Our Vision - Family
All right. We're gonna dive directly in here to our vision series. Now, what this is all about is we just want to describe why we think God put this community here. He builds his church. He has built this community. He's had his hand on it through some crazy times. And there's a reason there's stuff that he's up to there's work that he's doing in and through this church.
And if you're a part of it, we want to be able to articulate what's happening. We wanna be clear on what we sense God doing so that you can step in because the truth of the matter is this is an all in kind of church. I've said this often, this is not a church for observers. It's a church for builders.
We have a lot of work to do. If you come into this space and what you're looking for is simple and safe and easy. It's just not gonna be that kind of a community. I apologize in advance, but that's not what we're trying to do here. Now. That's not to say that you can't come in and if you're coming in broken or wounded or exhausted that you can't come in and find a place to rest.
But at the end of the day, the rest is toward recovery so that we can do work together. And if you're ready to work, this is a church to work. So we wanna talk about the work that God is doing. I got this, we were praying before the service and something, we call the the boiler room which is our pre-service prayer time.
And I got this picture that God put on my heart really heavy and that doesn't often happen to me. And so I started praying into it and it felt like what I was visualizing in my mind was this runner on a 400 meter run, sprints and on the backside of the track, he got tripped up some.
I was just stumbling, trying to catch himself to keep from falling. And I felt like that's where we not just canopy, but that church has been over the past two and a half years, like running this race. And all of a sudden, we all tripped over this giant global pandemic and everything that came with it and stumbling and not fallen, not collapse, not out of the race, but stumbling and trying to run.
And I felt like the holy spirit said it's time to stop running just so you don't fall and start running again to win the race. You know what I mean? Because I feel like for a while, and maybe this is just autobiographical, maybe it's just me, but I, the church in general has just been running, not to fall, flailing your arms, trying to get your feedback under you again.
And I feel like as we step into this fall, our feet are under us. Our feet are under us and it's time to run this race to win it. That's what Paul says. We run to win the prize. So with that in mind, Let's talk about what we feel like Jesus is doing in this church, why this church exists and what it means to be a part of it on the screen.
You'll see this amazing graphic that Caleb wheres, Caleb, he's gonna hate me for this. He's hiding behind the beam back there. So I can't see him, but he is over there. Caleb designed for us with inspiration from his amazing wife Renna. Thank you. It has our mission statement on it. Really simple. We are a family of Jesus followers learning to live.
Over the next month together in this series, we're gonna unpack what that means a little bit at a time today. We're gonna talk about what it means to be a family. And then over the next weeks ahead, we're gonna talk about what free actually means, because that's a word that I think we all, when we hear it, we nod along yeah.
But then when you really dig into it, what does it actually mean? It means something different. I think, in this space than it means out there. So today though, I wanna talk about family and what it means to be the family of God. What a big deal. This is and how seriously we want to take this. So to do this, we look at the words of our king in John 14, verse 15, here we go.
If you love me, Jesus says, keep my commands and I will ask the father and he will give you another advocate to help you and to be with you forever. The spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees nor knows him, but you know him for, he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans.
I will come to you. Is the words of our king. Last weekend, we talked about what it means to be followers of a king that this is not simply a personal savior, Jesus gospel. This is the king Jesus gospel. And if that's true, if we believe that Jesus is king, if we believe that, as he said, all authority in heaven and on earth.
Belongs to him in this moment, not someday, but in this moment that he is the reigning sovereign of heaven and earth. If we believe that's true, then when he says obey my commands, then that's what we do. If you love me, obey my commands. Look, this is a big deal. This is a big deal. Banging the commands of Jesus is central to the Christian life.
I think to backtrack for just a second, the conversation we had last week when we have this sort of personal savior Jesus gospel, as our only anchor, without balancing out with the king Jesus gospel, what we end up with is a faith in which believing in Jesus as personal savior is. And we reduce the gospel of the kingdom down to a matter of intellectual belief that may or may not have any bearing upon the way in which we live our lives.
Does that make sense? But when you include in the personal savior, Jesus gospel, the counterbalance of the king Jesus gospel, then belief is not nearly enough. At least not belief as an intellectual exercise, that belief has to get active. That belief has to have legs. It has to move. We've said here from time to time that in the kingdom of God, you believe with your feet, not with your head.
And so if Jesus is king obedience to his commands is not optional, it's part and parcel of the Christian life. And I wanna be very clear on this. Jesus does have commands. About this life and the stuff that happens here, it's not just about what happens next. This gospel. He has things that he would say to us about our lives here.
And now you may hear this and say, which commands are you talking about? Jesus. Are you talking about the stuff you said in the gospels? Like certainly dear Lord, hopefully not the stuff in the sermon on the Mount, because I don't know how I measure up to that. Or some of these other places where you talk about my finances or where you seem to get political.
Jesus, you can't be talking about that when you say obey, my commands, can you and the answer is yes. All of it. All of it. The truth is if he's king reigning, Lord of heaven and earth, and he has a right to say what he wants to say about everything in heaven. And on earth, that's how this works. All of it falls under his authority, which means he gets to walk into our lives and talk to us about anything he wants to look.
I wanna talk to you about your financial stuff. I wanna talk to you about how you spend your time. I wanna talk to you about the things that you look at, where you go to. I wanna talk to you again, God, for a bit about your politics and the way that you grew up and the way you were raised. Our king gets to do.
If we have truly bow a knee, if we are truly citizens of his kingdom, then we learn to obey. We're not gonna do it perfectly, but we learn to obey. So everything in this word, when he says obey my commands, he's talking about all of it. Everything he has spoken, but not just everything. He has spoken, everything he is speaking because this king isn't just a, like a once king.
He's also a current king he's alive. By with me on this one, he rose from the dead he's alive right now. Reigning right now, active right now, speaking right now, which means we need to listen, man. This is a tricky one, cuz life's crazy. Isn't it? It's a lot of stuff going on a daily basis. I don't know if I have time to stop and listen to Jesus.
You hear what I just said? Do you hear how ridiculous that sounds when I say it out loud, like honestly, if everything I just said is true, if he's the king, I don't get to say I'm sorry. I don't have time today to listen to what you might have to be say to me. And I'm confessing to you.
There are plenty of days that go by where I don't sit down. and quiet myself to hear what he might be doing. There are plenty of moments I step into completely unaware of the fact that he's alive and raining and active, and might just have something to say about the circumstance I'm walking into. Might just have somebody he wants me to notice might just have a different perspective or opinion than the one that I bring to the table.
Naturally. He is speaking commands now and it matters that we listen. It matters that we pay attention. Now to be clear here. I wanna make sure that I'm not just painting a picture of this control freak Jesus. Okay. Who just needs us to obey his commands? The Bible's clear. He doesn't need us to do anything for him.
He can accomplish everything he wants to accomplish in the world without us. He, however, invites us to experience the joy and power of obedience. Notice what he says here. If you love me, obey my commands and. And I'll do something for you. I will ask the father and he will send you the holy spirit. And yet I'm begrudging about my obedience when it seems like obedience is the gateway into the spirit empowered life.
Look, there's no comparison here. I give the small things. He's asking me to give painful that they may be, and he opens the very floodgates of heaven, rips the veil of the holy of Holies in half and sends the holy spirit by which all of the world was created into your life. There is no comparison between what he asks me to give and what he offers life in the spirit is abundant life.
And Jesus says. in the gospel of John just a bit earlier, the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, but I've come that you may have life and have it fully, completely abundantly. He says right before this, actually right after this in John 15, he says, I tell you all this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be full.
So we look at this and we think, man, obedience sounds hard. That sounds like a lot of work. And I tell you, it is, I'm not gonna lie to you. Some of the stuff our king talks to me about on a regular basis hurts me because that part of me is out of alignment with his kingdom and it's rusted and it's nasty.
And to get it back into alignment is a process sometimes of breaking. But man alignment is joy. Alignment is abundant life. This isn't about control for the sake of control. This is about obey me so that you can live.
So if I'm reading this right, obedience to Jesus seems to be the primary way in which we, as his followers will experience abundant life and. Notice what he says. If you love me, obey my commands and obedience to Jesus is the primary way in which we express our love for him. So it's the primary way that we receive his love for us through the spirit and the primary way that we give love to him.
It's worshiping him. It's the act of worship he likes best. Loves our songs loves it when we gather together and pray loves it. When we are a community, we loves all these things. But at the end of the day, what he loves most from his people, the worship he most asks is obedience.
Obedience is Jesus love language. So if you wanna love him well, and by the way, experience full abundant life. Do what he tells you to do everything. He tells you here, everything he is telling you now, but what's interesting to me. And now we get to the point what's interesting to me is that in the context of this passage, John 14, there seems to be one command that rises above all the rest.
That seems to be primary at the front of Jesus' mind as because this is the last S. This conversation is happening on the night. Jesus was to be arrested the night before he was crucified. That's when this conversation happens and he knows that this is gonna happen. He knows that this is a big deal. And on the night he was betrayed, he has one command that seems to be at the forefront of his mind.
As he says to disciples, if you love me, obey my commands, it's the gateway to life. It's the way that I want you to worship me. What's the command he cares about most. Couple verses earlier, John 1334, a new command. I give you love one another as I have loved you. So you must also love one another by this.
Everyone will know you're my disciples. If you love one, another chapter 15 as my father has loved me. So I've loved you now remain in my love. If you can keep my commands, you will remain in my love just as I've kept my father's commands and remain in his love. I've told you this listen so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be full.
My command is this love one, another John 17. My prayer is not for them alone. I pray for those who also believe in me through their message, that they may all be one father just as you are. And me and I am in. May they also be in us so that the world may believe you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one I in them and you and me, so that they may be brought to complete unity.
Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them. As you love me. You guys getting it. the night, Jesus goes to the cross talking about obedience and how important this is the thing that's preeminent on his mind. The command that he cares about the most that he repeats four times directly.
And then multiple times in other ways is that this group of disciples that would soon become the church, love each other. If you wanna love Jesus, love his church. If you wanna experience the full abundance spirit filled life. Love his church. Oh, and by the way, did you notice if you wanna make a difference in the world, if you want the world to see who the father is, if you want them to know who Jesus is, if you want them to know that the father loves them the way he loves Jesus, which is mind blowing to think about love his church.
So win win. Isn't it. Jesus love language. It's how we worship him. It's how we experience abundant life. And it's how the world gets to know who he is, the family of God. And that makes family a big deal. You know what I mean? I hear so many Christians in the church say it would be nice to have community and I think nice is that what it would be nice.
No. This is not a matter of nice. It's not an optional add-on. It is foundational to the Christian life. It is essential to living life with king Jesus. We must be a part of the family of God if we want to love Jesus. If we want to participate in the full abundant life that comes with his spirit, and if we want to make a difference in this world, family, Is essential.
We see this actually with the group of people in that room after Jesus was crucified, rose from the dead ascended into heaven, they did just what he told them to do. They got together and they started to love each other and the spirit fell and they continued to love each other. We've talked about this before.
We've been in an act series for a while, but it bears repeating acts two 40. They devoted themselves. This is those disciples who were in the room. They devoted themselves to the apostles, teaching into fellowship, to the breaking of bread, to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many signs and wonders performed by the apostles.
All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need every day. They continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere heart. Praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people and the Lord added daily to their number of those who are being saved.
So they bowed their knee to king Jesus. They gathered together, loved each other well, and as they were filled with the holy spirit, they began to express that life, that abundance of their king through loving each other in the most captivating way possible. Do you guys notice that this church that's described here is so vivid?
And so alive and so compelling cuz they did what Jesus said. They said you're my king. And because you've commanded me, I'm gonna love your people. And in response, the king lavished generosity, the gift of the spirit signs and wonders, poured out through the community because of their love for each other.
And. The world took notice the Lord added daily to their number of those who are being saved daily. How many of you want daily new people to be coming into this community saying Jesus just changed my life. Like not 30 years ago. That's great. I want to hear your 30 years ago stories or your 10 years ago stories or your five, but what I'm praying for in this church is for people who have a story of God, salvation breaking into their lives yesterday.
Right now, like real time, like I am blown away. When's the last time you sat with somebody who was experiencing for the first time, the love of Jesus in real time, I'm telling you we need it in our community. It's how communities stay like vital. It's how they, it's, how they, it's, how they revive. It's how they stay fresh.
Seeing the fresh outpouring of God. There's nothing like seeing it in somebody's life for the first time. And it happened. Because they obeyed the command of the king to love each other well received his love. They loved him, they loved each other. They loved the world and the world changed forever.
So my question, if that's the case is why is it that so few Christians have real community. Why do we treat it? Like it's an optional thing in this day and age? I've heard the stats and I know that most stats are, what do they say? 85% of stats are made up in the moment.
But I think that these are somewhat close to the truth. This notion that in most church settings, I think 65, 70% of people would say that they have no real community that they're just showing up and attending a gathering. The new stats are one and a half times. A regular church attender, a regular church.
Attender is someone who attends one and a half times a month. Crazy. Isn't it that's like the standard. Now I've heard it said I read a study on pastors. That was terrifying to me. It said that something like 90% of pastors hadn't been prayed for, by anyone else, like directly person to person in over a.
I thought if that's true of pastors, how much more true is it probably of people who aren't pastors, people who aren't in ministry, cuz pastors get paid to pray. That's what they do. So if they're not getting it, do you think anybody else is? And that's like fundamental to Christian community Dietrich, Bon Hoffer says communal prayer is the sincerest form of fellowship.
It's the best way we can love each other is to pray for each other. And yet, most people I think, would say they hadn't been prayed for by another person in years. And we wonder why. Sometimes we feel like our worship falls flat. We wonder why we aren't fully experiencing this abundant life that Jesus came to give us.
We wonder why the world's not noticing because my friends, the world is not noticing Jesus right now. I just the Gulf between the church and the world is widening as fewer and fewer people are being saved. That's the opposite of what's happening here. Daily people being saved in our context in this world, this Western world, less and less every day, not more.
And.
Could maybe the answer be that we need to love Jesus' body a little bit better. And I, I say that to myself, you guys if you know me at all, you know that I never stand up here and preach from a place of, I've got this all figured out. It's always a message that I've run through my life and found myself to be lacking.
And I find myself lacking here. I'll confess that right up front, but I want to grow. I don't wanna stay lacking. I wanna love his body more and more. I wanna love his people well, because I wanna love him. I wanna experience more of his life flowing through me and I want the world to see the problem is we read this compelling vision in acts too.
And we've talked about this at canopy before. There's nothing new here. And that's the thing about a vision series. If you're hearing new stuff, I'm not doing my. The way that vision works is we talk about it until everyone gets sick of it. And once everyone in the community is sick of it, then we know it's stuck because otherwise vision leaks, you guys know this, right?
It's a leaky bucket, this vision thing, and it just leaks right out, cuz all of us have a lot of other stuff going on. So we're gonna talk about it and you're gonna, you're gonna have heard this before. The problem with acts two is we read it. Immediately we're compelled. We're drawn. Our heart is pulled in.
I wanna be a part of that and almost immediately something within us pushes back and gives us a million reasons why it's not possible. I read acts too. And I'm like, yes, Lord. Yes, come on. Give us that kind of church. And then this voice in my head, I don't know if it's just me or if it's the enemy or what it is, but it's something this voice in my head says, but it was different back.
Like their city was smaller. Jerusalem was a city at max of a hundred thousand people. It's about the size of cost Mesa, but that's not like a Passover time. The city would grow by 10 times around Passover. Most of the year, it was about 10,000 people, a walled city where you could pretty much know everybody.
You lived on top of each other. Have you ever been in like a really urban context where you have like the shop downstairs and the apartments upstairs, and everybody knows everybody on the block. That's what we're talking about here. And you might think that yeah, of course it was easy for them to be all together.
Cuz they lived on the same block. They lived in the same context. So like hanging out was just what they did. And so the context was different. It was easier that pushes back in me. And there's something in me that breathes a little bit easier cuz it's oh maybe it's just not possible.
Maybe I don't have to worry about it, cause that vision is compelling as it is. That sounds like a lot of work to me. And oh, the cont ah, yeah, I forgot the context. Oh good. That means I don't have to actually try to hang out with people too much. I don't have to rearrange stuff too much. The introverted me sits up a little bit higher.
Great. It's perfect. Don't have to be known, I start to think about it and I'm like, their lives were so much simpler. The family business, wasn't a nine to five affair there weren't time clocks it wasn't it didn't the world didn't work like that. You didn't have people that were worried about their portfolios, constantly managing what the markets in Asia were doing.
Having to be up all hours of the night, figuring out whatever's happening with your 401k or whatever. I don't know actually what any of these words mean? By the way. So somebody, if you do Steven, you can tell me all about it. Okay, man, I appreciate that. But if you know what I'm talking about, then you know what I'm talking about, it can be consuming, it can be consuming as you watch money, just disappear and reappear, and they didn't have to worry about that.
You just had a hole in the ground where you put I'm being over overly simplistic, but you put your stuff and it was there the next day, or it wasn't, you didn't worry about it growing or shrinking. It just was there. They didn't have. This is, again this cuts me deep to say this, but they didn't have club soccer or travel baseball.
Didn't have all of the things that we have. And so again, I breathe a little, oh yeah. Our lives are way more complex, like way more complicated. The truth is we come from all sorts of different cities today. Even coming into this place, some of you have passed through three or four cities just to get here this morning and that's normal for.
We live disconnected lives. We can't expect for this same vision, this same picture. I also, as a student of the word of God, I think about why the gospel writers or why in the case of the book of acts, Luke gives us a portrait and I ask questions did he intend to prescribe to us a set of behaviors?
In other words, was he saying to us, this is how I want you to do it? Or was he just telling a. Was he just telling that's how they did it, how cool. And we get to look back and say that's really neat. Maybe that inspires some ideas for us, but we ought not think that we have to do it the way they did.
I've heard many pastors say this. Luke did not intend for this passage to be prescriptive, but to be descriptive simply to tell you what kind of a church it was. And oh, by the way, those pastors will often remind you. It didn't even work for them forever. This was just a season in the life of their church.
Where everybody loved them and their numbers were growing. And then they were so wildly generous with their money that nobody had need. If you read on in the story fairly quickly, not everybody loves them anymore and they start getting persecuted. Fairly quickly, their numbers diminish as they're scattered all over the world fairly quickly, the money runs out to the point where Paul will have to take an offering from the churches around the world to fund the church in Jerusalem.
So we look at it and we say that was just a moment in time, a snapshot church. Isn't always supposed to be like that. And I look at that and all of those reasons rise up in me. And eventually I find myself discouraged that, that picture's just not real. Not anymore. And so I let it go and I walk away and I settle in for one and a half times a month and call it a day or getting prayed for once a year or whatever else and call that
church's this famous British philosopher, theologian named GK Chesterton. Who once said the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting it's been found difficult and left untried. And that cuts me when I think about the body of Christ, cuz that's me. God, this is hard.
This is hard.
And we move on something. That's a little simpler, a different version of it, cuz they're good excuses. All of the things I just said, I wanted, I want you to hear this, all of them are legitimate. All of them are real, but you knew the butt was coming, but none of them is as legitimate as the vision of the kingdom of God that Jesus gives us.
None of them is as real as what he wants to do in and through his people loving each other. Yes, those excuses are legitimate. Yes. Context matters and yes, their context was different than ours. And what does that mean? That means that our expression will look different, but different does not equal lesser.
It just equals difference. Just because our context is different. Doesn't mean we water it down. It means we apply it differently. It's going to have a different sort of a flavor and a flare in 21st century, orange county than it did in first century Jerusalem. But it doesn't mean lesser. We don't settle for water down just because the context is, look, our context is watered down.
What does that mean? That we need to be more flavorful, more potent. If we intend to color, to flavor, to change the context, not lesser, but greater. Yes. Our lives are more distracted, more complicated, busier, crazier and so many different ways. Is that an argument against what we see here or a greater argument for it?
If I am so distracted, if I am so busy, if it is easy for me to get through a day without ever being attentive to the voice of God, then how much more do I need brothers and sisters who remind me, who I am, who speak the words of God into my life. When I forgot were present. To keep me grounded in the story of God and what he's doing through his church.
Yes. We're distracted. That's why we need this all the more. Yeah. Yes. This is descriptive. Luke doesn't ever tell us this kind of church is gonna be the only kind of church that has to exist. He doesn't tell us that, but let me ask you a question. You've heard me say this before. If I were to put a list of 10 descriptions of churches on the board, churches modern churches, ancient churches, current churches, and put this one in the list and told you, pick your favorite, which one would you pick every time?
Which one would you pick? This one signs and wonders, radical generosity. People coming to know Jesus every day, favor and blessing from God. That's the one we would pick. So it's prescriptive, but it's prescriptive of the kind of church that I would wanna be a part of you.
Yes. Yes. He doesn't intend to say you have to do it this way, but man, don't you wanna be a part of that, even if it's just for a season. That's the other argument. It was just a season for them. God give us a season. Please, dear Lord rain down on us, a season like that in this community, in this place.
Cuz the world needs it and we need it. Question I have for you is simple. Yeah. They're legitimate reasons. But do you wanna be a part of something like this? If so, are you willing to fight for it? Because that's what it's gonna take. It's not going to happen. Naturally. This kind of a community is against stream.
It's a, it's an against stream, a community. You're swimming upstream. You're going against the flow of the world. You're fighting against idolatry. You're fighting against self you're, fighting against all sorts of powers that would control us. If you wanna be a part of something like this, it will not happen naturally for us.
It did not for. Acts 2 42 says they devoted themselves. That word means they persisted stubbornly in a course of action, despite opposition. That's what devoted means. Devoted means no matter what together, no matter what this community had challenges too, they were busy people too. They had other priorities and concerns as.
By the way they, that people started killing them for their faith. Like they had external challenges that they were facing. Their world was not simple. Jesus had released them into Lyden quite literally and said, I want you to change the atmosphere in here. It was hard for them. The external factors were not easy.
And the internal factors weren't easy either, either because the people he told them to love, they were annoying. You guys know this. They didn't all get along right off the. In this group of disciples, there was a guy named Simon, the zealot who was zealous for the law. And there was Matthew, a tax collector who had in fact thrown his law in with the Roman government.
They would've hated each other. Jesus would've had to keep him apart often, and yet he tells him to love each other. There were men and women engaging in life together in a way that never happened outside the outside of the body of. In ways that were complicated because women now were being elevated by Jesus.
Let the let's all hear this women were being elevated by Jesus, into positions of leadership and power that they had never been given in culture. And yet Jesus says no. I have gifted them. And so nobody gets to tell them to be quiet. Nobody gets to shut them down. And that come, that becomes complicated.
Then for the church that the church begin to put rich and poor people. In ways that never happened in the Roman world, the rich and the poor avoided each other. And now they're in community where the rich are serving the poor, not the other way around. This is terribly off putting, as a matter of fact, some historians say that this would've been the primary, both motivator and inhibitor of the early church, that people would've either been so compelled by this community that they had never seen before or so repelled that they didn't wanna be a part of it because so radical was the way they lived their lives.
Yeah. The internal challenges must have been massive. Let's keep in mind that when Peter preached the sermon on the day of Pentecost, the thousands of people who were added to the church in Jerusalem had just a few days earlier, been yelling, crucify him. We get that right. That when Peter says on the day of Pentecost, you killed the Lord of glory, but God has raised him from the dead.
He wasn't speaking figuratively. He was talking to the people who had actually killed the Lord of. That sermon ends with you're forgiven. Join the family brother,
how hard that must have been for him to say, and to live out on a regular basis to invite his enemies who had killed his best friend into community. I think this was easy for them, anything but they devoted themselves to it. This passage is about people who are stubbornly persistent in community because their king told them to.
And because he told them this is how I'm gonna change the world. And so they went for it and we need to go for it. We need to go for it. Friends lean in with everything you've got.
Fact of the matter is I talk to a lot of people on a daily basis who have no interest in Jesus or the church.
And I think they have no interest because they've never seen it before. What they've seen is one and a half times a month. What they've seen is churches that are about observation rather than participation. That are about attending rather than investing
that are about tipping God, rather than radical generosity that are about talking about power rather than experiencing power.
I tell you what if the world sees this kind of a church, if this kind of a church were to just break out. I guarantee people wouldn't be saying, I have no interest in that. There might be people who are furious and repelled. There'd be a whole lot of people who are attracted and compelled, but there'd be nobody apathetic, nobody indifferent, nobody who says I don't have much use for that.
So the only way that church. Made that kind of an impact in their world, in a world that was just as toxic as ours is the only way they made that kind of an impact was that they became by the power of the spirit, a kind of community, the world had never seen before. Are we willing to do the same, the only way we will make a meaningful impact in this world, this post-Christian world that is over Jesus.
That's heard the story and doesn't care anymore. That's completely apathetic and shut down. That is drifting farther and farther away. The only way we will make an impact is if we, by the power of the spirit, devote ourselves to the kind of community that the world has never seen before and give them no option to be apathetic, any.
In other words, we have to become a family, like a real devoted to one another, no matter what kind of family and that's the invitation, that's the invitation. As we step into this vision series together, would you, if this is your home or you're considering making it your home or you're exploring even the idea of a home church, would you pray seriously about what it means to be family?
The call is not to attend one and a half times a month to get prayed for every once in a while to give a little bit of yourself the little bit that you can spare the call is to rearrange everything so that the big rocks go in first and the big rocks are what your king tells you to do. That's what we're going after here strikes me that this church didn't sit around strategizing.
I've often done about how to get lost people into their community. they didn't do that. People just showed up what they did. The questions that they were wrestling with all the time was what do we do with all the lost people that are showing up to our church? How many people wanna wrestle with that kind of a question in this church?
How do we, how can we possibly take care of all these people? Then we devote ourselves to each other. We devote ourselves stubbornly, persistently, no matter what to one. See what God wants to do. We're gonna talk a lot more about what this looks like. This can look like a lot of things in this community, primary expression is tables.
We're gonna have people that will highlight throughout this series that are table leaders that are people who've opened up their homes to bring people into community. I want you to meet them. I want you to get to know them. I want you to go to their home and be a part of their community. They're amazing.
And God's doing powerful things through our tables, and we want every person that canopy to be a part. I'm talking to myself right now. I'm not part of one right now. I'm just confessing. I'm telling you, I'm not being self-deprecating when I say I gotta figure this stuff out, it got hard. It got challenging stuff got in the way.
That's not good enough for me. We have to step in. We have to invest. We're gonna talk at all in night. I've talked a lot. So I'm gonna wrap up here. We're gonna talk at all in night. A lot about what this looks like in our community, cuz this is essential, but can I just ask. Would you prayerfully consider I don't just mean once or twice.
Commit to praying over the next month about which family, whether it's this one or somewhere else. Jesus is telling you to love. As an act of worship to him as a way of engaging with his spirit and abundant life and as a way of changing the world, do that together. Yeah. Okay.
Lord. We love you. We thank you that you love us.
We thank you that you have given us the gift of a family. Lord I ask forgiveness for the times where I have taken for granted that gift and have missed it. Because life is too busy or crazy or chaotic Lord, I lay my excuses at your feet, king Jesus. I throw them down like rusted crowns and ask you to do whatever you want in me.
And I, I invite brothers and sisters. You to do the same,
our response today, we're gonna sing a couple songs here in worship as a way of. Being open to what the holy spirit might do, but our main response is gonna be to eat a meal together. I invite you to stick around, invite you to stay, head out the back door here in just a few minutes and eat together.
Break bread as brothers and sisters, get to know people you don't currently know as an of worship as an of loving Jesus participating in his body. We'll start there. Okay. Can I get you to stand with me? Let's worship together.