us no matter why we're here this morning and give him the opportunity to draw us closer to the Father, closer to the Spirit, closer to Jesus. So Jesus calming the storm takes place in the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and they are beginning Jesus's ministry. So it's important to put this story in the context of the timeline. For those that don't know, Jesus spent about 33 years on this earth. We think he started his public ministry around the age of 30, and that he spent about three years going around Israel and ministering in the various villages and cities, and then eventually in Jerusalem. And we get that timing from Passovers and things like that in the New Testament, or in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So at about 30, Jesus begins to call the disciples. So if you open up to any of those books that I just mentioned, you'll see at the very beginning, Jesus starts to call the disciples to them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men, that kind of thing. And a lot of us know those stories. Well, that marks the beginning of Jesus's public ministry. And then obviously his crucifixion and resurrection marks the end of his public ministry. And so in that first year, early on, this story takes place. So the disciples have just started following Jesus. We'll see from the story that they don't fully know him yet. They really don't know who this man is that they're following. They haven't fully realized who this Jesus guy is just yet. And we'll see that come out in the story, but it's important to place it at the beginning of Jesus's ministry. If for no other reason than we can empathize with the disciples and their ignorance in this particular story. On a night after they had gotten done ministering and preaching, Jesus tells the disciples, hey, let's load up in the boat and go across the Sea of Galilee and we'll spend the night in a town over there on the opposite coast. Because when you pay attention to the life of Jesus, what you notice is that it's this always fluctuating balance of being with the people, surrounded by people, people pressing onto him, asking for miracles, listening for teachings, trying to trip him up and stump him and trick him and all those things. And then Jesus retreating for respite and rest so that he can gather his wits like we all need to do before he goes and faces the angry throngs the next day who want more things from him. Kind of like being a mom. So Jesus says, let's go across the Sea of Galilee and we'll rest there. And so that's what they do. Bless you. That's what they do. And they get in the boat and they begin to go across the Sea of Galilee. And as they go across the Sea of Galilee, it begins to get pretty turbulent. The wind picks up and the waves start to pick up and it begins to get pretty hectic in the Sea of Galilee. And I've had the opportunity myself to be on the Sea of Galilee because I'm a pastor. And if you're a pastor, you have to do that. So I went to Israel and I was on a boat in the Sea of Galilee. And I remember being surprised by how wavy and choppy it was and how much the boat was bouncing during totally clear blue skies with very little wind. And some of the waves did crash up over the side of the boat, not in a dangerous way, but just in that way that gets your rear end wet enough to make you uncomfortable for the rest of the day that you're trekking around Israel. And so it became believable to me that a storm could stir up and really make a trip across the Sea of Galilee feel pretty unsafe. And that's what happened that night. And so the Bible tells us in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and we're going to look at the depiction in Mark, that the waves started to pick up. The wind really started to blow. And the waves were crashing over the boat, not in the way that just makes you inconveniently wet, but in the way that makes you scared for your life. And the disciples became very fearful. And it would take something for the disciples to be fearful because many of you know that the disciples were fishermen. Peter, James, and John. James and John were called the sons of thunder. That was their nickname, okay? They were not sissies like Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector. He was an accountant. All right, my dad's an accountant. They are sissies, man. They cannot be trusted on open waters. I'm just kidding. Dad's great. I get seasick. He does not. I'm a pastor. I'm even worse. Anyway, talking about requisite toughness. But you've got James and John and Peter, and they're starting to freak out. They're getting legitimately scared. And so we pick up the story in Mark chapter 4, verse 38, and I'm going to read 38 through 41. This is what they do. It says, And I love that story. It's a simple one. It's a short one, but it's a powerful one. And one of the things that's so neat to me is that the disciples sense that they were in danger. And the hull of the ship is a guy that's older than them. They were not yet in their 30s. They were younger than him, presumably early 20s or maybe even younger than that. It could have been, some scholars think, upper high school boys that Jesus was giving the keys of the kingdom to. And they get scared and they know they're scared. They know they can't do anything about the weather. And so they go to Jesus. And it's clear from the text, they don't know what Jesus was going to do about it because when Jesus does what he does, they're shocked. So they weren't expecting him to calm the wind and to calm the rain and to calm the waves. They weren't thinking that was coming next. They just knew they were in trouble and they needed to go to Jesus. They didn't know what he was going to do. They didn't know how he was going to solve it. They just knew my soul's in fear. I'm going to run to Jesus. And I think that's such a great lesson for us. If nothing else, even when we don't know what he's going to do, run to Jesus when we're scared, run to Jesus when we don't feel safe, run to Jesus when we feel we need shelter. So they run to Jesus and Jesus wakes up. He's annoyed. He's clearly from the text. He was, he was, he was having a good snooze down there. He was out of the rain. He was nice and dry. Maybe it was working as like a little bit of like rock-a-bye baby white noise for Jesus. I don't know. Dude may have been hardcore. But he was sleeping. And I know, I happen to know from personal experience that even the sweetest people in the world, when they are awoken at 3.30 in the morning in the middle of the night and they don't want to be, they're not kind about that. And so Jesus clearly is annoyed with the disciples. He goes up on the deck and he looks at the wind and the waves and he says, peace, be still. And they do. And I've often thought, man, that would be a really cool moment in history to be in. If you could go back to one spot that's got to be in the running. Can you imagine, those of you who know me, how smug I would be on the deck of that ship with my popcorn? If you could time travel also popcorn with you, smart food, white cheddar, please. I would sit there and look at the disciples and be the least scared person laughing at them, be like, you're gonna be fine, just watch. Can you imagine how smug I would be knowing what was going to happen, just waiting for Jesus to come up on the hull of the ship, on the deck of the ship and say, peace, be still. And then it happens and you're like, see, I told you guys. It would be so easy to be peaceful in that moment because we know how the story ends, but they didn't. And so they were scared. And he comes out and he says, peace, be still. And peace, be still. When I hear people cover this story, talk about the story, preach on this story, peace, be still usually gets the focus. That's usually the phrase we stop on is the power of Jesus. And that's a good place to focus. But that's never really caught my attention as something else in the story. The next thing that catches my attention a little bit more is the disciples marveling at who this Jesus was. He goes back down into the stern of the ship, presumably to go back to sleep, this time peacefully, without his white noise. And the disciples look at each other and they were fearful and they said, who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him. See, when they went down into the ship to get him, they called him teacher, rabbi, pastor. They didn't know yet what Jesus was or who he was. They didn't call him Lord. They didn't call him Savior. They called him teacher. They were ignorant as to the nature of Christ just yet. And so they knew that guy could do some stuff. They knew that he could perform some miracles and cast out demons. They had seen a little bit of things. They knew that he possessed a wisdom that was unique in their generation. But they didn't know he could do this. So they marveled at who he was. And sometimes we focus on that. But for me, as far back as my memory goes from hearing this story, the thing that's always captured my attention is Jesus's incredulity with the disciples. He's incredulous with them. He's frustrated. And to me, because look at the text. He says, why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? Oh, you of little faith. Like, what's the matter, guys? Why are you being so scared? Like, just chill out. It's going to be all right. And it's never made sense to me that this would be Jesus' response because we're taught about Jesus that he's meek and mild. We see him being abundant in patience and grace and love. And from a very young age, it's always seemed out of step with the character of Christ that this would be his chosen response to his disciples at their very reasonable fear. Again, Peter and James and John, the fishermen in the group, they're scared too. When the flight attendant on the plane starts to freak out, it's time for you to get scared as well. So I don't really care what Matthew's doing, but I'm looking at Peter. This is the guy that walks on water a little bit later in his life. And he's scared. So there's not anybody listening to my voice who wouldn't have been scared on that boat too. And to that very legitimate fear, Jesus goes, what's the matter with you? What's the matter with you? Why are you scared? What, you have no faith? Come on. He's frustrated with them. And it's always puzzled me. Why was Jesus frustrated with the disciples? And I want to propose to you two reasons. The first reason that I'm about to share is not the reason. It's a reason, and I think it's worth talking about. But really, the first reason provides a bridge to the second reason that I'm going to get to at the end of the sermon that I think really is why Jesus was internally frustrated with the disciples. But we can't get there without going through the first reason first. So the first reason I would like to submit to you that Jesus was frustrated with the disciples is the disciples underestimated Jesus' power, plan, and love for them. I think very simply the disciples underestimated Jesus. They underestimated Jesus' power. They ran to him because they knew he could do something, but they didn't know that he could do that. And apparently Jesus felt like he had revealed enough to them and instructed them enough that they ought to have known. They ought to have known that he had this special connection with God the Father and that everything was going to be okay. But they underestimated his power and his efficacy and his ability to be able to bring about the change or the provision that they needed. So they underestimated the power of Jesus. They underestimated the plan of Jesus. See, the disciples got called by a rabbi, and in those days, if you understand how that worked, that was kind of going to seminary back in the day. That was preparatory school for being released as a pastor or a rabbi into the wild. And so their expectation is most likely we're going to follow this man for a little while, however many years it takes, four, five, eight, 10 years. And then eventually we're going to be released out into the wild to do, to lead our own ministry. A lot like a young pastor going to seminary, expecting to graduate with a degree that says, I know all the things about theology I'll ever need to know. There's no questions that will ever stump me. And I have good categories for everything that's ever going to happen in my life. And then going to church and starting real ministry and finding out those categories are going to be pretty challenging, pal. You're going to have to learn to adjust those. But that's what a seminarian does. They go to school, they get a degree, and then they're released to church. And so that's what the disciples presumably thought they were going to be doing. Training with this man, learning how to be a rabbi, eventually they'd be released to be rabbis on their own. What they had no idea about was the scope of Jesus's plan for their lives. Jesus wasn't going to release them into the various cities and towns within Israel to do their own personal ministries. No, these were the foundational rocks upon which the church of God was being built. They were the kingdom of God on earth. They were being entrusted with the keys to the kingdom. Two and a half years after this moment, Jesus was going to die on a cross. He was going to raise himself from the dead, conquering death and sin. Then he was going to spend 40 days with them and then go into heaven and say, wait for the Holy Spirit to come. He's going to tell you what you need. And then they were going to launch the movement of God on earth, the intersection of the physical and the spiritual in the temporal God's church, his kingdom here. He had big plans for the disciples. And listen, it's 2,000 years later. We're on a different continent talking about their Jesus. They did a pretty good job. It was a pretty good plan. They did not realize, the disciples, that they were plans A, B, C, D, E, all the way to Z of God starting his kingdom here on earth, of transferring it from the nation of Israel to the kingdom, God's church, the bride of Christ, of which we are a part. See, they underestimated Jesus's plan for them. Pay attention to this. Because they reduced it to what they could envision for themselves. They underestimated Jesus' plan for them because they reduced it to what they could envision for themselves. They didn't make space for what Jesus could possibly be envisioning for them. And then they underestimated the love of Christ. That Jesus actually loved them enough to execute that plan. Because the plan involves Jesus dying the most painful death that that era of humanity could cook up. Suffering through the torment of hell and being resurrected on the third day, conquering death and sin. The plan involved Jesus being separated from his God. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me is one of the things he mutters on the cross. It was the first time in all of time that Jesus and God had been separated even for a little bit. And Jesus endured that. He endured the sufferings on the cross for us, for you and for me, because he loves us. Because the Bible says that love is in that while we were yet sinners, Christ dies for us. That's what love is. And what the disciples did not know and did not understand is that two and a half years from now, he's going to be hanging on a cross and we're going to feel like we've failed and he's failed, but that's the necessary thing that has to happen because he is winning for us a seat at the banquet table for all of eternity. That through living his perfect life, through leaving the keys of the kingdom with us, through dying on the cross, through raising from the dead and leaving that tomb empty, that Jesus was conquering death and hell for all of eternity and there was going to come a day, spoiler alert, when he would calm all storms for all time. But that was going to require an excruciating death. That was going to require limitless forgiveness over and over and over again as he watches us, you and me, trample on that death with our willful actions and our willful rebellion and our decision to not honor the death of Jesus on the cross and our decision on a weekly and daily basis to put ourself as Lord of our life and not Jesus as Lord of our life. And he knew that he was going to die on the cross, that he was going to offer you his love, that we were going to trample on that, and yet still he was going to offer us grace and invite us to a seat at the banquet table in heaven one day where we will be in harmony with our God for all of eternity. The disciples did not know that Jesus loved them that much. They did not know his plan was that big and that his power was that great, and so they underestimated him. And it makes me wonder, do we underestimate Jesus too? Do we forget how powerful he is? Do we sit in a circumstance and render it hopeless as though prayer can't possibly help because Jesus can move mountains, but not that one. Jesus can fix other relationships, but not this one. Jesus can empower other people facing temptation, but not me and not mine. Do we underestimate his power? Do we underestimate Jesus' plan for us by reducing it to what we can envision for ourselves? Can I just tell you, you have no idea what Jesus wants to do with you. You have no clue what Jesus wants to do with a single faithful heart who will be consistent. I see over and over again people who are convinced that they have no gifting, there's nothing special about them or outstanding about them. And so when they hear pastors like me talk about plans that Jesus has for them, they think, certainly that's not me. That's for other people. And it just reminds me of my mama. I've told you guys this story plenty of times. She died of ovarian cancer at 74 or 75 years old, and she was a woman who would sit in sermons like this, and she would think, I have nothing to offer the kingdom of God. I have no talents. I have no skills. Everyone around me is more important and better liked than I am. And yet, because she loved God, she just faithfully loved others her entire life. And when she passed away at 75, there was over 400 people at that funeral. All a testament to how Linda had loved them so well throughout the course of her life. And I gotta tell you, I've done plenty of funerals for people around that age and older. It's not often there's 400 people there. And she's one that throughout her life would have sat in a sermon like this and thought, God doesn't really have a plan for me. Yes, he does. Yes, he does. You have no idea who you're raising. You think Billy Graham's parents and Mother Teresa's parents knew who they were raising? You have no idea who you're friends with and who you're loving on. You have no idea how much an email or a prayer or a phone call or a late night conversation can mean to somebody. You have no idea. Just walk faithfully in Jesus' plan and you let him do what he's going to do. So often we underestimate Jesus' plan for us by writing off ourselves and limiting that plan to what we can envision. And he has such a bigger picture for us. Do we underestimate his love for us? Do we think that we've trampled on his grace one too many times and he's probably fed up with me now? No, he's not. Do we forget that he's promised us in Hebrews that he's at the right hand of the Father interceding for us? Do we, like the disciples, underestimate our Jesus? I think one of the reasons that we do that is because we fail to remember, as the disciples are a good example for in this story, that Jesus has depth just like anyone else. And knowing him takes time. I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way, but very clearly in the story, the disciples simply didn't know Jesus enough yet. Jesus felt like he had revealed enough of himself that they should have faith in him by now, that they should know by now, but they simply didn't know who he was. They simply didn't know by then. And so they doubted him and they were scared and they were anxious and they worried and they were fearful. And so they underestimated him, I believe, because they didn't fully know him yet. And we've got to acknowledge that getting to know Jesus is just like getting to know anyone else. There's depth there. There's layers. I think of one of my favorite people that I've ever met in my entire life, Harris Winston. No, I'm just kidding around. It's not Harris. It's this guy that I used to teach with. It's really not Harris. It's this guy that I used to teach with named Coach McCready, Robert W. McCready. When I started teaching school, thanks Harris for being the punchline for that joke. Anybody could have done it. When I started teaching school, I was in a previous life, my late 20s. I taught high school Bible and was a school chaplain at a small private school outside of Atlanta. In my first year there, I got hired at the same time as this new science teacher and the football coach, Coach McCready. And when I met him, I learned about him that he was a tailback at Auburn in the 60s. And so tough, Southern, good old boy from Alabama. He didn't, actually he did chew tobacco all the time. Now I think about it, he always had to dip in, that guy, teaching at a private Christian high school. Everybody just looks the other way, right? That was Coach McCready, just tough as nails. And he calls me out. The first week, he starts calling me Coach Rector. I'm not the coach of anything, but he just brings me to practice, and he makes me the special teams coach because I know how to kick a ball because I have a soccer background, and he did not because he has a football background. And so I was the special teams coordinator. And he called everybody baby, and he called buses cheese wagons, and he was just a character, man. I could tell you some very colorful stories with colorful language about Coach McCready and some of the things I heard that man say. But then I find out that he was also a Vietnam veteran and that he led 100 Marines during his first tour in Vietnam to the jungles of Vietnam. That'll do something to you. He did such a good job with it that the Marine Corps honored him with a nice, easy assignment doing recruiting in Alabama so he wouldn't have to risk his neck anymore and could wait out the war that way. And Coach McCready hated that idea. So he bugged his CO over and over and over again until he could find a path to get back to Vietnam. And the only way to do it was to go to training to become a recon Marine. So he went back to Vietnam as a recon Marine crawling through the tunnels of the Viet Cong shirtless with a Bowie knife and a pistol. I'm not making that up. That's Rambo stuff, man. That's a tough son of a gun. And he was all of that. He dripped that toughness. He could look at you in a way and no one's ever made me that scared in my whole life. But you get to know him. And I had the opportunity to do that. Seventh period, I was free. He taught seniors a class that he didn't care about who were on the football team, and he just let them sit in the back and do whatever they wanted. It was a really great school. And me and Coach would sit in the front, and we would just have a conversation for an hour. And we'd talk about everything, and we'd talk about life, and he didn't know it at the time, but he was discipling me, and mentoring me, and counseling me, and helping me in my marriage, and helping me learn to be a man, and helping me learn to follow God well, and showing me different ways that faith could look, and I learned about his heart, and I saw him tear up with something special that happened for the boys. The last year I was at that school, he and his wife, by his request, got a little toy poodle, black one, named Pepper. And Coach McCready's policy was if Pepper's not invited, then neither am I. And it never went anywhere that Pepper was not invited. Took him to stores before emotional support dogs were a thing and just dared people to tell him to get out of there because you wouldn't. And I bet over those three years, I got to know Coach McCready better than anybody else at that school. And if I saw him this afternoon, we could stop and we could have a four-hour conversation and it would not be enough. We were thick as thieves, man. But that knowledge of him and who he was and his heart, that came over time. It came over investment. It came over going to see him every day when I didn't have to and us wanting to spend that time together. You have those friendships too. Why would your relationship with Jesus be any different? How can we come to church once a week, sing about Jesus, hear about Jesus, go home and don't think about Jesus for a week, and then show up the next week and think, why am I not closer to Jesus? It's a pursuit. It's a getting to know him. It's exploring him. It's mining the depths of who he is in his word. Learning more about our God. Reading the gospels over and over and over again and printinging on ourselves the character and the heart of Jesus, pursuing him in prayer, spending time with him that we don't have to passionately following after Jesus so that we get to know him, so that we get to trust him, so that we get to love him. And then what happens when we do this, when we pursue Jesus and we know his heart, we get to watch him come through over and over and over again. And we get to watch him calm the storms over and over and over again. We get to see how he's going to do that. I've had that experience to do that as the pastor of grace. When I got here, we were in a heck of a storm. And I'm not going to recount all of that for everyone present, but it was not good times. But I saw Jesus come through. I could tell you a story about a Memorial Day offering that was supernatural that first month that I was here, where God said, hey, I care about this place. How God has had the right people show up at the right times to just affirm for us, I care about this place. This place matters to me. And frankly, I've weathered enough storms with grace, and some of you have too, that we're now just the people on the boat eating the smart pop popcorn with the white cheddar going, this is going to be fun. Look at what God's going to do. The more you know Jesus, the more you trust him, and the less you doubt he will come through. And I asked the question earlier, have you underestimated Jesus? And I would tell you that a pretty good indicator for that is how much we worry, how much we give into anxiety and fear and stress. Now listen, I'm not talking about clinical anxiety that's treated by medications. I'm not talking about an actual chemical imbalance that causes that. I'm talking about your regular, everyday, run-of-the-mill worry. Is my kid gonna get the right teacher? Maybe if I stay up a couple more hours tonight worrying about it, then that will help the situation. And they will definitely get the teacher they're supposed to. Will the deal close? Is my kid going to make good decisions at college? No, but they'll learn from them. Will my son or my daughter meet the right person that they're supposed to marry? Am I going to like them? I don't know. But listen, God is over all of those things. And the longer we walk with Jesus, the less worrisome those things are because we know he's got it. And so a good indicator of whether or not we're underestimating Jesus in our own lives is how much fear and anxiety and worry and stress we carry about the things that only he can control. And this, I think, is the real reason that Jesus was frustrated with the disciples that night. Because the disciples were focused on the outer storm while Jesus was focused on the inner storm. The disciples were focused on the storm out there, things beyond their control. And Jesus is sitting there sleeping in the stern going, guys, if you'll just trust me, you could be asleep now too. If you'll just trust me, you don't have to be scared right now. You don't have to be fearful right now. You don't have to be anxious right now. See, Jesus comes to us and we often miss this and he offers to calm the storms in here. And so often we're like the disciples and we're like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm fine in here. Can you calm the storms out there? Can you make that go away and that go away and that go away and that go away? Can you heal here, here, and here? Can you handle all of those things so that I don't feel any stress? And Jesus is like, I'm offering you my perfect peace so that you don't have to stress at all. I'm offering you my perfect peace so that you can be calm in here and not have to worry about all the things going on out there. Because let me tell you something. To live this life is to experience storms. When Jesus calmed that storm in the Sea of Galilee, how long was it until the next one? Did they just stop altogether? When Jesus fixes that bad news, you've lived life long enough, there's more coming. We've weathered storms at grace. We're in a fun season right now. You think there's not more coming? Maybe you're in the midst of a storm right now, and we want desperately for Jesus to calm it. Maybe we're in a peaceful time right now. Either way, we know that there's more coming, but here's what Jesus offers to us, that he will give us such an internal peace and calm this internal storm in such a way that none of those will ever have an impact on us again. He gives us the option to trust him and walk in perfect peace. Maybe this is what Paul was talking about in Philippians. When he says, be anxious for nothing but in everything through prayer, petition, and with thanksgiving, present your request to God and the God of peace who transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. He's offering to calm the inner storm. Because on this side of eternity, in this broken world where sin pervades, there will always be storms. And there's coming a day in Revelation 19 and in Revelation 21 where Jesus calms all the storms forever and there's no more storms. And until then, and between now and then, there's gonna be storms out there, but he's offering you peace in here if you'll get to know him and trust him and love him and walk with him. And so that's the invitation to us. That's the invitation that we see as a result of this story. This story is an invitation to know Jesus more. This story is an invitation to go deeper with him, into his word, to pursue him in prayer, to swallows me up, even if that storm is the storm that swallows up someone I love so much, that Jesus has gone to where that storm is and he's conquered that too. And one day I'll exist on the other side of eternity and I'll be with that person again. That's the storm that Jesus has calmed for us. He's won that for us. So let's not look at the story of Jesus calming the storm as a simple story that displays the power of Jesus and the ignorance of the disciples, but let's look at it as a story that beckons our hearts to go deeper with him, to know him more, to trust him more, to walk with more peace and more humility and more grace as we see him come through again and again and again. Let's allow Jesus to calm the storm in here and we won't be so concerned with the storms out there. Let's pray. Father, God, we thank you for calming our storms. Lord, for the folks in here who are walking through them. There are waves crashing over their boat, man. They don't know how they're going to make it out of this one. God, I do pray that you would calm those. But more than that, I pray that you would calm them. Calm their anxious hearts. God, for those of us here who don't know you, who don't know your son, with the depth that we would like to, would you beckon us towards you? Would you call us into your presence? God, give us a daily desire to meet with you, to hear from you, to talk to you, to listen, to praise. God, would you be a part of our conversation? Would you be a part of our friendships? Would you be a part of the way we work and the way we operate and the way we think, be a part of our car rides and our walks and our workouts. Jesus, we invite you into our lives that we might know you more, that we might trust you more, that we might trust your heart more, that you might calm the storms that rage in us from time to time. And we thank you for being the one who calms the storms once and for all. It's in your name that we pray these things. Amen.

I wonder, pals, how long's it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids' stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along. And that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks, mailman Kyle. Today, Jesus calms the storm. We'll be right back. here, and I would love to get to meet you after the service. I'm so glad that you guys chose to make Grace a part of your Sunday, whether you're watching online or here in person, braving the elements. We are very, very grateful for that. We've got two more parts of this series, Kids Stories for Grownups. Today is Jesus Calms the Storm, and next week is Moses and the Ten Commandments, and I'm really excited to share that sermon with you that God's laid on my heart for next week. But this week, we look at what is one of my daughter Lily's most favorite stories in the Bible. I've told you guys before, sometimes at night, she'll ask me to tell her Bible stories. And I love to do that. And this one, Jesus Calming the Storm, is one of her favorites. And, you know, I'm not really sure why that is. I think that this story, if you know it, is one that captures your imagination from the very beginning, from a very young age, the idea of this Jesus, this man who was 100% man and 100% God at the same time was able to calm the wind and the waves. The sky and the sea obey him. And that just captures our imagination, I think. And so it's fun to revisit that story and reflect. And as we do and as we go through that story and we reflect on what we can learn from it and what Jesus has for us in this story and maybe hopefully what he would have us glean from that story. I just wanted to impress upon you that I kind of feel bad every week when I get up, when the worship stops and then you have to start listening to me because I just want to keep worshiping. And one of my favorite things to do is to lay out and listen to my church worship. And as I hear all of you cry out, it's your breath in our lungs. So we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise. And you say, great are you, Lord. I'm reminded that you are God's children and he is in pursuit of your hearts. And so let's let this message and where we go and where we lean into, let's make space for the Holy Spirit to speak to us no matter why we're here this morning and give him the opportunity to draw us closer to the Father, closer to the Spirit, closer to Jesus. So Jesus calming the storm takes place in the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and they are beginning Jesus's ministry. So it's important to put this story in the context of the timeline. For those that don't know, Jesus spent about 33 years on this earth. We think he started his public ministry around the age of 30, and that he spent about three years going around Israel and ministering in the various villages and cities, and then eventually in Jerusalem. And we get that timing from Passovers and things like that in the New Testament, or in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So at about 30, Jesus begins to call the disciples. So if you open up to any of those books that I just mentioned, you'll see at the very beginning, Jesus starts to call the disciples to them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men, that kind of thing. And a lot of us know those stories. Well, that marks the beginning of Jesus's public ministry. And then obviously his crucifixion and resurrection marks the end of his public ministry. And so in that first year, early on, this story takes place. So the disciples have just started following Jesus. We'll see from the story that they don't fully know him yet. They really don't know who this man is that they're following. They haven't fully realized who this Jesus guy is just yet. And we'll see that come out in the story, but it's important to place it at the beginning of Jesus's ministry. If for no other reason than we can empathize with the disciples and their ignorance in this particular story. On a night after they had gotten done ministering and preaching, Jesus tells the disciples, hey, let's load up in the boat and go across the Sea of Galilee and we'll spend the night in a town over there on the opposite coast. Because when you pay attention to the life of Jesus, what you notice is that it's this always fluctuating balance of being with the people, surrounded by people, people pressing onto him, asking for miracles, listening for teachings, trying to trip him up and stump him and trick him and all those things. And then Jesus retreating for respite and rest so that he can gather his wits like we all need to do before he goes and faces the angry throngs the next day who want more things from him. Kind of like being a mom. So Jesus says, let's go across the Sea of Galilee and we'll rest there. And so that's what they do. Bless you. That's what they do. And they get in the boat and they begin to go across the Sea of Galilee. And as they go across the Sea of Galilee, it begins to get pretty turbulent. The wind picks up and the waves start to pick up and it begins to get pretty hectic in the Sea of Galilee. And I've had the opportunity myself to be on the Sea of Galilee because I'm a pastor. And if you're a pastor, you have to do that. So I went to Israel and I was on a boat in the Sea of Galilee. And I remember being surprised by how wavy and choppy it was and how much the boat was bouncing during totally clear blue skies with very little wind. And some of the waves did crash up over the side of the boat, not in a dangerous way, but just in that way that gets your rear end wet enough to make you uncomfortable for the rest of the day that you're trekking around Israel. And so it became believable to me that a storm could stir up and really make a trip across the Sea of Galilee feel pretty unsafe. And that's what happened that night. And so the Bible tells us in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and we're going to look at the depiction in Mark, that the waves started to pick up. The wind really started to blow. And the waves were crashing over the boat, not in the way that just makes you inconveniently wet, but in the way that makes you scared for your life. And the disciples became very fearful. And it would take something for the disciples to be fearful because many of you know that the disciples were fishermen. Peter, James, and John. James and John were called the sons of thunder. That was their nickname, okay? They were not sissies like Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector. He was an accountant. All right, my dad's an accountant. They are sissies, man. They cannot be trusted on open waters. I'm just kidding. Dad's great. I get seasick. He does not. I'm a pastor. I'm even worse. Anyway, talking about requisite toughness. But you've got James and John and Peter, and they're starting to freak out. They're getting legitimately scared. And so we pick up the story in Mark chapter 4, verse 38, and I'm going to read 38 through 41. This is what they do. It says, And I love that story. It's a simple one. It's a short one, but it's a powerful one. And one of the things that's so neat to me is that the disciples sense that they were in danger. And the hull of the ship is a guy that's older than them. They were not yet in their 30s. They were younger than him, presumably early 20s or maybe even younger than that. It could have been, some scholars think, upper high school boys that Jesus was giving the keys of the kingdom to. And they get scared and they know they're scared. They know they can't do anything about the weather. And so they go to Jesus. And it's clear from the text, they don't know what Jesus was going to do about it because when Jesus does what he does, they're shocked. So they weren't expecting him to calm the wind and to calm the rain and to calm the waves. They weren't thinking that was coming next. They just knew they were in trouble and they needed to go to Jesus. They didn't know what he was going to do. They didn't know how he was going to solve it. They just knew my soul's in fear. I'm going to run to Jesus. And I think that's such a great lesson for us. If nothing else, even when we don't know what he's going to do, run to Jesus when we're scared, run to Jesus when we don't feel safe, run to Jesus when we feel we need shelter. So they run to Jesus and Jesus wakes up. He's annoyed. He's clearly from the text. He was, he was, he was having a good snooze down there. He was out of the rain. He was nice and dry. Maybe it was working as like a little bit of like rock-a-bye baby white noise for Jesus. I don't know. Dude may have been hardcore. But he was sleeping. And I know, I happen to know from personal experience that even the sweetest people in the world, when they are awoken at 3.30 in the morning in the middle of the night and they don't want to be, they're not kind about that. And so Jesus clearly is annoyed with the disciples. He goes up on the deck and he looks at the wind and the waves and he says, peace, be still. And they do. And I've often thought, man, that would be a really cool moment in history to be in. If you could go back to one spot that's got to be in the running. Can you imagine, those of you who know me, how smug I would be on the deck of that ship with my popcorn? If you could time travel also popcorn with you, smart food, white cheddar, please. I would sit there and look at the disciples and be the least scared person laughing at them, be like, you're gonna be fine, just watch. Can you imagine how smug I would be knowing what was going to happen, just waiting for Jesus to come up on the hull of the ship, on the deck of the ship and say, peace, be still. And then it happens and you're like, see, I told you guys. It would be so easy to be peaceful in that moment because we know how the story ends, but they didn't. And so they were scared. And he comes out and he says, peace, be still. And peace, be still. When I hear people cover this story, talk about the story, preach on this story, peace, be still usually gets the focus. That's usually the phrase we stop on is the power of Jesus. And that's a good place to focus. But that's never really caught my attention as something else in the story. The next thing that catches my attention a little bit more is the disciples marveling at who this Jesus was. He goes back down into the stern of the ship, presumably to go back to sleep, this time peacefully, without his white noise. And the disciples look at each other and they were fearful and they said, who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him. See, when they went down into the ship to get him, they called him teacher, rabbi, pastor. They didn't know yet what Jesus was or who he was. They didn't call him Lord. They didn't call him Savior. They called him teacher. They were ignorant as to the nature of Christ just yet. And so they knew that guy could do some stuff. They knew that he could perform some miracles and cast out demons. They had seen a little bit of things. They knew that he possessed a wisdom that was unique in their generation. But they didn't know he could do this. So they marveled at who he was. And sometimes we focus on that. But for me, as far back as my memory goes from hearing this story, the thing that's always captured my attention is Jesus's incredulity with the disciples. He's incredulous with them. He's frustrated. And to me, because look at the text. He says, why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? Oh, you of little faith. Like, what's the matter, guys? Why are you being so scared? Like, just chill out. It's going to be all right. And it's never made sense to me that this would be Jesus' response because we're taught about Jesus that he's meek and mild. We see him being abundant in patience and grace and love. And from a very young age, it's always seemed out of step with the character of Christ that this would be his chosen response to his disciples at their very reasonable fear. Again, Peter and James and John, the fishermen in the group, they're scared too. When the flight attendant on the plane starts to freak out, it's time for you to get scared as well. So I don't really care what Matthew's doing, but I'm looking at Peter. This is the guy that walks on water a little bit later in his life. And he's scared. So there's not anybody listening to my voice who wouldn't have been scared on that boat too. And to that very legitimate fear, Jesus goes, what's the matter with you? What's the matter with you? Why are you scared? What, you have no faith? Come on. He's frustrated with them. And it's always puzzled me. Why was Jesus frustrated with the disciples? And I want to propose to you two reasons. The first reason that I'm about to share is not the reason. It's a reason, and I think it's worth talking about. But really, the first reason provides a bridge to the second reason that I'm going to get to at the end of the sermon that I think really is why Jesus was internally frustrated with the disciples. But we can't get there without going through the first reason first. So the first reason I would like to submit to you that Jesus was frustrated with the disciples is the disciples underestimated Jesus' power, plan, and love for them. I think very simply the disciples underestimated Jesus. They underestimated Jesus' power. They ran to him because they knew he could do something, but they didn't know that he could do that. And apparently Jesus felt like he had revealed enough to them and instructed them enough that they ought to have known. They ought to have known that he had this special connection with God the Father and that everything was going to be okay. But they underestimated his power and his efficacy and his ability to be able to bring about the change or the provision that they needed. So they underestimated the power of Jesus. They underestimated the plan of Jesus. See, the disciples got called by a rabbi, and in those days, if you understand how that worked, that was kind of going to seminary back in the day. That was preparatory school for being released as a pastor or a rabbi into the wild. And so their expectation is most likely we're going to follow this man for a little while, however many years it takes, four, five, eight, 10 years. And then eventually we're going to be released out into the wild to do, to lead our own ministry. A lot like a young pastor going to seminary, expecting to graduate with a degree that says, I know all the things about theology I'll ever need to know. There's no questions that will ever stump me. And I have good categories for everything that's ever going to happen in my life. And then going to church and starting real ministry and finding out those categories are going to be pretty challenging, pal. You're going to have to learn to adjust those. But that's what a seminarian does. They go to school, they get a degree, and then they're released to church. And so that's what the disciples presumably thought they were going to be doing. Training with this man, learning how to be a rabbi, eventually they'd be released to be rabbis on their own. What they had no idea about was the scope of Jesus's plan for their lives. Jesus wasn't going to release them into the various cities and towns within Israel to do their own personal ministries. No, these were the foundational rocks upon which the church of God was being built. They were the kingdom of God on earth. They were being entrusted with the keys to the kingdom. Two and a half years after this moment, Jesus was going to die on a cross. He was going to raise himself from the dead, conquering death and sin. Then he was going to spend 40 days with them and then go into heaven and say, wait for the Holy Spirit to come. He's going to tell you what you need. And then they were going to launch the movement of God on earth, the intersection of the physical and the spiritual in the temporal God's church, his kingdom here. He had big plans for the disciples. And listen, it's 2,000 years later. We're on a different continent talking about their Jesus. They did a pretty good job. It was a pretty good plan. They did not realize, the disciples, that they were plans A, B, C, D, E, all the way to Z of God starting his kingdom here on earth, of transferring it from the nation of Israel to the kingdom, God's church, the bride of Christ, of which we are a part. See, they underestimated Jesus's plan for them. Pay attention to this. Because they reduced it to what they could envision for themselves. They underestimated Jesus' plan for them because they reduced it to what they could envision for themselves. They didn't make space for what Jesus could possibly be envisioning for them. And then they underestimated the love of Christ. That Jesus actually loved them enough to execute that plan. Because the plan involves Jesus dying the most painful death that that era of humanity could cook up. Suffering through the torment of hell and being resurrected on the third day, conquering death and sin. The plan involved Jesus being separated from his God. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me is one of the things he mutters on the cross. It was the first time in all of time that Jesus and God had been separated even for a little bit. And Jesus endured that. He endured the sufferings on the cross for us, for you and for me, because he loves us. Because the Bible says that love is in that while we were yet sinners, Christ dies for us. That's what love is. And what the disciples did not know and did not understand is that two and a half years from now, he's going to be hanging on a cross and we're going to feel like we've failed and he's failed, but that's the necessary thing that has to happen because he is winning for us a seat at the banquet table for all of eternity. That through living his perfect life, through leaving the keys of the kingdom with us, through dying on the cross, through raising from the dead and leaving that tomb empty, that Jesus was conquering death and hell for all of eternity and there was going to come a day, spoiler alert, when he would calm all storms for all time. But that was going to require an excruciating death. That was going to require limitless forgiveness over and over and over again as he watches us, you and me, trample on that death with our willful actions and our willful rebellion and our decision to not honor the death of Jesus on the cross and our decision on a weekly and daily basis to put ourself as Lord of our life and not Jesus as Lord of our life. And he knew that he was going to die on the cross, that he was going to offer you his love, that we were going to trample on that, and yet still he was going to offer us grace and invite us to a seat at the banquet table in heaven one day where we will be in harmony with our God for all of eternity. The disciples did not know that Jesus loved them that much. They did not know his plan was that big and that his power was that great, and so they underestimated him. And it makes me wonder, do we underestimate Jesus too? Do we forget how powerful he is? Do we sit in a circumstance and render it hopeless as though prayer can't possibly help because Jesus can move mountains, but not that one. Jesus can fix other relationships, but not this one. Jesus can empower other people facing temptation, but not me and not mine. Do we underestimate his power? Do we underestimate Jesus' plan for us by reducing it to what we can envision for ourselves? Can I just tell you, you have no idea what Jesus wants to do with you. You have no clue what Jesus wants to do with a single faithful heart who will be consistent. I see over and over again people who are convinced that they have no gifting, there's nothing special about them or outstanding about them. And so when they hear pastors like me talk about plans that Jesus has for them, they think, certainly that's not me. That's for other people. And it just reminds me of my mama. I've told you guys this story plenty of times. She died of ovarian cancer at 74 or 75 years old, and she was a woman who would sit in sermons like this, and she would think, I have nothing to offer the kingdom of God. I have no talents. I have no skills. Everyone around me is more important and better liked than I am. And yet, because she loved God, she just faithfully loved others her entire life. And when she passed away at 75, there was over 400 people at that funeral. All a testament to how Linda had loved them so well throughout the course of her life. And I gotta tell you, I've done plenty of funerals for people around that age and older. It's not often there's 400 people there. And she's one that throughout her life would have sat in a sermon like this and thought, God doesn't really have a plan for me. Yes, he does. Yes, he does. You have no idea who you're raising. You think Billy Graham's parents and Mother Teresa's parents knew who they were raising? You have no idea who you're friends with and who you're loving on. You have no idea how much an email or a prayer or a phone call or a late night conversation can mean to somebody. You have no idea. Just walk faithfully in Jesus' plan and you let him do what he's going to do. So often we underestimate Jesus' plan for us by writing off ourselves and limiting that plan to what we can envision. And he has such a bigger picture for us. Do we underestimate his love for us? Do we think that we've trampled on his grace one too many times and he's probably fed up with me now? No, he's not. Do we forget that he's promised us in Hebrews that he's at the right hand of the Father interceding for us? Do we, like the disciples, underestimate our Jesus? I think one of the reasons that we do that is because we fail to remember, as the disciples are a good example for in this story, that Jesus has depth just like anyone else. And knowing him takes time. I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way, but very clearly in the story, the disciples simply didn't know Jesus enough yet. Jesus felt like he had revealed enough of himself that they should have faith in him by now, that they should know by now, but they simply didn't know who he was. They simply didn't know by then. And so they doubted him and they were scared and they were anxious and they worried and they were fearful. And so they underestimated him, I believe, because they didn't fully know him yet. And we've got to acknowledge that getting to know Jesus is just like getting to know anyone else. There's depth there. There's layers. I think of one of my favorite people that I've ever met in my entire life, Harris Winston. No, I'm just kidding around. It's not Harris. It's this guy that I used to teach with. It's really not Harris. It's this guy that I used to teach with named Coach McCready, Robert W. McCready. When I started teaching school, thanks Harris for being the punchline for that joke. Anybody could have done it. When I started teaching school, I was in a previous life, my late 20s. I taught high school Bible and was a school chaplain at a small private school outside of Atlanta. In my first year there, I got hired at the same time as this new science teacher and the football coach, Coach McCready. And when I met him, I learned about him that he was a tailback at Auburn in the 60s. And so tough, Southern, good old boy from Alabama. He didn't, actually he did chew tobacco all the time. Now I think about it, he always had to dip in, that guy, teaching at a private Christian high school. Everybody just looks the other way, right? That was Coach McCready, just tough as nails. And he calls me out. The first week, he starts calling me Coach Rector. I'm not the coach of anything, but he just brings me to practice, and he makes me the special teams coach because I know how to kick a ball because I have a soccer background, and he did not because he has a football background. And so I was the special teams coordinator. And he called everybody baby, and he called buses cheese wagons, and he was just a character, man. I could tell you some very colorful stories with colorful language about Coach McCready and some of the things I heard that man say. But then I find out that he was also a Vietnam veteran and that he led 100 Marines during his first tour in Vietnam to the jungles of Vietnam. That'll do something to you. He did such a good job with it that the Marine Corps honored him with a nice, easy assignment doing recruiting in Alabama so he wouldn't have to risk his neck anymore and could wait out the war that way. And Coach McCready hated that idea. So he bugged his CO over and over and over again until he could find a path to get back to Vietnam. And the only way to do it was to go to training to become a recon Marine. So he went back to Vietnam as a recon Marine crawling through the tunnels of the Viet Cong shirtless with a Bowie knife and a pistol. I'm not making that up. That's Rambo stuff, man. That's a tough son of a gun. And he was all of that. He dripped that toughness. He could look at you in a way and no one's ever made me that scared in my whole life. But you get to know him. And I had the opportunity to do that. Seventh period, I was free. He taught seniors a class that he didn't care about who were on the football team, and he just let them sit in the back and do whatever they wanted. It was a really great school. And me and Coach would sit in the front, and we would just have a conversation for an hour. And we'd talk about everything, and we'd talk about life, and he didn't know it at the time, but he was discipling me, and mentoring me, and counseling me, and helping me in my marriage, and helping me learn to be a man, and helping me learn to follow God well, and showing me different ways that faith could look, and I learned about his heart, and I saw him tear up with something special that happened for the boys. The last year I was at that school, he and his wife, by his request, got a little toy poodle, black one, named Pepper. And Coach McCready's policy was if Pepper's not invited, then neither am I. And it never went anywhere that Pepper was not invited. Took him to stores before emotional support dogs were a thing and just dared people to tell him to get out of there because you wouldn't. And I bet over those three years, I got to know Coach McCready better than anybody else at that school. And if I saw him this afternoon, we could stop and we could have a four-hour conversation and it would not be enough. We were thick as thieves, man. But that knowledge of him and who he was and his heart, that came over time. It came over investment. It came over going to see him every day when I didn't have to and us wanting to spend that time together. You have those friendships too. Why would your relationship with Jesus be any different? How can we come to church once a week, sing about Jesus, hear about Jesus, go home and don't think about Jesus for a week, and then show up the next week and think, why am I not closer to Jesus? It's a pursuit. It's a getting to know him. It's exploring him. It's mining the depths of who he is in his word. Learning more about our God. Reading the gospels over and over and over again and printinging on ourselves the character and the heart of Jesus, pursuing him in prayer, spending time with him that we don't have to passionately following after Jesus so that we get to know him, so that we get to trust him, so that we get to love him. And then what happens when we do this, when we pursue Jesus and we know his heart, we get to watch him come through over and over and over again. And we get to watch him calm the storms over and over and over again. We get to see how he's going to do that. I've had that experience to do that as the pastor of grace. When I got here, we were in a heck of a storm. And I'm not going to recount all of that for everyone present, but it was not good times. But I saw Jesus come through. I could tell you a story about a Memorial Day offering that was supernatural that first month that I was here, where God said, hey, I care about this place. How God has had the right people show up at the right times to just affirm for us, I care about this place. This place matters to me. And frankly, I've weathered enough storms with grace, and some of you have too, that we're now just the people on the boat eating the smart pop popcorn with the white cheddar going, this is going to be fun. Look at what God's going to do. The more you know Jesus, the more you trust him, and the less you doubt he will come through. And I asked the question earlier, have you underestimated Jesus? And I would tell you that a pretty good indicator for that is how much we worry, how much we give into anxiety and fear and stress. Now listen, I'm not talking about clinical anxiety that's treated by medications. I'm not talking about an actual chemical imbalance that causes that. I'm talking about your regular, everyday, run-of-the-mill worry. Is my kid gonna get the right teacher? Maybe if I stay up a couple more hours tonight worrying about it, then that will help the situation. And they will definitely get the teacher they're supposed to. Will the deal close? Is my kid going to make good decisions at college? No, but they'll learn from them. Will my son or my daughter meet the right person that they're supposed to marry? Am I going to like them? I don't know. But listen, God is over all of those things. And the longer we walk with Jesus, the less worrisome those things are because we know he's got it. And so a good indicator of whether or not we're underestimating Jesus in our own lives is how much fear and anxiety and worry and stress we carry about the things that only he can control. And this, I think, is the real reason that Jesus was frustrated with the disciples that night. Because the disciples were focused on the outer storm while Jesus was focused on the inner storm. The disciples were focused on the storm out there, things beyond their control. And Jesus is sitting there sleeping in the stern going, guys, if you'll just trust me, you could be asleep now too. If you'll just trust me, you don't have to be scared right now. You don't have to be fearful right now. You don't have to be anxious right now. See, Jesus comes to us and we often miss this and he offers to calm the storms in here. And so often we're like the disciples and we're like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm fine in here. Can you calm the storms out there? Can you make that go away and that go away and that go away and that go away? Can you heal here, here, and here? Can you handle all of those things so that I don't feel any stress? And Jesus is like, I'm offering you my perfect peace so that you don't have to stress at all. I'm offering you my perfect peace so that you can be calm in here and not have to worry about all the things going on out there. Because let me tell you something. To live this life is to experience storms. When Jesus calmed that storm in the Sea of Galilee, how long was it until the next one? Did they just stop altogether? When Jesus fixes that bad news, you've lived life long enough, there's more coming. We've weathered storms at grace. We're in a fun season right now. You think there's not more coming? Maybe you're in the midst of a storm right now, and we want desperately for Jesus to calm it. Maybe we're in a peaceful time right now. Either way, we know that there's more coming, but here's what Jesus offers to us, that he will give us such an internal peace and calm this internal storm in such a way that none of those will ever have an impact on us again. He gives us the option to trust him and walk in perfect peace. Maybe this is what Paul was talking about in Philippians. When he says, be anxious for nothing but in everything through prayer, petition, and with thanksgiving, present your request to God and the God of peace who transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. He's offering to calm the inner storm. Because on this side of eternity, in this broken world where sin pervades, there will always be storms. And there's coming a day in Revelation 19 and in Revelation 21 where Jesus calms all the storms forever and there's no more storms. And until then, and between now and then, there's gonna be storms out there, but he's offering you peace in here if you'll get to know him and trust him and love him and walk with him. And so that's the invitation to us. That's the invitation that we see as a result of this story. This story is an invitation to know Jesus more. This story is an invitation to go deeper with him, into his word, to pursue him in prayer, to swallows me up, even if that storm is the storm that swallows up someone I love so much, that Jesus has gone to where that storm is and he's conquered that too. And one day I'll exist on the other side of eternity and I'll be with that person again. That's the storm that Jesus has calmed for us. He's won that for us. So let's not look at the story of Jesus calming the storm as a simple story that displays the power of Jesus and the ignorance of the disciples, but let's look at it as a story that beckons our hearts to go deeper with him, to know him more, to trust him more, to walk with more peace and more humility and more grace as we see him come through again and again and again. Let's allow Jesus to calm the storm in here and we won't be so concerned with the storms out there. Let's pray. Father, God, we thank you for calming our storms. Lord, for the folks in here who are walking through them. There are waves crashing over their boat, man. They don't know how they're going to make it out of this one. God, I do pray that you would calm those. But more than that, I pray that you would calm them. Calm their anxious hearts. God, for those of us here who don't know you, who don't know your son, with the depth that we would like to, would you beckon us towards you? Would you call us into your presence? God, give us a daily desire to meet with you, to hear from you, to talk to you, to listen, to praise. God, would you be a part of our conversation? Would you be a part of our friendships? Would you be a part of the way we work and the way we operate and the way we think, be a part of our car rides and our walks and our workouts. Jesus, we invite you into our lives that we might know you more, that we might trust you more, that we might trust your heart more, that you might calm the storms that rage in us from time to time. And we thank you for being the one who calms the storms once and for all. It's in your name that we pray these things. Amen.

I wonder, pals, how long's it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids' stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along. And that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks, mailman Kyle. Today, Jesus calms the storm. We'll be right back. here, and I would love to get to meet you after the service. I'm so glad that you guys chose to make Grace a part of your Sunday, whether you're watching online or here in person, braving the elements. We are very, very grateful for that. We've got two more parts of this series, Kids Stories for Grownups. Today is Jesus Calms the Storm, and next week is Moses and the Ten Commandments, and I'm really excited to share that sermon with you that God's laid on my heart for next week. But this week, we look at what is one of my daughter Lily's most favorite stories in the Bible. I've told you guys before, sometimes at night, she'll ask me to tell her Bible stories. And I love to do that. And this one, Jesus Calming the Storm, is one of her favorites. And, you know, I'm not really sure why that is. I think that this story, if you know it, is one that captures your imagination from the very beginning, from a very young age, the idea of this Jesus, this man who was 100% man and 100% God at the same time was able to calm the wind and the waves. The sky and the sea obey him. And that just captures our imagination, I think. And so it's fun to revisit that story and reflect. And as we do and as we go through that story and we reflect on what we can learn from it and what Jesus has for us in this story and maybe hopefully what he would have us glean from that story. I just wanted to impress upon you that I kind of feel bad every week when I get up, when the worship stops and then you have to start listening to me because I just want to keep worshiping. And one of my favorite things to do is to lay out and listen to my church worship. And as I hear all of you cry out, it's your breath in our lungs. So we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise. And you say, great are you, Lord. I'm reminded that you are God's children and he is in pursuit of your hearts. And so let's let this message and where we go and where we lean into, let's make space for the Holy Spirit to speak to us no matter why we're here this morning and give him the opportunity to draw us closer to the Father, closer to the Spirit, closer to Jesus. So Jesus calming the storm takes place in the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and they are beginning Jesus's ministry. So it's important to put this story in the context of the timeline. For those that don't know, Jesus spent about 33 years on this earth. We think he started his public ministry around the age of 30, and that he spent about three years going around Israel and ministering in the various villages and cities, and then eventually in Jerusalem. And we get that timing from Passovers and things like that in the New Testament, or in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So at about 30, Jesus begins to call the disciples. So if you open up to any of those books that I just mentioned, you'll see at the very beginning, Jesus starts to call the disciples to them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men, that kind of thing. And a lot of us know those stories. Well, that marks the beginning of Jesus's public ministry. And then obviously his crucifixion and resurrection marks the end of his public ministry. And so in that first year, early on, this story takes place. So the disciples have just started following Jesus. We'll see from the story that they don't fully know him yet. They really don't know who this man is that they're following. They haven't fully realized who this Jesus guy is just yet. And we'll see that come out in the story, but it's important to place it at the beginning of Jesus's ministry. If for no other reason than we can empathize with the disciples and their ignorance in this particular story. On a night after they had gotten done ministering and preaching, Jesus tells the disciples, hey, let's load up in the boat and go across the Sea of Galilee and we'll spend the night in a town over there on the opposite coast. Because when you pay attention to the life of Jesus, what you notice is that it's this always fluctuating balance of being with the people, surrounded by people, people pressing onto him, asking for miracles, listening for teachings, trying to trip him up and stump him and trick him and all those things. And then Jesus retreating for respite and rest so that he can gather his wits like we all need to do before he goes and faces the angry throngs the next day who want more things from him. Kind of like being a mom. So Jesus says, let's go across the Sea of Galilee and we'll rest there. And so that's what they do. Bless you. That's what they do. And they get in the boat and they begin to go across the Sea of Galilee. And as they go across the Sea of Galilee, it begins to get pretty turbulent. The wind picks up and the waves start to pick up and it begins to get pretty hectic in the Sea of Galilee. And I've had the opportunity myself to be on the Sea of Galilee because I'm a pastor. And if you're a pastor, you have to do that. So I went to Israel and I was on a boat in the Sea of Galilee. And I remember being surprised by how wavy and choppy it was and how much the boat was bouncing during totally clear blue skies with very little wind. And some of the waves did crash up over the side of the boat, not in a dangerous way, but just in that way that gets your rear end wet enough to make you uncomfortable for the rest of the day that you're trekking around Israel. And so it became believable to me that a storm could stir up and really make a trip across the Sea of Galilee feel pretty unsafe. And that's what happened that night. And so the Bible tells us in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and we're going to look at the depiction in Mark, that the waves started to pick up. The wind really started to blow. And the waves were crashing over the boat, not in the way that just makes you inconveniently wet, but in the way that makes you scared for your life. And the disciples became very fearful. And it would take something for the disciples to be fearful because many of you know that the disciples were fishermen. Peter, James, and John. James and John were called the sons of thunder. That was their nickname, okay? They were not sissies like Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector. He was an accountant. All right, my dad's an accountant. They are sissies, man. They cannot be trusted on open waters. I'm just kidding. Dad's great. I get seasick. He does not. I'm a pastor. I'm even worse. Anyway, talking about requisite toughness. But you've got James and John and Peter, and they're starting to freak out. They're getting legitimately scared. And so we pick up the story in Mark chapter 4, verse 38, and I'm going to read 38 through 41. This is what they do. It says, And I love that story. It's a simple one. It's a short one, but it's a powerful one. And one of the things that's so neat to me is that the disciples sense that they were in danger. And the hull of the ship is a guy that's older than them. They were not yet in their 30s. They were younger than him, presumably early 20s or maybe even younger than that. It could have been, some scholars think, upper high school boys that Jesus was giving the keys of the kingdom to. And they get scared and they know they're scared. They know they can't do anything about the weather. And so they go to Jesus. And it's clear from the text, they don't know what Jesus was going to do about it because when Jesus does what he does, they're shocked. So they weren't expecting him to calm the wind and to calm the rain and to calm the waves. They weren't thinking that was coming next. They just knew they were in trouble and they needed to go to Jesus. They didn't know what he was going to do. They didn't know how he was going to solve it. They just knew my soul's in fear. I'm going to run to Jesus. And I think that's such a great lesson for us. If nothing else, even when we don't know what he's going to do, run to Jesus when we're scared, run to Jesus when we don't feel safe, run to Jesus when we feel we need shelter. So they run to Jesus and Jesus wakes up. He's annoyed. He's clearly from the text. He was, he was, he was having a good snooze down there. He was out of the rain. He was nice and dry. Maybe it was working as like a little bit of like rock-a-bye baby white noise for Jesus. I don't know. Dude may have been hardcore. But he was sleeping. And I know, I happen to know from personal experience that even the sweetest people in the world, when they are awoken at 3.30 in the morning in the middle of the night and they don't want to be, they're not kind about that. And so Jesus clearly is annoyed with the disciples. He goes up on the deck and he looks at the wind and the waves and he says, peace, be still. And they do. And I've often thought, man, that would be a really cool moment in history to be in. If you could go back to one spot that's got to be in the running. Can you imagine, those of you who know me, how smug I would be on the deck of that ship with my popcorn? If you could time travel also popcorn with you, smart food, white cheddar, please. I would sit there and look at the disciples and be the least scared person laughing at them, be like, you're gonna be fine, just watch. Can you imagine how smug I would be knowing what was going to happen, just waiting for Jesus to come up on the hull of the ship, on the deck of the ship and say, peace, be still. And then it happens and you're like, see, I told you guys. It would be so easy to be peaceful in that moment because we know how the story ends, but they didn't. And so they were scared. And he comes out and he says, peace, be still. And peace, be still. When I hear people cover this story, talk about the story, preach on this story, peace, be still usually gets the focus. That's usually the phrase we stop on is the power of Jesus. And that's a good place to focus. But that's never really caught my attention as something else in the story. The next thing that catches my attention a little bit more is the disciples marveling at who this Jesus was. He goes back down into the stern of the ship, presumably to go back to sleep, this time peacefully, without his white noise. And the disciples look at each other and they were fearful and they said, who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him. See, when they went down into the ship to get him, they called him teacher, rabbi, pastor. They didn't know yet what Jesus was or who he was. They didn't call him Lord. They didn't call him Savior. They called him teacher. They were ignorant as to the nature of Christ just yet. And so they knew that guy could do some stuff. They knew that he could perform some miracles and cast out demons. They had seen a little bit of things. They knew that he possessed a wisdom that was unique in their generation. But they didn't know he could do this. So they marveled at who he was. And sometimes we focus on that. But for me, as far back as my memory goes from hearing this story, the thing that's always captured my attention is Jesus's incredulity with the disciples. He's incredulous with them. He's frustrated. And to me, because look at the text. He says, why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? Oh, you of little faith. Like, what's the matter, guys? Why are you being so scared? Like, just chill out. It's going to be all right. And it's never made sense to me that this would be Jesus' response because we're taught about Jesus that he's meek and mild. We see him being abundant in patience and grace and love. And from a very young age, it's always seemed out of step with the character of Christ that this would be his chosen response to his disciples at their very reasonable fear. Again, Peter and James and John, the fishermen in the group, they're scared too. When the flight attendant on the plane starts to freak out, it's time for you to get scared as well. So I don't really care what Matthew's doing, but I'm looking at Peter. This is the guy that walks on water a little bit later in his life. And he's scared. So there's not anybody listening to my voice who wouldn't have been scared on that boat too. And to that very legitimate fear, Jesus goes, what's the matter with you? What's the matter with you? Why are you scared? What, you have no faith? Come on. He's frustrated with them. And it's always puzzled me. Why was Jesus frustrated with the disciples? And I want to propose to you two reasons. The first reason that I'm about to share is not the reason. It's a reason, and I think it's worth talking about. But really, the first reason provides a bridge to the second reason that I'm going to get to at the end of the sermon that I think really is why Jesus was internally frustrated with the disciples. But we can't get there without going through the first reason first. So the first reason I would like to submit to you that Jesus was frustrated with the disciples is the disciples underestimated Jesus' power, plan, and love for them. I think very simply the disciples underestimated Jesus. They underestimated Jesus' power. They ran to him because they knew he could do something, but they didn't know that he could do that. And apparently Jesus felt like he had revealed enough to them and instructed them enough that they ought to have known. They ought to have known that he had this special connection with God the Father and that everything was going to be okay. But they underestimated his power and his efficacy and his ability to be able to bring about the change or the provision that they needed. So they underestimated the power of Jesus. They underestimated the plan of Jesus. See, the disciples got called by a rabbi, and in those days, if you understand how that worked, that was kind of going to seminary back in the day. That was preparatory school for being released as a pastor or a rabbi into the wild. And so their expectation is most likely we're going to follow this man for a little while, however many years it takes, four, five, eight, 10 years. And then eventually we're going to be released out into the wild to do, to lead our own ministry. A lot like a young pastor going to seminary, expecting to graduate with a degree that says, I know all the things about theology I'll ever need to know. There's no questions that will ever stump me. And I have good categories for everything that's ever going to happen in my life. And then going to church and starting real ministry and finding out those categories are going to be pretty challenging, pal. You're going to have to learn to adjust those. But that's what a seminarian does. They go to school, they get a degree, and then they're released to church. And so that's what the disciples presumably thought they were going to be doing. Training with this man, learning how to be a rabbi, eventually they'd be released to be rabbis on their own. What they had no idea about was the scope of Jesus's plan for their lives. Jesus wasn't going to release them into the various cities and towns within Israel to do their own personal ministries. No, these were the foundational rocks upon which the church of God was being built. They were the kingdom of God on earth. They were being entrusted with the keys to the kingdom. Two and a half years after this moment, Jesus was going to die on a cross. He was going to raise himself from the dead, conquering death and sin. Then he was going to spend 40 days with them and then go into heaven and say, wait for the Holy Spirit to come. He's going to tell you what you need. And then they were going to launch the movement of God on earth, the intersection of the physical and the spiritual in the temporal God's church, his kingdom here. He had big plans for the disciples. And listen, it's 2,000 years later. We're on a different continent talking about their Jesus. They did a pretty good job. It was a pretty good plan. They did not realize, the disciples, that they were plans A, B, C, D, E, all the way to Z of God starting his kingdom here on earth, of transferring it from the nation of Israel to the kingdom, God's church, the bride of Christ, of which we are a part. See, they underestimated Jesus's plan for them. Pay attention to this. Because they reduced it to what they could envision for themselves. They underestimated Jesus' plan for them because they reduced it to what they could envision for themselves. They didn't make space for what Jesus could possibly be envisioning for them. And then they underestimated the love of Christ. That Jesus actually loved them enough to execute that plan. Because the plan involves Jesus dying the most painful death that that era of humanity could cook up. Suffering through the torment of hell and being resurrected on the third day, conquering death and sin. The plan involved Jesus being separated from his God. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me is one of the things he mutters on the cross. It was the first time in all of time that Jesus and God had been separated even for a little bit. And Jesus endured that. He endured the sufferings on the cross for us, for you and for me, because he loves us. Because the Bible says that love is in that while we were yet sinners, Christ dies for us. That's what love is. And what the disciples did not know and did not understand is that two and a half years from now, he's going to be hanging on a cross and we're going to feel like we've failed and he's failed, but that's the necessary thing that has to happen because he is winning for us a seat at the banquet table for all of eternity. That through living his perfect life, through leaving the keys of the kingdom with us, through dying on the cross, through raising from the dead and leaving that tomb empty, that Jesus was conquering death and hell for all of eternity and there was going to come a day, spoiler alert, when he would calm all storms for all time. But that was going to require an excruciating death. That was going to require limitless forgiveness over and over and over again as he watches us, you and me, trample on that death with our willful actions and our willful rebellion and our decision to not honor the death of Jesus on the cross and our decision on a weekly and daily basis to put ourself as Lord of our life and not Jesus as Lord of our life. And he knew that he was going to die on the cross, that he was going to offer you his love, that we were going to trample on that, and yet still he was going to offer us grace and invite us to a seat at the banquet table in heaven one day where we will be in harmony with our God for all of eternity. The disciples did not know that Jesus loved them that much. They did not know his plan was that big and that his power was that great, and so they underestimated him. And it makes me wonder, do we underestimate Jesus too? Do we forget how powerful he is? Do we sit in a circumstance and render it hopeless as though prayer can't possibly help because Jesus can move mountains, but not that one. Jesus can fix other relationships, but not this one. Jesus can empower other people facing temptation, but not me and not mine. Do we underestimate his power? Do we underestimate Jesus' plan for us by reducing it to what we can envision for ourselves? Can I just tell you, you have no idea what Jesus wants to do with you. You have no clue what Jesus wants to do with a single faithful heart who will be consistent. I see over and over again people who are convinced that they have no gifting, there's nothing special about them or outstanding about them. And so when they hear pastors like me talk about plans that Jesus has for them, they think, certainly that's not me. That's for other people. And it just reminds me of my mama. I've told you guys this story plenty of times. She died of ovarian cancer at 74 or 75 years old, and she was a woman who would sit in sermons like this, and she would think, I have nothing to offer the kingdom of God. I have no talents. I have no skills. Everyone around me is more important and better liked than I am. And yet, because she loved God, she just faithfully loved others her entire life. And when she passed away at 75, there was over 400 people at that funeral. All a testament to how Linda had loved them so well throughout the course of her life. And I gotta tell you, I've done plenty of funerals for people around that age and older. It's not often there's 400 people there. And she's one that throughout her life would have sat in a sermon like this and thought, God doesn't really have a plan for me. Yes, he does. Yes, he does. You have no idea who you're raising. You think Billy Graham's parents and Mother Teresa's parents knew who they were raising? You have no idea who you're friends with and who you're loving on. You have no idea how much an email or a prayer or a phone call or a late night conversation can mean to somebody. You have no idea. Just walk faithfully in Jesus' plan and you let him do what he's going to do. So often we underestimate Jesus' plan for us by writing off ourselves and limiting that plan to what we can envision. And he has such a bigger picture for us. Do we underestimate his love for us? Do we think that we've trampled on his grace one too many times and he's probably fed up with me now? No, he's not. Do we forget that he's promised us in Hebrews that he's at the right hand of the Father interceding for us? Do we, like the disciples, underestimate our Jesus? I think one of the reasons that we do that is because we fail to remember, as the disciples are a good example for in this story, that Jesus has depth just like anyone else. And knowing him takes time. I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way, but very clearly in the story, the disciples simply didn't know Jesus enough yet. Jesus felt like he had revealed enough of himself that they should have faith in him by now, that they should know by now, but they simply didn't know who he was. They simply didn't know by then. And so they doubted him and they were scared and they were anxious and they worried and they were fearful. And so they underestimated him, I believe, because they didn't fully know him yet. And we've got to acknowledge that getting to know Jesus is just like getting to know anyone else. There's depth there. There's layers. I think of one of my favorite people that I've ever met in my entire life, Harris Winston. No, I'm just kidding around. It's not Harris. It's this guy that I used to teach with. It's really not Harris. It's this guy that I used to teach with named Coach McCready, Robert W. McCready. When I started teaching school, thanks Harris for being the punchline for that joke. Anybody could have done it. When I started teaching school, I was in a previous life, my late 20s. I taught high school Bible and was a school chaplain at a small private school outside of Atlanta. In my first year there, I got hired at the same time as this new science teacher and the football coach, Coach McCready. And when I met him, I learned about him that he was a tailback at Auburn in the 60s. And so tough, Southern, good old boy from Alabama. He didn't, actually he did chew tobacco all the time. Now I think about it, he always had to dip in, that guy, teaching at a private Christian high school. Everybody just looks the other way, right? That was Coach McCready, just tough as nails. And he calls me out. The first week, he starts calling me Coach Rector. I'm not the coach of anything, but he just brings me to practice, and he makes me the special teams coach because I know how to kick a ball because I have a soccer background, and he did not because he has a football background. And so I was the special teams coordinator. And he called everybody baby, and he called buses cheese wagons, and he was just a character, man. I could tell you some very colorful stories with colorful language about Coach McCready and some of the things I heard that man say. But then I find out that he was also a Vietnam veteran and that he led 100 Marines during his first tour in Vietnam to the jungles of Vietnam. That'll do something to you. He did such a good job with it that the Marine Corps honored him with a nice, easy assignment doing recruiting in Alabama so he wouldn't have to risk his neck anymore and could wait out the war that way. And Coach McCready hated that idea. So he bugged his CO over and over and over again until he could find a path to get back to Vietnam. And the only way to do it was to go to training to become a recon Marine. So he went back to Vietnam as a recon Marine crawling through the tunnels of the Viet Cong shirtless with a Bowie knife and a pistol. I'm not making that up. That's Rambo stuff, man. That's a tough son of a gun. And he was all of that. He dripped that toughness. He could look at you in a way and no one's ever made me that scared in my whole life. But you get to know him. And I had the opportunity to do that. Seventh period, I was free. He taught seniors a class that he didn't care about who were on the football team, and he just let them sit in the back and do whatever they wanted. It was a really great school. And me and Coach would sit in the front, and we would just have a conversation for an hour. And we'd talk about everything, and we'd talk about life, and he didn't know it at the time, but he was discipling me, and mentoring me, and counseling me, and helping me in my marriage, and helping me learn to be a man, and helping me learn to follow God well, and showing me different ways that faith could look, and I learned about his heart, and I saw him tear up with something special that happened for the boys. The last year I was at that school, he and his wife, by his request, got a little toy poodle, black one, named Pepper. And Coach McCready's policy was if Pepper's not invited, then neither am I. And it never went anywhere that Pepper was not invited. Took him to stores before emotional support dogs were a thing and just dared people to tell him to get out of there because you wouldn't. And I bet over those three years, I got to know Coach McCready better than anybody else at that school. And if I saw him this afternoon, we could stop and we could have a four-hour conversation and it would not be enough. We were thick as thieves, man. But that knowledge of him and who he was and his heart, that came over time. It came over investment. It came over going to see him every day when I didn't have to and us wanting to spend that time together. You have those friendships too. Why would your relationship with Jesus be any different? How can we come to church once a week, sing about Jesus, hear about Jesus, go home and don't think about Jesus for a week, and then show up the next week and think, why am I not closer to Jesus? It's a pursuit. It's a getting to know him. It's exploring him. It's mining the depths of who he is in his word. Learning more about our God. Reading the gospels over and over and over again and printinging on ourselves the character and the heart of Jesus, pursuing him in prayer, spending time with him that we don't have to passionately following after Jesus so that we get to know him, so that we get to trust him, so that we get to love him. And then what happens when we do this, when we pursue Jesus and we know his heart, we get to watch him come through over and over and over again. And we get to watch him calm the storms over and over and over again. We get to see how he's going to do that. I've had that experience to do that as the pastor of grace. When I got here, we were in a heck of a storm. And I'm not going to recount all of that for everyone present, but it was not good times. But I saw Jesus come through. I could tell you a story about a Memorial Day offering that was supernatural that first month that I was here, where God said, hey, I care about this place. How God has had the right people show up at the right times to just affirm for us, I care about this place. This place matters to me. And frankly, I've weathered enough storms with grace, and some of you have too, that we're now just the people on the boat eating the smart pop popcorn with the white cheddar going, this is going to be fun. Look at what God's going to do. The more you know Jesus, the more you trust him, and the less you doubt he will come through. And I asked the question earlier, have you underestimated Jesus? And I would tell you that a pretty good indicator for that is how much we worry, how much we give into anxiety and fear and stress. Now listen, I'm not talking about clinical anxiety that's treated by medications. I'm not talking about an actual chemical imbalance that causes that. I'm talking about your regular, everyday, run-of-the-mill worry. Is my kid gonna get the right teacher? Maybe if I stay up a couple more hours tonight worrying about it, then that will help the situation. And they will definitely get the teacher they're supposed to. Will the deal close? Is my kid going to make good decisions at college? No, but they'll learn from them. Will my son or my daughter meet the right person that they're supposed to marry? Am I going to like them? I don't know. But listen, God is over all of those things. And the longer we walk with Jesus, the less worrisome those things are because we know he's got it. And so a good indicator of whether or not we're underestimating Jesus in our own lives is how much fear and anxiety and worry and stress we carry about the things that only he can control. And this, I think, is the real reason that Jesus was frustrated with the disciples that night. Because the disciples were focused on the outer storm while Jesus was focused on the inner storm. The disciples were focused on the storm out there, things beyond their control. And Jesus is sitting there sleeping in the stern going, guys, if you'll just trust me, you could be asleep now too. If you'll just trust me, you don't have to be scared right now. You don't have to be fearful right now. You don't have to be anxious right now. See, Jesus comes to us and we often miss this and he offers to calm the storms in here. And so often we're like the disciples and we're like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm fine in here. Can you calm the storms out there? Can you make that go away and that go away and that go away and that go away? Can you heal here, here, and here? Can you handle all of those things so that I don't feel any stress? And Jesus is like, I'm offering you my perfect peace so that you don't have to stress at all. I'm offering you my perfect peace so that you can be calm in here and not have to worry about all the things going on out there. Because let me tell you something. To live this life is to experience storms. When Jesus calmed that storm in the Sea of Galilee, how long was it until the next one? Did they just stop altogether? When Jesus fixes that bad news, you've lived life long enough, there's more coming. We've weathered storms at grace. We're in a fun season right now. You think there's not more coming? Maybe you're in the midst of a storm right now, and we want desperately for Jesus to calm it. Maybe we're in a peaceful time right now. Either way, we know that there's more coming, but here's what Jesus offers to us, that he will give us such an internal peace and calm this internal storm in such a way that none of those will ever have an impact on us again. He gives us the option to trust him and walk in perfect peace. Maybe this is what Paul was talking about in Philippians. When he says, be anxious for nothing but in everything through prayer, petition, and with thanksgiving, present your request to God and the God of peace who transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. He's offering to calm the inner storm. Because on this side of eternity, in this broken world where sin pervades, there will always be storms. And there's coming a day in Revelation 19 and in Revelation 21 where Jesus calms all the storms forever and there's no more storms. And until then, and between now and then, there's gonna be storms out there, but he's offering you peace in here if you'll get to know him and trust him and love him and walk with him. And so that's the invitation to us. That's the invitation that we see as a result of this story. This story is an invitation to know Jesus more. This story is an invitation to go deeper with him, into his word, to pursue him in prayer, to swallows me up, even if that storm is the storm that swallows up someone I love so much, that Jesus has gone to where that storm is and he's conquered that too. And one day I'll exist on the other side of eternity and I'll be with that person again. That's the storm that Jesus has calmed for us. He's won that for us. So let's not look at the story of Jesus calming the storm as a simple story that displays the power of Jesus and the ignorance of the disciples, but let's look at it as a story that beckons our hearts to go deeper with him, to know him more, to trust him more, to walk with more peace and more humility and more grace as we see him come through again and again and again. Let's allow Jesus to calm the storm in here and we won't be so concerned with the storms out there. Let's pray. Father, God, we thank you for calming our storms. Lord, for the folks in here who are walking through them. There are waves crashing over their boat, man. They don't know how they're going to make it out of this one. God, I do pray that you would calm those. But more than that, I pray that you would calm them. Calm their anxious hearts. God, for those of us here who don't know you, who don't know your son, with the depth that we would like to, would you beckon us towards you? Would you call us into your presence? God, give us a daily desire to meet with you, to hear from you, to talk to you, to listen, to praise. God, would you be a part of our conversation? Would you be a part of our friendships? Would you be a part of the way we work and the way we operate and the way we think, be a part of our car rides and our walks and our workouts. Jesus, we invite you into our lives that we might know you more, that we might trust you more, that we might trust your heart more, that you might calm the storms that rage in us from time to time. And we thank you for being the one who calms the storms once and for all. It's in your name that we pray these things. Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, so it's good to see you on this February Sunday, the third Sunday in our Going Home campaign series. Last week, we kind of talked about the biggest question facing grace. I feel like because we have been brought to a place of health, last week I shared that for a long time the mission of grace has been grace. By necessity, we've looked inward and scrambled to get healthy and to get to a place where we weren't just trying to survive, but now we could thrive. And so in that place, believing that we are in a position of health, the question that we are collectively asking is, Father, what would you have us do in health? Say, God, what would you have us do now? We're in a position where we can really do your ministry. I feel like we're moving into a new season as a church. So the question becomes, what would you have us do in this new season? Part of that answer is to pursue a permanent home in the community that we care about so much. That's why we're having the campaign that's going to culminate on March the 1st. We're going to send out pledge cards this week to our partners, to people who call Grace family, and encourage everyone to bring those in or to send those in by March the 1st, and we'll have a celebratory pledge Sunday on that first Sunday in March. I think it's going to be a big celebratory Sunday for us. But that's kind of what we're pushing towards. But in the midst of that, as we ask God, what would you have us do in health? One answer is, one step is to pursue a permanent home. Now's the time to do that. But the bigger answers are the ones that we talked about last week and this week. Last week, I shared that if you asked Jesus, what would you have a healthy church do? I think he would point us to the Great Commission, to Matthew 28. And I shared with you that verse at the end of Matthew 28, as he is going into heaven and he tells the disciples, here are your marching orders. And I think he tells the church in perpetuity, for all church, for all Southern Baptist King James Church, so go ye therefore. Yeah, that's right. Some of y'all understand that. Let me go into the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father. And so what Jesus would have us do as a church is to seek to grow in both depth and breadth, to see us grow deep and wide. And so the Christian word that we use for growing deep is discipleship. We see that model of ministry in the Bible. And so last week, we talked about how is grace going to grow deep? What is discipleship going to look like here? And I don't do this a lot. I don't promote my own sermons, but nor, well, I won't say that aside. I don't promote my own sermons, but if you missed last week, that was kind of the manifesto on discipleship and what we want it to look like. So I would encourage you to give that one a listen or a watch if you like staring at me for 30 minutes on your work computer. Do that too. And so this week, I want to look at how do we want to grow wide. We looked at depth last week. So this week, how do we want to grow wide? And the church term for that is evangelism. How does grace want to handle evangelism? What do we want our ministry of evangelism to look like? And evangelism is simply sharing the gospel. It's an effort to see other people come to know Jesus. We want to win converts to the faith. And so how does grace want to do that? And even as I bring that up, as I seek to talk about that this week, I felt the need to confess to you that I'm not good at this. I'm not good at evangelism. And not in a way where I think like, well, that's okay because there's other things that maybe I feel like I'm stronger at or whatever, so it's okay to be weak over here. No, no, I'm telling you that historically I have not been good at this discipline. It scares me. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't love the idea of going out and sharing my faith with people. We had a guy from another church show up at our door this week, and he is the evangelism minister at one of the churches. And I thought, good for that guy. You could not pay me enough money to go door to door. It scares me. And so if it scares you, if the idea of evangelism, of sharing your faith intimidates you, you have some company. It intimidates me too. Now, I don't think that's an excuse because I think that the Bible calls us all to be evangelists. If you know Jesus, your job, your expectation is to share it with others, is to be a part of other people coming to the faith. That's the only reason he leaves us on earth. I've said this before. Have you ever thought about when you get saved, when you become a believer, why doesn't God just snatch us right to heaven, into eternity forever, where we don't have to experience any of the cruddy stuff that happens here anymore, so that we can stay here and tell other people about Him? Evangelism is the only reason we're still here, right? Romans 10 says, how will people believe unless we tell them? And how will people tell them unless it's preached? And how will it be preached unless people are sent? How beautiful are the feet that carry the good news to the people who need it? There's a biblical imperative for those of us who know Jesus to be involved in the discipline of evangelism, of growing the church in breadth. So we all need to do this. So even though it's intimidating, what I want to do is try to talk about it today in a way that makes it more approachable, in a way that makes it more doable, and hopefully we are inspired to make this a part of our life in an intentional way. To do that, I think it will help us to look at the way that Jesus framed up evangelism in the book of Mark. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. We're going to be looking at Mark chapter 4, starting in verse 3. In Mark 4, Jesus tells a parable. Now this is a little preview. I'm super excited for the next series. In March and April, we're going to be walking through the parables of Jesus, and I'm really excited to jump into those with you. A parable is a short story. It's totally made up to make a point. It's a short story to make a moral point. And Jesus did a lot of teaching in parables, and this is a very rough summation of why, but often we see Jesus preface things or follow parables like he does in Mark with, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. And so he often taught in parables because he was teaching to an audience of multiple motivations. In this one, he's talking to Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day who were closed off to him. He's talking to regular workaday folks, and he's teaching his disciples. And Jesus only wants you to get what he's saying if you really want to. I know that might sound weird, but he wants you to get what he's saying if you really mean it. If you're open to hear it, if you have a teachable spirit, then you're going to understand the parables. If you don't, then you won't. So he teaches in parables for a time while he does his ministry. And this parable is called the parable of the sower. And this is how he frames up evangelism for us. He says this. I'm going to start in verse 3. Verse 8 is going to be up on the screen because that's the one we're going to talk about for a little while. But this is what he says. Listen. So Jesus tells his parables to the general public and to his disciples. And a little while later, Jesus is with the disciples, and they kind of lean in as they often do, and they said, hey, what do you mean? Help us understand that. What do the different soils represent? And so Jesus explained it like this. He said, the sower is one who is spreading the word of God. He says, spreading the word. So when we sow seeds, we're telling people, Jesus loves you. Jesus died for you. God created you in his image. You are his beloved daughter or son. We're telling them truths from the Bible. We're opening up their eyes to the existence of Jesus and his love and care for them. And so that's what the word is. So the sower is spreading the word, telling people about Jesus and his love for them. And so sometimes that lands on the pavement, it lands on rocky soil, and the birds come and snatch it up. And Jesus says this is a picture of Satan actually snatching up those seeds before they can take root. And I've said before that we don't talk a lot about Satan here, but when we do, I like to remind you that if we believe the Bible, then we believe that he is real and he is against us. And so sometimes when people hear the gospel, Satan will bring things into their life to snatch that seed away so that it doesn't take root and they don't become believers yet. That's a thing that happens. Other times, it takes root immediately and the plant sprouts up right away. But because the soil isn't good, because it's shallow, because the roots aren't good, as soon as strife comes, as soon as difficulty occurs, as soon as tragedy happens, as soon as something challenges that new faith, it's scorched, it's washed away, it goes away just as quickly as it sprouted up. I've seen this dozens of times in ministry, and you probably have too. There'll be somebody who comes to the church for their first Sunday because of whatever's going on in their life. They're walking through a hard time. Guys just open their eyes up. They're just curious. They have a friend who invited them. Whatever it is, they'll come in, and on their very first Sunday, they sign up for all the stuff, man. They're serving on three teams. They wanna join three small groups. Is there anything else I can do? They're all the way in. They're coming to a meeting right after the service for the thing that they wanna do. And part of me says, that's great. But part of me knows because I've seen it so many times, they're gonna fall away just as quickly as they jumped in. Sometimes the soil just simply isn't ready yet for the gospel. And so we have to watch that and we have to know that and we have to try to tend to it. Other times it says, and this one is really tragic to me, that the seed gets into soil, the plant sprouts up, it's a good plant, but the thorns, it's among thorns, and the thorns choke it out so it doesn't produce seed. Jesus doesn't say it kills the plant, it just says this plant doesn't produce seed. It never does what it's supposed to do. This is the picture of someone who hears the Word of God, accepts the gospel, believes in Jesus, grows up, the plant sprouts, becomes a believer, but because of the concerns of the world, they never do what they're supposed to do. It's entirely possible to know Jesus, for the gospel to take root in your life, but for the concerns of the world to keep you from being effective in what God's asking you to do. For work to crowd out what life is really about. For the pursuit of money or power or possessions to crowd out what life is really supposed to be all about. For the pursuit of pleasure, for a habit or a hang-up that's in your life to choke out like a thorn the gospel that's in your life so that you never produce what you're designed to produce. That's a sad thing to see and to watch. It's one of my biggest fears that I'll be like that. But Jesus said, there's good soil. And when the seed, when God's word lands on good soil, the plant sprouts up and produces 30, 60, or 100 fold, which is another subtle way for Jesus to say the whole point of this exercise is for you to reproduce yourself. The whole point of the gospel being in your life, the whole point of knowing Jesus is to reproduce yourself in the life of others. It's so that other people can know Jesus and the gospel can take root in their lives as well. That's the whole point of it. So that's the parable of the sower and that's what it means. And as I read that parable, there are two questions to me that jump off the page. There's two things as I look at that parable that I immediately want to know the answer to as I'm thinking about it. The first one is, and this is just me being overly practical probably, is how do we share the gospel effectively? In the story, it seems so random that this sower's just throwing out seed willy-nilly. Just whoever can hear the word, however it goes, wherever it lands is fine with me. And I look at that and there's four options and three of them aren't so great. And I look at that and I'm like, there's gotta be a better way. How can I make sure I'm throwing it on the good soil? Because I don't know if you know this about me, this drives my wife Jen nuts, but my biggest pet peeve in life is inefficiency. Anybody that's taking too long to do anything, I lose my mind. Like parking lots are the worst. I hate inefficiency. I will be in an instant bad mood because something's going slower than it should be. And Jen's like, what in the world is wrong with you? And I'll give the eight step explanation about how this thing could go quicker if everybody would just get on the same page with it, right? And it drives her nuts and probably the people around me nuts, but I want to do things efficiently. So I'm not content with the idea of just throwing out seed and just letting the gospel take root wherever it lands. I want to know, how can we do this more effectively? How can we ensure that if we're going to be people who are going to share the gospel with others, who are going to spread the word of God to others, how can we be sure that that effort is going to be as effective as possible? To that end, after watching ministry for a number of years, watching people come to faith for a number of years, hearing stories of people come to faith, and talking to people about how they came to faith, I've come to the conclusion, you guys can try this on if you want to, but I've come to the conclusion that the human heart is best prepared through relationships and circumstances. The human heart becomes the best possible soil. It's best prepared and best work and best prepared for the reception of the gospel through relationships and circumstances. This is incidentally why I think the street preachers are incredibly ineffective. You're going to the ball game and there's that person on the corner and they're holding up the sign and they're yelling stuff at you about Jesus and maybe it's a good message and maybe it's just a threatening one, but it's almost always ineffective. And listen, I do, there is a part of me, I have a respect for those people because they got bigger guts than I do, you know? Good for you for believing so strongly in what you're doing. I think you believe it incorrectly. I think what you're doing is a terrible idea, but I admire your zeal, right? But it's so ineffective because there's neither a relationship nor the right circumstances for the gospel to be received, right? He doesn't have a relationship with any of the people walking by him. They don't know him, and if they do, they're probably not going to act like they do in that setting. And then it's the wrong circumstance, because people are like, bro, I'm just trying to make it to the game. Like, I'm trying to get into this concert, man. Like, it's not the right setting. But I think that relationship and circumstance works the soil to prepare the heart for the gospel. I cut my teeth in ministry doing Young Life, and there was a phrase in Young Life that we used all the time about ministering to students, and it's no different ministering to adults and to our friends. They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. You guys have heard that before. It was true. To walk with somebody, to do life with them, to show them consistently that, hey, I care about you as a person. You're not a target to me. You're not a project to me. You're not a holy tick box to me. You're a person that I love and care about tremendously. And then for them to watch you exude the gospel, do what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians, and it says that we are a procession led by Christ, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. If they're in your life and around you, and because of the relationship they have with you, that fragrance regularly passes by them. Or like Jesus says, that others would see our good works and so glorify our Father who is in heaven. There is a quote attributed to Francis of Assisi. He did not say this, and it is not the quote, but it still makes a good point. Share the gospel at all times. Use words when necessary. A relationship does this. It allows us into people's lives so they can get to know us and see how we live and see how we love. And it prepares them to trust us when we point them towards the gospel and plant the seeds of the gospel in their life. Now, here's the thing. We have to conduct the relationship in such a way that when we share the gospel with them, it makes sense. That when we share what Jesus does for us, they see that in our lives. That's the responsibility that we carry. As if one day I'm going to tell them I love Jesus and hear all the great things Jesus does for me, then it better not seem contradictory and hypocritical. But a relationship tills the ground so that they're ready to receive the gospel when we share it. The other thing that prepares us for the gospel is circumstances. If you think about what happened in your life that brought you to God, for many of us, it's life milestones. A lot of our stories are, we grew up, had some awareness of church. We were involved in it a little or a lot. But when we got to college, early adulthood, we kind of fell away from it. We deprioritized our faith. Not even really sure if we were Christians during that time. And then we got married and we had kids. And when we had kids, we looked at this baby and we went, oh man, I've got a responsibility here. And so we got back into church. And then when we got back into church because of the circumstance, because of this life event going on, our hearts were ready for the gospel, open to how to be good moms and good dads. And we began to grow spiritually. For a lot of us, that's our story. For a lot of us, we trace our faith back to a catalytic event in our life that made us question spiritual things. Sometimes it's when people hit rock bottom. Sometimes people have struggled so much and have made such a series of poor decisions that have led them to a place in life where they don't know what to do, and they are finally willing to go, you know what, God, my way of calling the shots is not working. I'm gonna start trusting your way. Circumstances. I don't think anything prepares the heart for the gospel better than relationships and circumstances. And here's a great illustration of how those two get married up so very often. I have a good buddy here who goes to the church named Ben. Ben's been at the same company for years. And Ben's kind of known in his work group, you know, in his peers, as he's the Christian guy. He's the one that loves Jesus. And so whenever anybody has a spiritual question, they go to Ben. And he talks to them about Jesus, and he kind of gives them the advice. Or when somebody has an issue going on in their life, often they'll go to Ben and say, what do you think about this? And he'll counsel them, right? I call him a pastor at his workplace. And there was somebody that he was buddies with that was a peer that would ask him these questions over the years, and Ben would give him books. And this guy was a total atheist, did not come from a spiritual background at all, didn't have any idea what he believed, but Ben tilled the ground with the relationship. And one day after years of doing this, the guy's wife got in some legal trouble. And so he came to Ben distraught. This is happening in my life. I don't know what to do. I'm kind of questioning everything. What do you think? I really want to have faith, but I don't know how to approach it. And so Ben gave him books and then they would talk about it. And then he would point them to a podcast and that guy would listen and they would talk back and forth. And months after this happened, the dude came to Ben's office one day and he kind of stuck his head in the office and he said, hey, I just want you to know that over the weekend I accepted Christ. I believe. I'm all in. And it was the kind of all in that now a year later, he and his wife are super involved in a church down south of the city. They do children's ministry down there. They're there every week. They give to the church. They're all in. The gospel took root in their life, and that ground was cultivated through years of relationship and then a circumstance that made them ready to receive the gospel. So I would say this to us. If we want to be people who are evangelists, if we want to share the gospel, see people come to faith, which is one of my big prayers for grace in 2020, that we would see more and more people come to faith this year, then I would encourage you to do it through relationships and be sensitive to circumstances. I think that evangelism is so intimidating because we think I'm going to have to convince somebody to become a believer. I'm going to have to have an answer for all of the rebuttals that they would have. I'm just going to have to approach a perfect stranger and say, hey, where would you go if you were to die today? And all that stuff is really intimidating. But really, I think the best possible evangelism plan, when I first started, somebody at the church said, hey, what's your evangelism plan for grace? And I said, not in a flippant, not in a way that I was joking, I was being serious, make friends. That's my plan. Go make friends. And I think that's still the best plan. Now the question becomes, do you have, those of you who are here who know Jesus and who love him and who want to tell other people about him, do you have friends in your life that are not church people? Do you have friends in your life that don't know him yet? Often in churches, we get in our little holy bubbles, our little holy huddles, and we don't know anybody outside of the faith. So the idea of sharing our faith forces us to go to strangers and have awkward conversations, but it's much more effective if we can have these conversations with people who know that we care about them. Do you have friends that don't know Jesus? That may be your step of obedience today, to start making some of those. The plan for evangelism at Grace is for you guys to go out and make friends on your tennis team, in your PTA groups, in your volunteer groups, in the things that you care about in your neighborhood. Stop and have a conversation when you go to the park. And listen, I'm preaching to myself here because I'm the very first one to just want to go to the park, watch Lily swing, and go back home. But stop and open yourself up to the opportunities around you and start having conversations and cultivating friendships with people. That's how we want to begin to share the gospel. And in those friendships, be sensitive to the circumstances going on in their life so that when they're ready to receive the word of the gospel, you can give it to them. Now, if that's how we're going to evangelize, if that's the best plan to do it, is to go make friends, be sensitive, have intentional conversations with them, and over time share the gospel with them and see them come to faith, which I do think is the most effective way to do it because it's the deepest roots. If that's what we're supposed to do, my question, the other question I ask as I look at this parable is, what's my motivation? Why am I supposed to do this? What should motivate me to share the gospel as much as possible? I think this is an important question because so often the motivator here is because we're supposed to, right? So often the motivator here, hey, you guys should go share the gospel. Why? Because Jesus told you to. And listen, that's enough, right? I mean, that's good enough. Jesus told us to. If you're a believer, you're living a life in submission to Jesus and what he wants for you, so go and do it. That should be enough. But if you're like me, because you ought to isn't very motivational to you. Matter of fact, I tend to hate that reason. Some of the biggest arguments Jen and I get into in our marriage are because she says we're supposed to do a thing, and I say I don't want to do the thing, and says, you're just supposed to do it. And I'm like, I just don't want to. Like Christmas, right? We're going to some gift exchange and everyone's doing a $30 gift card. And I'm like, why don't we all just keep our own $30 and spend it on what we want rather than I give you $30 at a place that you don't like and then I'll get $30 at a place that I don't like. It's dumb. And she goes, Nate, you ruin everything. I'm like, I know, but I'm right. I don't want to. And she sighs and she goes, and I said, why do we have to do this? And she sighs and she goes, because it's just what people do. You're supposed to. And I always push against it. There's never a motivator for me. Now in Christianity, Jesus is the Lord of our life because he said so is a good reason. But I think that there's even a better one. I think there's a better motivator that should inspire us to go be evangelists. The best motivation to evangelize is excitement about what Jesus is doing. The best motivation to evangelize is excitement about what Jesus is doing. And here's why I think this. Here's one of the things I learned at Grace. That first year at Grace, when I first got here, I didn't want you guys to invite anybody to church. People would be like, hey, hope it's good this weekend and we're inviting our friends, and I would think to myself, it's not gonna be. I wish you'd give us some time. I wish you'd just chill out a little bit. I'm glad you're excited, but this is still kind of a dumpster fire, so let's just chill out. We were lucky in that first year if my mic worked the whole time. I'll never forget that first Christmas Eve service. It was cutting in and out so bad that I shut it out and yelled at you. It wasn't good yet. I was scrambling to try to get all the pieces in place so that when you would invite your friends, I felt like we were giving them something that we could be proud of that would really serve them. We were trying to get other areas of the church set up. We were trying to lay the foundation for our small groups. We simply weren't ready for people. But you guys kept inviting them. Do you know why you did that? Because you were excited about what's happening here. You were excited about grace. And even though I never asked you to invite anybody, even though I would have preferred you just wait and give me a second. People kept inviting their friends. And what it taught me was the simple truth that we tell our friends what we're excited about. We tell our friends what we're excited about. If we're pumped up about something, we tell the people in our life about it. It's as simple as that. And because of that, what I know is that everyone is an evangelist for something. All of you are evangelizing something. All of you are spreading the good news about something. And here's how I know that's true. Take a look at this picture. This is my buddy Keith Cathcart in Mexico with somebody that's become a dear friend to his family that we call Chewy. Every year, Chewky, every year when we go down there, he's not my good friend, he's Keith's good friend. Every year when we go down there, Keith takes him more Steelers gear. And every year when I go down there, there are more Mexicans wearing Steelers gear. There's other churches that give t-shirts, you see those every now and again, but you see a bunch of guys working in Steelers gear the week that Keith is there, and I call him the Steelers evangelist. He's spreading the good news of the Steelers all over the place. And all kidding aside, he's excited about the Steelers. So he tells people about them, and he's evangelizing them. We're all evangelists for something. It might be the Netflix show. It might be the podcast. It might be the book. It might be the diet that you're on. It might be the job that you got. It might be your kids. We're all evangelizing something because we're all excited about something. So I think if we want to be effective evangelists, then we need to be excited about what Jesus is doing in our lives. As a matter of fact, I think the most effective way to evangelize is to have the mindset of, man, I am so blown away by what Jesus is doing in my life that I want you to experience this too. I am so excited, I am so impressed, I am so grateful that Jesus is a part of my life that I want you to experience this as well. That's the motivator to share Jesus. And when you're excited about him, this is why new converts share their faith the most, because they're the most excited. So I think for some of us, what we need is to pray a sincere prayer and say, God, make me excited. Excite me about what excites you. Find something to be excited about. If you're in a small group, to me, there's so much to be excited about. In the young couple small group that I'm in, we get to watch people come in. This last week, we had a couple come in. It was their second time in small group. Even though they kind of grew up around church, this is the first time they've been in a small group ever. And she's sharing something with the group and she starts crying. And I made fun of her and I said, typically we like to wait four groups before we cry, but you know, go ahead. She starts crying with what she's sharing. And then after she's done, her husband says, man, I'm so glad that we found a place where my wife can share things like that. And on the outside, I go, oh, that's so good. And on the inside, I'm like, yes! Like my pastoral heart is going crazy. That's exciting. I want other people to be a part of that. So I want to tell people and invite people to what's going on there. Sometimes the excitement is getting to watch what happens with other people. Sometimes the excitement is what's happening with you. But I think excitement about what Jesus is doing is the best motivator to evangelize. So that's what we do. We go and we make friends with people who don't yet know Jesus, and then we tell them about the things that are exciting to us in hopes that they come to Jesus. It's a simple plan of evangelism. That's how we want to do it. And you'll notice, nowhere in this that I tell you, go and make disciples and bring them to grace so that they sit in seats. That's not the point. But I will say this, you can let us help you. The community here, the camaraderie here, is the best thing we got going for us. Bring other, see? Bring other people. Was that Cindy? Bring other people here and expose them to the love and the friendships that are happening here. Can I tell you that that's why we do Big Night Out? We do Big Night Out now twice a year. Grace's Big Night Out. We go hang out. The other two times have been at Compass Rose. We've got one coming up March 27th. Mark your calendars. Be in town. It's going to be the best one yet. I'm super excited about it. I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag of what it is, but oh man, it's going to be good. We do those with no agenda other than to hang out and to give you easy invites. An easy way to reach out to your friends who don't know Jesus yet and say, hey, come hang out with me and my church at Compass Rose. Because maybe it would feel awkward to invite them to church. Maybe the soil isn't ready for that invite yet, but maybe they'll come hang out with us and they'll see the way that we do community. They'll see the way that we love one another. Let us help you in that same way. Grace, let's evangelize as a team. When somebody brings in a friend, let's be kind to them. Those of us who have been here for a long time, let's be cognizant in the lobby to not just talk with the people that we know at length every week. Let's have our heads on swivels and look around. And if there's folks that we haven't met yet, let's go meet them. Let's evangelize as a group. Let us help you. And really, that's all we're trying to do at Grace. We're trying to do things on Sunday morning and in our small groups and in our various ministries that are so exciting to you that you think to yourself, man, I am so grateful for what's happening for me and my faith and my family at Grace that I want it to happen for other people too. And then we go out, we plant the seeds and friendships that we've cultivated. We're sensitive to circumstances going on in their life. And we watch people come to Christ and we grow in your personal ministries in 30, 60, and 100 fold. So in the spirit of last week's sermon, I would ask you this week, what's your next step of obedience in terms of evangelism? Is it to go make some friends that don't know Jesus? Is it to simply pray an earnest prayer and say, Father, would you excite me about what's happening here in your church? Would you excite me about what your son is doing in my life? Is it to intentionally reach out to people and start extending those invites? I think everybody has a next step of obedience in terms of evangelism, and I would encourage you to identify yours and think about how you can begin to take it. And let's make this a church that's really good at inviting and then trust them when you bring them here that this is a team sport, that we evangelize together with the community that we have. All right, let's pray, and then you'll be dismissed. Father, thanks so much for this morning. Thank you for giving us a place where we can come in and slow down and focus on you. God, I pray that you would inspire us to share your word and your good news. Make us evangelists, God. Father, I pray that we would see people come to faith this year, that we would see conversions happen, that we would hear stories and repeat them of people who were far from you and over time came to know you and walk with you and grow in you. Give us courage to be the evangelist that you call us to be. Give us the words when we don't know them. Give us the insight when we lack it. Give us the sensitivity when we don't feel it. And help us be effective in the ministry of sharing our faith. It's in your son's name we pray these things. Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, so it's good to see you on this February Sunday, the third Sunday in our Going Home campaign series. Last week, we kind of talked about the biggest question facing grace. I feel like because we have been brought to a place of health, last week I shared that for a long time the mission of grace has been grace. By necessity, we've looked inward and scrambled to get healthy and to get to a place where we weren't just trying to survive, but now we could thrive. And so in that place, believing that we are in a position of health, the question that we are collectively asking is, Father, what would you have us do in health? Say, God, what would you have us do now? We're in a position where we can really do your ministry. I feel like we're moving into a new season as a church. So the question becomes, what would you have us do in this new season? Part of that answer is to pursue a permanent home in the community that we care about so much. That's why we're having the campaign that's going to culminate on March the 1st. We're going to send out pledge cards this week to our partners, to people who call Grace family, and encourage everyone to bring those in or to send those in by March the 1st, and we'll have a celebratory pledge Sunday on that first Sunday in March. I think it's going to be a big celebratory Sunday for us. But that's kind of what we're pushing towards. But in the midst of that, as we ask God, what would you have us do in health? One answer is, one step is to pursue a permanent home. Now's the time to do that. But the bigger answers are the ones that we talked about last week and this week. Last week, I shared that if you asked Jesus, what would you have a healthy church do? I think he would point us to the Great Commission, to Matthew 28. And I shared with you that verse at the end of Matthew 28, as he is going into heaven and he tells the disciples, here are your marching orders. And I think he tells the church in perpetuity, for all church, for all Southern Baptist King James Church, so go ye therefore. Yeah, that's right. Some of y'all understand that. Let me go into the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father. And so what Jesus would have us do as a church is to seek to grow in both depth and breadth, to see us grow deep and wide. And so the Christian word that we use for growing deep is discipleship. We see that model of ministry in the Bible. And so last week, we talked about how is grace going to grow deep? What is discipleship going to look like here? And I don't do this a lot. I don't promote my own sermons, but nor, well, I won't say that aside. I don't promote my own sermons, but if you missed last week, that was kind of the manifesto on discipleship and what we want it to look like. So I would encourage you to give that one a listen or a watch if you like staring at me for 30 minutes on your work computer. Do that too. And so this week, I want to look at how do we want to grow wide. We looked at depth last week. So this week, how do we want to grow wide? And the church term for that is evangelism. How does grace want to handle evangelism? What do we want our ministry of evangelism to look like? And evangelism is simply sharing the gospel. It's an effort to see other people come to know Jesus. We want to win converts to the faith. And so how does grace want to do that? And even as I bring that up, as I seek to talk about that this week, I felt the need to confess to you that I'm not good at this. I'm not good at evangelism. And not in a way where I think like, well, that's okay because there's other things that maybe I feel like I'm stronger at or whatever, so it's okay to be weak over here. No, no, I'm telling you that historically I have not been good at this discipline. It scares me. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't love the idea of going out and sharing my faith with people. We had a guy from another church show up at our door this week, and he is the evangelism minister at one of the churches. And I thought, good for that guy. You could not pay me enough money to go door to door. It scares me. And so if it scares you, if the idea of evangelism, of sharing your faith intimidates you, you have some company. It intimidates me too. Now, I don't think that's an excuse because I think that the Bible calls us all to be evangelists. If you know Jesus, your job, your expectation is to share it with others, is to be a part of other people coming to the faith. That's the only reason he leaves us on earth. I've said this before. Have you ever thought about when you get saved, when you become a believer, why doesn't God just snatch us right to heaven, into eternity forever, where we don't have to experience any of the cruddy stuff that happens here anymore, so that we can stay here and tell other people about Him? Evangelism is the only reason we're still here, right? Romans 10 says, how will people believe unless we tell them? And how will people tell them unless it's preached? And how will it be preached unless people are sent? How beautiful are the feet that carry the good news to the people who need it? There's a biblical imperative for those of us who know Jesus to be involved in the discipline of evangelism, of growing the church in breadth. So we all need to do this. So even though it's intimidating, what I want to do is try to talk about it today in a way that makes it more approachable, in a way that makes it more doable, and hopefully we are inspired to make this a part of our life in an intentional way. To do that, I think it will help us to look at the way that Jesus framed up evangelism in the book of Mark. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. We're going to be looking at Mark chapter 4, starting in verse 3. In Mark 4, Jesus tells a parable. Now this is a little preview. I'm super excited for the next series. In March and April, we're going to be walking through the parables of Jesus, and I'm really excited to jump into those with you. A parable is a short story. It's totally made up to make a point. It's a short story to make a moral point. And Jesus did a lot of teaching in parables, and this is a very rough summation of why, but often we see Jesus preface things or follow parables like he does in Mark with, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. And so he often taught in parables because he was teaching to an audience of multiple motivations. In this one, he's talking to Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day who were closed off to him. He's talking to regular workaday folks, and he's teaching his disciples. And Jesus only wants you to get what he's saying if you really want to. I know that might sound weird, but he wants you to get what he's saying if you really mean it. If you're open to hear it, if you have a teachable spirit, then you're going to understand the parables. If you don't, then you won't. So he teaches in parables for a time while he does his ministry. And this parable is called the parable of the sower. And this is how he frames up evangelism for us. He says this. I'm going to start in verse 3. Verse 8 is going to be up on the screen because that's the one we're going to talk about for a little while. But this is what he says. Listen. So Jesus tells his parables to the general public and to his disciples. And a little while later, Jesus is with the disciples, and they kind of lean in as they often do, and they said, hey, what do you mean? Help us understand that. What do the different soils represent? And so Jesus explained it like this. He said, the sower is one who is spreading the word of God. He says, spreading the word. So when we sow seeds, we're telling people, Jesus loves you. Jesus died for you. God created you in his image. You are his beloved daughter or son. We're telling them truths from the Bible. We're opening up their eyes to the existence of Jesus and his love and care for them. And so that's what the word is. So the sower is spreading the word, telling people about Jesus and his love for them. And so sometimes that lands on the pavement, it lands on rocky soil, and the birds come and snatch it up. And Jesus says this is a picture of Satan actually snatching up those seeds before they can take root. And I've said before that we don't talk a lot about Satan here, but when we do, I like to remind you that if we believe the Bible, then we believe that he is real and he is against us. And so sometimes when people hear the gospel, Satan will bring things into their life to snatch that seed away so that it doesn't take root and they don't become believers yet. That's a thing that happens. Other times, it takes root immediately and the plant sprouts up right away. But because the soil isn't good, because it's shallow, because the roots aren't good, as soon as strife comes, as soon as difficulty occurs, as soon as tragedy happens, as soon as something challenges that new faith, it's scorched, it's washed away, it goes away just as quickly as it sprouted up. I've seen this dozens of times in ministry, and you probably have too. There'll be somebody who comes to the church for their first Sunday because of whatever's going on in their life. They're walking through a hard time. Guys just open their eyes up. They're just curious. They have a friend who invited them. Whatever it is, they'll come in, and on their very first Sunday, they sign up for all the stuff, man. They're serving on three teams. They wanna join three small groups. Is there anything else I can do? They're all the way in. They're coming to a meeting right after the service for the thing that they wanna do. And part of me says, that's great. But part of me knows because I've seen it so many times, they're gonna fall away just as quickly as they jumped in. Sometimes the soil just simply isn't ready yet for the gospel. And so we have to watch that and we have to know that and we have to try to tend to it. Other times it says, and this one is really tragic to me, that the seed gets into soil, the plant sprouts up, it's a good plant, but the thorns, it's among thorns, and the thorns choke it out so it doesn't produce seed. Jesus doesn't say it kills the plant, it just says this plant doesn't produce seed. It never does what it's supposed to do. This is the picture of someone who hears the Word of God, accepts the gospel, believes in Jesus, grows up, the plant sprouts, becomes a believer, but because of the concerns of the world, they never do what they're supposed to do. It's entirely possible to know Jesus, for the gospel to take root in your life, but for the concerns of the world to keep you from being effective in what God's asking you to do. For work to crowd out what life is really about. For the pursuit of money or power or possessions to crowd out what life is really supposed to be all about. For the pursuit of pleasure, for a habit or a hang-up that's in your life to choke out like a thorn the gospel that's in your life so that you never produce what you're designed to produce. That's a sad thing to see and to watch. It's one of my biggest fears that I'll be like that. But Jesus said, there's good soil. And when the seed, when God's word lands on good soil, the plant sprouts up and produces 30, 60, or 100 fold, which is another subtle way for Jesus to say the whole point of this exercise is for you to reproduce yourself. The whole point of the gospel being in your life, the whole point of knowing Jesus is to reproduce yourself in the life of others. It's so that other people can know Jesus and the gospel can take root in their lives as well. That's the whole point of it. So that's the parable of the sower and that's what it means. And as I read that parable, there are two questions to me that jump off the page. There's two things as I look at that parable that I immediately want to know the answer to as I'm thinking about it. The first one is, and this is just me being overly practical probably, is how do we share the gospel effectively? In the story, it seems so random that this sower's just throwing out seed willy-nilly. Just whoever can hear the word, however it goes, wherever it lands is fine with me. And I look at that and there's four options and three of them aren't so great. And I look at that and I'm like, there's gotta be a better way. How can I make sure I'm throwing it on the good soil? Because I don't know if you know this about me, this drives my wife Jen nuts, but my biggest pet peeve in life is inefficiency. Anybody that's taking too long to do anything, I lose my mind. Like parking lots are the worst. I hate inefficiency. I will be in an instant bad mood because something's going slower than it should be. And Jen's like, what in the world is wrong with you? And I'll give the eight step explanation about how this thing could go quicker if everybody would just get on the same page with it, right? And it drives her nuts and probably the people around me nuts, but I want to do things efficiently. So I'm not content with the idea of just throwing out seed and just letting the gospel take root wherever it lands. I want to know, how can we do this more effectively? How can we ensure that if we're going to be people who are going to share the gospel with others, who are going to spread the word of God to others, how can we be sure that that effort is going to be as effective as possible? To that end, after watching ministry for a number of years, watching people come to faith for a number of years, hearing stories of people come to faith, and talking to people about how they came to faith, I've come to the conclusion, you guys can try this on if you want to, but I've come to the conclusion that the human heart is best prepared through relationships and circumstances. The human heart becomes the best possible soil. It's best prepared and best work and best prepared for the reception of the gospel through relationships and circumstances. This is incidentally why I think the street preachers are incredibly ineffective. You're going to the ball game and there's that person on the corner and they're holding up the sign and they're yelling stuff at you about Jesus and maybe it's a good message and maybe it's just a threatening one, but it's almost always ineffective. And listen, I do, there is a part of me, I have a respect for those people because they got bigger guts than I do, you know? Good for you for believing so strongly in what you're doing. I think you believe it incorrectly. I think what you're doing is a terrible idea, but I admire your zeal, right? But it's so ineffective because there's neither a relationship nor the right circumstances for the gospel to be received, right? He doesn't have a relationship with any of the people walking by him. They don't know him, and if they do, they're probably not going to act like they do in that setting. And then it's the wrong circumstance, because people are like, bro, I'm just trying to make it to the game. Like, I'm trying to get into this concert, man. Like, it's not the right setting. But I think that relationship and circumstance works the soil to prepare the heart for the gospel. I cut my teeth in ministry doing Young Life, and there was a phrase in Young Life that we used all the time about ministering to students, and it's no different ministering to adults and to our friends. They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. You guys have heard that before. It was true. To walk with somebody, to do life with them, to show them consistently that, hey, I care about you as a person. You're not a target to me. You're not a project to me. You're not a holy tick box to me. You're a person that I love and care about tremendously. And then for them to watch you exude the gospel, do what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians, and it says that we are a procession led by Christ, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. If they're in your life and around you, and because of the relationship they have with you, that fragrance regularly passes by them. Or like Jesus says, that others would see our good works and so glorify our Father who is in heaven. There is a quote attributed to Francis of Assisi. He did not say this, and it is not the quote, but it still makes a good point. Share the gospel at all times. Use words when necessary. A relationship does this. It allows us into people's lives so they can get to know us and see how we live and see how we love. And it prepares them to trust us when we point them towards the gospel and plant the seeds of the gospel in their life. Now, here's the thing. We have to conduct the relationship in such a way that when we share the gospel with them, it makes sense. That when we share what Jesus does for us, they see that in our lives. That's the responsibility that we carry. As if one day I'm going to tell them I love Jesus and hear all the great things Jesus does for me, then it better not seem contradictory and hypocritical. But a relationship tills the ground so that they're ready to receive the gospel when we share it. The other thing that prepares us for the gospel is circumstances. If you think about what happened in your life that brought you to God, for many of us, it's life milestones. A lot of our stories are, we grew up, had some awareness of church. We were involved in it a little or a lot. But when we got to college, early adulthood, we kind of fell away from it. We deprioritized our faith. Not even really sure if we were Christians during that time. And then we got married and we had kids. And when we had kids, we looked at this baby and we went, oh man, I've got a responsibility here. And so we got back into church. And then when we got back into church because of the circumstance, because of this life event going on, our hearts were ready for the gospel, open to how to be good moms and good dads. And we began to grow spiritually. For a lot of us, that's our story. For a lot of us, we trace our faith back to a catalytic event in our life that made us question spiritual things. Sometimes it's when people hit rock bottom. Sometimes people have struggled so much and have made such a series of poor decisions that have led them to a place in life where they don't know what to do, and they are finally willing to go, you know what, God, my way of calling the shots is not working. I'm gonna start trusting your way. Circumstances. I don't think anything prepares the heart for the gospel better than relationships and circumstances. And here's a great illustration of how those two get married up so very often. I have a good buddy here who goes to the church named Ben. Ben's been at the same company for years. And Ben's kind of known in his work group, you know, in his peers, as he's the Christian guy. He's the one that loves Jesus. And so whenever anybody has a spiritual question, they go to Ben. And he talks to them about Jesus, and he kind of gives them the advice. Or when somebody has an issue going on in their life, often they'll go to Ben and say, what do you think about this? And he'll counsel them, right? I call him a pastor at his workplace. And there was somebody that he was buddies with that was a peer that would ask him these questions over the years, and Ben would give him books. And this guy was a total atheist, did not come from a spiritual background at all, didn't have any idea what he believed, but Ben tilled the ground with the relationship. And one day after years of doing this, the guy's wife got in some legal trouble. And so he came to Ben distraught. This is happening in my life. I don't know what to do. I'm kind of questioning everything. What do you think? I really want to have faith, but I don't know how to approach it. And so Ben gave him books and then they would talk about it. And then he would point them to a podcast and that guy would listen and they would talk back and forth. And months after this happened, the dude came to Ben's office one day and he kind of stuck his head in the office and he said, hey, I just want you to know that over the weekend I accepted Christ. I believe. I'm all in. And it was the kind of all in that now a year later, he and his wife are super involved in a church down south of the city. They do children's ministry down there. They're there every week. They give to the church. They're all in. The gospel took root in their life, and that ground was cultivated through years of relationship and then a circumstance that made them ready to receive the gospel. So I would say this to us. If we want to be people who are evangelists, if we want to share the gospel, see people come to faith, which is one of my big prayers for grace in 2020, that we would see more and more people come to faith this year, then I would encourage you to do it through relationships and be sensitive to circumstances. I think that evangelism is so intimidating because we think I'm going to have to convince somebody to become a believer. I'm going to have to have an answer for all of the rebuttals that they would have. I'm just going to have to approach a perfect stranger and say, hey, where would you go if you were to die today? And all that stuff is really intimidating. But really, I think the best possible evangelism plan, when I first started, somebody at the church said, hey, what's your evangelism plan for grace? And I said, not in a flippant, not in a way that I was joking, I was being serious, make friends. That's my plan. Go make friends. And I think that's still the best plan. Now the question becomes, do you have, those of you who are here who know Jesus and who love him and who want to tell other people about him, do you have friends in your life that are not church people? Do you have friends in your life that don't know him yet? Often in churches, we get in our little holy bubbles, our little holy huddles, and we don't know anybody outside of the faith. So the idea of sharing our faith forces us to go to strangers and have awkward conversations, but it's much more effective if we can have these conversations with people who know that we care about them. Do you have friends that don't know Jesus? That may be your step of obedience today, to start making some of those. The plan for evangelism at Grace is for you guys to go out and make friends on your tennis team, in your PTA groups, in your volunteer groups, in the things that you care about in your neighborhood. Stop and have a conversation when you go to the park. And listen, I'm preaching to myself here because I'm the very first one to just want to go to the park, watch Lily swing, and go back home. But stop and open yourself up to the opportunities around you and start having conversations and cultivating friendships with people. That's how we want to begin to share the gospel. And in those friendships, be sensitive to the circumstances going on in their life so that when they're ready to receive the word of the gospel, you can give it to them. Now, if that's how we're going to evangelize, if that's the best plan to do it, is to go make friends, be sensitive, have intentional conversations with them, and over time share the gospel with them and see them come to faith, which I do think is the most effective way to do it because it's the deepest roots. If that's what we're supposed to do, my question, the other question I ask as I look at this parable is, what's my motivation? Why am I supposed to do this? What should motivate me to share the gospel as much as possible? I think this is an important question because so often the motivator here is because we're supposed to, right? So often the motivator here, hey, you guys should go share the gospel. Why? Because Jesus told you to. And listen, that's enough, right? I mean, that's good enough. Jesus told us to. If you're a believer, you're living a life in submission to Jesus and what he wants for you, so go and do it. That should be enough. But if you're like me, because you ought to isn't very motivational to you. Matter of fact, I tend to hate that reason. Some of the biggest arguments Jen and I get into in our marriage are because she says we're supposed to do a thing, and I say I don't want to do the thing, and says, you're just supposed to do it. And I'm like, I just don't want to. Like Christmas, right? We're going to some gift exchange and everyone's doing a $30 gift card. And I'm like, why don't we all just keep our own $30 and spend it on what we want rather than I give you $30 at a place that you don't like and then I'll get $30 at a place that I don't like. It's dumb. And she goes, Nate, you ruin everything. I'm like, I know, but I'm right. I don't want to. And she sighs and she goes, and I said, why do we have to do this? And she sighs and she goes, because it's just what people do. You're supposed to. And I always push against it. There's never a motivator for me. Now in Christianity, Jesus is the Lord of our life because he said so is a good reason. But I think that there's even a better one. I think there's a better motivator that should inspire us to go be evangelists. The best motivation to evangelize is excitement about what Jesus is doing. The best motivation to evangelize is excitement about what Jesus is doing. And here's why I think this. Here's one of the things I learned at Grace. That first year at Grace, when I first got here, I didn't want you guys to invite anybody to church. People would be like, hey, hope it's good this weekend and we're inviting our friends, and I would think to myself, it's not gonna be. I wish you'd give us some time. I wish you'd just chill out a little bit. I'm glad you're excited, but this is still kind of a dumpster fire, so let's just chill out. We were lucky in that first year if my mic worked the whole time. I'll never forget that first Christmas Eve service. It was cutting in and out so bad that I shut it out and yelled at you. It wasn't good yet. I was scrambling to try to get all the pieces in place so that when you would invite your friends, I felt like we were giving them something that we could be proud of that would really serve them. We were trying to get other areas of the church set up. We were trying to lay the foundation for our small groups. We simply weren't ready for people. But you guys kept inviting them. Do you know why you did that? Because you were excited about what's happening here. You were excited about grace. And even though I never asked you to invite anybody, even though I would have preferred you just wait and give me a second. People kept inviting their friends. And what it taught me was the simple truth that we tell our friends what we're excited about. We tell our friends what we're excited about. If we're pumped up about something, we tell the people in our life about it. It's as simple as that. And because of that, what I know is that everyone is an evangelist for something. All of you are evangelizing something. All of you are spreading the good news about something. And here's how I know that's true. Take a look at this picture. This is my buddy Keith Cathcart in Mexico with somebody that's become a dear friend to his family that we call Chewy. Every year, Chewky, every year when we go down there, he's not my good friend, he's Keith's good friend. Every year when we go down there, Keith takes him more Steelers gear. And every year when I go down there, there are more Mexicans wearing Steelers gear. There's other churches that give t-shirts, you see those every now and again, but you see a bunch of guys working in Steelers gear the week that Keith is there, and I call him the Steelers evangelist. He's spreading the good news of the Steelers all over the place. And all kidding aside, he's excited about the Steelers. So he tells people about them, and he's evangelizing them. We're all evangelists for something. It might be the Netflix show. It might be the podcast. It might be the book. It might be the diet that you're on. It might be the job that you got. It might be your kids. We're all evangelizing something because we're all excited about something. So I think if we want to be effective evangelists, then we need to be excited about what Jesus is doing in our lives. As a matter of fact, I think the most effective way to evangelize is to have the mindset of, man, I am so blown away by what Jesus is doing in my life that I want you to experience this too. I am so excited, I am so impressed, I am so grateful that Jesus is a part of my life that I want you to experience this as well. That's the motivator to share Jesus. And when you're excited about him, this is why new converts share their faith the most, because they're the most excited. So I think for some of us, what we need is to pray a sincere prayer and say, God, make me excited. Excite me about what excites you. Find something to be excited about. If you're in a small group, to me, there's so much to be excited about. In the young couple small group that I'm in, we get to watch people come in. This last week, we had a couple come in. It was their second time in small group. Even though they kind of grew up around church, this is the first time they've been in a small group ever. And she's sharing something with the group and she starts crying. And I made fun of her and I said, typically we like to wait four groups before we cry, but you know, go ahead. She starts crying with what she's sharing. And then after she's done, her husband says, man, I'm so glad that we found a place where my wife can share things like that. And on the outside, I go, oh, that's so good. And on the inside, I'm like, yes! Like my pastoral heart is going crazy. That's exciting. I want other people to be a part of that. So I want to tell people and invite people to what's going on there. Sometimes the excitement is getting to watch what happens with other people. Sometimes the excitement is what's happening with you. But I think excitement about what Jesus is doing is the best motivator to evangelize. So that's what we do. We go and we make friends with people who don't yet know Jesus, and then we tell them about the things that are exciting to us in hopes that they come to Jesus. It's a simple plan of evangelism. That's how we want to do it. And you'll notice, nowhere in this that I tell you, go and make disciples and bring them to grace so that they sit in seats. That's not the point. But I will say this, you can let us help you. The community here, the camaraderie here, is the best thing we got going for us. Bring other, see? Bring other people. Was that Cindy? Bring other people here and expose them to the love and the friendships that are happening here. Can I tell you that that's why we do Big Night Out? We do Big Night Out now twice a year. Grace's Big Night Out. We go hang out. The other two times have been at Compass Rose. We've got one coming up March 27th. Mark your calendars. Be in town. It's going to be the best one yet. I'm super excited about it. I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag of what it is, but oh man, it's going to be good. We do those with no agenda other than to hang out and to give you easy invites. An easy way to reach out to your friends who don't know Jesus yet and say, hey, come hang out with me and my church at Compass Rose. Because maybe it would feel awkward to invite them to church. Maybe the soil isn't ready for that invite yet, but maybe they'll come hang out with us and they'll see the way that we do community. They'll see the way that we love one another. Let us help you in that same way. Grace, let's evangelize as a team. When somebody brings in a friend, let's be kind to them. Those of us who have been here for a long time, let's be cognizant in the lobby to not just talk with the people that we know at length every week. Let's have our heads on swivels and look around. And if there's folks that we haven't met yet, let's go meet them. Let's evangelize as a group. Let us help you. And really, that's all we're trying to do at Grace. We're trying to do things on Sunday morning and in our small groups and in our various ministries that are so exciting to you that you think to yourself, man, I am so grateful for what's happening for me and my faith and my family at Grace that I want it to happen for other people too. And then we go out, we plant the seeds and friendships that we've cultivated. We're sensitive to circumstances going on in their life. And we watch people come to Christ and we grow in your personal ministries in 30, 60, and 100 fold. So in the spirit of last week's sermon, I would ask you this week, what's your next step of obedience in terms of evangelism? Is it to go make some friends that don't know Jesus? Is it to simply pray an earnest prayer and say, Father, would you excite me about what's happening here in your church? Would you excite me about what your son is doing in my life? Is it to intentionally reach out to people and start extending those invites? I think everybody has a next step of obedience in terms of evangelism, and I would encourage you to identify yours and think about how you can begin to take it. And let's make this a church that's really good at inviting and then trust them when you bring them here that this is a team sport, that we evangelize together with the community that we have. All right, let's pray, and then you'll be dismissed. Father, thanks so much for this morning. Thank you for giving us a place where we can come in and slow down and focus on you. God, I pray that you would inspire us to share your word and your good news. Make us evangelists, God. Father, I pray that we would see people come to faith this year, that we would see conversions happen, that we would hear stories and repeat them of people who were far from you and over time came to know you and walk with you and grow in you. Give us courage to be the evangelist that you call us to be. Give us the words when we don't know them. Give us the insight when we lack it. Give us the sensitivity when we don't feel it. And help us be effective in the ministry of sharing our faith. It's in your son's name we pray these things. Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, so it's good to see you on this February Sunday, the third Sunday in our Going Home campaign series. Last week, we kind of talked about the biggest question facing grace. I feel like because we have been brought to a place of health, last week I shared that for a long time the mission of grace has been grace. By necessity, we've looked inward and scrambled to get healthy and to get to a place where we weren't just trying to survive, but now we could thrive. And so in that place, believing that we are in a position of health, the question that we are collectively asking is, Father, what would you have us do in health? Say, God, what would you have us do now? We're in a position where we can really do your ministry. I feel like we're moving into a new season as a church. So the question becomes, what would you have us do in this new season? Part of that answer is to pursue a permanent home in the community that we care about so much. That's why we're having the campaign that's going to culminate on March the 1st. We're going to send out pledge cards this week to our partners, to people who call Grace family, and encourage everyone to bring those in or to send those in by March the 1st, and we'll have a celebratory pledge Sunday on that first Sunday in March. I think it's going to be a big celebratory Sunday for us. But that's kind of what we're pushing towards. But in the midst of that, as we ask God, what would you have us do in health? One answer is, one step is to pursue a permanent home. Now's the time to do that. But the bigger answers are the ones that we talked about last week and this week. Last week, I shared that if you asked Jesus, what would you have a healthy church do? I think he would point us to the Great Commission, to Matthew 28. And I shared with you that verse at the end of Matthew 28, as he is going into heaven and he tells the disciples, here are your marching orders. And I think he tells the church in perpetuity, for all church, for all Southern Baptist King James Church, so go ye therefore. Yeah, that's right. Some of y'all understand that. Let me go into the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father. And so what Jesus would have us do as a church is to seek to grow in both depth and breadth, to see us grow deep and wide. And so the Christian word that we use for growing deep is discipleship. We see that model of ministry in the Bible. And so last week, we talked about how is grace going to grow deep? What is discipleship going to look like here? And I don't do this a lot. I don't promote my own sermons, but nor, well, I won't say that aside. I don't promote my own sermons, but if you missed last week, that was kind of the manifesto on discipleship and what we want it to look like. So I would encourage you to give that one a listen or a watch if you like staring at me for 30 minutes on your work computer. Do that too. And so this week, I want to look at how do we want to grow wide. We looked at depth last week. So this week, how do we want to grow wide? And the church term for that is evangelism. How does grace want to handle evangelism? What do we want our ministry of evangelism to look like? And evangelism is simply sharing the gospel. It's an effort to see other people come to know Jesus. We want to win converts to the faith. And so how does grace want to do that? And even as I bring that up, as I seek to talk about that this week, I felt the need to confess to you that I'm not good at this. I'm not good at evangelism. And not in a way where I think like, well, that's okay because there's other things that maybe I feel like I'm stronger at or whatever, so it's okay to be weak over here. No, no, I'm telling you that historically I have not been good at this discipline. It scares me. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't love the idea of going out and sharing my faith with people. We had a guy from another church show up at our door this week, and he is the evangelism minister at one of the churches. And I thought, good for that guy. You could not pay me enough money to go door to door. It scares me. And so if it scares you, if the idea of evangelism, of sharing your faith intimidates you, you have some company. It intimidates me too. Now, I don't think that's an excuse because I think that the Bible calls us all to be evangelists. If you know Jesus, your job, your expectation is to share it with others, is to be a part of other people coming to the faith. That's the only reason he leaves us on earth. I've said this before. Have you ever thought about when you get saved, when you become a believer, why doesn't God just snatch us right to heaven, into eternity forever, where we don't have to experience any of the cruddy stuff that happens here anymore, so that we can stay here and tell other people about Him? Evangelism is the only reason we're still here, right? Romans 10 says, how will people believe unless we tell them? And how will people tell them unless it's preached? And how will it be preached unless people are sent? How beautiful are the feet that carry the good news to the people who need it? There's a biblical imperative for those of us who know Jesus to be involved in the discipline of evangelism, of growing the church in breadth. So we all need to do this. So even though it's intimidating, what I want to do is try to talk about it today in a way that makes it more approachable, in a way that makes it more doable, and hopefully we are inspired to make this a part of our life in an intentional way. To do that, I think it will help us to look at the way that Jesus framed up evangelism in the book of Mark. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. We're going to be looking at Mark chapter 4, starting in verse 3. In Mark 4, Jesus tells a parable. Now this is a little preview. I'm super excited for the next series. In March and April, we're going to be walking through the parables of Jesus, and I'm really excited to jump into those with you. A parable is a short story. It's totally made up to make a point. It's a short story to make a moral point. And Jesus did a lot of teaching in parables, and this is a very rough summation of why, but often we see Jesus preface things or follow parables like he does in Mark with, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. And so he often taught in parables because he was teaching to an audience of multiple motivations. In this one, he's talking to Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day who were closed off to him. He's talking to regular workaday folks, and he's teaching his disciples. And Jesus only wants you to get what he's saying if you really want to. I know that might sound weird, but he wants you to get what he's saying if you really mean it. If you're open to hear it, if you have a teachable spirit, then you're going to understand the parables. If you don't, then you won't. So he teaches in parables for a time while he does his ministry. And this parable is called the parable of the sower. And this is how he frames up evangelism for us. He says this. I'm going to start in verse 3. Verse 8 is going to be up on the screen because that's the one we're going to talk about for a little while. But this is what he says. Listen. So Jesus tells his parables to the general public and to his disciples. And a little while later, Jesus is with the disciples, and they kind of lean in as they often do, and they said, hey, what do you mean? Help us understand that. What do the different soils represent? And so Jesus explained it like this. He said, the sower is one who is spreading the word of God. He says, spreading the word. So when we sow seeds, we're telling people, Jesus loves you. Jesus died for you. God created you in his image. You are his beloved daughter or son. We're telling them truths from the Bible. We're opening up their eyes to the existence of Jesus and his love and care for them. And so that's what the word is. So the sower is spreading the word, telling people about Jesus and his love for them. And so sometimes that lands on the pavement, it lands on rocky soil, and the birds come and snatch it up. And Jesus says this is a picture of Satan actually snatching up those seeds before they can take root. And I've said before that we don't talk a lot about Satan here, but when we do, I like to remind you that if we believe the Bible, then we believe that he is real and he is against us. And so sometimes when people hear the gospel, Satan will bring things into their life to snatch that seed away so that it doesn't take root and they don't become believers yet. That's a thing that happens. Other times, it takes root immediately and the plant sprouts up right away. But because the soil isn't good, because it's shallow, because the roots aren't good, as soon as strife comes, as soon as difficulty occurs, as soon as tragedy happens, as soon as something challenges that new faith, it's scorched, it's washed away, it goes away just as quickly as it sprouted up. I've seen this dozens of times in ministry, and you probably have too. There'll be somebody who comes to the church for their first Sunday because of whatever's going on in their life. They're walking through a hard time. Guys just open their eyes up. They're just curious. They have a friend who invited them. Whatever it is, they'll come in, and on their very first Sunday, they sign up for all the stuff, man. They're serving on three teams. They wanna join three small groups. Is there anything else I can do? They're all the way in. They're coming to a meeting right after the service for the thing that they wanna do. And part of me says, that's great. But part of me knows because I've seen it so many times, they're gonna fall away just as quickly as they jumped in. Sometimes the soil just simply isn't ready yet for the gospel. And so we have to watch that and we have to know that and we have to try to tend to it. Other times it says, and this one is really tragic to me, that the seed gets into soil, the plant sprouts up, it's a good plant, but the thorns, it's among thorns, and the thorns choke it out so it doesn't produce seed. Jesus doesn't say it kills the plant, it just says this plant doesn't produce seed. It never does what it's supposed to do. This is the picture of someone who hears the Word of God, accepts the gospel, believes in Jesus, grows up, the plant sprouts, becomes a believer, but because of the concerns of the world, they never do what they're supposed to do. It's entirely possible to know Jesus, for the gospel to take root in your life, but for the concerns of the world to keep you from being effective in what God's asking you to do. For work to crowd out what life is really about. For the pursuit of money or power or possessions to crowd out what life is really supposed to be all about. For the pursuit of pleasure, for a habit or a hang-up that's in your life to choke out like a thorn the gospel that's in your life so that you never produce what you're designed to produce. That's a sad thing to see and to watch. It's one of my biggest fears that I'll be like that. But Jesus said, there's good soil. And when the seed, when God's word lands on good soil, the plant sprouts up and produces 30, 60, or 100 fold, which is another subtle way for Jesus to say the whole point of this exercise is for you to reproduce yourself. The whole point of the gospel being in your life, the whole point of knowing Jesus is to reproduce yourself in the life of others. It's so that other people can know Jesus and the gospel can take root in their lives as well. That's the whole point of it. So that's the parable of the sower and that's what it means. And as I read that parable, there are two questions to me that jump off the page. There's two things as I look at that parable that I immediately want to know the answer to as I'm thinking about it. The first one is, and this is just me being overly practical probably, is how do we share the gospel effectively? In the story, it seems so random that this sower's just throwing out seed willy-nilly. Just whoever can hear the word, however it goes, wherever it lands is fine with me. And I look at that and there's four options and three of them aren't so great. And I look at that and I'm like, there's gotta be a better way. How can I make sure I'm throwing it on the good soil? Because I don't know if you know this about me, this drives my wife Jen nuts, but my biggest pet peeve in life is inefficiency. Anybody that's taking too long to do anything, I lose my mind. Like parking lots are the worst. I hate inefficiency. I will be in an instant bad mood because something's going slower than it should be. And Jen's like, what in the world is wrong with you? And I'll give the eight step explanation about how this thing could go quicker if everybody would just get on the same page with it, right? And it drives her nuts and probably the people around me nuts, but I want to do things efficiently. So I'm not content with the idea of just throwing out seed and just letting the gospel take root wherever it lands. I want to know, how can we do this more effectively? How can we ensure that if we're going to be people who are going to share the gospel with others, who are going to spread the word of God to others, how can we be sure that that effort is going to be as effective as possible? To that end, after watching ministry for a number of years, watching people come to faith for a number of years, hearing stories of people come to faith, and talking to people about how they came to faith, I've come to the conclusion, you guys can try this on if you want to, but I've come to the conclusion that the human heart is best prepared through relationships and circumstances. The human heart becomes the best possible soil. It's best prepared and best work and best prepared for the reception of the gospel through relationships and circumstances. This is incidentally why I think the street preachers are incredibly ineffective. You're going to the ball game and there's that person on the corner and they're holding up the sign and they're yelling stuff at you about Jesus and maybe it's a good message and maybe it's just a threatening one, but it's almost always ineffective. And listen, I do, there is a part of me, I have a respect for those people because they got bigger guts than I do, you know? Good for you for believing so strongly in what you're doing. I think you believe it incorrectly. I think what you're doing is a terrible idea, but I admire your zeal, right? But it's so ineffective because there's neither a relationship nor the right circumstances for the gospel to be received, right? He doesn't have a relationship with any of the people walking by him. They don't know him, and if they do, they're probably not going to act like they do in that setting. And then it's the wrong circumstance, because people are like, bro, I'm just trying to make it to the game. Like, I'm trying to get into this concert, man. Like, it's not the right setting. But I think that relationship and circumstance works the soil to prepare the heart for the gospel. I cut my teeth in ministry doing Young Life, and there was a phrase in Young Life that we used all the time about ministering to students, and it's no different ministering to adults and to our friends. They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. You guys have heard that before. It was true. To walk with somebody, to do life with them, to show them consistently that, hey, I care about you as a person. You're not a target to me. You're not a project to me. You're not a holy tick box to me. You're a person that I love and care about tremendously. And then for them to watch you exude the gospel, do what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians, and it says that we are a procession led by Christ, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. If they're in your life and around you, and because of the relationship they have with you, that fragrance regularly passes by them. Or like Jesus says, that others would see our good works and so glorify our Father who is in heaven. There is a quote attributed to Francis of Assisi. He did not say this, and it is not the quote, but it still makes a good point. Share the gospel at all times. Use words when necessary. A relationship does this. It allows us into people's lives so they can get to know us and see how we live and see how we love. And it prepares them to trust us when we point them towards the gospel and plant the seeds of the gospel in their life. Now, here's the thing. We have to conduct the relationship in such a way that when we share the gospel with them, it makes sense. That when we share what Jesus does for us, they see that in our lives. That's the responsibility that we carry. As if one day I'm going to tell them I love Jesus and hear all the great things Jesus does for me, then it better not seem contradictory and hypocritical. But a relationship tills the ground so that they're ready to receive the gospel when we share it. The other thing that prepares us for the gospel is circumstances. If you think about what happened in your life that brought you to God, for many of us, it's life milestones. A lot of our stories are, we grew up, had some awareness of church. We were involved in it a little or a lot. But when we got to college, early adulthood, we kind of fell away from it. We deprioritized our faith. Not even really sure if we were Christians during that time. And then we got married and we had kids. And when we had kids, we looked at this baby and we went, oh man, I've got a responsibility here. And so we got back into church. And then when we got back into church because of the circumstance, because of this life event going on, our hearts were ready for the gospel, open to how to be good moms and good dads. And we began to grow spiritually. For a lot of us, that's our story. For a lot of us, we trace our faith back to a catalytic event in our life that made us question spiritual things. Sometimes it's when people hit rock bottom. Sometimes people have struggled so much and have made such a series of poor decisions that have led them to a place in life where they don't know what to do, and they are finally willing to go, you know what, God, my way of calling the shots is not working. I'm gonna start trusting your way. Circumstances. I don't think anything prepares the heart for the gospel better than relationships and circumstances. And here's a great illustration of how those two get married up so very often. I have a good buddy here who goes to the church named Ben. Ben's been at the same company for years. And Ben's kind of known in his work group, you know, in his peers, as he's the Christian guy. He's the one that loves Jesus. And so whenever anybody has a spiritual question, they go to Ben. And he talks to them about Jesus, and he kind of gives them the advice. Or when somebody has an issue going on in their life, often they'll go to Ben and say, what do you think about this? And he'll counsel them, right? I call him a pastor at his workplace. And there was somebody that he was buddies with that was a peer that would ask him these questions over the years, and Ben would give him books. And this guy was a total atheist, did not come from a spiritual background at all, didn't have any idea what he believed, but Ben tilled the ground with the relationship. And one day after years of doing this, the guy's wife got in some legal trouble. And so he came to Ben distraught. This is happening in my life. I don't know what to do. I'm kind of questioning everything. What do you think? I really want to have faith, but I don't know how to approach it. And so Ben gave him books and then they would talk about it. And then he would point them to a podcast and that guy would listen and they would talk back and forth. And months after this happened, the dude came to Ben's office one day and he kind of stuck his head in the office and he said, hey, I just want you to know that over the weekend I accepted Christ. I believe. I'm all in. And it was the kind of all in that now a year later, he and his wife are super involved in a church down south of the city. They do children's ministry down there. They're there every week. They give to the church. They're all in. The gospel took root in their life, and that ground was cultivated through years of relationship and then a circumstance that made them ready to receive the gospel. So I would say this to us. If we want to be people who are evangelists, if we want to share the gospel, see people come to faith, which is one of my big prayers for grace in 2020, that we would see more and more people come to faith this year, then I would encourage you to do it through relationships and be sensitive to circumstances. I think that evangelism is so intimidating because we think I'm going to have to convince somebody to become a believer. I'm going to have to have an answer for all of the rebuttals that they would have. I'm just going to have to approach a perfect stranger and say, hey, where would you go if you were to die today? And all that stuff is really intimidating. But really, I think the best possible evangelism plan, when I first started, somebody at the church said, hey, what's your evangelism plan for grace? And I said, not in a flippant, not in a way that I was joking, I was being serious, make friends. That's my plan. Go make friends. And I think that's still the best plan. Now the question becomes, do you have, those of you who are here who know Jesus and who love him and who want to tell other people about him, do you have friends in your life that are not church people? Do you have friends in your life that don't know him yet? Often in churches, we get in our little holy bubbles, our little holy huddles, and we don't know anybody outside of the faith. So the idea of sharing our faith forces us to go to strangers and have awkward conversations, but it's much more effective if we can have these conversations with people who know that we care about them. Do you have friends that don't know Jesus? That may be your step of obedience today, to start making some of those. The plan for evangelism at Grace is for you guys to go out and make friends on your tennis team, in your PTA groups, in your volunteer groups, in the things that you care about in your neighborhood. Stop and have a conversation when you go to the park. And listen, I'm preaching to myself here because I'm the very first one to just want to go to the park, watch Lily swing, and go back home. But stop and open yourself up to the opportunities around you and start having conversations and cultivating friendships with people. That's how we want to begin to share the gospel. And in those friendships, be sensitive to the circumstances going on in their life so that when they're ready to receive the word of the gospel, you can give it to them. Now, if that's how we're going to evangelize, if that's the best plan to do it, is to go make friends, be sensitive, have intentional conversations with them, and over time share the gospel with them and see them come to faith, which I do think is the most effective way to do it because it's the deepest roots. If that's what we're supposed to do, my question, the other question I ask as I look at this parable is, what's my motivation? Why am I supposed to do this? What should motivate me to share the gospel as much as possible? I think this is an important question because so often the motivator here is because we're supposed to, right? So often the motivator here, hey, you guys should go share the gospel. Why? Because Jesus told you to. And listen, that's enough, right? I mean, that's good enough. Jesus told us to. If you're a believer, you're living a life in submission to Jesus and what he wants for you, so go and do it. That should be enough. But if you're like me, because you ought to isn't very motivational to you. Matter of fact, I tend to hate that reason. Some of the biggest arguments Jen and I get into in our marriage are because she says we're supposed to do a thing, and I say I don't want to do the thing, and says, you're just supposed to do it. And I'm like, I just don't want to. Like Christmas, right? We're going to some gift exchange and everyone's doing a $30 gift card. And I'm like, why don't we all just keep our own $30 and spend it on what we want rather than I give you $30 at a place that you don't like and then I'll get $30 at a place that I don't like. It's dumb. And she goes, Nate, you ruin everything. I'm like, I know, but I'm right. I don't want to. And she sighs and she goes, and I said, why do we have to do this? And she sighs and she goes, because it's just what people do. You're supposed to. And I always push against it. There's never a motivator for me. Now in Christianity, Jesus is the Lord of our life because he said so is a good reason. But I think that there's even a better one. I think there's a better motivator that should inspire us to go be evangelists. The best motivation to evangelize is excitement about what Jesus is doing. The best motivation to evangelize is excitement about what Jesus is doing. And here's why I think this. Here's one of the things I learned at Grace. That first year at Grace, when I first got here, I didn't want you guys to invite anybody to church. People would be like, hey, hope it's good this weekend and we're inviting our friends, and I would think to myself, it's not gonna be. I wish you'd give us some time. I wish you'd just chill out a little bit. I'm glad you're excited, but this is still kind of a dumpster fire, so let's just chill out. We were lucky in that first year if my mic worked the whole time. I'll never forget that first Christmas Eve service. It was cutting in and out so bad that I shut it out and yelled at you. It wasn't good yet. I was scrambling to try to get all the pieces in place so that when you would invite your friends, I felt like we were giving them something that we could be proud of that would really serve them. We were trying to get other areas of the church set up. We were trying to lay the foundation for our small groups. We simply weren't ready for people. But you guys kept inviting them. Do you know why you did that? Because you were excited about what's happening here. You were excited about grace. And even though I never asked you to invite anybody, even though I would have preferred you just wait and give me a second. People kept inviting their friends. And what it taught me was the simple truth that we tell our friends what we're excited about. We tell our friends what we're excited about. If we're pumped up about something, we tell the people in our life about it. It's as simple as that. And because of that, what I know is that everyone is an evangelist for something. All of you are evangelizing something. All of you are spreading the good news about something. And here's how I know that's true. Take a look at this picture. This is my buddy Keith Cathcart in Mexico with somebody that's become a dear friend to his family that we call Chewy. Every year, Chewky, every year when we go down there, he's not my good friend, he's Keith's good friend. Every year when we go down there, Keith takes him more Steelers gear. And every year when I go down there, there are more Mexicans wearing Steelers gear. There's other churches that give t-shirts, you see those every now and again, but you see a bunch of guys working in Steelers gear the week that Keith is there, and I call him the Steelers evangelist. He's spreading the good news of the Steelers all over the place. And all kidding aside, he's excited about the Steelers. So he tells people about them, and he's evangelizing them. We're all evangelists for something. It might be the Netflix show. It might be the podcast. It might be the book. It might be the diet that you're on. It might be the job that you got. It might be your kids. We're all evangelizing something because we're all excited about something. So I think if we want to be effective evangelists, then we need to be excited about what Jesus is doing in our lives. As a matter of fact, I think the most effective way to evangelize is to have the mindset of, man, I am so blown away by what Jesus is doing in my life that I want you to experience this too. I am so excited, I am so impressed, I am so grateful that Jesus is a part of my life that I want you to experience this as well. That's the motivator to share Jesus. And when you're excited about him, this is why new converts share their faith the most, because they're the most excited. So I think for some of us, what we need is to pray a sincere prayer and say, God, make me excited. Excite me about what excites you. Find something to be excited about. If you're in a small group, to me, there's so much to be excited about. In the young couple small group that I'm in, we get to watch people come in. This last week, we had a couple come in. It was their second time in small group. Even though they kind of grew up around church, this is the first time they've been in a small group ever. And she's sharing something with the group and she starts crying. And I made fun of her and I said, typically we like to wait four groups before we cry, but you know, go ahead. She starts crying with what she's sharing. And then after she's done, her husband says, man, I'm so glad that we found a place where my wife can share things like that. And on the outside, I go, oh, that's so good. And on the inside, I'm like, yes! Like my pastoral heart is going crazy. That's exciting. I want other people to be a part of that. So I want to tell people and invite people to what's going on there. Sometimes the excitement is getting to watch what happens with other people. Sometimes the excitement is what's happening with you. But I think excitement about what Jesus is doing is the best motivator to evangelize. So that's what we do. We go and we make friends with people who don't yet know Jesus, and then we tell them about the things that are exciting to us in hopes that they come to Jesus. It's a simple plan of evangelism. That's how we want to do it. And you'll notice, nowhere in this that I tell you, go and make disciples and bring them to grace so that they sit in seats. That's not the point. But I will say this, you can let us help you. The community here, the camaraderie here, is the best thing we got going for us. Bring other, see? Bring other people. Was that Cindy? Bring other people here and expose them to the love and the friendships that are happening here. Can I tell you that that's why we do Big Night Out? We do Big Night Out now twice a year. Grace's Big Night Out. We go hang out. The other two times have been at Compass Rose. We've got one coming up March 27th. Mark your calendars. Be in town. It's going to be the best one yet. I'm super excited about it. I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag of what it is, but oh man, it's going to be good. We do those with no agenda other than to hang out and to give you easy invites. An easy way to reach out to your friends who don't know Jesus yet and say, hey, come hang out with me and my church at Compass Rose. Because maybe it would feel awkward to invite them to church. Maybe the soil isn't ready for that invite yet, but maybe they'll come hang out with us and they'll see the way that we do community. They'll see the way that we love one another. Let us help you in that same way. Grace, let's evangelize as a team. When somebody brings in a friend, let's be kind to them. Those of us who have been here for a long time, let's be cognizant in the lobby to not just talk with the people that we know at length every week. Let's have our heads on swivels and look around. And if there's folks that we haven't met yet, let's go meet them. Let's evangelize as a group. Let us help you. And really, that's all we're trying to do at Grace. We're trying to do things on Sunday morning and in our small groups and in our various ministries that are so exciting to you that you think to yourself, man, I am so grateful for what's happening for me and my faith and my family at Grace that I want it to happen for other people too. And then we go out, we plant the seeds and friendships that we've cultivated. We're sensitive to circumstances going on in their life. And we watch people come to Christ and we grow in your personal ministries in 30, 60, and 100 fold. So in the spirit of last week's sermon, I would ask you this week, what's your next step of obedience in terms of evangelism? Is it to go make some friends that don't know Jesus? Is it to simply pray an earnest prayer and say, Father, would you excite me about what's happening here in your church? Would you excite me about what your son is doing in my life? Is it to intentionally reach out to people and start extending those invites? I think everybody has a next step of obedience in terms of evangelism, and I would encourage you to identify yours and think about how you can begin to take it. And let's make this a church that's really good at inviting and then trust them when you bring them here that this is a team sport, that we evangelize together with the community that we have. All right, let's pray, and then you'll be dismissed. Father, thanks so much for this morning. Thank you for giving us a place where we can come in and slow down and focus on you. God, I pray that you would inspire us to share your word and your good news. Make us evangelists, God. Father, I pray that we would see people come to faith this year, that we would see conversions happen, that we would hear stories and repeat them of people who were far from you and over time came to know you and walk with you and grow in you. Give us courage to be the evangelist that you call us to be. Give us the words when we don't know them. Give us the insight when we lack it. Give us the sensitivity when we don't feel it. And help us be effective in the ministry of sharing our faith. It's in your son's name we pray these things. Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, so it's good to see you on this February Sunday, the third Sunday in our Going Home campaign series. Last week, we kind of talked about the biggest question facing grace. I feel like because we have been brought to a place of health, last week I shared that for a long time the mission of grace has been grace. By necessity, we've looked inward and scrambled to get healthy and to get to a place where we weren't just trying to survive, but now we could thrive. And so in that place, believing that we are in a position of health, the question that we are collectively asking is, Father, what would you have us do in health? Say, God, what would you have us do now? We're in a position where we can really do your ministry. I feel like we're moving into a new season as a church. So the question becomes, what would you have us do in this new season? Part of that answer is to pursue a permanent home in the community that we care about so much. That's why we're having the campaign that's going to culminate on March the 1st. We're going to send out pledge cards this week to our partners, to people who call Grace family, and encourage everyone to bring those in or to send those in by March the 1st, and we'll have a celebratory pledge Sunday on that first Sunday in March. I think it's going to be a big celebratory Sunday for us. But that's kind of what we're pushing towards. But in the midst of that, as we ask God, what would you have us do in health? One answer is, one step is to pursue a permanent home. Now's the time to do that. But the bigger answers are the ones that we talked about last week and this week. Last week, I shared that if you asked Jesus, what would you have a healthy church do? I think he would point us to the Great Commission, to Matthew 28. And I shared with you that verse at the end of Matthew 28, as he is going into heaven and he tells the disciples, here are your marching orders. And I think he tells the church in perpetuity, for all church, for all Southern Baptist King James Church, so go ye therefore. Yeah, that's right. Some of y'all understand that. Let me go into the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father. And so what Jesus would have us do as a church is to seek to grow in both depth and breadth, to see us grow deep and wide. And so the Christian word that we use for growing deep is discipleship. We see that model of ministry in the Bible. And so last week, we talked about how is grace going to grow deep? What is discipleship going to look like here? And I don't do this a lot. I don't promote my own sermons, but nor, well, I won't say that aside. I don't promote my own sermons, but if you missed last week, that was kind of the manifesto on discipleship and what we want it to look like. So I would encourage you to give that one a listen or a watch if you like staring at me for 30 minutes on your work computer. Do that too. And so this week, I want to look at how do we want to grow wide. We looked at depth last week. So this week, how do we want to grow wide? And the church term for that is evangelism. How does grace want to handle evangelism? What do we want our ministry of evangelism to look like? And evangelism is simply sharing the gospel. It's an effort to see other people come to know Jesus. We want to win converts to the faith. And so how does grace want to do that? And even as I bring that up, as I seek to talk about that this week, I felt the need to confess to you that I'm not good at this. I'm not good at evangelism. And not in a way where I think like, well, that's okay because there's other things that maybe I feel like I'm stronger at or whatever, so it's okay to be weak over here. No, no, I'm telling you that historically I have not been good at this discipline. It scares me. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't love the idea of going out and sharing my faith with people. We had a guy from another church show up at our door this week, and he is the evangelism minister at one of the churches. And I thought, good for that guy. You could not pay me enough money to go door to door. It scares me. And so if it scares you, if the idea of evangelism, of sharing your faith intimidates you, you have some company. It intimidates me too. Now, I don't think that's an excuse because I think that the Bible calls us all to be evangelists. If you know Jesus, your job, your expectation is to share it with others, is to be a part of other people coming to the faith. That's the only reason he leaves us on earth. I've said this before. Have you ever thought about when you get saved, when you become a believer, why doesn't God just snatch us right to heaven, into eternity forever, where we don't have to experience any of the cruddy stuff that happens here anymore, so that we can stay here and tell other people about Him? Evangelism is the only reason we're still here, right? Romans 10 says, how will people believe unless we tell them? And how will people tell them unless it's preached? And how will it be preached unless people are sent? How beautiful are the feet that carry the good news to the people who need it? There's a biblical imperative for those of us who know Jesus to be involved in the discipline of evangelism, of growing the church in breadth. So we all need to do this. So even though it's intimidating, what I want to do is try to talk about it today in a way that makes it more approachable, in a way that makes it more doable, and hopefully we are inspired to make this a part of our life in an intentional way. To do that, I think it will help us to look at the way that Jesus framed up evangelism in the book of Mark. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. We're going to be looking at Mark chapter 4, starting in verse 3. In Mark 4, Jesus tells a parable. Now this is a little preview. I'm super excited for the next series. In March and April, we're going to be walking through the parables of Jesus, and I'm really excited to jump into those with you. A parable is a short story. It's totally made up to make a point. It's a short story to make a moral point. And Jesus did a lot of teaching in parables, and this is a very rough summation of why, but often we see Jesus preface things or follow parables like he does in Mark with, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. And so he often taught in parables because he was teaching to an audience of multiple motivations. In this one, he's talking to Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day who were closed off to him. He's talking to regular workaday folks, and he's teaching his disciples. And Jesus only wants you to get what he's saying if you really want to. I know that might sound weird, but he wants you to get what he's saying if you really mean it. If you're open to hear it, if you have a teachable spirit, then you're going to understand the parables. If you don't, then you won't. So he teaches in parables for a time while he does his ministry. And this parable is called the parable of the sower. And this is how he frames up evangelism for us. He says this. I'm going to start in verse 3. Verse 8 is going to be up on the screen because that's the one we're going to talk about for a little while. But this is what he says. Listen. So Jesus tells his parables to the general public and to his disciples. And a little while later, Jesus is with the disciples, and they kind of lean in as they often do, and they said, hey, what do you mean? Help us understand that. What do the different soils represent? And so Jesus explained it like this. He said, the sower is one who is spreading the word of God. He says, spreading the word. So when we sow seeds, we're telling people, Jesus loves you. Jesus died for you. God created you in his image. You are his beloved daughter or son. We're telling them truths from the Bible. We're opening up their eyes to the existence of Jesus and his love and care for them. And so that's what the word is. So the sower is spreading the word, telling people about Jesus and his love for them. And so sometimes that lands on the pavement, it lands on rocky soil, and the birds come and snatch it up. And Jesus says this is a picture of Satan actually snatching up those seeds before they can take root. And I've said before that we don't talk a lot about Satan here, but when we do, I like to remind you that if we believe the Bible, then we believe that he is real and he is against us. And so sometimes when people hear the gospel, Satan will bring things into their life to snatch that seed away so that it doesn't take root and they don't become believers yet. That's a thing that happens. Other times, it takes root immediately and the plant sprouts up right away. But because the soil isn't good, because it's shallow, because the roots aren't good, as soon as strife comes, as soon as difficulty occurs, as soon as tragedy happens, as soon as something challenges that new faith, it's scorched, it's washed away, it goes away just as quickly as it sprouted up. I've seen this dozens of times in ministry, and you probably have too. There'll be somebody who comes to the church for their first Sunday because of whatever's going on in their life. They're walking through a hard time. Guys just open their eyes up. They're just curious. They have a friend who invited them. Whatever it is, they'll come in, and on their very first Sunday, they sign up for all the stuff, man. They're serving on three teams. They wanna join three small groups. Is there anything else I can do? They're all the way in. They're coming to a meeting right after the service for the thing that they wanna do. And part of me says, that's great. But part of me knows because I've seen it so many times, they're gonna fall away just as quickly as they jumped in. Sometimes the soil just simply isn't ready yet for the gospel. And so we have to watch that and we have to know that and we have to try to tend to it. Other times it says, and this one is really tragic to me, that the seed gets into soil, the plant sprouts up, it's a good plant, but the thorns, it's among thorns, and the thorns choke it out so it doesn't produce seed. Jesus doesn't say it kills the plant, it just says this plant doesn't produce seed. It never does what it's supposed to do. This is the picture of someone who hears the Word of God, accepts the gospel, believes in Jesus, grows up, the plant sprouts, becomes a believer, but because of the concerns of the world, they never do what they're supposed to do. It's entirely possible to know Jesus, for the gospel to take root in your life, but for the concerns of the world to keep you from being effective in what God's asking you to do. For work to crowd out what life is really about. For the pursuit of money or power or possessions to crowd out what life is really supposed to be all about. For the pursuit of pleasure, for a habit or a hang-up that's in your life to choke out like a thorn the gospel that's in your life so that you never produce what you're designed to produce. That's a sad thing to see and to watch. It's one of my biggest fears that I'll be like that. But Jesus said, there's good soil. And when the seed, when God's word lands on good soil, the plant sprouts up and produces 30, 60, or 100 fold, which is another subtle way for Jesus to say the whole point of this exercise is for you to reproduce yourself. The whole point of the gospel being in your life, the whole point of knowing Jesus is to reproduce yourself in the life of others. It's so that other people can know Jesus and the gospel can take root in their lives as well. That's the whole point of it. So that's the parable of the sower and that's what it means. And as I read that parable, there are two questions to me that jump off the page. There's two things as I look at that parable that I immediately want to know the answer to as I'm thinking about it. The first one is, and this is just me being overly practical probably, is how do we share the gospel effectively? In the story, it seems so random that this sower's just throwing out seed willy-nilly. Just whoever can hear the word, however it goes, wherever it lands is fine with me. And I look at that and there's four options and three of them aren't so great. And I look at that and I'm like, there's gotta be a better way. How can I make sure I'm throwing it on the good soil? Because I don't know if you know this about me, this drives my wife Jen nuts, but my biggest pet peeve in life is inefficiency. Anybody that's taking too long to do anything, I lose my mind. Like parking lots are the worst. I hate inefficiency. I will be in an instant bad mood because something's going slower than it should be. And Jen's like, what in the world is wrong with you? And I'll give the eight step explanation about how this thing could go quicker if everybody would just get on the same page with it, right? And it drives her nuts and probably the people around me nuts, but I want to do things efficiently. So I'm not content with the idea of just throwing out seed and just letting the gospel take root wherever it lands. I want to know, how can we do this more effectively? How can we ensure that if we're going to be people who are going to share the gospel with others, who are going to spread the word of God to others, how can we be sure that that effort is going to be as effective as possible? To that end, after watching ministry for a number of years, watching people come to faith for a number of years, hearing stories of people come to faith, and talking to people about how they came to faith, I've come to the conclusion, you guys can try this on if you want to, but I've come to the conclusion that the human heart is best prepared through relationships and circumstances. The human heart becomes the best possible soil. It's best prepared and best work and best prepared for the reception of the gospel through relationships and circumstances. This is incidentally why I think the street preachers are incredibly ineffective. You're going to the ball game and there's that person on the corner and they're holding up the sign and they're yelling stuff at you about Jesus and maybe it's a good message and maybe it's just a threatening one, but it's almost always ineffective. And listen, I do, there is a part of me, I have a respect for those people because they got bigger guts than I do, you know? Good for you for believing so strongly in what you're doing. I think you believe it incorrectly. I think what you're doing is a terrible idea, but I admire your zeal, right? But it's so ineffective because there's neither a relationship nor the right circumstances for the gospel to be received, right? He doesn't have a relationship with any of the people walking by him. They don't know him, and if they do, they're probably not going to act like they do in that setting. And then it's the wrong circumstance, because people are like, bro, I'm just trying to make it to the game. Like, I'm trying to get into this concert, man. Like, it's not the right setting. But I think that relationship and circumstance works the soil to prepare the heart for the gospel. I cut my teeth in ministry doing Young Life, and there was a phrase in Young Life that we used all the time about ministering to students, and it's no different ministering to adults and to our friends. They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. You guys have heard that before. It was true. To walk with somebody, to do life with them, to show them consistently that, hey, I care about you as a person. You're not a target to me. You're not a project to me. You're not a holy tick box to me. You're a person that I love and care about tremendously. And then for them to watch you exude the gospel, do what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians, and it says that we are a procession led by Christ, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. If they're in your life and around you, and because of the relationship they have with you, that fragrance regularly passes by them. Or like Jesus says, that others would see our good works and so glorify our Father who is in heaven. There is a quote attributed to Francis of Assisi. He did not say this, and it is not the quote, but it still makes a good point. Share the gospel at all times. Use words when necessary. A relationship does this. It allows us into people's lives so they can get to know us and see how we live and see how we love. And it prepares them to trust us when we point them towards the gospel and plant the seeds of the gospel in their life. Now, here's the thing. We have to conduct the relationship in such a way that when we share the gospel with them, it makes sense. That when we share what Jesus does for us, they see that in our lives. That's the responsibility that we carry. As if one day I'm going to tell them I love Jesus and hear all the great things Jesus does for me, then it better not seem contradictory and hypocritical. But a relationship tills the ground so that they're ready to receive the gospel when we share it. The other thing that prepares us for the gospel is circumstances. If you think about what happened in your life that brought you to God, for many of us, it's life milestones. A lot of our stories are, we grew up, had some awareness of church. We were involved in it a little or a lot. But when we got to college, early adulthood, we kind of fell away from it. We deprioritized our faith. Not even really sure if we were Christians during that time. And then we got married and we had kids. And when we had kids, we looked at this baby and we went, oh man, I've got a responsibility here. And so we got back into church. And then when we got back into church because of the circumstance, because of this life event going on, our hearts were ready for the gospel, open to how to be good moms and good dads. And we began to grow spiritually. For a lot of us, that's our story. For a lot of us, we trace our faith back to a catalytic event in our life that made us question spiritual things. Sometimes it's when people hit rock bottom. Sometimes people have struggled so much and have made such a series of poor decisions that have led them to a place in life where they don't know what to do, and they are finally willing to go, you know what, God, my way of calling the shots is not working. I'm gonna start trusting your way. Circumstances. I don't think anything prepares the heart for the gospel better than relationships and circumstances. And here's a great illustration of how those two get married up so very often. I have a good buddy here who goes to the church named Ben. Ben's been at the same company for years. And Ben's kind of known in his work group, you know, in his peers, as he's the Christian guy. He's the one that loves Jesus. And so whenever anybody has a spiritual question, they go to Ben. And he talks to them about Jesus, and he kind of gives them the advice. Or when somebody has an issue going on in their life, often they'll go to Ben and say, what do you think about this? And he'll counsel them, right? I call him a pastor at his workplace. And there was somebody that he was buddies with that was a peer that would ask him these questions over the years, and Ben would give him books. And this guy was a total atheist, did not come from a spiritual background at all, didn't have any idea what he believed, but Ben tilled the ground with the relationship. And one day after years of doing this, the guy's wife got in some legal trouble. And so he came to Ben distraught. This is happening in my life. I don't know what to do. I'm kind of questioning everything. What do you think? I really want to have faith, but I don't know how to approach it. And so Ben gave him books and then they would talk about it. And then he would point them to a podcast and that guy would listen and they would talk back and forth. And months after this happened, the dude came to Ben's office one day and he kind of stuck his head in the office and he said, hey, I just want you to know that over the weekend I accepted Christ. I believe. I'm all in. And it was the kind of all in that now a year later, he and his wife are super involved in a church down south of the city. They do children's ministry down there. They're there every week. They give to the church. They're all in. The gospel took root in their life, and that ground was cultivated through years of relationship and then a circumstance that made them ready to receive the gospel. So I would say this to us. If we want to be people who are evangelists, if we want to share the gospel, see people come to faith, which is one of my big prayers for grace in 2020, that we would see more and more people come to faith this year, then I would encourage you to do it through relationships and be sensitive to circumstances. I think that evangelism is so intimidating because we think I'm going to have to convince somebody to become a believer. I'm going to have to have an answer for all of the rebuttals that they would have. I'm just going to have to approach a perfect stranger and say, hey, where would you go if you were to die today? And all that stuff is really intimidating. But really, I think the best possible evangelism plan, when I first started, somebody at the church said, hey, what's your evangelism plan for grace? And I said, not in a flippant, not in a way that I was joking, I was being serious, make friends. That's my plan. Go make friends. And I think that's still the best plan. Now the question becomes, do you have, those of you who are here who know Jesus and who love him and who want to tell other people about him, do you have friends in your life that are not church people? Do you have friends in your life that don't know him yet? Often in churches, we get in our little holy bubbles, our little holy huddles, and we don't know anybody outside of the faith. So the idea of sharing our faith forces us to go to strangers and have awkward conversations, but it's much more effective if we can have these conversations with people who know that we care about them. Do you have friends that don't know Jesus? That may be your step of obedience today, to start making some of those. The plan for evangelism at Grace is for you guys to go out and make friends on your tennis team, in your PTA groups, in your volunteer groups, in the things that you care about in your neighborhood. Stop and have a conversation when you go to the park. And listen, I'm preaching to myself here because I'm the very first one to just want to go to the park, watch Lily swing, and go back home. But stop and open yourself up to the opportunities around you and start having conversations and cultivating friendships with people. That's how we want to begin to share the gospel. And in those friendships, be sensitive to the circumstances going on in their life so that when they're ready to receive the word of the gospel, you can give it to them. Now, if that's how we're going to evangelize, if that's the best plan to do it, is to go make friends, be sensitive, have intentional conversations with them, and over time share the gospel with them and see them come to faith, which I do think is the most effective way to do it because it's the deepest roots. If that's what we're supposed to do, my question, the other question I ask as I look at this parable is, what's my motivation? Why am I supposed to do this? What should motivate me to share the gospel as much as possible? I think this is an important question because so often the motivator here is because we're supposed to, right? So often the motivator here, hey, you guys should go share the gospel. Why? Because Jesus told you to. And listen, that's enough, right? I mean, that's good enough. Jesus told us to. If you're a believer, you're living a life in submission to Jesus and what he wants for you, so go and do it. That should be enough. But if you're like me, because you ought to isn't very motivational to you. Matter of fact, I tend to hate that reason. Some of the biggest arguments Jen and I get into in our marriage are because she says we're supposed to do a thing, and I say I don't want to do the thing, and says, you're just supposed to do it. And I'm like, I just don't want to. Like Christmas, right? We're going to some gift exchange and everyone's doing a $30 gift card. And I'm like, why don't we all just keep our own $30 and spend it on what we want rather than I give you $30 at a place that you don't like and then I'll get $30 at a place that I don't like. It's dumb. And she goes, Nate, you ruin everything. I'm like, I know, but I'm right. I don't want to. And she sighs and she goes, and I said, why do we have to do this? And she sighs and she goes, because it's just what people do. You're supposed to. And I always push against it. There's never a motivator for me. Now in Christianity, Jesus is the Lord of our life because he said so is a good reason. But I think that there's even a better one. I think there's a better motivator that should inspire us to go be evangelists. The best motivation to evangelize is excitement about what Jesus is doing. The best motivation to evangelize is excitement about what Jesus is doing. And here's why I think this. Here's one of the things I learned at Grace. That first year at Grace, when I first got here, I didn't want you guys to invite anybody to church. People would be like, hey, hope it's good this weekend and we're inviting our friends, and I would think to myself, it's not gonna be. I wish you'd give us some time. I wish you'd just chill out a little bit. I'm glad you're excited, but this is still kind of a dumpster fire, so let's just chill out. We were lucky in that first year if my mic worked the whole time. I'll never forget that first Christmas Eve service. It was cutting in and out so bad that I shut it out and yelled at you. It wasn't good yet. I was scrambling to try to get all the pieces in place so that when you would invite your friends, I felt like we were giving them something that we could be proud of that would really serve them. We were trying to get other areas of the church set up. We were trying to lay the foundation for our small groups. We simply weren't ready for people. But you guys kept inviting them. Do you know why you did that? Because you were excited about what's happening here. You were excited about grace. And even though I never asked you to invite anybody, even though I would have preferred you just wait and give me a second. People kept inviting their friends. And what it taught me was the simple truth that we tell our friends what we're excited about. We tell our friends what we're excited about. If we're pumped up about something, we tell the people in our life about it. It's as simple as that. And because of that, what I know is that everyone is an evangelist for something. All of you are evangelizing something. All of you are spreading the good news about something. And here's how I know that's true. Take a look at this picture. This is my buddy Keith Cathcart in Mexico with somebody that's become a dear friend to his family that we call Chewy. Every year, Chewky, every year when we go down there, he's not my good friend, he's Keith's good friend. Every year when we go down there, Keith takes him more Steelers gear. And every year when I go down there, there are more Mexicans wearing Steelers gear. There's other churches that give t-shirts, you see those every now and again, but you see a bunch of guys working in Steelers gear the week that Keith is there, and I call him the Steelers evangelist. He's spreading the good news of the Steelers all over the place. And all kidding aside, he's excited about the Steelers. So he tells people about them, and he's evangelizing them. We're all evangelists for something. It might be the Netflix show. It might be the podcast. It might be the book. It might be the diet that you're on. It might be the job that you got. It might be your kids. We're all evangelizing something because we're all excited about something. So I think if we want to be effective evangelists, then we need to be excited about what Jesus is doing in our lives. As a matter of fact, I think the most effective way to evangelize is to have the mindset of, man, I am so blown away by what Jesus is doing in my life that I want you to experience this too. I am so excited, I am so impressed, I am so grateful that Jesus is a part of my life that I want you to experience this as well. That's the motivator to share Jesus. And when you're excited about him, this is why new converts share their faith the most, because they're the most excited. So I think for some of us, what we need is to pray a sincere prayer and say, God, make me excited. Excite me about what excites you. Find something to be excited about. If you're in a small group, to me, there's so much to be excited about. In the young couple small group that I'm in, we get to watch people come in. This last week, we had a couple come in. It was their second time in small group. Even though they kind of grew up around church, this is the first time they've been in a small group ever. And she's sharing something with the group and she starts crying. And I made fun of her and I said, typically we like to wait four groups before we cry, but you know, go ahead. She starts crying with what she's sharing. And then after she's done, her husband says, man, I'm so glad that we found a place where my wife can share things like that. And on the outside, I go, oh, that's so good. And on the inside, I'm like, yes! Like my pastoral heart is going crazy. That's exciting. I want other people to be a part of that. So I want to tell people and invite people to what's going on there. Sometimes the excitement is getting to watch what happens with other people. Sometimes the excitement is what's happening with you. But I think excitement about what Jesus is doing is the best motivator to evangelize. So that's what we do. We go and we make friends with people who don't yet know Jesus, and then we tell them about the things that are exciting to us in hopes that they come to Jesus. It's a simple plan of evangelism. That's how we want to do it. And you'll notice, nowhere in this that I tell you, go and make disciples and bring them to grace so that they sit in seats. That's not the point. But I will say this, you can let us help you. The community here, the camaraderie here, is the best thing we got going for us. Bring other, see? Bring other people. Was that Cindy? Bring other people here and expose them to the love and the friendships that are happening here. Can I tell you that that's why we do Big Night Out? We do Big Night Out now twice a year. Grace's Big Night Out. We go hang out. The other two times have been at Compass Rose. We've got one coming up March 27th. Mark your calendars. Be in town. It's going to be the best one yet. I'm super excited about it. I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag of what it is, but oh man, it's going to be good. We do those with no agenda other than to hang out and to give you easy invites. An easy way to reach out to your friends who don't know Jesus yet and say, hey, come hang out with me and my church at Compass Rose. Because maybe it would feel awkward to invite them to church. Maybe the soil isn't ready for that invite yet, but maybe they'll come hang out with us and they'll see the way that we do community. They'll see the way that we love one another. Let us help you in that same way. Grace, let's evangelize as a team. When somebody brings in a friend, let's be kind to them. Those of us who have been here for a long time, let's be cognizant in the lobby to not just talk with the people that we know at length every week. Let's have our heads on swivels and look around. And if there's folks that we haven't met yet, let's go meet them. Let's evangelize as a group. Let us help you. And really, that's all we're trying to do at Grace. We're trying to do things on Sunday morning and in our small groups and in our various ministries that are so exciting to you that you think to yourself, man, I am so grateful for what's happening for me and my faith and my family at Grace that I want it to happen for other people too. And then we go out, we plant the seeds and friendships that we've cultivated. We're sensitive to circumstances going on in their life. And we watch people come to Christ and we grow in your personal ministries in 30, 60, and 100 fold. So in the spirit of last week's sermon, I would ask you this week, what's your next step of obedience in terms of evangelism? Is it to go make some friends that don't know Jesus? Is it to simply pray an earnest prayer and say, Father, would you excite me about what's happening here in your church? Would you excite me about what your son is doing in my life? Is it to intentionally reach out to people and start extending those invites? I think everybody has a next step of obedience in terms of evangelism, and I would encourage you to identify yours and think about how you can begin to take it. And let's make this a church that's really good at inviting and then trust them when you bring them here that this is a team sport, that we evangelize together with the community that we have. All right, let's pray, and then you'll be dismissed. Father, thanks so much for this morning. Thank you for giving us a place where we can come in and slow down and focus on you. God, I pray that you would inspire us to share your word and your good news. Make us evangelists, God. Father, I pray that we would see people come to faith this year, that we would see conversions happen, that we would hear stories and repeat them of people who were far from you and over time came to know you and walk with you and grow in you. Give us courage to be the evangelist that you call us to be. Give us the words when we don't know them. Give us the insight when we lack it. Give us the sensitivity when we don't feel it. And help us be effective in the ministry of sharing our faith. It's in your son's name we pray these things. Amen.

There is something so peaceful about lighting a candle, watching the flame flicker, move ever so slightly that seems to lull us into an almost meditative state. So different from the lack of peace we've experienced in our world, we come here caught up in the flow of traffic and Christmas shopping, our feet moving in the way of the world. It is exhausting. Add to that the barrage of chaos in the news or on social media that has us scared or worried, that has angered and outraged us. At times like this, we welcome Jesus into our fearful, anxious hearts. This is one of the reasons why we celebrate Advent. It is a season of expectant waiting, and we light a new candle each week. The earlier candles have burned down, now misshapen, showing our patience wearing thin, our longing growing more fierce. And so we prepare ourselves in a fresh way for the coming of our Lord Jesus in our Christmas celebrations because hope, love, joy, and peace aren't just words we find on Christmas cards. No, we find them in Christ, who is our light, the most peaceful light we could ever experience. Like we read in the book of John, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. Jesus is that light. The prophet Isaiah calls him the one who would come, that he would be the prince of peace for hearts that grieve in a world in turmoil. We are a people whose whole lives have been go with the flow, but it is Jesus who shows us how to march to the beat of God's heart, who shows us what it means to really live. So let's welcome him. We welcome you with all of your peace, Jesus. Give us your peace so that we can be peace bringers. Stop us in our tracks so that the flicker of the flame captures our attention, so that we look past the flow of the world to Jesus who says to some meaningful plans with your family. I can't wait to experience the Christmas Eve service with you guys. I can't wait for y'all to experience the Christmas Eve service. I think it's going to be a really special time for Grace. This week, we want to wrap up the four different topics that we cover in Advent as we talk about peace. Aaron opened talking about hope. I got to talk about love. Kyle taught us about joy. And now we get to focus on the peace that Jesus brings us. As I reflected on peace this week, I was reminded of a story, something that happened to me on an airplane a few years ago. And now I'll warn you, I'm going to tell this story and it's going to make me look kind of good because I do nice things. I try not to share stories about myself that shed me in a positive light because I think that's gross and self-aggrandizing. But this one just kind of makes the point pretty well. So if you'll indulge me, I'll admit some kindness to you. I was getting on a plane a couple of years ago, and I sat down, and I sat down next to this older woman. It was just two on each side and two seats on each side. And as I sat down, it will not surprise you to learn that I'm not one that introduces myself to my seatmate on my plane. I'm one who just sits down and silently stares straight ahead until the plane lands, and then I get off and go about my business. But this particular woman decided that she wanted to introduce herself to me, and so we started talking. And it didn't take very long for her to say that this was her first flight ever. And I said, oh, really? Are you nervous? And she said, yeah, I actually am pretty nervous. I struggle with anxieties. It was hard for me to even get on the plane. Have you flown before? And I said, you're in luck. Don't worry. I've flown probably hundreds of times. I will guide you through the process. I'm not going to be worried at all. As a matter of fact, this is what I told her. I said, listen, when we're flying, if something feels weird, if it feels like it shouldn't happen, if you start to get nervous, you just look at my face. And if I'm calm, you can be calm. If I'm at peace, then you can be at peace. If I'm not worried, then you don't have to be worried. If it feels amiss to you, because if you've never flown before, there's all kinds of things that can happen that can make you go, wait a second, is this safe? Is this okay? And so I told her, if you are experiencing that, just look at me. And if I'm calm, you can be calm. I said, as a matter of fact, I'm going to leave my hand right here on this armrest. And if you feel the need to reach over and grab my hand, you feel free to do that. And we'll get through this together. And she said, okay, thank you. Good. So we're sitting there, we're minding our business. The plane taxis and it goes to take off. And as it takes off, I'm already kind of have my eyes closed, dozing a little bit. It's a short flight. I was just trying to get in a quick nap. And as the plane is picking up off the ground, which if you've never experienced that before, it can feel a little turbulent, I feel her hand reach over and grab mine. And so I just give her a little squeeze and let her know everything's going to be okay. We get up into the air and we're cruising. She's good. I'm good. I'm reading a little bit. And then I close my eyes to doze again. And as I close my eyes, the plane hits a little bit of turbulence. And if you've never experienced turbulence before, it can be scary. You bounce a lot. It can make you feel sick to your stomach. And if you've never experienced it before and you're already worried about flying, that can be a really terrifying thing. And so we begin to experience a little bit of turbulence. We're bouncing around and I'm aware that she's probably freaking out a little bit. So I keep my eyes closed. I'm not dozing anymore, but I keep my eyes closed because I just kind of have a feeling she's looking at me to see if I'm calm, to see if I'm worried. And I wanted to project some peace for her. I wanted her to know this is no big deal. It's just normal turbulence. And so while I'm sitting there kind of fake snoozing, trying to offer peace to her, I just kind of do a thumbs up with my hand like this, like it's going to be, it's all right. You got nothing to worry about. And I feel her hand kind of tap mine, like, thank you. I see that. I appreciate that. And we got through the flight. We landed. She said, thank you. She went about her business. I went about mine. And it just, that principle that I took away from that as I was thinking about peace and that story this week is just this idea of, hey, listen, you just look at me. If I'm calm, you can be calm. If I'm not worried, you don't have to be worried. If I'm at peace, you can be at peace. I was thinking about that idea and how often Jesus does this for us in the Bible. It's something that we don't think about a lot. I never thought about it before this week. But then as I looked at the Bible and I went through the stories of Jesus in my mind and kind of asked that question, what are the times that Jesus looks at us? And he says, listen, look at me. If I'm not worried, you don't need to be worried. If I'm at peace, then you can be at peace. And I saw over and over again in Scripture where Jesus offers us his peace. Maybe the most glaring example, the easiest place to go to is when Jesus calms the storm. A lot of us know this story. This is a story that shows up in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, three of the four Gospels. But we're going to look at the story in Mark, chapter 4, verses 35-41, just to make sure we're all on the same page. If you have a Bible, turn there with me as I read. It says down in verse 35, This is Jesus speaking. I love the story of Jesus calming the storm. The disciples are out on a boat. They're in the Sea of Galilee. They have been there thousands of times before. They are a crew of mostly fishermen. And the wind picks up and the waves start to buffet the boat and the water starts to come into the boat in such a way that they are freaked out. And it's a big deal that they're freaked out because, again, these are seasoned fishermen. They had weathered some storms. This isn't the lady on the plane experiencing light turbulence for the first time. This is the seasoned businessman or businesswoman who flies cross country twice a week going, holy smokes, what is gonna happen? This has to be the end. They're freaking out. They're so scared that they go and they wake up Jesus who's managing to sleep through this. And they say, are you not worried? Are you not worried? Can you not see that we are perishing? And Jesus is almost annoyed with them. And I see him stretching out a hand and saying, peace, be still. And everything calms. And they marvel at who this man is and what he can do. His legend with them grows. But the part of it that I see now as I think about this idea of peace is this invitation from Jesus. They're up there on the deck freaking out. They look at Jesus. He's sleeping. And what they should have done is said, he's clearly not worried. We don't have to be. And that's Jesus' first question to them. When they wake him, he says, why do you have no faith? Don't you see me? I'm at peace. You can be at peace. I'm not worried about this storm. You don't need to be worried about the storm. I'm not anxious. You don't have to be anxious. Look at my face. If I'm calm, you can be calm. If I'm not worried, you don't have to be worried. The disciples forgot in that moment who Jesus was. Or they didn't yet realize who he was. But it's so interesting to me that Jesus challenges their faith. Just look at me. Just remember who I am. If I'm not worried, you don't need to be worried. And I realize that Jesus has this habit of calming storms in our life. He has this habit of remaining stoic, of remaining calm, of remaining unmoved in the face of turmoil. And he reminds us from the scripture, if I'm not worried, you don't have to be worried. I was reminded of the story of the adulterous woman and thought about the peace that Jesus must have given her in that moment. In the book of John, there's this famous story where Jesus is teaching in, I believe, Jerusalem, and the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day, go and they catch a woman in the act of adultery. They drag her through the streets, and they put her down at the feet of Jesus. And they say to Jesus, the law of Moses says that she should be stoned. What do you think we should do with her? You see, they think that they have Jesus between a rock and a hard place. Because here's Jesus, this new radical teacher, who's teaching and proclaiming grace. And yet, they bring this adulterous woman in front of him. And if he says we should stone her, then he has no mercy, and the people that he's teaching will lose interest in what he's saying. If he says that we should forgive if we'll stop for just a second and think about it from her perspective. Being in the act of adultery, having men storm into the house or the room, grab her and drag her into the street. Maybe she was able to grab a sheet on the way. Maybe she wasn't. We don't know. And she knows the penalty for what she's doing. She knows who these men are. They are Pharisees. And she knows the penalty for what she's doing. It is to have big rocks dropped on her head until she dies. She knows that. She has to be at the height of fear and anxiety in her life. There is no possible way she was ever more worried or anxious than she was in this moment. And there she lands at the feet of this new radical teacher named Jesus. And for some reason, somehow, she realizes that her fate now rests in his hands. And these angry men are accusing her, and they're asking Jesus, what should we do with her? I would love to be able to go back in time and see whatever look it was that Jesus gave her. I would love to see her eyes connect with his. I would love to see his calm and tranquility transposed onto her. I would love to see the recognition on her face when she realized that she was in good hands. And Jesus responds in the midst of all this turmoil and chaos. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. And one by one, the Pharisees begin to go away. And then he looks down at her and he says, is there anyone left to condemn you? And she says, no, Lord. And he says, neither do I condemn you. And it's one of my favorite stories. Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more. It's one of my favorite stories about Jesus to see this perfect balance of grace and truth in that moment. But what I've never thought about is the peace that he gave her, is the peace that he imparted onto her. When she is worried, she is anxious, she is fearful, she doesn't know if this is going to work out. And Jesus almost, you can just see him. Just look at me. If I'm calm, you can be calm. If I'm at peace, you can be at peace. If I'm not worried, then you don't need to be worried. Look at me. I've got this. These men will not harm you today. I'm going to protect you. Think about the peace and the certainty that he gave her in that moment. I think about the night that Jesus was arrested. He gets done praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. They've just finished their Passover meal. The disciples are outside with him, and the guards of Caiaphas, the high priest, come to arrest Christ. And in the scuffle, Peter takes a sword and lops off the ear of one of the guards. And Jesus stops everything and he reaches down and he picks up the ear and he places it back on the soldier. And it's almost as if he's saying, Peter, calm down. I'm not worried. This has to happen. And if I'm not anxious, then you don't have to be anxious. If I can be calm about this, you can be calm about this. Scripture tells us that Jesus was crucified, that he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, that he was quiet and that he was passive and that he was calm, that he was in perfect peace. And he's telling the disciples, if I can be at peace with this, that this is supposed to happen, then you can be too. Don't worry. It's going to be okay. What Jesus knows is that in three days he's going to conquer this death that he's about to face. He offers them perfect peace. You look at me. While everyone else in the Garden of Gethsemane, the troops are likely terrified because this Jesus figure just spoke words that knocked them all down. Now they have to get up, dust themselves off, and try to arrest this guy. The disciples are seeing their Messiah being taken, their leader being taken. Everyone around him is freaking out, and Jesus is in perfect peace. Look at me. I'm fine. You can be fine too. The last moment I would take you to is in the book of Revelation. John, at the end of his life, lifelong disciple of Christ, is whisked up to heaven for a vision and told to write down what he sees and share it with the people. And when he gets there, he's terrified. He sees God and he sees angels and he sees the span of heaven and he feels his feebleness. He feels how small he is and he's not exactly sure where he is and he's seeing angels for the first time, which are terrifying creatures, and he's kind of hunkered down in a corner, not sure what's going on. And in that moment, we see in Revelation that he feels a hand on his shoulder. And he hears a voice. And it's the voice of Jesus. And he says, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. And I have the keys to death and Hades. One of the great lines in the Bible. In this moment where John is anxious and terrified, Jesus gives him peace, puts his hand on his shoulder, lets him hear his voice, and he says, I'm here. I've got this. I'm the one that's in control of this space. You're going to be okay. He offers John his peace. And so as I thought about all these different stories, and there's more. I could do this for a lot longer. It occurred to me, this idea of look at my face. If I'm calm, you can be calm. What's happening in that moment is that Jesus is imparting peace onto us. So what we need to realize is our peace is imparted by Jesus. The peace that we're offered in Scripture, the peace that God offers to us is imparted to us by Jesus. When we look at His face and see that He is calm, we can be calm. When we look to Him and see that He is at peace, then we can feel peace. When everything around us is chaos, and everyone around us is worried and losing their mind, we can look at Jesus who is not worried, who is calm, who is a picture of perfect peace, and we can experience his peace. And in that way, our peace is imparted to us by Jesus himself. And so it made me wonder, how is Jesus able to maintain perfect peace in all these situations? How is he at so much peace in a storm where seasoned fishermen are freaking out that he is taking a nap? When he is at the epicenter of an entire body of really smart men trying to entangle him, how can he be so calm and answer so eloquently and succinctly while protecting this woman? When he is being marched to his death, how can he maintain perfect peace knowing what lies ahead of him? It's because of this. Because Jesus has true peace. And true peace is certainty that is untouched by circumstances. Peace is certainty that is untouched by circumstances. It's like Jesus knows a secret. He's unmoved by everything around him because he knows it's all going to be okay. He's not worried about the storm sinking his boat because he's the creator of the storm. He made the heavens and the earth. Without him, there is nothing is made, says the book of John. So he's not worried about the storm because he made the storm. He's not worried about getting tripped up and entangled in the law because he wrote the law. He's not worried about getting marched off to his death because he came to do just that and he knows where that ends. That ends in him conquering the death that he is about to suffer for you and for me. He came to conquer death and sin and that's how he did it. So he's at perfect peace in going through the process. He's at perfect peace in heaven when everything feels like it's at chaos at the end of times because this is what he came to do and he offers that peace to John. Jesus has a peace that is untouched by circumstance because nothing in this world can change that God is sovereign. Nothing in this world can change that God's will will be done. Nothing in this world can change that God loves you. Nothing in this world can change that God has a perfect plan and in the fullness of time he will execute it. Nothing in this world can change that for those who believe in him we can look forward to an eternity where God is with his people and where we will be with our God and where there is no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain anymore. Because God is in control, because God has orchestrated all of time to bring about that moment, we know that there are no circumstances that can change the certainty that we have in Christ. And so we have perfect peace. Maybe this is why Paul writes about peace in the book of Philippians and points us to God in prayer so that we might have perfect peace. In Philippians, Paul writes this in chapter 4, verses 6 and 7. He says, Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understandings, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. You understand that our peace isn't just imparted by Christ, but our peace is guarded by God? As believers, we have this Christ-imparted, God-guarded peace that circumstances cannot touch. You understand that God advocates for your peace, that He wants you to feel at ease? He does not want you to be anxious. He does not want you to move through life with anxiety. He does not want you to be crippled by worry. He does not want you to be one of the ones freaking out and wondering how everything is going to be okay. And because of that, he offers you Christ-imparted and God-guarded peace so that your soul can be at rest. So we don't have to worry so much. And guys, has there ever been a year in our memories where we needed this peace more? where it feels like everyone around us is losing their mind, where we're in a culture that is rife with racial and political tension, where we're seeing riots and demonstrations and we're wondering what is going on here, where we are in a country that is more divided than ever, When will I ever get to see my loved ones? Is the vaccine really going to work? Will the economy recover? Will I be able to find a new job? Will my position still be there? We have all sorts of anxieties and worries this year. Has there ever been a time when we needed God's peace more? I know that for me, I've needed that peace this year. For me, I've worried a lot about grace. When we went into quarantine in March, we had come off of what was, while I've been here, a high point while I've been at grace. More people than we've ever seen were coming every week. We did a campaign. We were hoping to get a $1.5 million pledge. We had $1.6 million pledge. I would have never expected that. God was moving and shaking, and there was so much contagious enthusiasm here, and then we just had to stop meeting. And for a while, into doing online services like this, I would look for those numbers every week. How many people are watching online? How many screens we're on? How many downloads do we have? What's our engagement look like? Are we losing our momentum? Oh no, God, the church is gonna crumble. Everything's gonna fall apart. I think we're starting to lose people. I'm really worried and I lost sleep over what was happening at at Grace until I was gently reminded to just look at God. And over the course of the year, I saw his hand on Grace. I was so worried about giving because we're not meeting in person, and we're not telling anybody to give online, and I wouldn't dare, especially if you remember the beginning of quarantine when the economy was tanking and everything was going bad, I wouldn't dare ask for money then. So I just buttoned it up and just hoped. And God just continued to provide everything that the church needed, even so that we were able to continue to give away to other ministries who were in need. And God just reminded me over and over and over again over the course of the year, I care about grace. I've got this place. Look at me. Do I look worried? And so now, I don't even look at the numbers. Steve emails them to me every week as is our habit. I never even open it. Sorry, Steve. Because I don't care. They don't matter to me. God's got this church. We're not going anywhere. He's got big plans for us. He's chosen to sustain us. I have a certainty about grace that is untouched by circumstances because I see that God's not worried, so I'm not. He offers us this peace in our lives too. He's not worried about your kids. He's got a plan for them. He's not worried about how your family is going to make it. He's got a plan for that. He's not worried about if everything's going to be okay. He's not worried about what's it going to look like as we try to return back to normal. God isn't concerned with pandemics. He's unfazed with 2020. I promise you he's seen harder years from heaven. But I think sometimes we get so caught up in our worry and in our anxiety and in the circumstances of the day that we keep our focus down. And maybe what we need to do is slow down and let him impart his peace. Maybe this morning or wherever we are as we listen to this or watch this, what we really need to do is just slow down, look at the face of Christ, and let him impart his peace. Let him guard our hearts with perfect peace. When we will be people who will do that, who will constantly put our focus on Christ and not on circumstances, who will allow him to impart his God-guarded peace on us, we can have conversations like I got to have this week. Many of you are aware of what Jen's family is walking through, and just this last week I sat next to my father-in-law in his bed as he moves towards passing away. And I knelt next to him and I told him that it was time for me to say goodbye. And he said, oh, are you going somewhere? I said, no, John, I'm not, but you are. And he said, yeah, I am. And we shared a really sweet moment that caused me to go ugly cry for about 15 minutes on my own in the bathroom somewhere. But at the end of the conversation, I said, John, you're going to go to heaven soon. And you're going to see his parents are Porter and Bernice. You're going to see Porter and Bernice. You're going to hug them. They're going to be glad to see you. Jesus is going to be there. He's going to be glad to see you too. And John whispered in his soft and weak voice, yeah, and when I get there, there's going to be a lot of rejoicing. He's not afraid to die. He's anxious for it. He welcomes it. Because he has a peace that is untouched by circumstance. Because he knows where he's going. He's focused on the face of Christ and Christ is waiting to welcome him into perfect peace. And if there is a peace that is so strong that when someone is hours away from transitioning into the next life, they can lay in their bed at perfect peace and be certain that they are not about to be sad, but that they are about to rejoice. That's the kind of peace that we should want. And Christmas is our yearly reminder that God offers us a peace that no circumstance can touch. This year, as we celebrate Jesus, let's remember that Jesus imparts a peace on us. He imparts a certainty that circumstance can't touch, that God guards this peace. And maybe instead of being worried about all the things that we can't control anyways, what we should do is slow down and focus on the face of Christ and hear him say to us, I'm not worried. You don't have to be either. And let's all of us experience perfect peace as we finish up this year. Let's pray. Father, we are so grateful for your peace. We are so grateful for the way that you guard our hearts, that you don't want us to be anxious, that you don't want us to be worried. Lord, I pray that if there are people hearing this who are anxious, who are riddled with anxiety, who are riddled with worry, who haven't felt peace and rest in a long time, God, would you give their soul rest in you? Would they hear you today saying, look at me. If I'm calm, you can be calm. Would they today accept your peace? Would they rest easy in that? God, I pray for every person who can hear my voice, that they would experience the same peace that Jesus had, a peace that is untouched by any circumstance. Father, thank you for that gift. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

There is something so peaceful about lighting a candle, watching the flame flicker, move ever so slightly that seems to lull us into an almost meditative state. So different from the lack of peace we've experienced in our world, we come here caught up in the flow of traffic and Christmas shopping, our feet moving in the way of the world. It is exhausting. Add to that the barrage of chaos in the news or on social media that has us scared or worried, that has angered and outraged us. At times like this, we welcome Jesus into our fearful, anxious hearts. This is one of the reasons why we celebrate Advent. It is a season of expectant waiting, and we light a new candle each week. The earlier candles have burned down, now misshapen, showing our patience wearing thin, our longing growing more fierce. And so we prepare ourselves in a fresh way for the coming of our Lord Jesus in our Christmas celebrations because hope, love, joy, and peace aren't just words we find on Christmas cards. No, we find them in Christ, who is our light, the most peaceful light we could ever experience. Like we read in the book of John, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. Jesus is that light. The prophet Isaiah calls him the one who would come, that he would be the prince of peace for hearts that grieve in a world in turmoil. We are a people whose whole lives have been go with the flow, but it is Jesus who shows us how to march to the beat of God's heart, who shows us what it means to really live. So let's welcome him. We welcome you with all of your peace, Jesus. Give us your peace so that we can be peace bringers. Stop us in our tracks so that the flicker of the flame captures our attention, so that we look past the flow of the world to Jesus who says to some meaningful plans with your family. I can't wait to experience the Christmas Eve service with you guys. I can't wait for y'all to experience the Christmas Eve service. I think it's going to be a really special time for Grace. This week, we want to wrap up the four different topics that we cover in Advent as we talk about peace. Aaron opened talking about hope. I got to talk about love. Kyle taught us about joy. And now we get to focus on the peace that Jesus brings us. As I reflected on peace this week, I was reminded of a story, something that happened to me on an airplane a few years ago. And now I'll warn you, I'm going to tell this story and it's going to make me look kind of good because I do nice things. I try not to share stories about myself that shed me in a positive light because I think that's gross and self-aggrandizing. But this one just kind of makes the point pretty well. So if you'll indulge me, I'll admit some kindness to you. I was getting on a plane a couple of years ago, and I sat down, and I sat down next to this older woman. It was just two on each side and two seats on each side. And as I sat down, it will not surprise you to learn that I'm not one that introduces myself to my seatmate on my plane. I'm one who just sits down and silently stares straight ahead until the plane lands, and then I get off and go about my business. But this particular woman decided that she wanted to introduce herself to me, and so we started talking. And it didn't take very long for her to say that this was her first flight ever. And I said, oh, really? Are you nervous? And she said, yeah, I actually am pretty nervous. I struggle with anxieties. It was hard for me to even get on the plane. Have you flown before? And I said, you're in luck. Don't worry. I've flown probably hundreds of times. I will guide you through the process. I'm not going to be worried at all. As a matter of fact, this is what I told her. I said, listen, when we're flying, if something feels weird, if it feels like it shouldn't happen, if you start to get nervous, you just look at my face. And if I'm calm, you can be calm. If I'm at peace, then you can be at peace. If I'm not worried, then you don't have to be worried. If it feels amiss to you, because if you've never flown before, there's all kinds of things that can happen that can make you go, wait a second, is this safe? Is this okay? And so I told her, if you are experiencing that, just look at me. And if I'm calm, you can be calm. I said, as a matter of fact, I'm going to leave my hand right here on this armrest. And if you feel the need to reach over and grab my hand, you feel free to do that. And we'll get through this together. And she said, okay, thank you. Good. So we're sitting there, we're minding our business. The plane taxis and it goes to take off. And as it takes off, I'm already kind of have my eyes closed, dozing a little bit. It's a short flight. I was just trying to get in a quick nap. And as the plane is picking up off the ground, which if you've never experienced that before, it can feel a little turbulent, I feel her hand reach over and grab mine. And so I just give her a little squeeze and let her know everything's going to be okay. We get up into the air and we're cruising. She's good. I'm good. I'm reading a little bit. And then I close my eyes to doze again. And as I close my eyes, the plane hits a little bit of turbulence. And if you've never experienced turbulence before, it can be scary. You bounce a lot. It can make you feel sick to your stomach. And if you've never experienced it before and you're already worried about flying, that can be a really terrifying thing. And so we begin to experience a little bit of turbulence. We're bouncing around and I'm aware that she's probably freaking out a little bit. So I keep my eyes closed. I'm not dozing anymore, but I keep my eyes closed because I just kind of have a feeling she's looking at me to see if I'm calm, to see if I'm worried. And I wanted to project some peace for her. I wanted her to know this is no big deal. It's just normal turbulence. And so while I'm sitting there kind of fake snoozing, trying to offer peace to her, I just kind of do a thumbs up with my hand like this, like it's going to be, it's all right. You got nothing to worry about. And I feel her hand kind of tap mine, like, thank you. I see that. I appreciate that. And we got through the flight. We landed. She said, thank you. She went about her business. I went about mine. And it just, that principle that I took away from that as I was thinking about peace and that story this week is just this idea of, hey, listen, you just look at me. If I'm calm, you can be calm. If I'm not worried, you don't have to be worried. If I'm at peace, you can be at peace. I was thinking about that idea and how often Jesus does this for us in the Bible. It's something that we don't think about a lot. I never thought about it before this week. But then as I looked at the Bible and I went through the stories of Jesus in my mind and kind of asked that question, what are the times that Jesus looks at us? And he says, listen, look at me. If I'm not worried, you don't need to be worried. If I'm at peace, then you can be at peace. And I saw over and over again in Scripture where Jesus offers us his peace. Maybe the most glaring example, the easiest place to go to is when Jesus calms the storm. A lot of us know this story. This is a story that shows up in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, three of the four Gospels. But we're going to look at the story in Mark, chapter 4, verses 35-41, just to make sure we're all on the same page. If you have a Bible, turn there with me as I read. It says down in verse 35, This is Jesus speaking. I love the story of Jesus calming the storm. The disciples are out on a boat. They're in the Sea of Galilee. They have been there thousands of times before. They are a crew of mostly fishermen. And the wind picks up and the waves start to buffet the boat and the water starts to come into the boat in such a way that they are freaked out. And it's a big deal that they're freaked out because, again, these are seasoned fishermen. They had weathered some storms. This isn't the lady on the plane experiencing light turbulence for the first time. This is the seasoned businessman or businesswoman who flies cross country twice a week going, holy smokes, what is gonna happen? This has to be the end. They're freaking out. They're so scared that they go and they wake up Jesus who's managing to sleep through this. And they say, are you not worried? Are you not worried? Can you not see that we are perishing? And Jesus is almost annoyed with them. And I see him stretching out a hand and saying, peace, be still. And everything calms. And they marvel at who this man is and what he can do. His legend with them grows. But the part of it that I see now as I think about this idea of peace is this invitation from Jesus. They're up there on the deck freaking out. They look at Jesus. He's sleeping. And what they should have done is said, he's clearly not worried. We don't have to be. And that's Jesus' first question to them. When they wake him, he says, why do you have no faith? Don't you see me? I'm at peace. You can be at peace. I'm not worried about this storm. You don't need to be worried about the storm. I'm not anxious. You don't have to be anxious. Look at my face. If I'm calm, you can be calm. If I'm not worried, you don't have to be worried. The disciples forgot in that moment who Jesus was. Or they didn't yet realize who he was. But it's so interesting to me that Jesus challenges their faith. Just look at me. Just remember who I am. If I'm not worried, you don't need to be worried. And I realize that Jesus has this habit of calming storms in our life. He has this habit of remaining stoic, of remaining calm, of remaining unmoved in the face of turmoil. And he reminds us from the scripture, if I'm not worried, you don't have to be worried. I was reminded of the story of the adulterous woman and thought about the peace that Jesus must have given her in that moment. In the book of John, there's this famous story where Jesus is teaching in, I believe, Jerusalem, and the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day, go and they catch a woman in the act of adultery. They drag her through the streets, and they put her down at the feet of Jesus. And they say to Jesus, the law of Moses says that she should be stoned. What do you think we should do with her? You see, they think that they have Jesus between a rock and a hard place. Because here's Jesus, this new radical teacher, who's teaching and proclaiming grace. And yet, they bring this adulterous woman in front of him. And if he says we should stone her, then he has no mercy, and the people that he's teaching will lose interest in what he's saying. If he says that we should forgive if we'll stop for just a second and think about it from her perspective. Being in the act of adultery, having men storm into the house or the room, grab her and drag her into the street. Maybe she was able to grab a sheet on the way. Maybe she wasn't. We don't know. And she knows the penalty for what she's doing. She knows who these men are. They are Pharisees. And she knows the penalty for what she's doing. It is to have big rocks dropped on her head until she dies. She knows that. She has to be at the height of fear and anxiety in her life. There is no possible way she was ever more worried or anxious than she was in this moment. And there she lands at the feet of this new radical teacher named Jesus. And for some reason, somehow, she realizes that her fate now rests in his hands. And these angry men are accusing her, and they're asking Jesus, what should we do with her? I would love to be able to go back in time and see whatever look it was that Jesus gave her. I would love to see her eyes connect with his. I would love to see his calm and tranquility transposed onto her. I would love to see the recognition on her face when she realized that she was in good hands. And Jesus responds in the midst of all this turmoil and chaos. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. And one by one, the Pharisees begin to go away. And then he looks down at her and he says, is there anyone left to condemn you? And she says, no, Lord. And he says, neither do I condemn you. And it's one of my favorite stories. Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more. It's one of my favorite stories about Jesus to see this perfect balance of grace and truth in that moment. But what I've never thought about is the peace that he gave her, is the peace that he imparted onto her. When she is worried, she is anxious, she is fearful, she doesn't know if this is going to work out. And Jesus almost, you can just see him. Just look at me. If I'm calm, you can be calm. If I'm at peace, you can be at peace. If I'm not worried, then you don't need to be worried. Look at me. I've got this. These men will not harm you today. I'm going to protect you. Think about the peace and the certainty that he gave her in that moment. I think about the night that Jesus was arrested. He gets done praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. They've just finished their Passover meal. The disciples are outside with him, and the guards of Caiaphas, the high priest, come to arrest Christ. And in the scuffle, Peter takes a sword and lops off the ear of one of the guards. And Jesus stops everything and he reaches down and he picks up the ear and he places it back on the soldier. And it's almost as if he's saying, Peter, calm down. I'm not worried. This has to happen. And if I'm not anxious, then you don't have to be anxious. If I can be calm about this, you can be calm about this. Scripture tells us that Jesus was crucified, that he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, that he was quiet and that he was passive and that he was calm, that he was in perfect peace. And he's telling the disciples, if I can be at peace with this, that this is supposed to happen, then you can be too. Don't worry. It's going to be okay. What Jesus knows is that in three days he's going to conquer this death that he's about to face. He offers them perfect peace. You look at me. While everyone else in the Garden of Gethsemane, the troops are likely terrified because this Jesus figure just spoke words that knocked them all down. Now they have to get up, dust themselves off, and try to arrest this guy. The disciples are seeing their Messiah being taken, their leader being taken. Everyone around him is freaking out, and Jesus is in perfect peace. Look at me. I'm fine. You can be fine too. The last moment I would take you to is in the book of Revelation. John, at the end of his life, lifelong disciple of Christ, is whisked up to heaven for a vision and told to write down what he sees and share it with the people. And when he gets there, he's terrified. He sees God and he sees angels and he sees the span of heaven and he feels his feebleness. He feels how small he is and he's not exactly sure where he is and he's seeing angels for the first time, which are terrifying creatures, and he's kind of hunkered down in a corner, not sure what's going on. And in that moment, we see in Revelation that he feels a hand on his shoulder. And he hears a voice. And it's the voice of Jesus. And he says, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. And I have the keys to death and Hades. One of the great lines in the Bible. In this moment where John is anxious and terrified, Jesus gives him peace, puts his hand on his shoulder, lets him hear his voice, and he says, I'm here. I've got this. I'm the one that's in control of this space. You're going to be okay. He offers John his peace. And so as I thought about all these different stories, and there's more. I could do this for a lot longer. It occurred to me, this idea of look at my face. If I'm calm, you can be calm. What's happening in that moment is that Jesus is imparting peace onto us. So what we need to realize is our peace is imparted by Jesus. The peace that we're offered in Scripture, the peace that God offers to us is imparted to us by Jesus. When we look at His face and see that He is calm, we can be calm. When we look to Him and see that He is at peace, then we can feel peace. When everything around us is chaos, and everyone around us is worried and losing their mind, we can look at Jesus who is not worried, who is calm, who is a picture of perfect peace, and we can experience his peace. And in that way, our peace is imparted to us by Jesus himself. And so it made me wonder, how is Jesus able to maintain perfect peace in all these situations? How is he at so much peace in a storm where seasoned fishermen are freaking out that he is taking a nap? When he is at the epicenter of an entire body of really smart men trying to entangle him, how can he be so calm and answer so eloquently and succinctly while protecting this woman? When he is being marched to his death, how can he maintain perfect peace knowing what lies ahead of him? It's because of this. Because Jesus has true peace. And true peace is certainty that is untouched by circumstances. Peace is certainty that is untouched by circumstances. It's like Jesus knows a secret. He's unmoved by everything around him because he knows it's all going to be okay. He's not worried about the storm sinking his boat because he's the creator of the storm. He made the heavens and the earth. Without him, there is nothing is made, says the book of John. So he's not worried about the storm because he made the storm. He's not worried about getting tripped up and entangled in the law because he wrote the law. He's not worried about getting marched off to his death because he came to do just that and he knows where that ends. That ends in him conquering the death that he is about to suffer for you and for me. He came to conquer death and sin and that's how he did it. So he's at perfect peace in going through the process. He's at perfect peace in heaven when everything feels like it's at chaos at the end of times because this is what he came to do and he offers that peace to John. Jesus has a peace that is untouched by circumstance because nothing in this world can change that God is sovereign. Nothing in this world can change that God's will will be done. Nothing in this world can change that God loves you. Nothing in this world can change that God has a perfect plan and in the fullness of time he will execute it. Nothing in this world can change that for those who believe in him we can look forward to an eternity where God is with his people and where we will be with our God and where there is no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain anymore. Because God is in control, because God has orchestrated all of time to bring about that moment, we know that there are no circumstances that can change the certainty that we have in Christ. And so we have perfect peace. Maybe this is why Paul writes about peace in the book of Philippians and points us to God in prayer so that we might have perfect peace. In Philippians, Paul writes this in chapter 4, verses 6 and 7. He says, Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understandings, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. You understand that our peace isn't just imparted by Christ, but our peace is guarded by God? As believers, we have this Christ-imparted, God-guarded peace that circumstances cannot touch. You understand that God advocates for your peace, that He wants you to feel at ease? He does not want you to be anxious. He does not want you to move through life with anxiety. He does not want you to be crippled by worry. He does not want you to be one of the ones freaking out and wondering how everything is going to be okay. And because of that, he offers you Christ-imparted and God-guarded peace so that your soul can be at rest. So we don't have to worry so much. And guys, has there ever been a year in our memories where we needed this peace more? where it feels like everyone around us is losing their mind, where we're in a culture that is rife with racial and political tension, where we're seeing riots and demonstrations and we're wondering what is going on here, where we are in a country that is more divided than ever, When will I ever get to see my loved ones? Is the vaccine really going to work? Will the economy recover? Will I be able to find a new job? Will my position still be there? We have all sorts of anxieties and worries this year. Has there ever been a time when we needed God's peace more? I know that for me, I've needed that peace this year. For me, I've worried a lot about grace. When we went into quarantine in March, we had come off of what was, while I've been here, a high point while I've been at grace. More people than we've ever seen were coming every week. We did a campaign. We were hoping to get a $1.5 million pledge. We had $1.6 million pledge. I would have never expected that. God was moving and shaking, and there was so much contagious enthusiasm here, and then we just had to stop meeting. And for a while, into doing online services like this, I would look for those numbers every week. How many people are watching online? How many screens we're on? How many downloads do we have? What's our engagement look like? Are we losing our momentum? Oh no, God, the church is gonna crumble. Everything's gonna fall apart. I think we're starting to lose people. I'm really worried and I lost sleep over what was happening at at Grace until I was gently reminded to just look at God. And over the course of the year, I saw his hand on Grace. I was so worried about giving because we're not meeting in person, and we're not telling anybody to give online, and I wouldn't dare, especially if you remember the beginning of quarantine when the economy was tanking and everything was going bad, I wouldn't dare ask for money then. So I just buttoned it up and just hoped. And God just continued to provide everything that the church needed, even so that we were able to continue to give away to other ministries who were in need. And God just reminded me over and over and over again over the course of the year, I care about grace. I've got this place. Look at me. Do I look worried? And so now, I don't even look at the numbers. Steve emails them to me every week as is our habit. I never even open it. Sorry, Steve. Because I don't care. They don't matter to me. God's got this church. We're not going anywhere. He's got big plans for us. He's chosen to sustain us. I have a certainty about grace that is untouched by circumstances because I see that God's not worried, so I'm not. He offers us this peace in our lives too. He's not worried about your kids. He's got a plan for them. He's not worried about how your family is going to make it. He's got a plan for that. He's not worried about if everything's going to be okay. He's not worried about what's it going to look like as we try to return back to normal. God isn't concerned with pandemics. He's unfazed with 2020. I promise you he's seen harder years from heaven. But I think sometimes we get so caught up in our worry and in our anxiety and in the circumstances of the day that we keep our focus down. And maybe what we need to do is slow down and let him impart his peace. Maybe this morning or wherever we are as we listen to this or watch this, what we really need to do is just slow down, look at the face of Christ, and let him impart his peace. Let him guard our hearts with perfect peace. When we will be people who will do that, who will constantly put our focus on Christ and not on circumstances, who will allow him to impart his God-guarded peace on us, we can have conversations like I got to have this week. Many of you are aware of what Jen's family is walking through, and just this last week I sat next to my father-in-law in his bed as he moves towards passing away. And I knelt next to him and I told him that it was time for me to say goodbye. And he said, oh, are you going somewhere? I said, no, John, I'm not, but you are. And he said, yeah, I am. And we shared a really sweet moment that caused me to go ugly cry for about 15 minutes on my own in the bathroom somewhere. But at the end of the conversation, I said, John, you're going to go to heaven soon. And you're going to see his parents are Porter and Bernice. You're going to see Porter and Bernice. You're going to hug them. They're going to be glad to see you. Jesus is going to be there. He's going to be glad to see you too. And John whispered in his soft and weak voice, yeah, and when I get there, there's going to be a lot of rejoicing. He's not afraid to die. He's anxious for it. He welcomes it. Because he has a peace that is untouched by circumstance. Because he knows where he's going. He's focused on the face of Christ and Christ is waiting to welcome him into perfect peace. And if there is a peace that is so strong that when someone is hours away from transitioning into the next life, they can lay in their bed at perfect peace and be certain that they are not about to be sad, but that they are about to rejoice. That's the kind of peace that we should want. And Christmas is our yearly reminder that God offers us a peace that no circumstance can touch. This year, as we celebrate Jesus, let's remember that Jesus imparts a peace on us. He imparts a certainty that circumstance can't touch, that God guards this peace. And maybe instead of being worried about all the things that we can't control anyways, what we should do is slow down and focus on the face of Christ and hear him say to us, I'm not worried. You don't have to be either. And let's all of us experience perfect peace as we finish up this year. Let's pray. Father, we are so grateful for your peace. We are so grateful for the way that you guard our hearts, that you don't want us to be anxious, that you don't want us to be worried. Lord, I pray that if there are people hearing this who are anxious, who are riddled with anxiety, who are riddled with worry, who haven't felt peace and rest in a long time, God, would you give their soul rest in you? Would they hear you today saying, look at me. If I'm calm, you can be calm. Would they today accept your peace? Would they rest easy in that? God, I pray for every person who can hear my voice, that they would experience the same peace that Jesus had, a peace that is untouched by any circumstance. Father, thank you for that gift. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

There is something so peaceful about lighting a candle, watching the flame flicker, move ever so slightly that seems to lull us into an almost meditative state. So different from the lack of peace we've experienced in our world, we come here caught up in the flow of traffic and Christmas shopping, our feet moving in the way of the world. It is exhausting. Add to that the barrage of chaos in the news or on social media that has us scared or worried, that has angered and outraged us. At times like this, we welcome Jesus into our fearful, anxious hearts. This is one of the reasons why we celebrate Advent. It is a season of expectant waiting, and we light a new candle each week. The earlier candles have burned down, now misshapen, showing our patience wearing thin, our longing growing more fierce. And so we prepare ourselves in a fresh way for the coming of our Lord Jesus in our Christmas celebrations because hope, love, joy, and peace aren't just words we find on Christmas cards. No, we find them in Christ, who is our light, the most peaceful light we could ever experience. Like we read in the book of John, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. Jesus is that light. The prophet Isaiah calls him the one who would come, that he would be the prince of peace for hearts that grieve in a world in turmoil. We are a people whose whole lives have been go with the flow, but it is Jesus who shows us how to march to the beat of God's heart, who shows us what it means to really live. So let's welcome him. We welcome you with all of your peace, Jesus. Give us your peace so that we can be peace bringers. Stop us in our tracks so that the flicker of the flame captures our attention, so that we look past the flow of the world to Jesus who says to some meaningful plans with your family. I can't wait to experience the Christmas Eve service with you guys. I can't wait for y'all to experience the Christmas Eve service. I think it's going to be a really special time for Grace. This week, we want to wrap up the four different topics that we cover in Advent as we talk about peace. Aaron opened talking about hope. I got to talk about love. Kyle taught us about joy. And now we get to focus on the peace that Jesus brings us. As I reflected on peace this week, I was reminded of a story, something that happened to me on an airplane a few years ago. And now I'll warn you, I'm going to tell this story and it's going to make me look kind of good because I do nice things. I try not to share stories about myself that shed me in a positive light because I think that's gross and self-aggrandizing. But this one just kind of makes the point pretty well. So if you'll indulge me, I'll admit some kindness to you. I was getting on a plane a couple of years ago, and I sat down, and I sat down next to this older woman. It was just two on each side and two seats on each side. And as I sat down, it will not surprise you to learn that I'm not one that introduces myself to my seatmate on my plane. I'm one who just sits down and silently stares straight ahead until the plane lands, and then I get off and go about my business. But this particular woman decided that she wanted to introduce herself to me, and so we started talking. And it didn't take very long for her to say that this was her first flight ever. And I said, oh, really? Are you nervous? And she said, yeah, I actually am pretty nervous. I struggle with anxieties. It was hard for me to even get on the plane. Have you flown before? And I said, you're in luck. Don't worry. I've flown probably hundreds of times. I will guide you through the process. I'm not going to be worried at all. As a matter of fact, this is what I told her. I said, listen, when we're flying, if something feels weird, if it feels like it shouldn't happen, if you start to get nervous, you just look at my face. And if I'm calm, you can be calm. If I'm at peace, then you can be at peace. If I'm not worried, then you don't have to be worried. If it feels amiss to you, because if you've never flown before, there's all kinds of things that can happen that can make you go, wait a second, is this safe? Is this okay? And so I told her, if you are experiencing that, just look at me. And if I'm calm, you can be calm. I said, as a matter of fact, I'm going to leave my hand right here on this armrest. And if you feel the need to reach over and grab my hand, you feel free to do that. And we'll get through this together. And she said, okay, thank you. Good. So we're sitting there, we're minding our business. The plane taxis and it goes to take off. And as it takes off, I'm already kind of have my eyes closed, dozing a little bit. It's a short flight. I was just trying to get in a quick nap. And as the plane is picking up off the ground, which if you've never experienced that before, it can feel a little turbulent, I feel her hand reach over and grab mine. And so I just give her a little squeeze and let her know everything's going to be okay. We get up into the air and we're cruising. She's good. I'm good. I'm reading a little bit. And then I close my eyes to doze again. And as I close my eyes, the plane hits a little bit of turbulence. And if you've never experienced turbulence before, it can be scary. You bounce a lot. It can make you feel sick to your stomach. And if you've never experienced it before and you're already worried about flying, that can be a really terrifying thing. And so we begin to experience a little bit of turbulence. We're bouncing around and I'm aware that she's probably freaking out a little bit. So I keep my eyes closed. I'm not dozing anymore, but I keep my eyes closed because I just kind of have a feeling she's looking at me to see if I'm calm, to see if I'm worried. And I wanted to project some peace for her. I wanted her to know this is no big deal. It's just normal turbulence. And so while I'm sitting there kind of fake snoozing, trying to offer peace to her, I just kind of do a thumbs up with my hand like this, like it's going to be, it's all right. You got nothing to worry about. And I feel her hand kind of tap mine, like, thank you. I see that. I appreciate that. And we got through the flight. We landed. She said, thank you. She went about her business. I went about mine. And it just, that principle that I took away from that as I was thinking about peace and that story this week is just this idea of, hey, listen, you just look at me. If I'm calm, you can be calm. If I'm not worried, you don't have to be worried. If I'm at peace, you can be at peace. I was thinking about that idea and how often Jesus does this for us in the Bible. It's something that we don't think about a lot. I never thought about it before this week. But then as I looked at the Bible and I went through the stories of Jesus in my mind and kind of asked that question, what are the times that Jesus looks at us? And he says, listen, look at me. If I'm not worried, you don't need to be worried. If I'm at peace, then you can be at peace. And I saw over and over again in Scripture where Jesus offers us his peace. Maybe the most glaring example, the easiest place to go to is when Jesus calms the storm. A lot of us know this story. This is a story that shows up in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, three of the four Gospels. But we're going to look at the story in Mark, chapter 4, verses 35-41, just to make sure we're all on the same page. If you have a Bible, turn there with me as I read. It says down in verse 35, This is Jesus speaking. I love the story of Jesus calming the storm. The disciples are out on a boat. They're in the Sea of Galilee. They have been there thousands of times before. They are a crew of mostly fishermen. And the wind picks up and the waves start to buffet the boat and the water starts to come into the boat in such a way that they are freaked out. And it's a big deal that they're freaked out because, again, these are seasoned fishermen. They had weathered some storms. This isn't the lady on the plane experiencing light turbulence for the first time. This is the seasoned businessman or businesswoman who flies cross country twice a week going, holy smokes, what is gonna happen? This has to be the end. They're freaking out. They're so scared that they go and they wake up Jesus who's managing to sleep through this. And they say, are you not worried? Are you not worried? Can you not see that we are perishing? And Jesus is almost annoyed with them. And I see him stretching out a hand and saying, peace, be still. And everything calms. And they marvel at who this man is and what he can do. His legend with them grows. But the part of it that I see now as I think about this idea of peace is this invitation from Jesus. They're up there on the deck freaking out. They look at Jesus. He's sleeping. And what they should have done is said, he's clearly not worried. We don't have to be. And that's Jesus' first question to them. When they wake him, he says, why do you have no faith? Don't you see me? I'm at peace. You can be at peace. I'm not worried about this storm. You don't need to be worried about the storm. I'm not anxious. You don't have to be anxious. Look at my face. If I'm calm, you can be calm. If I'm not worried, you don't have to be worried. The disciples forgot in that moment who Jesus was. Or they didn't yet realize who he was. But it's so interesting to me that Jesus challenges their faith. Just look at me. Just remember who I am. If I'm not worried, you don't need to be worried. And I realize that Jesus has this habit of calming storms in our life. He has this habit of remaining stoic, of remaining calm, of remaining unmoved in the face of turmoil. And he reminds us from the scripture, if I'm not worried, you don't have to be worried. I was reminded of the story of the adulterous woman and thought about the peace that Jesus must have given her in that moment. In the book of John, there's this famous story where Jesus is teaching in, I believe, Jerusalem, and the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day, go and they catch a woman in the act of adultery. They drag her through the streets, and they put her down at the feet of Jesus. And they say to Jesus, the law of Moses says that she should be stoned. What do you think we should do with her? You see, they think that they have Jesus between a rock and a hard place. Because here's Jesus, this new radical teacher, who's teaching and proclaiming grace. And yet, they bring this adulterous woman in front of him. And if he says we should stone her, then he has no mercy, and the people that he's teaching will lose interest in what he's saying. If he says that we should forgive if we'll stop for just a second and think about it from her perspective. Being in the act of adultery, having men storm into the house or the room, grab her and drag her into the street. Maybe she was able to grab a sheet on the way. Maybe she wasn't. We don't know. And she knows the penalty for what she's doing. She knows who these men are. They are Pharisees. And she knows the penalty for what she's doing. It is to have big rocks dropped on her head until she dies. She knows that. She has to be at the height of fear and anxiety in her life. There is no possible way she was ever more worried or anxious than she was in this moment. And there she lands at the feet of this new radical teacher named Jesus. And for some reason, somehow, she realizes that her fate now rests in his hands. And these angry men are accusing her, and they're asking Jesus, what should we do with her? I would love to be able to go back in time and see whatever look it was that Jesus gave her. I would love to see her eyes connect with his. I would love to see his calm and tranquility transposed onto her. I would love to see the recognition on her face when she realized that she was in good hands. And Jesus responds in the midst of all this turmoil and chaos. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. And one by one, the Pharisees begin to go away. And then he looks down at her and he says, is there anyone left to condemn you? And she says, no, Lord. And he says, neither do I condemn you. And it's one of my favorite stories. Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more. It's one of my favorite stories about Jesus to see this perfect balance of grace and truth in that moment. But what I've never thought about is the peace that he gave her, is the peace that he imparted onto her. When she is worried, she is anxious, she is fearful, she doesn't know if this is going to work out. And Jesus almost, you can just see him. Just look at me. If I'm calm, you can be calm. If I'm at peace, you can be at peace. If I'm not worried, then you don't need to be worried. Look at me. I've got this. These men will not harm you today. I'm going to protect you. Think about the peace and the certainty that he gave her in that moment. I think about the night that Jesus was arrested. He gets done praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. They've just finished their Passover meal. The disciples are outside with him, and the guards of Caiaphas, the high priest, come to arrest Christ. And in the scuffle, Peter takes a sword and lops off the ear of one of the guards. And Jesus stops everything and he reaches down and he picks up the ear and he places it back on the soldier. And it's almost as if he's saying, Peter, calm down. I'm not worried. This has to happen. And if I'm not anxious, then you don't have to be anxious. If I can be calm about this, you can be calm about this. Scripture tells us that Jesus was crucified, that he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, that he was quiet and that he was passive and that he was calm, that he was in perfect peace. And he's telling the disciples, if I can be at peace with this, that this is supposed to happen, then you can be too. Don't worry. It's going to be okay. What Jesus knows is that in three days he's going to conquer this death that he's about to face. He offers them perfect peace. You look at me. While everyone else in the Garden of Gethsemane, the troops are likely terrified because this Jesus figure just spoke words that knocked them all down. Now they have to get up, dust themselves off, and try to arrest this guy. The disciples are seeing their Messiah being taken, their leader being taken. Everyone around him is freaking out, and Jesus is in perfect peace. Look at me. I'm fine. You can be fine too. The last moment I would take you to is in the book of Revelation. John, at the end of his life, lifelong disciple of Christ, is whisked up to heaven for a vision and told to write down what he sees and share it with the people. And when he gets there, he's terrified. He sees God and he sees angels and he sees the span of heaven and he feels his feebleness. He feels how small he is and he's not exactly sure where he is and he's seeing angels for the first time, which are terrifying creatures, and he's kind of hunkered down in a corner, not sure what's going on. And in that moment, we see in Revelation that he feels a hand on his shoulder. And he hears a voice. And it's the voice of Jesus. And he says, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. And I have the keys to death and Hades. One of the great lines in the Bible. In this moment where John is anxious and terrified, Jesus gives him peace, puts his hand on his shoulder, lets him hear his voice, and he says, I'm here. I've got this. I'm the one that's in control of this space. You're going to be okay. He offers John his peace. And so as I thought about all these different stories, and there's more. I could do this for a lot longer. It occurred to me, this idea of look at my face. If I'm calm, you can be calm. What's happening in that moment is that Jesus is imparting peace onto us. So what we need to realize is our peace is imparted by Jesus. The peace that we're offered in Scripture, the peace that God offers to us is imparted to us by Jesus. When we look at His face and see that He is calm, we can be calm. When we look to Him and see that He is at peace, then we can feel peace. When everything around us is chaos, and everyone around us is worried and losing their mind, we can look at Jesus who is not worried, who is calm, who is a picture of perfect peace, and we can experience his peace. And in that way, our peace is imparted to us by Jesus himself. And so it made me wonder, how is Jesus able to maintain perfect peace in all these situations? How is he at so much peace in a storm where seasoned fishermen are freaking out that he is taking a nap? When he is at the epicenter of an entire body of really smart men trying to entangle him, how can he be so calm and answer so eloquently and succinctly while protecting this woman? When he is being marched to his death, how can he maintain perfect peace knowing what lies ahead of him? It's because of this. Because Jesus has true peace. And true peace is certainty that is untouched by circumstances. Peace is certainty that is untouched by circumstances. It's like Jesus knows a secret. He's unmoved by everything around him because he knows it's all going to be okay. He's not worried about the storm sinking his boat because he's the creator of the storm. He made the heavens and the earth. Without him, there is nothing is made, says the book of John. So he's not worried about the storm because he made the storm. He's not worried about getting tripped up and entangled in the law because he wrote the law. He's not worried about getting marched off to his death because he came to do just that and he knows where that ends. That ends in him conquering the death that he is about to suffer for you and for me. He came to conquer death and sin and that's how he did it. So he's at perfect peace in going through the process. He's at perfect peace in heaven when everything feels like it's at chaos at the end of times because this is what he came to do and he offers that peace to John. Jesus has a peace that is untouched by circumstance because nothing in this world can change that God is sovereign. Nothing in this world can change that God's will will be done. Nothing in this world can change that God loves you. Nothing in this world can change that God has a perfect plan and in the fullness of time he will execute it. Nothing in this world can change that for those who believe in him we can look forward to an eternity where God is with his people and where we will be with our God and where there is no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain anymore. Because God is in control, because God has orchestrated all of time to bring about that moment, we know that there are no circumstances that can change the certainty that we have in Christ. And so we have perfect peace. Maybe this is why Paul writes about peace in the book of Philippians and points us to God in prayer so that we might have perfect peace. In Philippians, Paul writes this in chapter 4, verses 6 and 7. He says, Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understandings, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. You understand that our peace isn't just imparted by Christ, but our peace is guarded by God? As believers, we have this Christ-imparted, God-guarded peace that circumstances cannot touch. You understand that God advocates for your peace, that He wants you to feel at ease? He does not want you to be anxious. He does not want you to move through life with anxiety. He does not want you to be crippled by worry. He does not want you to be one of the ones freaking out and wondering how everything is going to be okay. And because of that, he offers you Christ-imparted and God-guarded peace so that your soul can be at rest. So we don't have to worry so much. And guys, has there ever been a year in our memories where we needed this peace more? where it feels like everyone around us is losing their mind, where we're in a culture that is rife with racial and political tension, where we're seeing riots and demonstrations and we're wondering what is going on here, where we are in a country that is more divided than ever, When will I ever get to see my loved ones? Is the vaccine really going to work? Will the economy recover? Will I be able to find a new job? Will my position still be there? We have all sorts of anxieties and worries this year. Has there ever been a time when we needed God's peace more? I know that for me, I've needed that peace this year. For me, I've worried a lot about grace. When we went into quarantine in March, we had come off of what was, while I've been here, a high point while I've been at grace. More people than we've ever seen were coming every week. We did a campaign. We were hoping to get a $1.5 million pledge. We had $1.6 million pledge. I would have never expected that. God was moving and shaking, and there was so much contagious enthusiasm here, and then we just had to stop meeting. And for a while, into doing online services like this, I would look for those numbers every week. How many people are watching online? How many screens we're on? How many downloads do we have? What's our engagement look like? Are we losing our momentum? Oh no, God, the church is gonna crumble. Everything's gonna fall apart. I think we're starting to lose people. I'm really worried and I lost sleep over what was happening at at Grace until I was gently reminded to just look at God. And over the course of the year, I saw his hand on Grace. I was so worried about giving because we're not meeting in person, and we're not telling anybody to give online, and I wouldn't dare, especially if you remember the beginning of quarantine when the economy was tanking and everything was going bad, I wouldn't dare ask for money then. So I just buttoned it up and just hoped. And God just continued to provide everything that the church needed, even so that we were able to continue to give away to other ministries who were in need. And God just reminded me over and over and over again over the course of the year, I care about grace. I've got this place. Look at me. Do I look worried? And so now, I don't even look at the numbers. Steve emails them to me every week as is our habit. I never even open it. Sorry, Steve. Because I don't care. They don't matter to me. God's got this church. We're not going anywhere. He's got big plans for us. He's chosen to sustain us. I have a certainty about grace that is untouched by circumstances because I see that God's not worried, so I'm not. He offers us this peace in our lives too. He's not worried about your kids. He's got a plan for them. He's not worried about how your family is going to make it. He's got a plan for that. He's not worried about if everything's going to be okay. He's not worried about what's it going to look like as we try to return back to normal. God isn't concerned with pandemics. He's unfazed with 2020. I promise you he's seen harder years from heaven. But I think sometimes we get so caught up in our worry and in our anxiety and in the circumstances of the day that we keep our focus down. And maybe what we need to do is slow down and let him impart his peace. Maybe this morning or wherever we are as we listen to this or watch this, what we really need to do is just slow down, look at the face of Christ, and let him impart his peace. Let him guard our hearts with perfect peace. When we will be people who will do that, who will constantly put our focus on Christ and not on circumstances, who will allow him to impart his God-guarded peace on us, we can have conversations like I got to have this week. Many of you are aware of what Jen's family is walking through, and just this last week I sat next to my father-in-law in his bed as he moves towards passing away. And I knelt next to him and I told him that it was time for me to say goodbye. And he said, oh, are you going somewhere? I said, no, John, I'm not, but you are. And he said, yeah, I am. And we shared a really sweet moment that caused me to go ugly cry for about 15 minutes on my own in the bathroom somewhere. But at the end of the conversation, I said, John, you're going to go to heaven soon. And you're going to see his parents are Porter and Bernice. You're going to see Porter and Bernice. You're going to hug them. They're going to be glad to see you. Jesus is going to be there. He's going to be glad to see you too. And John whispered in his soft and weak voice, yeah, and when I get there, there's going to be a lot of rejoicing. He's not afraid to die. He's anxious for it. He welcomes it. Because he has a peace that is untouched by circumstance. Because he knows where he's going. He's focused on the face of Christ and Christ is waiting to welcome him into perfect peace. And if there is a peace that is so strong that when someone is hours away from transitioning into the next life, they can lay in their bed at perfect peace and be certain that they are not about to be sad, but that they are about to rejoice. That's the kind of peace that we should want. And Christmas is our yearly reminder that God offers us a peace that no circumstance can touch. This year, as we celebrate Jesus, let's remember that Jesus imparts a peace on us. He imparts a certainty that circumstance can't touch, that God guards this peace. And maybe instead of being worried about all the things that we can't control anyways, what we should do is slow down and focus on the face of Christ and hear him say to us, I'm not worried. You don't have to be either. And let's all of us experience perfect peace as we finish up this year. Let's pray. Father, we are so grateful for your peace. We are so grateful for the way that you guard our hearts, that you don't want us to be anxious, that you don't want us to be worried. Lord, I pray that if there are people hearing this who are anxious, who are riddled with anxiety, who are riddled with worry, who haven't felt peace and rest in a long time, God, would you give their soul rest in you? Would they hear you today saying, look at me. If I'm calm, you can be calm. Would they today accept your peace? Would they rest easy in that? God, I pray for every person who can hear my voice, that they would experience the same peace that Jesus had, a peace that is untouched by any circumstance. Father, thank you for that gift. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.