APR 2 2017 | Rooted S1E10

Sea Change Church · Rooted S1E10 · Adam Stadtmiller · April 2, 2017
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Amen. Hey, well, so we are talking in the final week of the Rooted series. It is week 10, and it's really been a great series. I mean, it is just basic, you know, meat and potatoes spirituality. I would say it would be Christianity or Christ following 101. We have talked about everything, your purpose. We've talked about generosity. We've talked about prayer and God's word, all these different things.

But today we're talking about the importance of the local church, the importance of a body of Christ followers when they come together and the synergy that happens when they come together and lock their shields with an individual purpose of seeing the kingdom of God advanced, the kingdom of God advanced in the world. So, if you want to know what you're doing here, the reason you were here, and you might have come for a lot of different reasons, but ultimately, we have come together to source encouragement that we can go back out into the world and create a, I would say, a junction where the kingdom of God meets the place on earth where you live, where your feet are, where you dwell, that through prayer, through the word of God, through what it says are our spiritual weapons of our warfare, we use these things, and almost like a steroid, we infuse our lives with things that are supernatural.

At that place where you infuse, say it's your work with prayer or your marriage relationship, your relationship with your kids, just the way in which you live on your street, the way in which you drive, it's something I need, or play basketball, definitely need to bring the kingdom of God there, because the skills are minimal, but the smack talk is high.

I have always been a B average DNA, and you know, you just can't get any better DNA than you got, for the most part. But what we can do is we can infuse a supernatural source of God's goodness and implement that into the places in which we live. That's what we're doing. And so we come together to gather, to source encouragement for that transactional work.

It's a transaction. To say, I'm not going to live on the currency of the things of the world. The currency of pride, the currency of celebrity, the currency of whatever it would be, or even could be fear, but I'm going to source a different currency, and I want to spend that. You see, I just see myself as loose change in God's pocket, but at the same time, I am sourcing eternal riches to cast out.

It says, I cast your bread upon the water, to cast it out to change the world. And so I'm asking you, where are you changing the world? In micro actions. Now, with that said, that is one thing and reason why the church is here. The other reason is to keep you in community and following Christ. Let me just make it very clear. The enemy wants to pick you off.

He wants to separate you and pick you off. In the scripture, the devil is seen as a roaring lion seeking what? Yeah, someone whom he may devour, which means he can't devour them, but he's looking for a certain type of person that has circumstances in their life that now he may devour them, if that makes sense. And oftentimes, when we get attacked, that attack happens because we come in agreement with the waves of the enemy.

We become in agreement with unforgiveness. We become in agreement with lust, with covetousness, with whatever it is. And so when we agree, we open ourselves off and become easy pickings. Now, when I was a kid, I used to love watching National Geographic. And I didn't watch it to watch the flamingos or all the nice birds. I wanted to see the predatory prey scene, okay?

And so I would love when I would see that, you know, the lions, they would be up on the hill. I guess the lionesses did most of the hunting, you know? They'd be up on the hill. And then what would they always try to do? They'd try to separate someone from the pack. They'd try to separate them. Once they were separated, they were easy prey. They became someone that they may devour.

The local church exists in large part in order to give you a way station along life's journey where you can pull in and source encouragement, hope, and peace. And we see that here. Let me read this scripture again. And let us consider how we may spur one another on towards good deeds. You see, we're encouraging each other in to do good deeds. Now, you don't have to go to wherever Carmen is going to do that, those macro movements of God.

Let me say that micro actions on a regular basis, I believe, bring more kingdom change than the major things that we do in our lives. There's a lot of major things happen, but it's the micro things, the micro movements of God's grace, the micro generosity, where we just stop, the micro patience, where we release God's kingdom in little micro movements add up to bring massive kingdom change.

Going on in verse 24, not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing. The fact that you are here today is good. The Bible is really clear that believers need to meet together to find a place where church doesn't become an option. It becomes a way of life. That attendance isn't something that is obligatory or something that you have to do out of compulsion, but you do it out of a culture in your life.

When we spoke to Dick Cotton at the men's bacon fest, which was awesome, lots of bacon. Great job, Adam Bogey and his team. He talked about Sunday, that they would not miss Sunday. And it wasn't because there was an illegalistic thing that's happening. It's because he had created a culture in his family that he would live by. Prayer every night on the phone after the kids would eat.

And saying on Sunday, it's not really an option for me. It's not legalistic. Like, I just know that this is the best place for me to be. Like I say, I don't know where I would be with Jesus if I wasn't a pastor. I actually have an unfair advantage against, you know, the rest of the field. Because I have to show up for prayer meeting every Tuesday.

I had to get out of bed this morning. I did not want, let me just tell you, yesterday I'm like, I could use another week of vacation, okay? Ah, I gotta go, you know. I love preaching, but another week wouldn't have been too bad. You wouldn't have missed me. I gotta say, that one week in my life could easily become two weeks, three weeks. I'll go every quarter, Easter and Christmas.

I'm so prone to just kind of casting off the things of God for my own personal desires. One of the best things for my spiritual walk has been to be in the ministry. To be in a place that gives me routine, that gives me regular, it's almost like working out. It just gives me regular touch points where I can be blessed by God. And once again, like the song said, be reminded who I am.

And who I am becoming. And who I am called to be. The verse goes on. It says, as some of the habit of doing, but encourage one another. I love that. That's what we do here. I say that's one of the best things that we do here. I want when you leave, for you to be able to source encouragement. I want to trigger hope in you every single week. I want to trigger joy.

I want you to think, when things are going bad during the week, I can't wait till Sunday. Because I know on Sunday, when I get there, by the time I leave, I'm gonna feel like God has touched me. That I am His beloved. I am gonna have more joy. A better perspective. And a better way of living life. Because I showed up. That's what I'm trying to do regularly in my preaching.

Not trying to whip the saints into, you know, compulsion. But rather, in showing you the goodness of God. That you might say, you know, I'm willing to give this up because I want that. I want the hope of that. And so we meet together regularly. And one another. And then I love this verse. We'll talk about it in a moment. All the more when you see the day approaching.

Is encouragement needed now more than perhaps ever in your personal lifetime? Maybe if you live through the 60s, it seems very similar in some things. I was, I did a 10-day news fast. I haven't looked. I didn't have my computer for 10 days. Didn't open it up. Didn't look at any of it. So everything's going great. I could tell. Based on the weather, things are great.

Do we need encouragement more? I've got to say, the closer we move towards Christ's return, it says, the more you're going to need to be in places like this. The more you're going to need to be in a home group. The more you're going to need to have a friend that you meet with for coffee regularly. Talk about life and pray. Bring the eternal in. So many times we just meet and talk about life with people, but we never harvest the things that God has given us to infuse a supernatural character to your life, which is prayer.

Which is, you know, the word of God. That when you meet with friends, hey, let's just take a moment to pray. In the rooted curriculum, it said this, and I thought it was good enough to put into the notes. It says, the Bible is very clear. Christians are to belong to a church. Now, I'm not a big guy on shoulds. I don't like when someone tells me I should do something.

I should, you know, you should have. That's just language, you know, that I don't like and we try not to use here. But I will say it's incredibly important. And I do believe if there are any shoulds, I would say being in a local church was probably more important than, well, I won't pick any out, but it's very important that we be a part of it.

And they speak about it here. Christians are to belong to a church, to belong to the body of Christ. We'll talk about what that means in a moment. The word belong is a very tricky word because it means more than just showing up as often as you can on Sundays. We use the word belong the same way you would if you were to belong to your family. I think there's a real, there's a real synchronicity between your church family and your home family.

People get so discouraged at church, you know, because it isn't the perfect environment. We have these huge expectations of what a church should be, but we don't oftentimes have the same expectations of our home. What I've always wanted to say is I want the church to be, I want to have, I don't want to have a shiny church in a sullen home. I want to have, I want the church to be a reflection of what is happening in my home.

So my family and my home has always been the starting point with Jesus as the core of that. It's been the starting point. And anything I do in ministry, anything I do to bless you or work within the church is a reflection of that, creating a culture of belonging. And so oftentimes we have different expectations of church and home. The rooted curriculum says that they should be very similar.

And I totally agree. There should be a synchronicity there. It says when you belong to your family, it doesn't mean that you just show up to be fed when you're hungry, rest when you're tired, and use the name for applications when needed. I got a chuckle out of that one. I fill out a lot of applications, which I love to do because we have great people.

But when you, the rooted curriculum really looks at being a part of a family and saying there is a responsibility as a part of that. I think one of the greatest challenges for modern day believers is not becoming church consumers. And the Western church, when I speak about it, I want to speak about the American church. The American church, at least the ones you see often, haven't done a very good job of not serving that up to you to consume.

We will create something where the stage becomes the star, where everything we have on offer for you becomes the star. And we rarely ask you for much beyond that. We've always been a congregational church here for 90 years, where is if you are not functioning as the body, if you are not volunteering, if you are not giving of your time, your treasure, your talent, if you are not inviting friends, as we heard last week, people get invited and receive Christ, then we are going to stop functioning well.

I do believe that there are church models that whether anybody is a part of it much at all, they would still function very well because the stage is offering this incredible show that is on hand. We want to offer much more than that. And so that was a hard statement. And the question is, how are you belonging? If this is a family, how are you belonging?

And do you realize in a church home that we need to have, like Pastor Jim says on a regular basis, short toes? A lot of times I go up to him, I say, Jim, you know, I think I, you know, I stepped on your toes there on this one. I, you know, I didn't do this right or I have to apologize. He goes, it's okay, I have short toes. I want to say, short toes in church are going to be necessary if you're going to survive.

We so often give up on a church because we reach difficulty in relationships. I love the story of Carol Golden, who's been in this church as a member now. I think we're on 84 years at this point or she's 84, 73, I don't know, a lot of decades. Same church. She has seen the highs and the lows. Many people, I call them the originals that were here when I got here, have been here 25, 30 years.

Others have told me we went through a decade where we were just praying, God, are you going to do anything ever again on this corner? Asking, you know, and through the lowest times, holding on and coming to church when they didn't want to. Many of the originals, and you know who you are that are here, said God told us to stay. We felt like we wanted to leave.

There was other hipper places happening and we stayed because we believe that God told us here and that God had a purpose for this corner. And now they say to me, thank God we did. And we are in a reviving renewal of the local church. I'm not a church planter by nature. I'm a church renewalist and I love taking the history and renewing it with all you that are new.

Here's the big thought for the day. The local church has the potential to be the most powerful change agent in the world. I fully believe this. I believe Google can't touch the church. I believe that there's not a government that can touch the church. I don't believe that there's any single entity in the world that has the power of the local church.

Why? Because we are harvesting and sourcing an eternal wealth of riches. It says in Ephesians that God has given you every spiritual blessing and riches in the heavenly realms. We're working with a completely different currency. And I use the word potential because so often we fail to unite and let things like money, sex, and power destroy the church or disunity destroy the church from within.

I say the local church more than a parachurch organization, which means that it works alongside the church. Because even if you are working in a parachurch organization like I have, I was a raise your own support missionary. I work for Young Life. I work for Christian Surfers. As I did that, I was still a part of a great local church. I believe that every believer needs to be part of a local church like you are and functioning as a belonging member.

That you really care about this church. That care about the community and not just the building, but you start to care about this community deeply. Think again about those originals that stayed here or the original originals that were here in 1927 and they met in a tent and they didn't have a building. And there was times where they thought they were going to lose the building, but we have the records.

We have the journals. But God held on. And we believe that God had something great for this corner, someone wrote in the 1930s during the Depression. They believed and they stayed. And it was more than consumerism. It wasn't because they liked the pastor or the music was good or something set them off that they were going to leave. They had made a commitment and said, God's called me here.

I ask you this, where has God called you? I hope he's called you here. We love having you. I love having you be a part. And I hope he calls more people here to bring kingdom change. But my question is, I serve the ball back to you with a forehand over the top, topspin, right? Is that what it is? I was going to say slice, but slice isn't really a powerful shot, is it?

Although Beyond Borg used it a fair amount. I actually played tennis, act like I never played it in my life. You know, I'm asking you about your level of belonging. Only you can choose that. You are the person who decides how much you want to belong here, how deep you want to go. Now, there are some of you that need a place of rest. And I want to say, come out, put your feet up, you know, get your spiritual Mai tie and sit there and hang out and heal.

You've been through cancer. You've been through a divorce. You're just in a rough time. You do not have to listen to Carol's trance about, you know, the Ka from Jungle Book. I am everywhere today. I am hitting all genres. I am in the literature, medieval times. You know, come and hang out. But at some point, once you're better, get involved and belong and care and say, I care deeply.

Imagine if we all had that originals point of view here, where we all just started pulling on the rope the same way. We had short toes and began to harvest that. The local church. I have never seen in my personal walk, I have never seen what's happening in my 25 years of local church ministry, where I've been a pastor on a staff. What I see happening right here, I've seen some great things.

I've never experienced it in a way that it's happening right here. I'm seeing some amazing things. I don't believe that we have the secret sauce. I don't believe that our recipe is the best. And it is arrogant to think that we've got it figured out. But God has been touching this corner for a long time, and he's continuing to touch it. And hopefully you can feel it.

And you say, I'm so glad to be a part of that. Because we are triggering life change for you every single week. The local church has the potential to be the most powerful change agent in the world. I would say it is the desire, as you'll see in your notes, of the enemy to disenfranchise people of God from the local body of Christ. He wants to disenfranchise you.

He wants you to become like that animal that the predators separate from the pack for one reason or another. And there's a lot of reasons this happened. You'll see in your notes. Here's just a few. You're being hurt by church people. Biggest problem with the church is people. It would be awesome if it wasn't for people. Just come to an empty building.

It would be amazing. But while there are people, and we will injure each other because we are human beings, forgiveness and harvesting grace and joy and health in a way that restores relationships is what brings unity and strength. Some of my strongest relationships, I have a mentor right now that we just did not get along. And we just decided to stay working at it and working at it.

And now we're great friends. Our friendship was tested through the difficulty of conflict. You know, if everyone just bounces out because of the quickest conflict, you know, just because you have a little thing that, you know, I'm going to go down the street to the next church or whatever. You cannot, you have no perseverance to stay in a place.

And you're going to oftentimes miss the harvest that comes after laboring in the field. And God has called us to persevere. We see that the cares of the world are another reason that people get picked off. You know, it says the cares of the world. It talks about when, you know, the roots and getting rooted. If you just got too many cares, too many things, you know, you're worrying about the world way too much.

You know, you're not able to get it off of your radar. That will pull us away. You know, you begin to look. I know a lot of believers right now. I know a lot. I see it, you know, on Facebook or different things. They're so discouraged. They were so discouraged by the election. I saw people go, I couldn't believe that my Christian friends would vote in this way or that way or not vote in this way.

And I don't know about the church. And I don't know if I can follow Jesus anymore. I don't know if anybody else saw those. I saw those. And I'm like, really? Like, the way somebody else decides to live their life and how they follow Jesus is the reason you're going to stop following Jesus. I've got to say, God has done great things for my life. And I've had hard times as well.

But I want to continue to keep my eye focused on the ball. I want to keep being a Christ follower, not a follower of all the other things that are happening in the world. If we base our Christ following on what happens around Jesus, it'd be very hard to follow Jesus. But we want to follow in the dust of the Messiah. We want to follow in the dust of Jesus.

It is an honor to follow in the dust of Jesus so closely behind him, where all we see is his back and his head and his hands. And we keep our eyes focused on Jesus, and he leads us on. The enemy wants to separate you. The cares of the world. Personal sin is another one. Self is another one. And spiritual burnout is another one. You just work. You belong so much to the church that you just become the martyr.

Like, you're doing every ministry. You're just crushing it. You're hashtag killing it, you know. And all of a sudden, you're just burned out. You got nothing left. Let's say the Holy Spirit will never burn you out. If you have burnout in your life, it is not because you're following the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will never lead you into a place of burnout.

Jesus says, I've come to give you everlasting water, and it'll continue to overflow. You will be living in an abundance. The whole point is to find the way to minister but live in the abundance, not to live in the dregs, the scraps of spirituality, to overwork yourself in the church. Some of you need to stop volunteering. Some of you need to call Carol or Drea and say, I need to stop.

Now, not all at once. Let's plan it out. Give them three months, okay? I'm quitting today. But some other people need to step up, step up and belong. Many reasons why people get separated. Let's look at the church real quick. What is the church? The church is this. It's, first of all, and these are my definitions. Tried to make them as simple as possible.

They're not the perfect definitions. But it's a community centered upon the very presence of God. But at first I wrote, it is a community centered around God. But when we center ourselves around God, I don't, I think it kind of puts God in a box and limits him. I think it's a community that is completely infused with God. I've been making acai for breakfast every morning.

So once again, I'm in another genre. Now we're cooking. We're in the culinary world right now. I've been making acai bowls every day. And I put all this fruit in there. And then what do I do? I hit the blender and it just becomes one incredible poultice of life-giving, you know, I was going to say antibiotics, but whatever they are. You know, just as a, they're antioxidants.

That's the word I'm looking for. I think, I think the church is more like that. I don't think we center around Jesus. He's in the middle and we're dancing around him like a maypole, you know. But Jesus wants to be infused in everything that he's everywhere we go. He's up in the balcony. You know, he's everywhere we go. He's in our hearts. He's in every conversation.

It is a gathering of people that want to be infused and mixed together with the presence of God. That's what we're doing here. When you come together, when you talk during the week, we're two or more gathered. When we come together for prayer, and if you don't come to Tuesday prayer, I want to encourage you, if you can ever get away and do it, it's one of my favorite times of the week.

Tuesday prayer is fantastic. If you can just slip away, or if you want to start a separate prayer meeting on your own, do that. But it is a presence of God being infused. Next thing I put is this. It's a modern expression of what was lost in the garden. The church is a modern expression. There was a complete unity. There was a presence of God. There was a dominion that they were living in.

They weren't living, as we said, and this is one of the best things that came out of the Rooted series. They weren't living within control within the environment. They were living in dominion what? Over the environment. There's a difference. When I'm trying to live control within, my life gets very marginalized. But when I can step out of control and begin to live in dominion above and over, letting God hover over, then things begin to synergize.

We see that the church is meant to be a modern expression of what we're going to see in heaven. Oftentimes it isn't for the reasons I mentioned, but that is the goal. And I say, if you stick around enough, you're going to see moments of glory. If you stick around enough in the church, you're going to see moments of glory. You're going to see moments of hope.

You're going to experience life on a level that you've never seen it before. Now, granted, are there bad models and bad leadership? Most definitely. But it has the potential. That's it. The potential to create something like you've never seen before. I'm going to look at the church. I'm going to give two quick ideas, and then we'll go into the text, and we'll be done.

As I come in, they've called me to circle the tower. So let me just show you what the global church is. People oftentimes talk about the church, the church this and the church that. I always struggle with that. When people make these huge statements about, well, the church does this, I'm like, what church? You mean the church in America, the church in Africa, the church in China?

What about the charismatic church? What about the Catholic church? What about all these different expressions of church? What do you mean by church? And when we talk about the church, seeing as it is the bride of Christ, I think we need to be a little careful. Just saying. I'm not saying. I'm just saying. If you're going to besmirch the bride of Christ, you're going to say, this church over there, or that church there, or that, because you don't like that pastor.

Or you're going to start speaking derogatorily about another church, which in pastor circles is very easy to do. You start talking about it. I'm an expert at doing it in a way that you're not sure I did it, but I'm pretty sure I did it. But I always have to be reminded, and I learned this in seminary, you better be careful how you walk when you talk about the bride of Jesus.

We need to be very, very careful. And even if we disagree with some of the things that are happening, we need to be very careful. Imagine if Jesus was standing there with his bride. Are you going to walk up to her and go, nice dress. Not looking. You get some, you know, OCA stains on that one. You know what's going on. Are you going to say something negative?

How would you speak if Jesus was standing there? The global church. Here's what the global church is. The global church is the mixture of all the different expressions of churches around the world. The global church is the totality of God's people in the world. The totality. It is, encompasses many expressions of the faith. Thank God there's not just one expression.

Thank God for the Pentecostals who blow the shofar and pour the oil. Thank God for them. Thank God for the conservatives, you know. And thank God for the Salvation Army. Thank God for the Southern Baptists. Thank God for the Methodists. On and on. And if I keep mentioning it, I'm probably going to mention one you're not going to like here in a minute.

You're going to say, well, he mentioned that one. He said it was good. Thank God for all the expressions. John Wimber had a time where he had a dream. He was started at the vineyard. And in the dream, he was sitting on God's lap as a child. And God said, ask me a question. And in front of him were all these different expressions of churches. And John pointed at this one, real extreme, real extreme.

He goes, God, what about that one over there? And he said, oh, I love them. Oh, they're so amazing. They have such a passion for me. Yeah, but they do that. Oh, I just love that church. They're amazing. What about these guys? These guys are doctrines, Rad. Oh, I just love them. Oh, they're such good hearts. They love to serve the poor. You should see how they serve the poor.

Yeah, but not them. Surely not. Oh, I got to tell you how amazing they are. He just loves to talk about his people. God loves to talk about his people. There is a global expression of the church. And we need to go to the 30,000-foot view and see that God is orchestrating, you know, massive, macro movements of his spirit through this macro global church.

But that global church is made up of the local church, which you're sitting in right now. Here's the definition of the local church. Local churches are individual churches centered, Christ-centered communities. Excuse me, let me read that again. Local churches are the individual Christ-centered communities that form the larger body of Christ. These are these smaller expressions.

And I believe that it is these expressions, these smaller communities, that if they are living on mission and on purpose and changing the very people that sit in their pews to go out and change the world, that is how you bring kingdom world change to be a part of that. I want to say that you are a part of it right now. Let's consume the text and then we're done.

I am now circling the tower. Two points today. The church exists to bring kingdom change to the world. Let me say that again. The church exists to bring kingdom change to the world, to make the world more like heaven. If you want to know what God wants the earth to look like, read about heaven. Read about the things in heaven. Read about peace. Read about the joy.

And the primary highway to bring that kingdom change is you. The primary highway to bring that kingdom change to the world is you. Working, I believe, through micro movements of God's spirit in your life. It's by smiling when you don't want to smile. It's by reading the word. It's by sharing a scripture. It's the micro things over and over again where you create a kingdom culture in your life.

I want to say, what's the culture of your life? Is it a kingdom culture or is it a meism culture? Is there a culture in your home? I ask, what is the culture of scripture in your house? Does scripture ever, does the good book ever get cracked during the week with the entire family or with your spouse? Or at a coffee house with your boyfriend or your girlfriend?

What is the culture of the word of God? I'm not saying that every time you go out to eat, you got to put your Bible on your table. In the 1980s, we were encouraged to take our Bibles, big Bibles to school and lay them on the table. I'm not sure I would do that again, but I did it then. In the 80s, I was going to show my faith and we put our Bibles on the table and let you know that my desk, I had a giant Bible on my desk the whole week.

And then I went and smoked pot after that. So it wasn't a great on and off. It depended on what time of the camp season it was. But it didn't really do anything for me. I had it there, but I never read it. I literally, I don't remember reading it. I just remember bringing it because they told me to bring it. What's the culture of the word of God in your life?

What's this culture, this culture that we bring? You are the highway. You being a part of this body to be encouraged to be the highway to bring micro change that will lead to macro kingdom change in your neighborhood, in the place that you live. And number two, the church exists to bring kingdom change to your personal life. I want to talk about a paradigm shift.

Actually, I'm going to skip that. The point wasn't that good anyways, so we'll just skip to the back page. The church exists to bring kingdom change to the world. Verse 24. Look at what it says in verse 24. And let us consider. So taking time. Taking time to consider. Consider your walk with God. Not just beat yourself up. Beating yourself up, I need to be a better Christian.

I need to read my Bible more. But taking time, separated from guilt, separated from all the shoulds and the have tos, to take time and sit for a half hour and consider your spiritual life. Consider what it needs. Where does it need a tune-up? To take serious time. And let us consider how we may what? Spur one another on. I love that. You need to be spurred on.

You need to be around people who fly a little bit higher than you. I want to surround myself with people that fly at a different altitude than me. I want to be spurred forward. I want to be with people that encourage me. Not with people that bring me down. There are certain people I've just had to separate myself from in my life. It does not make you a bad Christian if you set up a boundary and say, I can't spend any more time with you.

Because you bring me down. You know, to be honest with people. You don't have to keep yourself in an abusive situation. It says, but we want to spur one another on towards what? Towards love and what? Good deeds or good works. Those don't bring us our salvation. We are saved by the blood of Jesus. But that we spur each other on. Do you see that? We're encouraging each other to do good works.

I said in the first point, consider how you might expand God's kingdom. Here's your assignment for the week. Get a half hour at the beach or go take some time with God and consider your life with God. Consider it. And consider what you can do to bring change. Not based on being spurred by guilt. Not based on being spurred by anything else, but being encouraged.

There is a different voice when you hear in your heart when something is encouraging you and something is prodding you with fear and guilt. I'd better spend time with God or he's going to be mad at me. You can feel the difference. And part of spiritual maturity is being able to hear the different voices and know who's speaking to you. To say, my father doesn't speak to me that way.

My God does not speak to me with fear and guilt. All that curse was taken care of by Jesus on the cross. But he calls me home like a good father who waits for a prodigal son or a prodigal daughter waiting for you to come home. To sit and consider and ask, Lord, what would you have for me? What do you want for me? Oh, I want to bless you. I want to tell you how much I love you.

I want to meet with you in the morning. Take some time. Meet with me. I want to share things with you. I want to share knowledge with you. There's some things coming up you've got to know about them. I've got to share them with you. Meet with me. I want to tell you how much I love you. I want to tell you how good you are. I want to take all the dross off you.

I want you to get out of that dragon skin like we saw with Eustace in the Chronicles of Narnia. To get out of that dragon skin and to have that fresh new baby skin. I want to change your life. I want to give you a kingdom experience. I want to give you life. I want to give you hope. I want to give you peace. Consider me. So Jesus says, consider me.

Come to me. That you might be spurred on to love and good deeds undergirded by the kingdom tools God has provided us. They are the primary instruments to living a kingdom bringing life. You see here, this is what we're doing. We're spurring each other on. I'm giving you hope. I'm giving you encouragement to say there's another week. No matter what happens in the news, no matter what's happening in your finance, no matter what's happening with your health, at this point, you can go another day.

You can go another minute. You can experience the hope of God to go out. The church exists to bring kingdom change to the world. And so to take that and to go through good deeds. What are the good deeds you're doing this week? And not good deeds because you're earning anything. But just to say, my father loves me so much, I want you to experience his love.

To go out and love God. This week. Just think about that word, good deeds. Just this week. And ask the Lord today, what would you have me do good today? Give up your seat. I know Lisa's going back to Hawaii this week. Maybe give up a seat or on an airline or whatever it would be. There's going to be a moment where you can do self or good deeds. Good deeds bring the kingdom.

Do you get that? This scripture says when you do a good deed, you give someone a wave out in the ocean, you do something, whatever small thing it is. Whenever you do that, you have harvested kingdom power and released it into your life. And then you infuse that thing with prayer. You infuse it with a scripture in your mind. That is transactional kingdom currency in your life.

It is spiritually nuclear. You never know, like C.S. Lewis said, where the smallest act of goodness will lead to your greatest experience of Christ ever. The smallest thing that you do. You open a door for a person. You have a conversation. That person is the one who brings the key to that thing that you've always wanted to see happen in your life.

Who knows what it will be? The smallest micro elements of hope and joy being released. What God can do. And then lastly, the wheels are on the ground. The church exists to bring kingdom change to your life. It says don't give up meeting together. I want to encourage you. Don't give up showing up. Keep showing up here. Get up. Show up. Be a part of a small group.

Be a part of community. Be a part of a prayer group. Start a prayer group. Be in a rooted group. Work with our missionaries. Ask Joe how to visit some of our missionaries around the world. Keep yourself in the game. Don't allow yourself to get separated. Not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing. But encouraging all the more as you see the day approaching.

Encouragement. I love this word encouragement. This is the final note for the day. The word encouragement. Encouragement is fuel for life. You know how it is when you get encouraged? I got a couple texts this week. A couple days I was, you know, when I go on vacation, seriously, the first few days, once I slow down, it's like, I just get, it's hard to slow down.

Because all of a sudden I just feel like I just get overwhelmed with, you know, it takes me a while to break out of a funk. I go into like a vacation funk. Anybody else have that? And I got a couple encouraging texts for some people. And I was just like, oh, how good is encouragement? You can build, look, you can build a work of God on encouragement.

Trust me. The encouragement of this is that Jesus loves you. And he's coming back for you to encourage one another. It's fuel. It is the action of giving someone support, confidence, or hope. Surround yourself with encouragement. I know every day I want to listen to encouragement. The Bible is encouragement. I listen to the Daily Auto Bible. Fill your day with encouragement.

And as you see a day approaching, why is this important? Because the closer to Christ's return, the greater the need will be to encourage one another. Like, we need to be encouraged. This world needs encouragement. I got to say, this is probably one of the greatest times for people to come to Christ ever. All the stuff that's happening right now, my conversations with people, and people that are like, the world is not working.

I need something. They want, there's, not all of them, but there are people that the scripture says, as soon as you talk to them, they will say yes. They are waiting to hear the gospel. It is so, the fields are ripe. Trust me, it is some of the most ripe time. The worse it gets, the more ripe they're going to be. Why? Because God uses tribulation to draw people unto him.

You want to see over and over again in the scripture, when God wants to draw his people back, what does he do? He allows tribulation to come. And in the midst of that tribulation, people, when they're drowning and they're going under, they're crying out for hope. For you to come by and say, let me tell you about a Jesus I know. Let me tell you what he's done in my life.

That's what I'm talking about. Don't give up hope. Don't give up. But now, when you see these things, look up. This is the most powerful verse. Worship team, as soon as I'm done reading this verse, I'll have you come up. When these, Jesus, talking about all these negative things that are going to happen. When these things begin to take place, stand up.

Lift up your heads. Because what? Your redemption is drawing near. Listen to that. Look at that. When these things begin to take place, stand up. Lift your head up. Because your day of redemption is drawing near. You know what most people are doing? Many people are doing. Not most. Many. Especially believers. They see this stuff happening. They just lay down in the valley of the shadow of death.

Just lay down. They don't even want you to lay down. You know what's so bad? Things have never been worse. You know what? They're probably going to get a lot worse. Scripture tells us they're going to get a lot worse. Keep your head up. Keep looking up. Because your day of redemption is coming near. And God will protect you. Amen?