OCT 4 2015 | Becoming Sound

Sea Change Church · "Becoming Sound" · Adam Stadtmiller · October 4, 2015
Acts 3:11-16
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Well, hey, if you have your Bibles, open up to the amazing story of the Acts of the Apostles. It is chapter 3, verse 11 through 16. I'll be reading out of the New King James Version, which I've been enjoying the last couple weeks. I'll be hanging out with, I think, New King James for a while. And then probably going back to, I think I'm going to try out the Holman Christian Standard Version.

If you're not used to pastors doing that, I wish more would, using different translations so that we can be biblical students. And I would encourage you to have a Bible that you really enjoy, but be willing to read other versions to see what other theologians think. I want to give you some tools, some practical tools. One is BibleGateway.com. BibleGateway. Write it down if you would.

Or if you put a verse in, John 3.16, in your Google search or Yahoo search, whatever it is, put John 3.16 and then put Bible Hub. It will come up with multiple translations of the same scripture. We want to be Bible students. And with the internet now, there's no reason we can't all be, you know, I would say theologians of sorts and to try to do that.

So we're going to be in the New King James Version, checking it out. I think you have an NIV, a 1984 version of the NIV in front of you, or you have your Bible. Let me read this, and then we will get into this incredibly unique, invested, devoted, and disruptive church. Let's look at it. Verse 11. Now, as the lame man who was healed held on to Peter. Stop there.

If you weren't here last week, Peter and John healed a guy at the temple, on the way into temple to go have prayers at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. He held on to Peter and John, and all the people ran together to them in the porch, which is called Solomon's. Greatly amazed. Put a check by that. Greatly amazed. So when Peter saw it, put a check by it and write the word opportunity.

So when Peter saw it, he responded to the people. Men of Israel, why do you marvel at this? So interesting. So interesting. I mean, he just healed a guy who had been lame since the day he was born, paralyzed in his ankles since the day he was born. He raises him up, and then he asks the question, why are you marveling at this? Like, it had become commonplace to him.

Like, there's things that are more important than this, and healing is so important. Supernatural is so important, but he's like, hey, this is just every day. This is common. This is what we do. This is what John and I do. This is just our normal gig, okay? Why are you marveling at this? Let me tell you about what really matters. He pivoted on that opportunity.

Did you write opportunity in your notes? He pivoted on the opportunity. He said, get your eyes on the ball and know what's important. What are you focusing on? Strategically, let me ask this, in changing the culture of your life, which was last week's sermon, what are you focusing on? Every day do you get up and say, strategically, what are the three most strategic things I can do as a person today?

And go after those. Spend time with God. Go, you know, spend, call a family member. I don't know what it is. Have an act of love. Paul was on point. Excuse me. Peter was on point. So when Peter responded, he responded to the people, men of Israel, why do you marvel at this? Why do you look so intently at us? Put a stop there. Remember not too long ago, who had said this to him?

Think about it. Angels. That's right. Where was he? Jesus had just been ascended into heaven, and what were the disciples doing? Standing there looking into the sky amazed. And what did the angel come back and said? What are you standing here looking at? Quit looking at it. Get to work. Do you see that he had learned the lesson of learning what is important to marvel at?

Where's your focus right now? Where's your focus? What are you focusing on? What are you marveling at? The giant that's in front of you? That's what Israel marveled at. David didn't see a giant. He saw a dead man. David, as a young boy, went up and took his five stones strategically, and he hurled, and only took one. He hurled a stone, and he took that giant down.

You see, he wasn't marveling at the giant. He had his eyes set on the God of Israel. And he said, who is this wretched Philistine, or this uncircumcised Philistine, that he might taunt what? The armies of the who? The living God. That he might taunt the armies of the living God. Where was David's focus? Where's your focus? What are you marveling at right now?

Are we impressed? We have a society that marvels at the stupidest of things. Really? Stupidest of things. I was with my children, and we were walking, and they were looking, we were getting slimed as we walked through Vons, or Ralphs, or wherever we were. And on the left there, they had the gauntlet of shame and glory, where if you look to your left, all the magazines, we're either shaming somebody, or we're giving them glory.

There's no other options, okay? There's no middle ground in our society. Just to say, hey, that person's doing a really nice job. That's great. And it's either, you are absolutely horrible, and we're going to put you in the stocks and shame you for something, or we're going to highlight you. And my children were standing there looking at it, and they were asking questions about the different people that were on there.

And I said, kids, this is the darkest, one of the darkest parts of society. And the checkers said, amen to that. I said, thank you very much. You know, I'm used to some amens. This is the darkest. What are we marveling at? Our society marvels at things. We see people, you know, I won't even mention their names. You know who they are. There's like six of them, okay?

That we just marvel at. They have TV shows, and we watch them do the stupidest things, and they get the highest ratings. Are you serious? I mean, it just, it seems sometimes it feels like a society, excuse me, it just feels like a society of idiots. Does that make sense? Does anybody feel that way? That you feel like the media is just saying to you, you're idiots.

I just want you to know you're a bunch of idiots, and we're going to show you the stupidest things, and we're going to have you focus on them. You want to know what the problem is? Click, watch. Click, watch. What are you focusing on? What are you marveling on? What you focus on will change the culture of your life. See that? What you focus on will change the culture of your life.

In some parenting classes I've done, I've said, hey, in your Bible, have the open word of God laying around in your house. I really, you know, at first I really liked the digital age when the Bibles were all coming on screens. I have a problem with it, though, because whoever controls the feed controls the literature. Does that make sense? I think it's important to have hard copy.

The other thing, too, is, and this is a side note, Wikipedia, which is the encyclopedia, right? It self-updates, and there's never an archive. So as the culture changes its ideas on what it believes, kids grow up, and they look at the encyclopedia, and it has no archive, they can't go back to 1984 and see, this is what the definition for this meant then.

Now it just self-updates. So ultimate truth is self-updating, and there's no, well, it's hard to find a record, at least in the common things, which would be the ones like Wikipedia, things like that. It's hard to go back and say, hey, what did my ancestors think about this? What did the people who come before me think about this? And I began, I've begun to make sure that I have a different Bibles and different versions in print again, because I looked around, I didn't have any Bibles left in my house.

I couldn't find a Bible. I used to have like 20. Now I want to have more, and I want to have the open Word of God in my house displayed. I'm trying to get better at that, to have that displayed, to have verses displayed, to have worship on in our house, to turn my car into a sanctuary. Where you focus, what you marvel at, is going to shape the culture of your life.

And last week, I spoke about having a mirror up, where you're just looking and self-consumed. We live in a state of self-consumption in this world. If you want to be anxious, if you want to be depressed, and I'm not saying that there aren't real chemical reasons why people are anxious and depressed, but I also believe that those can be highlighted by the emotional damage that happens in our lives, because I believe that emotional brokenness leads to mental brokenness.

I don't know if you don't see that happening in our culture, where there's a school shooting every two weeks now. Every two weeks. School shooting. What are you focusing on? And so if we're self-consumed, we are going to be full of either anxiety, depression, or often pride. Those are kind of the three options. Hey, I'm killing it right now. I am absolutely, you look good today, Adam.

Mm. You know, or whatever that is. That thing where you just sit there and look, and you're full of pride. Or, I'm not as good as that person. If I see one more, what happens when I see someone's feet on a beach in Facebook? I'm angry. You're in Hawaii. I don't want to see your feet. That's, by the way, don't post that anymore, okay? The picture of your feet at some exotic place in the world, I don't want to see it, okay?

It makes me upset. I'm at work. You're at the beach. You're better than me. You won Facebook today. I lost. I'm going to win tomorrow. Oh. Hi, Zach. You recording me? Hey, Zach. I'm glad you're okay, buddy. Zach took a fall this week. I don't know if you guys know it. And hit his face. It looked like he got... Bahia Hotel. Bahia Hotel. Don't mention them. Somebody's going to do it.

You're going to do it. You're going to sue him, or what? It is. No, okay. You look like you went 12 rounds with Ali. No. I'm getting ready for Halloween. You're getting ready for Halloween. Okay. Okay. Thank you for all you who prayed for Zach, that his seizures weren't increased by that. I got a... Nine o'clock at night, I got, hey, we're off to the emergency room with Zach.

And like you guys need another problem, right? Be praying for Ky and Bev. Please put them on your prayer list. They've had enough. Okay. So just pray for them. And Zach as well. That's right. Thank you. I love you, man. All right. You too. What are you focused on? What are you marveling at? I should read the rest of the verse. I've already preached a sermon.

What are you marveling at? Why do you look so intently at us as though by our own power, our own godliness, we made this man walk? I love it. It's not about us. They weren't taking a selfie of healing the man. If they had a Facebook page, how many people, if they healed somebody, would take a... Hey, get in this picture with me. A little selfie to post on Facebook.

Hey, 38 years healed. They're like, why are you looking at me? Stop looking at me. Stop it. Who does that these days? Stop looking at me. I think we should have something called your Facebook, where it's all about all your friends. And you just post their stuff. That's what we should call it. Put your face on it. That's a pretty good idea. No one thought so.

Okay. He said, as if it was by our own power, our own godliness, that we made this man walk. The God of Abraham. And I love, he's looking back to the ancestry, to the history. Knowing what came before him. Everything that's new is not better. When is our culture going to learn that? Every new thought is not a better thought. It's chronological snobbery to think that everything that we think is progressive and new and is a better thought than those that went before us.

There's reasons that 6,000 years of human history have done certain things and had certain traditions in every culture. They've done it for a reason. Maybe because they're right. And maybe the new ideas that we've developed in the last 30 years aren't better than 6,000 years of cultures that have come before us. Anybody want to get an amen on that?

Goodness gracious. Let's just look back. And so he looks back and he says, look back at Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the God of our fathers who glorified his servant Jesus. Now remember who he's talking to. Where is he at when he's talking? The temple, right, David? Good one. You get three points and a star. He was at the temple. Was he talking to non-believers out in the street at the moment?

No. Who was he talking to? Religious Jews, religious Jewish people who had come and he knew his audience. Now remember, did he speak that way to the broken man with the lame ankles? No, because he was a broken man. He reached out with him with kindness. He said, let me enter your world. Let me put a hand out to you. Let me give you a smile. Look intently at me.

And he helped raise him to his feet. But to this audience, he spoke the truth to him. Know your audience. Know your audience. When you're on Girard and you walk past somebody and you have a conversation with somebody, what measure of throttle do you need to use when you're with that person? It's like the guys that go down this street every day on their motorcycles.

Do you need to throttle it on Draper? I can't hear in my office. How many dislike, I won't say you a bad word, dislike loud motorcycles, right? Oh, I know it keeps you safe. I get it. Sometimes it's like with our evangelism. We just need to make sure we're not throttling it down Draper. Know your audience. Does that make sense? Know your audience. Know where you're speaking, who you're speaking to, and intently focus on that.

And so he's speaking to Jews here. Know his audience. He says, so he references their history, which I love. And he says of Abraham, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when Pilate had determined to let him go. The Romans, the world said Jesus is free. Even they could see that Jesus had done nothing wrong.

Powerful. And Peter looks at him. He says, even Pilate. Do you think they liked Pilate? Now think of your least favorite political person. Don't say it. Okay. That person, he would be, imagine that person, him referencing them and saying, even that person who you dislike the most saw that Jesus was legit. Saw that Jesus was true. And they wanted, they tried to let him go.

But you, you religious people that should know the difference, you crucified our Lord. Powerful. But you denied the Holy One and the just and asked for a murderer to be granted to you. Oh, that's, that's heavy. Do you get that? Jesus, the pure Lamb of God, beautiful. Not a sin on him. Spotless. They beat him down and asked for a murderer in return.

Do you get that? Wow. When we look at our society, that should give us a little bit of a big picture. That it, that, you know, maybe it isn't the worst it's ever been. That was, that was horrific. And it happens on a regular day to children that are being abused and on. And we want to fight that as a church. And he said, the murder was granted to you.

And you killed, I love this, the Prince of Life. Jesus is the Prince of Life. I, I couldn't figure out a point. I sat on that for a little bit. And I couldn't figure out a point to say about it. I just knew it was important. And I thought, I need to highlight this to the congregation so that they can go meditate on that. Just get in that, I don't know what it's, maybe God doesn't want me to say anything about it.

So I won't. But I know it's important for us as a congregation. Take this scripture and meditate on the Prince of Life. Just meditate on it and see what it does for you. And then come back and tell me if you did it. Whom God raised from the dead. Why did he raise him from the dead? Because he's the Prince of Life. Life cannot be killed. You get that.

Life has a power that if you try to, to, um, snuff it out, it'll always come back like those birthday candles. You blow them out and they come back again and again and again. That is life. You can't destroy life because life will always win. And he is the Prince of Life. And death could not, the scripture says what? Hold him. It couldn't hold him.

I went to the fair and saw a greased pig. They were, when that was still politically correct, they were chasing a, a greased pig. You can't chase a greased pig anymore. It's politically incorrect, right? Couldn't hold on to him. I'm not going to say Jesus was a greased pig. But I will say that they couldn't hold on to him. God raised him from the dead.

And he says, you were witnesses. And his name, now this is powerful because this is why the man was healed. And his name, it is the name of Jesus that brings power. That every knee shall bow and what? Every tongue will confess that what? Christ is Lord. That name of Jesus that is above what? All names holds a power. Do you realize the name of Jesus holds a power?

And even when someone speaks it profanely, there is a power that goes out. Do you get that? I'm offended by it. No one else is offended by it. You can say Jesus. I can't say, there's other religious figures that if I said them, I'd be held to task. But you can say Jesus Christ on a regular basis in profanity. But let me say that Jesus Christ's name is not hindered by someone using it profanely.

And then when it goes out, it has a ability, an innate ability to bring power. And I would speak the name of Jesus in your house. Jesus, Jesus, the power of Jesus. The name of Jesus has power. Do I understand it? No. Is it magical? No. But there is a power in the name of Jesus. And in the name of Jesus, we shall walk day by day. And it says, and in his name.

And then what? How do we access the power of that? What is the next verse that it says right there? Through what? Faith in his name. It is by his name. It's not because of your faith. You get that. The power is where? In his what? Name. All you have to do is access the power that is already there. Through what? Faith in his name. Maybe your life needs some more of the name of Jesus in it.

Maybe you need to sit in your prayer time and just take 10 minutes. Set a clock. A lot of times for prayer, I'll light a candle. I've got to do something physical to make myself, I don't know, I'm just that kind of person. I've got to do something. So I'll light a candle when my prayer time starts and I'll blow it out at the end. Or sometimes I'll just leave it all day.

I had a candle burning all day yesterday. To just symbolize to me, is it magical? Is it supernatural? No. It's just for me that it's a reminder. Just like Israel would put rocks and they would build different altars to things as a reminder. Maybe some of you just need to sit and you need more of the name of Jesus in your life. I believe that you just go for 10 minutes and this will be your prayer time for the whole day.

I believe in the name of Jesus Christ. I believe in the name of Jesus Christ. You're not chanting. You're not trying to be magical to make anything happen. You're just reasserting your faith. And I would say some of you need to either do that or focus on the Prince of Life. But if you need power in your life and you need to get the focus off yourself, be thinking about Jesus.

And Peter is always now bringing it back at Jesus because he stopped marveling at what? Things that don't matter. The angel said, you know, Jesus went up in the sky. You would think that would be something to marvel at. But as soon as the clouds had taken him away, it was done and it was on to the next thing. As they say in sports when someone gets hurt, next man up.

I coach an eight-year-old soccer team. We played fantastic yesterday. We lost. One nil. But a little update for the congregation. Keep praying. We played fantastic. It was so awesome. My daughter got defensive player of the game, which was great. I'm the coach, so that was up to me and a couple other coaches. How many of you know Sable in the congregation?

You guys know Sable? Yeah, some of you know her. She works for David Robinson over there. She came last week. She goes, I just love what you're doing with your soccer team. Can I help? I used to play competitive soccer. I don't have an assistant coach because Lily's joined the surf team now and she's left. So abandon ship. I said, yes. She came, took half the girls.

She was there coaching yesterday. It was awesome. And it was so cool. And Carrie and the family were there. We had a great time. And we're changing the culture. And I just love working with those kids. It is so awesome to bring the name of Jesus with a soccer ball. I just love it. I love it. I love smiling. We lost. We had such a good time. We're getting better.

Come to our games. I'll let you know. Come watch a game. Wouldn't it be great if like 100 people show up to our game? I'm going to invite you all to a game. I'm going to find a game and you're going to be invited. And I want everyone to show up. That would be unreal. 100 people on our side. Okay. You notice I haven't got to the points yet. I'm going to get there.

I'm coming. It says, through faith in his name and he's made this man strong. I love it. Maybe, how many of you just, I know we're weak and Paul talks about weakness. But there's always a balance between our weakness and him making us strong. And you can be weak and strong at the same time. Do you get that? You can be weak because God isn't hindered by us not being able to understand things.

Trinity. Okay. That's another one. You can be weak and yet be stronger than you could ever imagine. You see, there can be a duality of concepts. There can be a way of putting things together that is through faith that this man was made strong. And we live in a society where people need to be made strong. We live in a society that is broken with terminal illness.

Where people that have mental disorders can be made well. I talked to somebody in the congregation today. This week I was thinking again about working with mental illness. And I believe much of the mental illness we have right now is coming from emotional brokenness. I said it earlier, I know that there are chemical things, there's hereditary things.

Yes, yes, yes. But I know that also I've seen where emotional brokenness, a person becomes so broken emotionally, it affects their mind. I've had that happen to me in different times. And God brought me back where I was so emotionally broken that with worry and fear that it began to affect my mind, I thought I was losing my mind. There is a between the heart and the mind.

Just go to the scripture and read about the connection between the heart and the mind and the heart's ability to think. Look up the thoughts of the heart, meaning our hearts have an ability to think. It's a different message for a different time. But we need to heal human hearts. And I believe we can start fixing systemically the things that are breaking our society.

You know, I know we focus on the weapons and these different things and it's tragic and all these things. But very rarely do I see us go back 15 steps to the systemic brokenness that is causing these things to happen. And as a church, we will go to the root. Do you want, as a church, to go to the root of these things and to see change, to see people be made well?

That's what I want to do at this church. I want to have a place where the broken become well, where the people that are in the tombs with chains, that are pulling at themselves and they're killing other people and all these things that we see. And Jesus makes them well and they're in their right mind and they are made strong. That's where we're going here.

Be a part. That's where we're going here and support that. It says, through faith in his name has made this man strong who you seem now. Yes, the faith which has come through him has given, and this, circle this, put a check by it, given this perfect soundness. Perfect soundness. That's the Greek word there. I looked it up. The meaning is, I couldn't pronounce it.

Perfect soundness. Soundness. Integrity. You know what integrity means? We always think of it in regard to like, this person has integrity. But what it means is there's no chips. There's no fractures. It can withstand a shaking. It is strong. It is perfectly sound. It is stout. It is a sequoia. It is a redwood. It is a giant granite boulder that sits. Sound.

Sound. I want to say, that is what Christ offers to us, the ability to become sound, and to become more and more sound. And some of you might feel a long way away from being that sound. But I want to say, through his name and faith in the power of his name, we can be made sound, no matter what the experience we are going through. Soundness. I want a church that is sound.

I want people that are sound. I want you to be sound. I want you, when there's a fear in your life, to be able to become grounded and be able to walk through that, where you see that the things that used to affect you so deeply no longer affect you. Now, it's funny because what happens is sometimes we have the same reaction to an issue that comes to our life, but we're in a much deeper water than we were before.

And oftentimes we don't have the ability to look back and say, I never could have handled this three years ago. You have become more sound. But the lie is I still feel like I used to feel. And you disregard how far you've come, not realizing that if what you were going through right now had hit you one year ago, six months ago, two weeks ago, 12 years ago, you would have broken.

But you have become more sound. And I see many people in this congregation that I know, many, many, many, dozens in this congregation, who are more sound than they've ever been before. But then we hit a hard spot and we think, oh, I haven't gotten any better. That's not true. That you are becoming sound and we will become sound. Put a circle there.

Pray for soundness. God, that's a great prayer. If you have ten sentence prayers, but they're the right prayers, just pray ten, make ten prayers up. Ten sentences and pray ten sentences. One can be God, make me sound. And every day, just pray those ten sentences. Make simplify your prayer life. The secret key of prayer is what? Praying. That's the secret key.

You figured it out. Now just go do it. Perfect soundness in the presence of you all. You see, the soundness was seen. They could see the stability. They could see the solidity in the man. Can the culture see the solidity in you? Does the culture see when you walk in, there's something about this person? There's something about them. There's something about the way they smile.

And smiles are disruptive. Kindness is disruptive. There's something about them that is different than everybody else. There's something when they walk into the room, there's a soundness about them. And they say that I want that. No matter all the darkness in the world, nothing can snuff out life. And if you are accessing the life that comes through the risen Messiah, you will have that life.

This week I walked up and the next point here is disruptive faith. Where is your faith being disrupted? We finally got to the first point. I'll be done in about seven minutes. That probably means ten, but I'm going to be done soon. My mom and I, we went out for our birthday. She is, can I tell how old you are? 84. Okay. Doing good, mom. Looking good.

It's all Avon products, right, mom? That's DNA. You can't buy DNA. It's just the way it is, you know? And we walked into this store. I took her out for our after prayer on Tuesday. If you don't come to our Tuesday prayer meeting, they're awesome. We've been doing them for over a year now. Tuesdays at noon, stop on by, pray with us about anywhere between 8 and 15 a week to pray.

And afterwards I took her out to get something up at the Panic Inn. Up there we walked up. And we went into a store on the way there, and there was a lady working at the front. And I was just in a good mood. I just feel alive. She just got out of prayer meeting. I walked in, and she's there. And I won't tell you what the store is. I walked in, and I go, hey, how you doing?

And she goes, she looks up, and she goes, like, and if you're online, just look at disdain, okay? Just like, and it just blew me back. I couldn't believe it. And then I said something I shouldn't have said, but I did. I said, oh, I hope my kindness didn't, my friendliness didn't overwhelm you. We got out of there. My mom said, I can't believe you said that.

I about fell on the floor when you said that. It just came out. Like, I just was, it was almost like running 100 miles an hour. I didn't walk in and do a dance in front of her, okay? I just walked in and said, hey, good morning. How you doing? Like that. That was about it, okay? Was that about the tone, right? It was like me running 100 miles an hour into a brick wall.

I mean, that's what it was like. Like, it was like, bam! It couldn't have come back any harder of like, you've ruined my day by saying hi to me, you know? Disruptive. Disruptive. This was a church and a people that had a disruptive faith. I read that in Brian Harden's book from the Daily Audio Bible. He's going to be here November 15th. I will tell you more about that.

I read his book called Reframe, How to Reframe Your Life for Jesus. And he said, where is your life being disruptive? Disruptive faith. I love that idea. You know, disruptive faith doesn't mean you have to be out on the street corner with a sign. Disruptive faith doesn't mean you have to break the windows of everyone else's faith in the world with your faith.

Disruptive faith can be kindness. It can be a smile. It can be pulling over to help someone when they're broken. It can be the way that you act at a restaurant. The way you tip somebody. It can be disruptive. Where are you being disruptive? I want to say my soccer team that I love. I love being disruptive. I love changing the culture. Yesterday, the parents made the fire tunnel.

Afterwards, the kids run through the tunnel. I ran through it too. We're running. I made Sable run through it. We just run through with the kids. We're having a pool party. It's going to be awesome. I want to say surf church. By the way, they've got the whole aisle. Surf church right there. I love it. Let's welcome surf church. Yay! They've taken a whole pew.

They're taking over, guys. Invite a friend. Take over a bunch of surfers. Greasy surfers. They're being disruptive. They're being disruptive in the culture. In the water. The way that they surf. What they bring. Chris Kelly. And we're going to be surf coaches. As soon as soccer's done, I'm going to be over there working as coaches. He's the head of the Muralin Surf Team.

He's in our church here. He's disruptive. Why? Being kind to kids. Where are you being disruptive? Disruptive means showing up in the name of Jesus, with faith in Jesus, and with a bottle of kindness. Kindness is disruptive in our society. And I want to say, you're going to have to protect yourself from compassion overload if you're going to be kind to the person next to you.

I know there's a lot of things going on in the world. If you choose to take part in every one of those emotionally, you will have a thing called compassion overload. Compassion overload. Basically, it's called, I forgot there's a technical term for it. But it's compassion overload. You can only be compassionate about so much. And there are certain things.

I don't choose to watch the half hour television 2020 extra on what happened. Okay, I know there was a shooting. That's horrible. I don't need to know everything about the shooter. I don't need to know every story that goes along with who was shot. Why? I don't have the margin for it. None of us do. We weren't built to have the margin for it. You know, we were built as an agrarian people to really not know the news outside of a three days horse ride.

Do you get that that's how God built us? We're not built to be saturated with every, and there's sad stories in the world. I just can't enter into all of them. And I have to protect myself so that I have compassion for my wife. So that I have compassion for my friends. Because we can become calloused. And it says in the end times, people's hearts will grow what?

Why? You know what I think? I think it's because of compassion overload because of what's happened with the media-saturated culture. I think that has directly to do with us being so overwhelmed with compassion overload. It's sad. But eventually it's just like, I mean, when the school shooting thing happened, I mean, there's one every two weeks.

Did it affect you the same way Columbine did? Sandy Hook? Nope. Are you a callous person? No, it's just how we're built. You know why? Because God says, you can't handle all the compassion you need. You have to go to me. He built us to have compassion overload. Why? So we need who? God. If you can handle all the compassion that you need to have in the world, who needs God?

You see, you redirect the focus. Disruptive church. Where are you being disruptive? Here's the next one. Opportunity. I had you say it. Where are you finding opportunities? Opportunities. It says, as soon as the people ran together to them, greatly amazed. So, verse 12. When Peter saw it, what are you seeing? Are you even aware? If you're focused on where you want to go, what you want, if the cookie that you're going to get at the, you know, the restaurant doesn't, looks a little burned today, you know opportunities you're going to miss?

You're going to miss opportunity after opportunity. Keep your eye on the ball. You know what I tell my kids when you kick the ball? Keep your eye on the ball. My kids don't see the ball. When they don't look at the ball, they keep, they miss the ball. They don't kick it where it's supposed to go. The other thing I tell my soccer team, because I think it's great for coaching churches, I have a forward.

She's amazing. She always looks down, never looks up. Sometimes there's no one near, and she'll dribble right to a defender. I said, stop. She's one of my best. She's Ella. She's like this tall. She must weigh 60 pounds. She's the best dribbler in the league. She's amazing. I say, stop. If no one's near you, stop. Yesterday, she stopped. She put her foot on the ball, and she looked around.

During the game, there's no one near her. She stopped, and she put her foot on the ball. She did what I had. Isn't it great when you coach, and they do it? She can pass anywhere on a field, on a B line. She passes better than me. I do coaching drills with her, and I always kick it away from her. I'm like, oh, okay, start over again. My bad. She's so good.

But she was ruining herself, because she didn't have an eye of the big picture. And then when she had to make a move based on the big picture, she had to keep her eye on the ball, which she always did. But she wasn't looking at the big picture. I said, stop. She stops. She looks at the field. She sees where she needs to pass it. Yesterday, she would stop, and she'd kick it to where it needed to go, pass defenders to the next player.

I thought, thank God it's getting through. Let me say to you, keep an eye on the big picture. And when the opportunity comes, look at the ball and strike it. Strike it at the goal. Don't kick it out of bounds. Strike it at the goal. Where's your opportunities in your culture? Where is your opportunity? There is an opportunity every day, multiple opportunities every day.

Where are you being disruptive? Where are you making culture change? And if you're feeling guilt right now, to hell with guilt. Guilt belongs in hell. The Old Testament says the guilty and the condemned will be in hell, but we will not. Guilt will end up in hell. To hell with guilt. Let me just ask you to refocus. And like I said last week, start over.

Start over. Start over today. Start over this moment where you're just being disruptive. Finally, there's a power of faith and then perfect soundness. I've already preached those points. That's my message for today. Thank you.