Our Vision - Commissioned
Canopy is a family of, churches learning to live free, and we've been unpacking that over the last four weeks with claim covered and commission. And I, I'm gonna be talking about the. Commission this morning. And one of the things, just as I've been processing that word a little bit, um, obviously we see that word playing out all throughout the New Testament, right?
Where we see the followers of Jesus expanding and going and taking the, taking the commandments of Jesus. To the places taking a great commission, literally going to make, uh, preaching the word. It's uh, seeing people get baptized and seeing the followers of Jesus and the church expand. Right. And I almost went down that path with this message of just great commission and just through prayer and really discerning, there's so much more power that goes into that word commission that I actually want to campus out in before we actually get to that word commission, if that makes sense.
One of the greatest things about having a relationship with God, of course, is that what God speaks to us. We in a pre our pre gathering, call it the boiler room, in this space, we are committed as a church just slowing down and stopping, um, and, and approaching God with the, with the belief that God is always speaking, like God is always speaking to us, but are we actually stopping ourselves to listen to what he has to say?
And for me, I've been following Jesus now for 25 years. I know that sounds like a long time. I'm only 38, so I guess since a high school student and, um, discerning the voice of God for me is turning out and I'm gonna, starting to recognize that to be a lifelong journey, right? Like, if I can be honest to truly discern the voice of God, I wish I would've figured that out like yesterday.
Does that make sense? There's something about like God's speaking and there's moments where I'm like, Oh, he's speaking clearly and I can hear him, and there's moments in season. Weeks, possibly months. And I've had pastoral enough pastoral coffees with people in this room to say it could even be years for people where just discerning the voice of God tends to be a little bit of this frustrating reality, this tension of, Okay, God is speaking, but I'm not hearing Him, his attention that we constantly live in, and the longer I follow Jesus, I don't know if being comfortable is the right word or phrase to put.
But I'm just getting more comfortable at balancing that tension. And when God speaks and I hear, let's go. But what are we doing? How are we stopping ourselves to position ourselves and actually listening to what God has to say? As difficult as it is to discern the voice of God in my life, one of the ra, it's one of the main reasons that keep drawing me back to him is this hunger, is this.
This desire to hear what God has to say to. To hear what God might wanna say to you through me, to hear what God might be wanting to say to our church, to my family, with whatever it is. It's the thing that keeps driving me back to him and, and I recognize something with myself like, and even this morning as we're worshiping and listening and wanting to know, like, God, what is it that you have?
There's something, a deeper desire in me to want to grow in my intimacy with God, specifically towards his voice. And however I can confidently. From following Jesus for as long as I have that there are just times where I don't hear his voice. However, that still doesn't mean that God isn't speaking. That certainly doesn't mean God hasn't spoken.
Right? And so I want to approach this word commission this morning as we talk about the journey that we're set out as a, as a family of Jesus for is learning to live free. A big part of that is embracing the fact that God is commissioning us, right? And I think that if we wanna fully grasp the power behind that word, we have to.
In the place with the belief, with the faith that God is speaking, He speaks through his word. We're about to get into this right? He can speak directly to us. He can speak to us through someone else. That's happened to me quite a bit where I come up and I'm, someone's praying for me or I'm having a meeting with somebody and there's no, there was way that God uses an individual to speak.
He speaks through that individual to me, and then we also see that God speaks through. Just was up in the mountains for Daniel Whitney's, uh, ceremony up there. He got married, right? And it was beautiful up there. There's a way that God speaks through his, his, his creation. Psalm 19 verse one says, The heavens declare the glory of God.
The sky's proclaim the work of his hands, and so we can't, we can't put the voice of God in a box. God can speak to us however he wants to, through whomever he wants. So if we want to grasp again, the power behind this word commission, we have to realize that first and foremost God is spoken and God is still speaking today.
So the question that I wrote down in my notes is just this, Well, what now? What do we do with that truth? What do we do with the reality that God is speaking? Cuz the voice of God is so much more than just meant to comfort me in times of need, although that's a big part of it. There are many times where I'm in a tough season, in a tough circumstance, and the voice of God comforts me, comforts my soul with his voice, but, but I would actually say that the primary reason for God speaking out to us is actually to awaken us to the fact that he's working in the world.
So yes, the voice of God is meant to comfort us, but primarily the voice of God is to awaken us, is to lift our heads. To open up our eyes, it's to step out and look out and be like, Oh my gosh, God is in fact working in my life, but also in the world, even in ways that I can't fully comprehend or even in ways that I can't fully understand.
So the voice of God is awakening us to what he's doing in and around our lives. And I think back to, I was talking with Kean, a couple people in the office week, and I'm like, I, I, if I'm being honest with you, I can only confidently. A hundred percent certainty that God has spoken to me four or five times and, and like those were markers in my life.
Like those were desperation times of like, God, what do I do now? Right? Like, are you in fact in this? Are you in fact calling us? Part part of it was marrying Jesse. Part of it was fostering it at up, Part of it was planting the church. Part of was merging our community with Canopy. There are milestones, there are markers in faith where I'm looking back and I'm like, God actually spoke right?
I'm certain of that four or five times. Each of those times pushed me beyond myself into a circumstance that was incredibly challenging and why I can look back and say, I know for certain that there was at least four or five times because God actually told me to do something I wouldn't have done on my own.
Right? Like God pushes us into circumstances. He pushes us beyond ourselves. He pushes us beyond our comfort zones, and those are always indications that maybe just maybe God's in this. And so for us, there's lots of examples of this in scripture, by the way, here's two that I wanna share with you. The first comes in, Exodus 19 will be on the screen.
Verse three, if you have your Bible. No bibles today. Oh, Josh, just what the good old days in church when you'd hear the page flipping. Thank you guys. Bring your Bibles to church, but we have technology to help you. Exodus 19 verse three through six. This is an example here. Of what this, what we're trying to get at here says.
Then Moses went up to God and the Lord, sorry, Moses went up to God and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said, This is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel. You yourselves have seen what I did at, to what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on Ingles wings and brought you to myself.
Now, if you have your Bible underlying this now, if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, Then out of all the nations, you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelite.
So what do we, what do we see here? God is speaking to Moses, right? His instructions for Moses are to remind the Israelites that they've been set apart to represent God to the world, and it's imperative that they do what? Obey his command. So in other words, do what he says, right? And then he says, If you do this, like this is how you'll, you're gonna be a kingdom of priests.
You're gonna be a holy nation. I'm speaking. So do what I say. If you do that, you will be a holy priest. You will be a holy nation, You'll be a kingdom priest, right? So this is, this is speaking. Look at these words of Jesus. Matthew 28 19, the familiar passage for all of us. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations.
Baptizing the him and the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you. And surely I'm with you always to the very end of the age. So what do we see in these two passages? One, God speaks , right? Two, God is working. And three, our response to that is obedience.
So when we talk about commission, this is where we live like this. This is the reality. This is what the C. Life boils itself down to as God is speaking, God is working, and I'm gonna obey. I'm gonna respond to those two truths with obedience. So am I waking up each and every day listening for the voice of God in my life?
That's a question for me to really wrestle with. The answer to you is no. That's why I'm standing up here confessing. I have a desire to approach God in this. Speaking. So I'm I, waking up every morning intentionally listening for the voice of God in my life. Am I waking up each morning fully trusting that God is working in my life, not just in my life, but in the world?
Am I waking up each morning, laying down my desires and my dreams for the sake of whatever God is asking me to do?
This is what the word commission, this is the power behind this word. This is not something to be taken light. This isn't necessarily one of those rah messages where we get fired up. I can't wait to get outta my seat and I'm gonna go evangelized to the world. There's conviction here. There's something worth paying attention to.
Cuz until we can be commissioned out into the world, Jesus has to get a hold of us. He has to stir something. He has to stir a hunger, a desire, a passion for him before we can be useful to him. Not that he can't. He's primarily focused. He wants you first, and then what he does from there is transform the world.
Right? Case study here, 12 disciples, he got a hold of their hearts first. He transformed their lives first. And what did they go do? We know the story. We're going through it in an acts, right?
And so for each of us, when we talk about. God speaking to us, God working in and through our lives. Response obedience. This actually, and this is where it gets fun, like for us as a community in, in relationship with one another, is this looks different with every single one of you. There's no like cookie cutter plan here.
Like, God doesn't look down at the planet Earth and say, I'm gonna operate these people and, and like, treat 'em like puppets or robots. And they're just gonna, I'm gonna use them to fulfill and do the things that I want to do, right? Like, God does not look at us that way. Like God sees you. He sees me as, uh, complex individuals who feel right, who have fear, who, who have insecurities.
Like we're complex beans, right? And he, he, he's wired us differently, gifted us differently, given us quirkiness and personalities that, that are actually useful to the kingdom of God. And so the journey of, of following Jesus practically, there are those three, three things that is a really helpful starting point for us.
But where it gets fun for us to journey in life together is that it's gonna look differently for each life. Then we're getting a taste of the kingdom. We're we're able to step back and look and see how great, how big, how beautiful God is. Cuz look at the ways he's working in your life. Look at the ways he's working in your life and in my life.
Can you believe how good God is that he would see me useful, That he would create me the way that he created me, and give me the opportunities he can use anybody he is using.
Even with all my, uh, failures, shortcomings, whatever you wanna call it, like God still wants to use my life to bring him glory. And I would say with great faith and expectation, he wants to do the same through you. You wanna know what's great about God. Thanks. There's a lot of things right, But to be really specific and boil it.
Is that God doesn't leave us alone to figure this out all on our own. Like he's not just turning you loose in the world, be like, Hey, good luck. Let me know if you need some help. Right? He has given us primarily the Holy Spirit, but what I want to kind of camp out in the rest of our time here together this morning is that he's given us each other.
We're all full of the Holy Spirit. He's given us the church to set out on mission together. To approach every single day together, or separate wherever we are at work or home or school, beach, the mountains. God is speaking, God is working. I'm gonna respond to those two truths with obedience. And so he's given us the church to do that together so that we don't operate in isolation.
And Jesus, when we talk about we need each other to obey the commission. Like we looked at passages and they frame it towards commandments. Like when Jesus came to earth, Jesus looked back and through the to, if you know, I think 605. Is that about right? Professor Josh? Pretty close. Am I off a little bit? 6 10, 6 15.
Do I hear six 20? All right. 600 and something commandments, right? That they were trying to fulfill, that they were trying to obey. Can you imagine the burden there desperately wanting to obey God relationship with God inadvertently became just do and be good, right? And so ge, that broke Jesus' heart. And so when he came, Jesus is a simple guy, which I appreciate about him, is a beautiful way about making things that are confusing.
Understandable, Right? This is the gift that he is to the world. This is the gift that he was to the people he interacted with. He said, 605 ish. I'm gonna give this, break that down to two. Just two. So we talk about obeying the commandments of God. Jesus came and said, It means loving God and loving people.
When we talk about being the people who are commissioned into the world, we are in fact saying is that God is speaking, that he's working, and God wants us to respond to those two truths with loving him and loving people and loving God, and loving people are not mutually exclusive, right? For those of us that maybe have been following Jesus for too long, that makes sense, right?
When I say that right? We love God by what? Loving people, right? We love people by what? Loving God. These work together. They're not at tension together. They work together beautifully. And so if you're ever curious about what's the best way to love God, well, he says, Love the people you're around all the time.
That is in fact how you love me. I created them. Right? So these are connected to one another. And the best way that we do this, I believe, and I'm convicted of it, and I'm given my life to the church because I think it's through the local church. The best way we love God and that we love people, I believe, is through the local church, not a building, right?
Forget the building. It's the people. If I'm gonna love God and love people to my fullest potential, I'm gonna need every single one of you to do that. I cannot, and I don't want to do that on my own. Why? Because my, my love is limited. Real talk, right? My faith is limited. My giftings are limited, my experiences are limited, and I need you, we need each other to pull us up a little bit to recognize like really, like what?
Like what can I really do on my own? Maybe a cool feel, if you like a, a few cool things. Good job, Mike, on that sustainably, really like what could I really accomplish on my own in my limited abilities? But when we do it together and we're moving in the same direction on the same page, committed to the fact that God is speaking and God is working and we're gonna love God and love people together.
Can you imagine what we can do as a community of people who are committed to that mission together? Are you with me? I can't, I can't do this on my own. You can't do this on your own. And this is why the church is so important to the world. This is why the world needs the church, and, and this is why we even see in the New Testament.
If you have, your Bible can flip over to First Corinthians chapter 12, a title, a phrase, a description that was given to the church. That still rocks me every time I think about it as the bride of Christ. Whoa, this is, this is how God sees his church. This is how Jesus treated his church as his bride. So First Corinthians chapter 12, verse 12.
My Bible is gonna be, this is gonna get a little sketchy in here with my translation. Sorry about that. But just the one on the screen's, the clear cut, better version. Verse 12. Just as for just as the body is one and as many parts and all the parts of that body, though many are one body, so also is Christ, for we are all baptized by one spirit into one body, whether Jew or Greeks, whether slave free, and we were all given one spirit to drink.
Indeed the body is not one part, but many. If the foot should say, because I'm not a hand, I don't belong to the body. It is not for that reason. Any less a part of the. If the ear should say, because I'm not an eye, I don't belong to the body. It is not for that reason any less. As a part of the body, for the whole body, were an eye.
Where would the hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is with God has arranged each one of the parts of the body just as he wanted, and if they were all the same part, where would the body. As it is, there are many parts, but one body, the eye cannot say to the hand, I don't need you.
Or again, the head can't say to the feet, I don't need you. On the contrary, those parts of the body are the weaker and indispensable for those parts of the body that we consider less honorable. We clothe these with great honor and are respectable parts are treated with greater respect, which our respectable parts do not need.
Instead, so that there would be no division in the. But the members would have so that there would be no division in the body, but the members would have the same concern for each other. So if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. If one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are the body of Christ, individual members of it, and God has appointed these in the church.
First apostle second profits, third teachers, next miracles. Then gifts of healing, helping administrating various kinds of tongue. Are all apostles? Are all prophets, are all teachers. Do all do miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in other tongues? Do all interpret, but desire the greater gifts.
And I will show you even better way. Whoa, , what a powerful passage. I've read that I don't. Maybe you have to, and there's something so refreshing every time I read that passage is describing the church. The body of Christ. Paul is simply echoing the words of Jesus here. Jesus called his church, right, His bride.
He talked about it as his body as well. And so if we, if we change our perspective here and we begin to see the church, not as just a group of people that gather on Sundays, not just a bunch of people who have independent lives from this, we come together and it's a social club, not even as a. . But if we see the church the way that Christ sees the church, it completely undos how we live our lives.
It ought to convict us. It ought to speak to places in our lives. It ought to help us and want to reorder things and set and establish new rhythms in our, in our families, in our homes, and our work to reprioritize where the church should be. Cuz if Jesus says, the church is the body of Christ. . If we want Christ to be the primary focus of our lives, the church is there as well.
And so Paul uses this illustration of a body to communicate the significance of the church. And there are two things here that Paul is after. Number one, if you're taking notes, we need each other. I heard someone say it like this, and it just stuck with me over the years. We suffer in isolation and we grow in c.
We suffer in isolation and we grow in community. There's no truer statement than that is there. For those of us that just have lived life a little bit, we suffer the most when we feel alone. We suffer the most when we feel isolated. We, we saw this and we all experience this, and when I say that there's a collective Yeah, that happens.
And everybody's saw in this room because we experienced this during the. So if I would've said that two years ago, there would've been a few amens. But collectively now as a church, when I say we suffer in isolation, we all think back to two years of isolation pandemic. When we recognize and we were all high fiving each other cuz I couldn't go outta my house.
But after two weeks what happened? Things got really dark quickly for people like for two weeks. It was really nice being isolated cuz whatever the expectations the world had of. I now said can't go outside. , right? There was something really, there was a reprieve that happened initially. People that didn't like wanted to work from home were stoked and then we saw soon, Wow, this working from home thing is really isolating the amount of coffees I had with people after two weeks about what the pandemic, what isolation was doing to people.
Depression, anxiety, loneliness, fear. Like we suffer in isolation, but we grow in community. So if we live our lives in a way that's isolating, we're missing out on the life that Jesus has for us. Why? Well, Paul tells us it's because we were built to be connected to one another. That's in fact how you are built and how you are wired is to be connected.
And so when we're together, we can only live in our full potential. This is so important for us as a church if we are in fact committed to being a family of Jesus followers. Learning to live free. It has to come back to the truth that we need each other. We cannot experience freedom on our own. It's impossible.
Been there, done that. Don't wanna do it anymore. . I love the barbecue. Anybody here wants some barbecue? Love barbecue. I have a charcoal grill and I'm still pretty amateur in figuring this out. I'm know Josh Harrison that were the Coles. He just seems to speak in, they obey . Um, I'm still trying to figure out the cole situation, but one thing I have grown to love about charcoal grills and specifically grilling on my 22 inch kettle um, Weber grill is.
Really just the tension to detail that goes into grilling. So I don't want to gas grill because that's just easy and it's not that fun, right? When you, when you, when you're smoking meats or when you're using charcoal grills, there's something about the process. There's something that goes into the charcoal and the, and the temperature and, and the wind and the food and the whatever that, the humidity in the air that makes barbecuing fun.
My first time I started doing this, I learned very quickly. That the only way to keep the coals hot was by keeping the coals together. Pretty, pretty basic, right? Like if you're gonna actually cook with charcoal to keep your coals hot, they must be literally connected. They must be touching other coals to keep up to temperature.
If you take one coal out and you isolate that coal from all the others, what do you think happens? It burns out pretty quickly, actually. It goes out like just like. Coals only stay hot when they're up against or they're surrounded by other coals that keep them moving. And this is, honestly, this is a silly illustration cuz I'm hungry for now for barbecue about really what the picture and what the intentionality, what the purpose of the church is for you and, and what the church is for me.
Right. This is what makes the church important. It's the place where I surround myself. This is the place where I'm up against. I'm doing life with other followers of Jesus who, who encourage me, who can challenge me, who can keep me move, who can keep me moving forward towards Christ likeness. If I'm isolated, I'm no longer living in the purpose to which I was created.
I'm detached from it just like a coal. We need to be around each other, surrounded by each other. The church went healthy is a hot bit of goals. When I'm not feeling it, I'm coming and stepping in with faith that somebody else there is gonna keep me going. Yeah, and this is the beauty of community, right?
When we isolate, we lose the very essence of who we are and what we do. Number two, there are no bystanders. Mike Erie said this, and I just love it. Community isn't just about eating and drinking together. It's also about bleeding and sweating together. So really, he's echoing the words of Paul here. In in, in First Corinthians chapter 12, Paul says, and what he's really fighting for is that the church isn't just about community.
What did he say? That's all I thought it was. No, it's good. Like if we are just community, we're missing out. It's not, it's the church is more than a social club, right? The church is much more than that. It's a body on mission. Community is a big part of that. Like we want to be on mission, we need the community.
Like it's not either or. And I've been a part of churches that are all about mission, but have no community. I've been a part of churches that have a ton of community, but no. If we're gonna step in and actually re and live into the identity of the church, we are a community that's on mission. And so what that means is that we need that commitment from everybody.
So if Church for You is just about community, it's time to step back and prayerfully invite the Holy Spirit into your life and step out at yourself and say, Okay, how can I actually step into mission? If the Church for you is all about mission and you have no community, this, I would say the same to. It's time to step back and lean into community and put yourself in situations that might be uncomfortable for you.
Paul says that the church. Is more than just community. So the body here, he says is, is how important the body knows how important the arm is. The body knows that without the toes, it's only gonna limp through life, right? So he's just drawing attention to all the different body parts. If the hand he says, or the ear or the eyes are missing and the whole body suffers, it's still maybe alive, but it's not gonna operate in wholeness.
It's not gonna be working in, in at its best in the world, right? So Paul is changing the way that we think about the church and, and if I see the church as the body of Christ, then I'm gonna know how important it is for me to participate in my local church, and how will I understand how much the body of Christ suffered if I'm actually not around.
We can only be connected if we're around. We're gonna miss out on what in fact, the body of Christ is up to, and the beauty and the power behind the body if we're only connected to it, you might be aware of the statistics. I mean, three years ago I would get up here and say, The average person attend a church twice a month.
Do you know what it is now? And the guesses, it's less . It's one, one time a. I, I like, I'm not here to condemn. I condemn, I get it. Like I get it. But what we have to actually look back and speak to is that that means that the average person just attends church. Like this is Western talking, right? Like westernized church, Westernized Christianity.
I'm a Christian because I go to church. This is my language, this is my framework right now. So the average person is only around the church, give or take 29. Uh, they're away from it 29 days. A. That's the normal disconnected alone, isolated for 29 days a month, and we wonder why we're hurting. We're wondering why we feel distant.
We're wondering why we feel disconnected. It's because we're not around. We're not connected. And I can't speak for other churches, but I do feel okay speaking for this one, I just think we can do so much better. God dreams that canopy will be a Monday through Saturday Church. Not to diminish Sunday, Sundays is a given around here, like we're here every Sunday, but like Canopy is gonna be and will be.
And this is what's so exciting about Josh's leadership and all the different things that are coming up, is that we see ourselves beyond Sunday. And so the call for us is how do we step in? I need you all Monday through Saturday. It's really hard. Monday through Saturday. You guys know that a lot happens in my life Monday through Saturday, right?
Like you only see little glimpses of me here. There's a lot going on outside of this space, and I would imagine the same as for you two. And so we need each other. We need that. We need each other because we are the body of Christ. So my encouragement to you is to see the church the way that Jesus and the way that Paul is speak.
If you follow Jesus, see yourself as the body of Christ. With that, you have a role to play. God is working. Josh touched up on, um, All In Night. I just wanna speak to it for a second tomorrow night. He, as he mentioned, and I'm so excited for this because it's been, if there's been something craving inside of me, um, as a pastor of this church, but for sure, but also a member of Canopy Church.
This is where our fam, my family, Like, my kids look forward to coming to, like, coming to Canopy every single Sunday. So our, our, our, our community is growing here. Our desire for relationship is, is growing. And there's always been something in us that's just kind of confused about like, okay, like coming outta the pandemic, we merged churches even before that.
Like who, like, who's really here? Like people are coming, going all the time, but like, like who really calls? Can it be their church? . And so for us that that desire, that ache stemmed out of into all, all in night to say like, I think if we're hungry for this, surely more people are to declare that this is our family.
Like, you can count on me, I can count on you if you need something, you know people got you. If you're feeling faithless, you can lean in and and attach yourself to people who have faith in the. . And so All In Night is an opportunity for us that we're so excited about and timely for those that do Call Canopy and say, This is gonna be our church to say, I'm in.
You can count on me. I can count on you. We're here, we're in now. If you're here and you're just checking things out and you're like too much, too quick, that's okay. Like find, Find a church that you can be a part of the body at, whether it's this church or not. Like you need to be a part of the. and Canopy is just gonna lean into that intentional ways where we know in order for us to actually operate in our full potential this next year, it's gotta go beyond our staff.
It's gotta beyond our goal, beyond our pastors and the leaders like God has called this church to so much, and in order for us to actually embrace that identity, we need every single person here. If one person opts out, we feel it big.
I'll close with this. It's enough. I think you get it. Um, I grew up in, I grew up in a big family. Any big family people here, grew up in big families, Anybody? Few of us. Wow. Okay. I'm the youngest of five. Um, I have four older sisters. Um, between, between sisters, cousins, aunts. Holidays were always crazy. Um, some of my favorite memories growing up were holidays.
Like there was always busy. There were always people around and we were always doing things. Um, and one thing that I realized very quickly at a young age is that we just couldn't all fit around one table. And so my parents who were right over here, Huge Rams fan over here. My dad, um, don't tell 'em they're pretty awful this year.
Chargers are better. One thing, one thing my parents did to like, you know, facilitate that space was there's a kids' table, right? Kids sit at the kids' table, adults sit at the adult table. And I had to be honest, I hated sitting at the kids' table. Like that was, that was not very fun for me. And I would always grab my plate and I would always try to sneak away and sit at a spot at the adult table.
Ever since it, ever since being a kid without fail, mostly my mom would be like, Your place is over at the kids' table. That's where the kids go, right? Like, that's where you're supposed to go sit. And so I would go over there and there would be kids fighting. There would be kids taking each other's food.
There would just be fighting or whatever it was going on over there. And um, I hated it. I wanted to go hang out with the adults. And it's all changed on Thanksgiving, 1999. I dunno if you remember this, but it sticks out to me very vivid. Where my parents both said that I can now, I was now old enough to come sit at the adult table,
I graduated from the kids' table to the adult table. No longer was I around kids that were crying or fighting or throwing food each other. I had finally become, I become considered an adult now, and what I quickly observed by sitting at the adult table was that wow, the conversations were better, right?
The portion. We're larger , the drinks were better. So I heard
like once I got to feast at the adult table, I'm never going back to that kid's table, right? And that's a silly way. And as I was praying through this message, there's an invitation here that I think Jesus wants to extend canopy. I think too many people, too many followers of Jesus just have kind of quite got comfortable of just hanging out over at that kid's table.
It's comfortable. There's not much asked of me over there, right? I can kind of stay in my little corner. No one's gonna challenge me. No one's gonna push me beyond what I'm comfortable doing. There's little accountability. And I think the invitation that Jesus wants to make to Canopy Church is that he's inviting those of us who fall are following him to get up from that kid's table and make our way over to the adult table and recognize how beautiful, the beautiful things, the powerful work that he's doing in that space.
And so the question for you is, do you accept the invitation from Jesus? Jesus said, Go into the world, make. Baptize, preach the gospel. This is not just a commandment for a few. This is a commandment for all who declared Jesus' Lord and King. And at Canopy Church, I speak for all of our pastors and leaders.
I think when I say we're committed to equipping you Permiss mission, we're committed to seeing you step into community, and we're committed to helping you identify the giftings that God has given you so that you can participate fully within the body of Christ. This is a. That we're on together. And so would you stand, we're gonna
close with a couple songs here, but the invitation I feel led to, Can Josh or Kiana jump in here whenever you feel like it, if you want to, but just to pray, um, if you feel like you're in that space where you just feel stuck, like you're hearing the invitation, but you just feel like your life, there's just something.
It's keeping you away from fully stepping in. Like if there's a hesitancy in you, I just wanna invite you to pay attention to that, and I wanna invite you forward just to come and receive, just to allow the presence of the Holy Spirit to minister over you. We wanna pray for courage for you. We wanna pray that he would fill you, that he would give you eyes and refreshment and desire to move away from that comfortable kids table and to step over to the adults table.
And then the second half of you in here, maybe you're just ready to go. And you were just waiting for the invitation, like, you're in, you're here. But you would just, you just wanted that invitation. And I just wanna invite you to come forward to you. We wanna just pray over you and lay your hand and bless the work that God is doing in your lives.
And so, um, as you feel led, or if you just want, just come forward, the front's open, um, wanna invite you into this space and we'll just have different leaders just coming and blessing you and laying a hand on you as well. So if you'll feel that, please come forward. We'll pray for you.