Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] How would you evaluate the quality of a worship gathering? Like what we're doing right here at Journey? Like, just imagine that on the way home, somebody called you and they asked you the question, so how was worship today?
[00:00:17] What would you say? Like, how would you evaluate that? What is the criteria?
[00:00:23] I think maybe a clarifying question would be this. At a worship gathering like this, who's the audience?
[00:00:31] I think oftentimes, the way our culture is set up, people that are in the seats, they are the audience. They're the ones that do the evaluating of what's happening. And they're evaluating oftentimes the things that are happening on the stage or out in the lobby. They're asking questions like, do I like what the bald man said?
[00:00:54] Do I like the worship?
[00:00:57] Did my kids learn something in base camp? How was the coffee? Were the ushers and the greeters nice? There's lots of different things that we evaluate, but here's a question that I think is even a better question, and it's this.
[00:01:14] How does God evaluate a worship gathering of his people?
[00:01:22] What is his criteria? What are the things that he is looking for?
[00:01:27] And let's ask that same question from God's perspective.
[00:01:32] Who's the audience here today?
[00:01:36] Let's don't be confused.
[00:01:38] God.
[00:01:40] God himself, and God alone is the audience for all of our worship. Who does that mean is on the stage today?
[00:01:50] Not just the bald guy, all of us.
[00:01:54] God is looking at all of our lives and evaluating our worship. How does God evaluate our worship? Here's what I want you to understand. If you're going to evaluate a worship gathering, it is not just about how did they do or how did he do.
[00:02:11] You've got to ask the question, how did I do?
[00:02:16] What is God looking to evaluate?
[00:02:20] When we think about the great commandment, the greatest commandment, it's this, love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. God wants you to declare your love for him, wants you to worship Him.
[00:02:34] And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. It is about loving God and loving people.
[00:02:43] That's what we've been looking at as we've been going across the Book of Romans. I said during the first week, the first 11 chapters of the book of Romans is about this vertical relationship with God, this idea that the gospel has been poured out, God's grace and his love has been poured out to us, and we receive the gospel.
[00:03:03] But chapters 12 to 16, Paul gets really, really clear. If you've received the gospel, the love and the grace of God, how do you extend the the Gospel to other people?
[00:03:16] You love and you serve people?
[00:03:22] Hear this, friends.
[00:03:24] Your spiritual maturity. If you want to measure your spiritual maturity, it is not measured in any way by how much you know about God or how much you know about the Bible.
[00:03:38] It is not about your church attendance or the church activities that you're involved in.
[00:03:44] It's not about how well or how often you engage in spiritual disciplines. And it's not about how moral your life is.
[00:03:53] All of those things, friends, are very important.
[00:03:56] But if God wants to evaluate how you worship him, it is about how you love people.
[00:04:07] How do we love people?
[00:04:09] That's where Paul takes us today in Romans chapter 12, starting in verse 9. What does it actually look like practically for us to extend the love and the grace of God to other people? I'm just going to read through this entire section and just let it wash over our minds.
[00:04:29] Romans 12, starting in verse 9. Paul says this.
[00:04:33] Love must be sincere.
[00:04:38] Hate, hate what is evil, cling to what is good.
[00:04:43] Be devoted.
[00:04:46] Be devoted to one another in love.
[00:04:49] Honor, honor one another above yourselves.
[00:04:54] Never, never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor serving the Lord.
[00:05:01] Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction.
[00:05:05] Faithful in prayer.
[00:05:07] Share, share with the Lord's people who are in need.
[00:05:13] Practice, practice hospitality.
[00:05:17] Bless.
[00:05:19] Bless those who persecute you.
[00:05:24] Bless and do not curse.
[00:05:26] Rejoice, Rejoice with those who rejoice. Mourn with. With those who mourn.
[00:05:31] Live in harmony with one another.
[00:05:36] Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.
[00:05:44] Do not be conceited.
[00:05:48] I want us to just take some time to unpack and highlight a few things that Paul talks about here. He starts out by saying, love must be sincere.
[00:06:00] That word literally means unhypocritical.
[00:06:06] The idea of a hypocrite was a word that they often used in this time to talk about an actor.
[00:06:13] An actor would also wear a mask. So there was some way that you didn't actually know what was behind the mask. They portrayed something that wasn't who they really were.
[00:06:24] That's where Paul is saying that is not how it works in the kingdom of God.
[00:06:29] No masks. We are not phony in our dealings with people.
[00:06:34] It's not this idea that we can just be kind of polite and helpful and kind of outwardly warm toward people. Bless your heart.
[00:06:44] That is not what we're to do when that there are negative thoughts and emotions and happening on the inside as we relate to other people.
[00:06:54] He's not Talking about just being nice.
[00:06:57] Cause niceness, friends. It can just be a veneer.
[00:07:00] It can be a veneer that covers over things that are gross on the inside.
[00:07:06] Backbiting, gossip, judgment.
[00:07:11] Paul says, in my family, in our family, in God's kingdom, we don't do anything like that.
[00:07:19] But Paul explains that there's two forms that sincerity takes. We need to hate what is evil and we need to cling to what is good.
[00:07:29] There are things that we need to hate, and there's things that we need to grab ahold of. What do we hate, friends? We hate the things that God hates.
[00:07:42] We hate sin.
[00:07:45] We hate sin when we see it in us, and we hate sin when we see it in other people.
[00:07:52] But we cling to some things.
[00:07:54] We cling to the good that is in people.
[00:07:58] And it doesn't matter how much evil there is in a person. There is some good in them.
[00:08:04] They are made in God's image.
[00:08:07] But we've got to think about how do we do these two things and do these two things well. Because if we're gonna be sincere, we've gotta hate some things and we've gotta cling to some things.
[00:08:17] I think a way for us to describe this kind of sincere love would be what we would call tough love.
[00:08:28] Tough love means that we actually love someone enough to confront the problems in their life, to confront the sins in their life, but also not just their life. We allow them to do that to us.
[00:08:48] That's the kind of love that Paul is asking us to give.
[00:08:52] You know what it's like.
[00:08:54] You know what it's like when there's someone that you love and you're watching them, you're seeing sin and disobedience start to ravage their life. They're starting to head them down a road that you know is going to lead to destruction. And if you're a parent, if you watch your kids do this, it is so difficult.
[00:09:13] Love compels us to say, no, stop.
[00:09:17] You need to confront the lies. We need to confront the sin, confront the deception.
[00:09:23] Because we know that it has the capacity to destroy them. Love must be sincere.
[00:09:30] Hate what is evil, cling to what is good.
[00:09:36] Here's another way, I think, to say this.
[00:09:39] Sincere love isn't a kind of love that talks about people.
[00:09:48] Sincere love is willing to talk to people.
[00:09:54] We don't talk about people behind their back. We don't even just think about them negatively. In our mind, we actually love them enough to move toward them and talk to them.
[00:10:06] Question when was the last time Somebody loved you enough to say the hard thing to you, the difficult thing.
[00:10:20] When was there a time recently that someone gave you the difficult feedback that you didn't want to hear, but that you needed to hear?
[00:10:29] When was there a time that someone actually shined the light on your life and told you and showed you what everybody else sees but you were blind to when was the last time that that happened?
[00:10:45] If you can't think of a time, ask yourself, am I in the kind of love relationship that Paul is talking about here? Those tough love kind of relationships. But maybe it's not just a matter of when you've received that, when have you given that to somebody else? When was the last time someone loved you enough to say the hard things to you?
[00:11:13] Here's where we go in this.
[00:11:16] We say, you know, I see these things, but I don't want to judge.
[00:11:23] Let me just say this. You're probably not worried about judging.
[00:11:27] What you're worried about is your own comfort.
[00:11:31] You love yourself and your comfort more than you love them. Even if there's something in their life that might be destroying them. Paul is saying, if we're going to love, love sincerely.
[00:11:43] Love them more than you love yourself. Love must be sincere.
[00:11:51] Paul doesn't stop there, though.
[00:11:54] He says, love must be generous.
[00:11:59] Verse 13, Paul says, Share, share with the Lord's people who are in need.
[00:12:10] We're generous.
[00:12:11] We share.
[00:12:13] When we walk into a worship environment, if we're gonna do what it is that Paul is asking us to do, we actually walk in thinking about, what do I have to offer somebody?
[00:12:25] I've got my time, I've got my attention. It might even be my money, it might be my energy, whatever it is. But we walk into an environment like this and we're asking ourselves, what can I do to. To share with others who those who are in need.
[00:12:43] Here's the deal, friends.
[00:12:45] You don't have to look far.
[00:12:48] Every one of us is in need in this room. Every one of us has needs.
[00:12:55] It might be a tangible, physical need that you might have the opportunity to love the them by sharing in that need.
[00:13:05] It could be a financial need. It might just take money to get people out of a situation that's in their life. So many of us, we know what it's like to have way more month left at the end of the money. It could be a financial need, it could be an emotional need.
[00:13:21] People are just carrying stuff. Anxiety, depression, loneliness.
[00:13:28] They just need someone to enter into their world.
[00:13:31] A relational need.
[00:13:33] They just need a friend, someone to listen A spiritual need, someone to help them know how to walk this faith thing out. And they need someone to get their arm around them to do that with them.
[00:13:47] When we walk into an environment like this, we got to be asking the question, how do I share? What do I have to share? What can I bring to the life of, of others?
[00:13:59] If we're going to love like Paul is asking us to love, we've got to walk into this room and look for needs.
[00:14:07] How do we know the needs of others?
[00:14:12] We got to talk to people, we got to ask questions, and we need to practice hospitality.
[00:14:23] Hospitality, that word that Paul uses here, literally means the love of strangers.
[00:14:30] Paul's not talking about here loving the people that are easy to love, loving the people that you know well. He's talking about opening up the circle of your life to people that are outside, maybe even your comfort zone. How do we extend love to people that are maybe different from us in every way?
[00:14:51] They grew up differently than we did. Maybe a different ethnicity, a different race, they have a different background.
[00:14:58] Maybe they believe differently than we do. Maybe they behave differently than we do.
[00:15:04] Maybe they vote differently than we do.
[00:15:11] Lots of people in this room are outside of our circle.
[00:15:17] But Paul tells us the gospel breaks all of that down.
[00:15:22] Earlier in the book of Romans, Paul talks about the reality that the gospel of Jesus Christ, it breaks down the things that separates us from one another. He says, there's no longer Jew or Gentile. I mean, you couldn't come up with a group of people that were more distant from each other in that culture. Paul says all, all of those walls are taken down.
[00:15:46] The ground is level at the foot of the cross. But not just Jews and Gentiles. Male, female, slave free.
[00:15:55] Everyone is on equal footing.
[00:16:00] What we need to do then, friends, is open the circle of our life to people that maybe are a little uncomfortable, a little different from us.
[00:16:12] And Paul says about hospitality, we need to practice it.
[00:16:19] What does practice imply?
[00:16:22] Practice implies the fact that it might be something that we're not very good at right now, but we're gonna intentionally start to do it over and over again until we get better at it, until we actually get good at it. We're gonna actively, regularly over open up the circle of our life, looking for opportunities, asking God for opportunities to benefit the lives of others, especially, especially people that are different, different from us.
[00:16:53] Love looks for the needs of others.
[00:16:57] Maybe another way that Paul would say this is he would just say, put your money, put your time, put your money, put your energy where your mouth is.
[00:17:06] You say you love people, practice hospitality, meet their needs.
[00:17:12] But here's the deal, friends. You don't know what the needs of other people are until you practice hospitality and you start asking people, what are your needs?
[00:17:23] How could I help meet your needs?
[00:17:25] Until we get to that place where we start to open up the circle of. Of our lives, we'll never know.
[00:17:31] Practice hospitality because love, the kind of love that Paul's talking about here, it is generous.
[00:17:40] It just gives and gives and keeps giving.
[00:17:45] But here, now, Paul makes a turn, because the kind of love that he's calling us to, it's definitely sincere, it's definitely generous.
[00:17:56] But this kind of love is also incredibly hard.
[00:18:02] Paul is calling us to love people that are actually difficult to love.
[00:18:09] Here's what I know about myself and you. This will be the place in this passage where we will be tempted to try to rationalize what it is that Paul's teaching here and just say, it can't mean that.
[00:18:24] Certainly not. That's so counterintuitive to how we live our normal lives. No, it is what Paul is saying, but it is supernatural. We can't try to lower the bar to what it is that God is calling us to.
[00:18:42] Paul says this.
[00:18:44] He says, bless.
[00:18:46] Bless who?
[00:18:48] Those who persecute you.
[00:18:51] Bless.
[00:18:52] Do not curse.
[00:18:57] Bless people that persecute you, people that make your life difficult, people that give you a hard time, people that are standing against you in this life. Paul is saying, bless them.
[00:19:15] He's just reiterating the words of Jesus. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
[00:19:20] Will the good of people, even the ones that persecute you.
[00:19:25] And here's where we might be tempted, like Bob, why don't you do a word study on bless? Because yes, it may mean to will the good of another person, but maybe if you look deep enough, it also means you can throat punch them.
[00:19:41] No, bless doesn't mean throat punch. Bless means bless.
[00:19:49] We bless even those that persecute us.
[00:19:53] And then Paul says, rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.
[00:20:01] Paul is saying, if we love people, what we're going to discipline ourselves to do, what we're going to learn to get really good at, is entering into the inner life of other people.
[00:20:11] That we know the things that are happening underneath the surface, the things that are lifting their hearts to the highest of heights, and we know those things that are just taking them down to the depths of despair. And we enter into that.
[00:20:25] That's not easy either one of Those is not that easy. You know what it's like sometimes to rejoice when someone is just rejoicing about how amazing their life is? You know, what can happen in us?
[00:20:37] We can start to get jealous.
[00:20:39] We can covet, like God.
[00:20:42] Why did their. Why is their life so great?
[00:20:46] Why is my life so hard? Sometimes it can be difficult to rejoice with those that rejoice.
[00:20:53] And sometimes it can be difficult to mourn with those who mourn. But we've got to enter in. We've got to get our life around. We've got to get our ears around our heart, around the pain and the hurt of other people. And we weep with them as they weep. That's the kind of love that Paul's talking about here. We need to seek the inner world of other people.
[00:21:16] And then he says, live in harmony with one another.
[00:21:23] Harmony, peace, shalom.
[00:21:31] Meaning that as you look across the landscape of your relationships, there's no relationships where there's ripples on the water.
[00:21:38] Everything is just peaceful.
[00:21:43] You know what's difficult about being a preacher is you gotta sit with this text all week long and just let the spirit pound your heart and show you the things.
[00:21:57] Looking across the landscape of my life, is there harmony in every relationship?
[00:22:04] Are there ripples on the water?
[00:22:05] In my relationships, yes.
[00:22:08] It was so vivid to me. There was someone that I saw from a distance. They had their back to me, but I knew who it was. And as I was walking. It's nobody in our church. Just so you know. You're not. You don't have to wonder if it's you, but when I saw them, this was my immediate response.
[00:22:29] I want to go in the other. I didn't actually turn around, but that's what I wanted to do.
[00:22:34] Why ripples?
[00:22:35] No, no, no. When there's ripples on the water, we move toward those people. We deal with the ripples that are in our life and with other people. And it's hard and it's uncomfortable, but that's what we do.
[00:22:49] You know what else I know? You know how I know that there's ripples in relationships? It's because I'm having these imaginary conversations with people.
[00:22:57] Yeah, you laugh because you have them, too.
[00:23:00] I'm not the only one. In those conversations, you always say the right thing. You always know how to jab just the way you should to get your point across.
[00:23:11] If you're having imaginary conversations, you got ripples.
[00:23:16] You don't have harmony.
[00:23:19] Don't think about people.
[00:23:21] Don't talk about people.
[00:23:22] Talk to People move toward the people where there's ripples on the water. Allow your heart to be changed.
[00:23:31] And lastly, Paul says, do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people position.
[00:23:42] Do not be conceited.
[00:23:46] This is just a reality of the world we live in is that there's, there's a pecking order.
[00:23:53] Sometimes we just walk into a room, we're like, what's the pecking order?
[00:23:58] Is this person above me? Is this person below me?
[00:24:01] Paul is saying, not in God's kingdom.
[00:24:04] That's not how we work.
[00:24:06] And even if there is a pecking order and you know that the world looks at someone as beneath you, we don't act proud, we move toward that person.
[00:24:17] And sometimes it's not just a person of low position, sometimes it can be a person of like low EQ emotional intelligence. They're just awkward, they're difficult to be around.
[00:24:30] Sometimes we call these people the extra grace required people.
[00:24:36] You know who I'm talking about, don't you? In fact, some of those people are coming to your mind right now because they're in every group. The extra grace required.
[00:24:46] You've got them in your mind and if you can't think of someone, it's probably you.
[00:24:53] You're the extra grace required.
[00:24:58] But Paul is saying, where all the extra grace required people, there's no pecking order in God's kingdom.
[00:25:06] It's not how God sees it.
[00:25:08] We need to love sincerely, regardless of the position that a person's in.
[00:25:17] When I read this just casually, even you just see that there is this incredibly high bar that Paul is calling us to as a family of God. How do we live this out?
[00:25:30] How do we actually do this?
[00:25:33] I read this and I just think this is impossible.
[00:25:36] This isn't natural.
[00:25:39] And you know what? It's not natural, it's supernatural.
[00:25:44] The only way, friends, that we can actually live out these values of the kingdom of God is if our life first and foremost has been transformed by the gospel.
[00:25:56] I want to remind you where we started two weeks ago in Romans, chapter 12, Paul looking back at the first 11 chapters, he says, then therefore I urge you brothers and sisters looking at that first 11 chapters, in view of God's mercy, in view of God's mercy.
[00:26:18] It's only when we come to a realization that we are the extra grace required person that God poured out his love toward us. Not because there was anything intrinsically lovely about us, anything that we worked for or earned to make God value us above anybody else, but he saw our worth and he gave his Life for us, we, we friends are the extra grace required.
[00:26:52] And it's only when we understand that and we are so moved by that and we are so grateful for that receiving of God's grace and his love that we can actually extend his grace and his love to other people.
[00:27:08] It's not natural, it's supernatural.
[00:27:13] And it only happens when our lives are transformed from the inside out. That's why Paul says, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.
[00:27:24] We give ourself. We give our life not only to God, but to others. And pleasing this is holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Offering our life to God and offering our life to people is our true and proper worship. That this is what it looks like when we worship well together.
[00:27:45] Your maturity, it's not about what you know, it's about how you love. Here's how John said it in First John, he just makes it so clear.
[00:27:57] We love meaning that we're able to love each other the way that Paul's talking about here. We love because he first loved us.
[00:28:06] Whoever claims to love God, yet hates a brother or sister is a liar.
[00:28:11] If you're not willing to love someone the way Paul's talking about John is saying you're a liar. You don't understand.
[00:28:19] You haven't been changed by the gospel. For whoever does not love their brother and sister whom they have seen, who we can actually see with our eyes, cannot love God whom you have not seen.
[00:28:34] And he has given us this command.
[00:28:37] Anyone, anyone who loves God must also love their brother.
[00:28:45] That's the test of your maturity.
[00:28:48] How well do we love people?
[00:28:53] That's what God's evaluating when he looks at a worship gathering of his family. How well do we love, love one another?
[00:29:03] Here's the deal.
[00:29:05] I think in general this text, it's not that difficult to understand, but this text is incredibly difficult to apply because this takes time.
[00:29:19] This takes time for us to get rooted and connected in these kind of love relationships, to actually become a family and friends in our culture. There are so many headwinds that we've got to come up against just in the way we live our lives. We are an incredibly individualized culture.
[00:29:40] We are almost anti communal and we are so transient.
[00:29:45] We're constantly moving from place to place, from city to city, from school district to school district, and from church to church.
[00:29:57] And we're doing this like never before in human history.
[00:30:02] Paul wants us to understand a tree that is continually uprooting itself and trying to Plant it somewhere else.
[00:30:11] Uprooted, planted somewhere else. It doesn't have the capacity to let its roots go deep.
[00:30:19] And when its roots don't go deep, it doesn't bear the fruit that God wants us to bear.
[00:30:26] So that's why when relationships get hard in and around the church that we're in, we're gone.
[00:30:33] There's something the bald guy says that you don't like, you're gone.
[00:30:37] If something else out there looks new and exciting and different, we're gone.
[00:30:42] Always something.
[00:30:45] But here's what that says.
[00:30:48] It says that we are the center of the church, not God.
[00:30:55] My participation in a community, in a family, is based on its service to me.
[00:31:03] As soon as this community stops benefiting me, I am gone.
[00:31:10] The community serves me, not me serving the community. But here's the problem.
[00:31:15] You can go, you can go somewhere else, but wherever you go, there you are.
[00:31:23] And God wants to do something in our life through even the difficulty that we experience in relationships.
[00:31:31] About 10 years ago, on staff here at this church, it was a season where. I don't know how to say it kindly, but there were just lots of things that were unhealthy.
[00:31:42] And I got to the place. Carmen and I got to the place where we thought, we can't.
[00:31:47] We can't be here anymore.
[00:31:50] So we looked elsewhere, looked for a job, found another job. We were right on the edge of stepping in to that job, saying yes to that job, when the Lord so very clearly, in the most unique and powerful way, told me, bob, you need to stay.
[00:32:08] And he gave me this picture.
[00:32:11] He said, bob, I want you to get your arms around people, and I want you to do your best to walk them through this.
[00:32:18] You know what my response to God was?
[00:32:21] I don't want to.
[00:32:23] I don't want to do that. That looks hard.
[00:32:27] I was so afraid of being disobedient to God that I actually got together a handful of our closest friends and we sat around our kitchen table, and I said, this is what we are convinced that God wants us to do. And none of us, neither of us wants to do this. We need you. We need you to help us. Because I'm afraid that I'm going to try to pull the ripcord and jump ship, and I need you to hold my feet to the fire.
[00:32:51] I need to do what God is asking me to do.
[00:32:55] So I did my best to get my arms around people and walk them through this.
[00:33:01] And it was hard.
[00:33:04] Never experienced anything more difficult, sad and frustrating in all my years of ministry.
[00:33:11] But here's what I can tell you with a straight face. I can look you right in the eye and say that God did things in me that he could never have done any other way than being in it with other people. Walking through the difficult things. There were relationships that were forged and formed in the midst of the fire that will never, never go away because of what we walked through together. There were things that God wanted to do in me. There were things that God wanted to do through me. But I had to say yes and stay planted and rooted in a community of people.
[00:33:47] And where I stand today, I can look you right in the eye and tell you truthfully, it's never been better.
[00:33:57] Back then, I couldn't have looked at today and had any hope that things would be like they are today.
[00:34:06] Now one of my greatest joys in life, greatest joys, is that I get to at least be a part of of what it is that God is doing around here. At Journey, I'm so grateful that God didn't let me go the way that I wanted to go. He formed me. And here's what I learned in the midst of that.
[00:34:25] My spiritual journey is not more important than our spiritual journey.
[00:34:31] We need to do it together.
[00:34:33] The good and the bad. Love must be sincere.
[00:34:37] And Paul says that's how we're going to grow.
[00:34:40] That's what makes us grow. Here's how Paul said it in Ephesians chapter 4. He said this instead. Speaking the truth in love. Again, that idea of being sincere. Tough love.
[00:34:52] We will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is Christ.
[00:35:00] From him, the whole body, all of us, every one of us, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, every all. That means all of us grows and builds itself up in love. The kind of love that Paul's talking about. As each part does its work.
[00:35:28] As each part does its work.
[00:35:31] That means this is an all play, friends.
[00:35:34] Nobody gets a pass.
[00:35:36] All of us need to work toward this in our life, in our relationships around this spiritual family. We grow in community.
[00:35:44] That's how God forms us. Now, I know some of you like you could like all day. I just want to keep my eyes in my Bible.
[00:35:53] But if I say put your eyes on another human being, you're like, I don't know.
[00:35:57] I don't know if that's what I want. But if you read your Bible long enough, Jesus is going to tell you, don't just read what I say, do it.
[00:36:07] This is what Jesus is asking us to do. Learn to love one another the way he loved us.
[00:36:14] You've got to ask yourself, is your spiritual formation taking you into relationship with people or is it taking you to isolation? Because if you're becoming isolated, it's not following Jesus.
[00:36:26] Jesus leads us into community with other people. And it's hard.
[00:36:31] It's sincere, it's generous, and it's hard. You want to grow. You want to grow in patience.
[00:36:39] Get around people that are difficult to be around.
[00:36:43] You want to grow in gentleness and kindness. Walk through conflict with people.
[00:36:48] Then you'll know that something's happened.
[00:36:51] You want to grow in your self control. Be tempted to want to be angry and gossip toward other people.
[00:36:57] God uses difficult relationships to form us and to shape us.
[00:37:05] I'm going to say it again. We've got a lot of headwinds in this life.
[00:37:09] In our culture, we don't do well at relationships. We are incredibly isolated. We are incredibly disconnected. We're incredibly lonely.
[00:37:19] It's bad.
[00:37:20] Read the research. And I believe it's getting worse.
[00:37:24] I read these statistics this week that just blew my mind. I'm kind of new to the whole artificial intelligence AI game, but I was reading the Harvard Business Review published some statistics. You know what the number one use of AI is?
[00:37:42] Companionship and therapy.
[00:37:46] We're outsourcing relationships to a robot.
[00:37:52] 73% of teenagers have an AI companion.
[00:37:57] Many, if not most of them say they prefer it to a human being.
[00:38:04] We've got headwinds, We've got challenge. If we're going to grow relationally, here's some of the challenges that we have. Even at Journey Church.
[00:38:14] In a large and growing church, here's one of the challenges that we have. So many of you are new.
[00:38:21] When we did our Pulse survey just a handful of weeks ago, the statistics came back. 48% of the people in this room are new in the last two years. That means half of us are brand new.
[00:38:34] So many people are sitting there like, I need somebody to reach out to me. Every one of us needs somebody to reach out to them. It can't just be people that have been here forever. Cause there's not that many of them.
[00:38:46] We've got to be people who are willing to do what it takes, no matter how long we've been here, to build the kind of relationships that Paul is asking us to build. The question is how?
[00:38:59] How are we going to do it?
[00:39:01] I want to give you some thoughts.
[00:39:05] Don't be the first one out the door after our worship gatherings.
[00:39:11] Take some time.
[00:39:13] Introduce yourself to another human Being learn their name, maybe learn something about them.
[00:39:21] At the end of our worship gathering, Ryan's going to say to you, don't hurry out.
[00:39:27] Get to know somebody. He's also going to say, there are prayer tables at the end of the stage. Take advantage of that. There are people there that want to pray with you and pray for you. And I know these people. They're not just going to pray for you today, they're going to continue to pray for you. What are your needs? Let your needs be known.
[00:39:47] But also this. I think it would be beautiful, so beautiful if the, the prayer wasn't just about what happened at the tables, but we would actually pray with each other out there, that we would be interested in entering in to the inner life of another person, that we would just ask, we is a need in your life that I could be praying for.
[00:40:08] It's not just the tables. Like prayer would be happening everywhere and we'd be praying for each other throughout the week.
[00:40:16] We would start to open up our circle.
[00:40:21] We would practice hospitality.
[00:40:23] We would begin to invite people into our life that are different than us.
[00:40:28] This might stretch some of you not. Not just get to know somebody's name, but just say, hey, could we grab a cup of coffee sometime? Could we grab a meal together? Could you come to my home? I would love to get to know you more. We would learn to practice hospitality.
[00:40:45] Now you're going to hate this one.
[00:40:49] We would start to have hard conversations.
[00:40:53] When I said that earlier, maybe something came to your mind.
[00:40:57] You thought about a hard conversation that you know that you should have.
[00:41:02] But up until this point, all you've done is talk about them.
[00:41:07] You haven't talked to them.
[00:41:09] Get over your discomfort.
[00:41:12] Love someone enough to say the hard thing, to give the feedback, to share with them what everybody else sees and they can't see. Love someone.
[00:41:22] Have a hard conversation.
[00:41:24] I'd say join a group, get in a smaller group of people where you can enter into the lives of one another on a more regular basis, on a smaller basis. But let me say this, I'm not naive.
[00:41:39] Just because you go to the go to a group does not mean that you will build these kind of relationships.
[00:41:46] You've got to give more than just your time in the group. You, you've got to give your transparency. You've got to open up your life. You've got to let your needs be known. And that can be so difficult for us. Don't just go to a group, be a part of a group. Lead it out.
[00:42:03] Lead out in transparency and for some of you, your next step might be, I need to lead a group.
[00:42:11] I've got spiritual capital.
[00:42:13] I've got history.
[00:42:15] I've got God working in my life. Open up the circle of your life and invite people in and help them walk with Jesus.
[00:42:27] They need you and you need them.
[00:42:34] That's how God grows us.
[00:42:36] He grows us in relationships with people.
[00:42:41] When you walk away today, if someone calls you or someone asks you, how was the worship at Journey today?
[00:42:52] I don't want you to answer it by saying, this is how they did.
[00:42:58] I want you to answer it the way God is looking at it.
[00:43:03] You'd answer it, how did I do?
[00:43:06] How did I do it? Coming before God and loving him, receiving his love for me. And as a result of receiving that love, I extended it to people. And here's how I did it. Worship was awesome.
[00:43:19] The bald guy wasn't great, but the worship was awesome because I did what God wanted me to do.
[00:43:28] It's not about what they do, it's about what you do.
[00:43:33] Worship that matters.
[00:43:36] Let's pray.
[00:43:41] Jesus, move in our lives.
[00:43:46] We acknowledge the way you've asked us to. Love is not natural, it is supernatural.
[00:43:55] Holy Spirit, we need you to invade our hearts and our lives, invade our minds.
[00:44:03] Give us your picture of what the kingdom of God looks like amongst your people.
[00:44:10] Jesus, Give us perseverance to keep moving toward it, even when it's hard. Jesus, we trust you.
[00:44:18] You prayed that we would be one the way you and the Father are one. And it's by that that the world's going to know that you are who you claim to be. Jesus, you prayed for it. So I know that you want it and I know that you will do it. Allow us, Jesus, we want to be your vessels to show the world what your kind of love looks like.
[00:44:40] We love you, Jesus, and it's in your name that we pray.
[00:44:44] And all God's people said, amen.
