SEP 15 2024 | One Thing: The Purpose of the Church S1E3 | The Pace of Grace

Sea Change Church · SEP 15 2024 | One Thing: The Purpose of the Church - S1E3: The Pace of Grace
Ephesians 2:8-10
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

That you would guide our decisions In you know community groups And prayer and finances And every piece of it God That it all just leads People straight to you Please receive today's offering And use it to expand your kingdom In Jesus name we pray Amen The book of Ephesians Chapter 2 Verses 8 through 10 For by grace You have been saved Through faith And this is not your own doing It is the gift of God Not a result of works So that no one may boast For we are his workmanship Created in Christ Jesus For good works Which God prepared beforehand That we should walk in them This is the word of the Lord A culture of serving Is important for our church That's the way we get healthy True healing comes When you get involved In the community And I believe it's A scriptural principle To be able to minister And to help brothers and sisters And then reach out To the non-Christian world Beyond that It's a fundamental part Of being a Christian I'm inspired when I read The New Testament To see that money Wasn't the thing That drove Jesus It was time He invested in his disciples And he took the time To invest in people Along the way And if Jesus is our example We need to invest time In our church And in our community And I'm I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one I'm the one �� Good morning, welcome to church today, especially if you are online.

I was surprised. The first service, by 10 o'clock at night last week on YouTube, we had 110 people had watched on just the first service. So you're out there, and if you are out there, you're not gonna get to try Miracles Cafe. We wanna encourage you to come to church. If you have not been to Miracles Cafe, this is what's left of the coconut iced latte.

Hang on. Mmm. I'm not sure the first century had this, but nonetheless, try that. You can volunteer and serve out there. My daughter was running it. I actually had my whole family out there today running it, and you can check that out. If you have your Bibles, open up to Ephesians 2, 8 through 10. In a series on the epistles, we're talking about GPS, give, pray, and serve, really trying to engage you as members of your church, trying to give some teaching on what it means to not just come and be a visitor and sit in the pews, but how to be an active member so we can have a really healthy, functioning church.

And so we've been talking about giving was the first week, praying, and now we're on serving, and next week we'll be back with another one on giving. But on this, Paul is talking about what it means to work in the faith and the idea of work. And work is interesting in our culture these days. I think work has gotten kind of a bad rap. Paul reframes it around the idea of grace.

And I think when we see work and what it's meant to be, because we know even God worked, right? He worked and then he took a break and says that. I don't think when God was creating and doing the work, he was just sitting there going, ah, ah, it's hump day, you know, it's Wednesday. God, I can't wait to get to that Friday, you know. I think they had a different meaning.

And so we're going to talk about that today and how important it is in regard to growing you to who you're called to be. My daughter and I, Lucy, are really into Friday and Saturday radio. I'm back to listening to the radio. I hear radio's making a comeback. I was talking to a Gen Y kid and they said, oh, I listen to the radio all the time because I like having someone to talk to me when I'm listening, not just listening to music on Spotify.

And so I get that because I was kind of a radio kid, 91X. You had your favorite DJs and your VJs on all that. And so on Friday afternoon, one, Friday afternoon, they play longer sets, all right? So you get more music. And Saturday nights, you get more music. So her and I listen to it. And we have our different little DJs. And what I realized on Friday is one of the main themes of Friday DJs is how much work stinks, right?

And then it's Friday. The work's over. You're finally freed from your change. You get to go have 48 hours of bliss before you go back to the salt mines. Like pretty, no, go listen to it. It's over and over again what they say. When you look at this verse, Paul says some incredible things that really puts a value to the reason that we work, no matter what you do.

Whether you are working as a plumber or whether you are overseeing a hedge fund for a billion dollar company, Paul puts it in a framework of grace and he puts Jesus Christ into the equation. And that changes absolutely everything. Go to verse 8 if you would. Verse 8. For by grace, circle grace, you have been saved through faith. It's not of your own doing.

It's a gift of God. And then we're going to go to verse 9. Not a result of your works so that no one may boast. We'll get to the second part there about being God's workmanship. But what Paul is doing, it's really interesting. He's starting a passage that goes on to talk about giving your lives away in acts of service. And you would think that if you were writing a book on works and the things that you do that we get our daily wage from, or sometimes you don't, you're just giving acts of service away, you think the first sentence wouldn't have anything to do with you've been saved by grace, there's a free gift that God has given you, and everything is free.

He's talking about free. We don't see work in that way, do we? When we think of work, we think quid pro quo. I will do a little bit of work, and then I will get my wage. When Paul speaks about it, he basically says that the wage that we get for work is being Christ's workmanship and experiencing God in whatever we do. It totally flips on its head.

Any, whether it be capitalistic understanding of work, whether it be a communistic understanding of work, a socialistic understanding of work, what he is saying is you are free. God has given you a free grace. Your entire worth is based on that free gift, and your entire reward that you get for working is based on that free gift. And what you get is Jesus Christ himself.

That there's nothing more. Now that you know that, let's get about work for God, for his purposes. This will change your entire perspective of what you do for a living, or what you do for volunteerism, or what you do. When I went to Australia in 2004, I went there thinking that God had called me there to bring revival. I was going to be part of a massive revival.

We were going to die with our boots on. I wanted to die and live in Australia my entire life. My wife and I had a passion for it. I was going to go plant a church. It was going to be Hillsong before Hillsong existed. It was going to be everything, right? And I got there. It didn't quite work out. And I ended up working as a janitor at a Christian camp, cleaning toilets, right?

And not quite what I had in mind, not quite the vision that I had that I had been called to. And I remember one day I was there and I was complaining to God. I'm like, God, I came here to do your work. I came here to do your service, to just, you know, have all these amazing things happen. And I'm cleaning toilets. And I had walked in that day and there had been a camp.

And the kids had thought it would be funny to just destroy the bathroom. And I'm not even going to go into what it was like, but it was a biohazard. It was a biohazard. And I got there and I said, Lord, why am I doing this? And I felt like the Lord spoke to me and said, clean this bathroom as if Jesus Christ himself is the next person to use it. That's why I have you here, because I want to teach you a lesson.

And I realized at that point that God said to me, and maybe God doesn't speak to you this way, I get little sentences in my head, little thoughts. And I felt like he said, if you're not willing to clean toilets for me, then you're not worthy to speak or do these other giant and massive things that you want to do. That reframed for me everything that I thought about work.

And it has still reframed it to this day. To realize I'm just a toilet cleaner for Jesus. And if he has me speak, I'll speak. And if he wants me to go sweep the gutters, I will go sweep the gutters. But it was based in an understanding that Paul was talking about here, that my worth is not based on whether I'm cleaning toilets, whether I'm sitting in a cubicle, or whether I'm doing TED Talks on a stage where everyone's being wowed by all the amazing things that I am just sharing.

It is based on that Jesus Christ loves me. That's a free gift. Now he's created good works because I am his workmanship. Now go about the good works. That's the framework. And so we see Paul talking about that. The key word today is grace. I had to circle grace. And I thought one of the best definitions came from Charles Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon had this incredible idea of the word grace.

He says grace is the free, undeserved, unmerited favor of God. Now if God favors you, it's a good thing. Grace, it says, that anyone who believes in Jesus Christ, Paul talks about this, he reiterates this in Galatians 3 and 4. If you want a deeper dive in this, go, he takes this passage and he just blows it up for two chapters in Galatians 3 and 4. You can do that later on the week in your study.

But he's saying that God favors you and there's nothing you can do in your own workmanship to earn that favor. It's just free. I don't know about you, I have a really hard time with that. I have a really hard time with just accepting the fact that no matter what I do, how much I do, how little I do, that God actually just loves me and has favor for me and that comes through faith in Jesus Christ.

That's what Paul was saying. So many of us are waiting to really get to work for God until we get a little more cleaned up. You know, I'll tell you this. God is not in heaven waiting for the future version of you. The future perfected, cleaned up version of you that's a little bit better with the things that they say, do a little bit better in the way that they act, a little more quiet time.

I don't know about you, this last month, I have just put my foot in my mouth so many times. Like I'm not a guy that has done that a lot. You know, I have a friend, he's like, I've always put my foot in my mouth saying the stupidest thing. I have said the stupidest things, not like sinful things, but like I'm in a conversation, I just say something awkward, right?

Something stupid. Then I walk away, I'm like, I'm so stupid. You know what I mean? I feel like a Napoleon Dynamite. What am I doing? I'm so stupid. There's been this feeling of like, man, you just, you're horrible at social relationships, dude. You just go hide. Like, why did you say that? There's this sense that if I could just be a little bit better, then God could use me.

So let me just say this entire passage about the things that God has called you to do, the work that God has called you to be a part of, it has nothing to do with how good you are at it. It has to do with the unmerited favor of God, which is upon you if you're in Jesus Christ. You can't earn it. If you could earn it, then the most talented people would be the godliest people.

The people with the most gifting would be the most godly people. But instead, it's the people that can rely on what Jesus did on the cross through faith. Something that you can never understand will the ones that will have the ability to step into God's work and understand his favor in a greater way. Otherwise, like I said, the most gifted and most talented people.

And it says that if you are gifted and talented, the only thing, it says, you can't boast in that because all of your gifts and your talents, it is all based on what Jesus did for you because you were a sinner. And it says, while you were yet a sinner in Romans 5a, Christ died for you. So, I want to use that for the framework before we start talking about actually work.

Here's two things. Here's three things we're going to talk about quickly. One, accept grace. Two, stop striving. And three, let's get to work. Let's go to verse 8 once again. It is for grace. It is by grace that you have been saved. The word grace there in verse 8 when he says, for grace you have been saved through faith. That version of the word grace is, it's kariti.

Okay? Now, I was really hoping, at first I thought it was karate and I thought that would be super fun if there was a Greek word that was like karate and we kind of go, karate! You know, but no. It's kariti. All right? There's a Greek word I'm going to use again here a little bit later and I can't pronounce it but I can pronounce this one. Kariti. It's only used, that version of the Greek word is only used twice in all of scripture.

The word grace is used I believe 156 times in the New Testament but it's only used twice in this matter and both times are right here in the book of Ephesians. It's in verse 5 and verse 8 and what it means is it frames up grace as a gift. Now there's a lot of different ideas of grace. Grace is, you know, you can give someone forgiveness. That is a form of grace.

You could, you know, something that is beauty, you think grace is a form of beauty. You know, they're so graceful in the way that they walk or it is having grace with yourself, forgiveness for yourself. But this form of grace is a gift. And I don't know about you, I have a really difficult time receiving gifts like this. I kind of would rather get something I earned.

I'm a duty guy. I like duty. I like the grind. I like earning things. And with someone who just gives me something, especially if they lavishly give you something, like, you know, they give you something and then they give you a little bit more, eventually, you start to feel uncomfortable, right? And I think for me, when it comes to God's grace, I start to feel uncomfortable a little bit.

And I think, I've been trying to nail it down. I think the reason is is because that boasting part, I kind of like that. I kind of like getting my worth from what I can do. I don't know about you. I kind of like it. I kind of thought, like, I'm thinking, yeah, I crushed that, yeah. And I give a little bit of a flex, you know what I mean? Like, oh yeah, I just totally crushed that.

Like, I just dig it. Because why? I'm in control of it. Now, there's a back side of this. They say every high has a corresponding low. If you base your self-worth on what you can do, when you lose the ability to do it, which as we get older, God put a little funny thing in our lives that like everything you're really good at, you're going to get less good at it as you get older.

It's just true. Tends to be. Unless it's love or faith or something like that. But as I, you tend to do something not so well one day, you are going to feel equally as bad about yourself as you feel good about yourself. So, if I do something good and people are like, that was amazing, you crushed it, I try really hard to go like, you know, God, you're so good, your grace is good.

Because I know that if I take that hook and I don't take it as a free gift that hey, this has only happened because God gave it to me and he loves me and cares for me, then I'm going to eventually, I'm going to do something like put my foot in my mouth. I won't even tell you what I did. It was so embarrassing. I'm going to be like, oh, I'm horrible. I want to say one of the best things you can do to help yourself against those feelings when you don't measure up to the standard that you've set for yourself is when you think you've crushed it, give that back to God.

Because that will bring you back to a mean, that will bring you back to a center place that it is Christ's worth that I am, that I have anything in my life because I'm a sinner and I deserve nothing. We deserve absolutely nothing and so it's this free gift and this kariti word means that God has given you a free gift. Now let's talk a little bit more about what this free gift is.

So the first one is accepting that. Oh, I said this a moment ago. I want to say it one more time. I put, God is not waiting for the future you, the cleaned up, put together version of you. He wants to use you right now where you are. And so if you're waiting for this place to get to, you're never going to get there. If you think you're there, you're not there.

If you think God's waiting for you to get somewhere, I want to tell you what, you're never going to get there. If you think you've reached it and you're crushing it for God, you're not there. The only way to be there is to say, Jesus, you were there and I have your resume when it comes to God. So that's the first thing. The next is stop striving. Go to verse 8b, halfway through, to verse 9.

And this is not your own doing. It is a gift of God. So he reiterates that word gift by actually using the word gift, so the Kiriti word and then he adds onto it, so he reiterates, not a result of works so that no one can boast. In the 1970s, if you're from San Diego, there was a store called Windmill Farms. It was the first health store and my mom was into the health kick.

In the 70s, there was a health kick. I remember she got Brewer's yeast tablets, right? Has anybody ever eaten a chalky Brewer's yeast tablet? Okay, so anybody over like 40 knows what I'm talking about. So she would say, before you go to school, I want you guys to chew these Brewer's yeast tablets. I have no idea to this day what Brewer's yeast does, but she'd make me chew these Brewer's, it's all chalky and I'd be like, this is horrible.

I don't know, I'll have to ask her why Brewer's yeast, but that was a big craze back in the day, right? Like Keto's a craze now, it was like Brewer's yeast. And so I remember we would go to Windmill Farms and I would try to bag the groceries because I want, you know why? Because I was eight years old and I wanted them to see how good I was at bagging groceries so that they would eventually hire me.

Big aspirations, big aspirations. And so I remember I would be like, oh, don't put the eggs on top and I would try really hard and I would like, no one ever noticed my bagging skills. Like, surprisingly, there was a Winchell's Donuts across the street and I wanted to be able to go to Winchell's Donuts and buy the donuts with my paycheck that I got from there.

But it was like, if I could just prove myself, if I could just work a little bit harder, I would be noticed. I would be, then they would want me. I want to say that God has already noticed you before you've done anything. He knows who you are and he wants to get to the work of partnering with you in the works that he has created because he loves you and you don't need to strive.

Satan has a, two traps, I think, on the path of the righteous. And I wrote, the devil has two snares to bind the believer. The first is a feeling of hopeless inadequacy so that they just give up. The other is a driving belief that with just a little more extra effort, you will finally win God's favor. I'm going to say that again. The devil has two snares to bind the believer.

The first is a feeling of hopeless inadequacy that they will, that they give up. The other is a driving belief that with just a little extra effort, they will finally win God's favor. It says in verse 8 and 9, you can relax. Actually, it should have said in that. This is not your own doing. It is a gift of God. It's not a result of work so that no one may boast.

When you begin to do work, acts of service, when you begin to get active in the life of God and begin to give your life away, it's going to be a different fuel that drives you, that will feel very different than any fuel you've had drive you in the past. I remember when I was really in a season of trying to prove myself in my, probably in my 40s, and I was trying to, you know, grow my Twitter following and all for God.

Didn't really care about how many followers I had. Just all for God, right? And I was writing and I was trying, I was getting up at 4 in the morning and I'd be writing and just grinding, just grinding, just grinding. I would just fly out of bed in the morning. I remember I telling my wife, I hate having to go to sleep and the only reason I want to go to sleep is so I can get up in the morning and get back to work.

Like, I'm just grinding, right? It's kind of a work ethic that came from my family. I definitely didn't have it in high school. I don't know, I used to be able to sleep until like 1. But when I, when God took this away and he healed me because that drove me to death in anxiety. One day I had, all of a sudden, I was writing, I was there and something happened, I had a panic attack.

I've never had a panic attack. If you haven't had a panic attack, I don't recommend them. Not fun. Think you're gonna die. And I was at Starbucks coffee and I just, all of a sudden, I had a panic attack. All of a sudden, for the next six to eight months, I lost the ability as God began to heal me of that because all of a sudden, all of the things that I was doing to prove myself, he just got to the end.

He goes, you know, we're done with Adam. I'm just gonna show Adam that he can't do it. And all of a sudden, I lost all the ability. I realized, I'm not even sure I could do this anymore. I had driven myself to that. He had to reframe everything to do it for him and for the sake of love. Like I say, that fuel burns like an oak log. The fuel that I was on was like dry grass.

I don't know how to explain it any different than that. But one was, it was just driving me. It's like a hot flame. It was like that kind of life. When you start living according to a fuel that has peace according to it, that the whole reason that I would write, the whole reason that I would go to build a home in Mexico has nothing to do with you proving your worth or living according to that fuel.

But just because you love God, there comes a peace. peace. And I gotta tell you, I didn't really know how to live for two years because that burning desire to jump out of bed in the morning to go prove myself left. And then I was just there with like, now I'm just gonna do it. But I'm doing it for God's love. And it took a long time to learn how to live in that because it's just different.

It'll actually, it just chills you out. There's peace. And it doesn't have the same dopamine kick. It's just absolutely different. But you start living according to grace. And I would say one is according to the flesh and one is according to the spirit. And the Bible says that the flesh leads to death is which I was going. And the spirit leads to life. You will know what path you're on because you will feel it.

You will feel things that lead you to death. I heard someone say the spirit will never lead you to burnout. The spirit will never lead you to burnout. burnout. If you follow the spirit. But the flesh oftentimes will lead you to that. So you can stop striving. So the second thing then, the final thing is this. Now what do we do? I got this, I got this new way of living.

I'm totally accepted by God. I don't have to prove myself. What do I do? Do I just chill? Do I just live in peace or whatever? No. Paul says now get to work for the right reasons. Go to verse 10. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. I'm going to get to that word should here in a second because that's a really interesting word.

It's the Greek word that I can't pronounce but we're going to get to that in a second. We are his workmanship. Now this is really interesting. He's talking about work. He's talking about the works that we are meant to do but he says while we're doing that work God is doing his work and you are the thing he's working on. That it doesn't say go do the good works that he's prepared in advance so that the work that you're doing is the workmanship.

So you go to the orphanage you help the orphans and then that's his workmanship. That's what he's doing. No. It says you go to the orphanage and while you're at the orphanage working with the orphans the workmanship is you. You're the one he's changing. What is so interesting? We're in the self-help age and thank God we are, right? Because it has been so good to dive into the counseling to find out all the reasons to read the self-help books to listen to the self-help podcast.

Those things are so helpful. Where they become unhelpful is when we put those above the word of God and stop realizing how the Bible actually has so many of the answers that we need. Self-help according to this verse happens when you give your life away to do the things that God has prepared in advance for you to do. That when you go to the school and dedicate your time as a playground dad.

That when you coach that baseball team as long as you're doing it in the name of Jesus not just to win championships so you can feel good and you can get all your self-worth met because your kid accomplished all the goals that you weren't able to accomplish as a dad. Sorry. Just living through that myself. While you're doing those things for the right reasons in Jesus not for any other reason as you do those things he's working on you.

This verse right here says one of the best things you can do for self-help to be changed is to go give your life away. There are studies I went into a bunch of studies I won't go into all of them but they found the they did brain scans of people that were receiving gifts and people that were giving gifts. And they found that the people who were giving the gift had a higher oxytocin higher dopamine in their pleasure response centers would just get lit up from giving it away.

God built us to have joy joy and grace and peace when we do work in his names. He's built your brain that way. We live in a world that is about all about getting and when we do that it doesn't do the same thing that giving does for a person and so he says you are his workmanship that's why he says God loves a joyful giver. Not only does he love a joyful giver when you give you become joyful because he created our brain to do that.

The next thing that we see which I thought and here's the Greek word I'm going to try to say it and the word actually is go to verse 10 halfway through it says which God these are the works prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Circle that word should. That's a really interesting word and it's going to beg the question to this argument like well if God knows something's going to happen then it's going to happen or he knows is God sovereign is there free will is there any is our path malleable or is it all predestined we can have that question but let me just tell you in this verse what this verse says.

That word should I'm going to work on it I'm going to try to say it really hard. pe-ri-pa-te-so-men okay that's the word all right horrible horrible horrible Greek word I don't know why they said words like that but it is the phrase should walk okay and it's in a thing called a subjunctive mood okay what does that mean is this a Greek class no but this is super important the subjunctive mood expresses potentiality intention or an action that is contingent upon certain circumstances let me just give you the layman's Adam's Greek definition that God has created works for you that you should do but you can miss that God has all these works that he's created in advance now did he create them three minutes before it happened or did he create it before the beginning of time I have no idea and I only know what this verse says and granted you can take me to verses that say you know well if we didn't do it then it wasn't meant to be done I'm just going to tell you what this verse says this verse says that you should have done them and it's possible that you didn't and you missed it I've said over and over again it's one of my favorite things to say so I'm going to say it again that we give more credit to Google Maps to reroute us to a destination than we give God we believe that Trader you know that Google Maps can get me to Trader Joe's 12 different ways and if there's an accident it can take me another way but it's still going to get me to Trader Joe's more than we believe that God can do that I believe that we serve a sovereign God that can put something in our path that we're supposed to do we're supposed to be there and do it and we can miss it and he can still get it done in his path and reroute and do it I don't want you to walk in guilt and so the beginning of this says it's a free act of grace that you are perfect in Jesus when God looks at you spiritually in the spiritual realm you have if you have faith in Jesus you have the same resume spiritually as Jesus Christ do you know that?

that's what the Bible says God's not mad if you miss one he's not mad at you if you are in Jesus Christ God cannot be mad at you because why? Jesus died for all wrath Jesus died for all guilt Jesus died for all shame the Bible the gospel is clear that even when you mess up you put your foot in your mouth you do something stupid you say something you shouldn't do you commit the most horrible sin in the world you ask forgiveness for that that God gives you the same it is just as if I had never sinned that's justification it is through Jesus Christ it's not based on your works whether it's good or it's bad and so what I would say though is that he has created these works for you to do in advance and I gotta you know what I realize is how many of them I miss and how many of them I intentionally miss one of the things I like is is going on trips and getting on airplanes okay because when I'm in an airplane I realize I'm in a whole another world you know airports are like these little little countries inside of they all have a little system and once you're in the system you're not in the country anymore you're kind of in this I don't know if that makes sense to you but I also know no one can get me like if somebody texts me hey um my something broke can you come over and can I borrow your truck nope sorry I'm on my way to Florida you know what I mean it's like I just feel like away and whatever and I don't want to talk to anybody in the airport I don't want I don't want my phone to ring in the air I don't know about you everybody's looking at me like you're a horrible person okay and I'll get to the airport and I'll sit by somebody and they'll be chatty Kathy right and then God's and I just want to put the earbuds in right just put the earbuds in just I'm on a plane I'm just laid back it's uncomfortable it's like a bit in my little leg room and I know he's going to test me when I fly right and these are these things and there's been I got to say more often than not I tend to miss the work that I should have done I just do I'm selfish and you know what my excuse is I do good works for a living God I'm a pastor all I do is good works so when I'm on a plane or at a coffee house I get to check out I'm not like the other people the other people you guys have normal jobs and when God interrupts your day you have to do it I don't because I do it all day I should get my minutes not true and he's created these works in advance and every time I don't step into one I miss an opportunity to be his workmanship for him to shave a little bit more off my personality that shouldn't be there to add a little bit of this to that and that is why we do good works if we're going to be a church that does good works and changes the world we need to be a church that dives into this I'm going to finish with this story I told you about the toilet cleaning thing when I was in Australia and I had gotten to my new church and it was a big church and I don't know three to four thousand people every weekend and to get to preach was awesome right just big crowd and you get a lot of pets on the back afterwards and it feels great right there's a I think you're created to enjoy things like that just not enjoy them in the wrong way and they hadn't seen my greatness and they hadn't had me preach for like three years maybe it had been four years and I was getting really frustrated about it because I was like I haven't preached in four years you know what I mean like come on I got something to bring to the table and I went down I was from my little cubicle and I went down and I went to the restroom and I was coming out of the restroom and I looked and just somebody had just kind of destroyed the toilet like it was just not good you know I'm not going to go into everything but it was a biological hazard like I said and as I walked by it I just felt the Lord speak to my heart and say if you're not willing to clean the toilet something I had heard ten years earlier I'm not going to have you're not worthy to be on you know worthy to be on my stage and so I went to the janitor's closet got on my hands and I can shine a dunny they call him a dunny in Australia I can just shine it so I shined that thing like it was a Ferrari you know what I mean I don't know who was coming in there next or they would have been impressed walked out washed my hands walked out I walked past my pastor head pastor's office door opens right when I walk by thirty seconds later he says Adam can you come to my office I said yeah sure he goes hey I'm not going to be here this Sunday can you preach and I was like yeah yeah I think I can I clean toilets too bro I preached a sermon that sermon was called praying for your elephant which was interesting it was just random and ended up somebody heard the sermon and called me and said hey do you want to write a book about that sermon on that and that ended up being one of my books I ended up publishing and it went blah blah blah I really think I'll tell you the truth and I think one of the reasons I got the job here is because they had read that book and it was part of the whole package of when they saw and wanted to hire me I wonder if I would be here today I wonder if I would have ever written that book if I hadn't cleaned that toilet I don't know I don't know but I know that I'm just a toilet cleaner for Jesus that's all I want to do I just want to kiss his feet forever and whatever happens happens Count Zisendorf said serve Jesus die and be forgotten that's what I want to do serve Jesus die and be forgotten that's the church you want to be amen let's stand if you guys would if you need prayer we want to pray for you Chris is going to lead us in a little song here and then I'm going to bless you and we will call it a day but our prayer team is going to come forward as Chris leads us in this one little chorus as we prepare our hearts and just if you've been striving if you've not been able to accept if you feel worthless accept that free gift we'll just take you know a minute and a half or so to sing and just get your hearts prepared before the Lord I run to the Father I'm falling to grace I'm done with the hiding I'm reason away my heart found a surgeon my soul needs a friend so I'll run to the Father again and again I'll run to the Father I'm falling to grace I'm done with the hiding the reason to wait my heart found a surgeon my soul found a friend so I'll run to the Father again and again and again and again if you need prayer today I want to have you come forward if you've never made a decision to follow Jesus if you've been living in that guilt and that shame come forward we're going to pray for you I want to see you get saved I want to see you know Jesus Christ and spend eternity with God just experience that freedom I want to see you baptized these people will pray for you for that if you need somebody that needs healing or something else come forward and then this week the final I didn't say the final practical takeaway keep your ears and eyes open look for places where you can step in you usually won't want to do it step in if you see someone that needs help if you see someone that needs money if you need whatever it is step in and let God be his workmanship be you amen extend your hands if you would I want to bless you Lord Jesus I bless your people God this is a good word this is a good word it's a word that says get to work with me I love you and there's nothing you have to do so God I pray for our freedom I pray for those that are striving that are living according to the flesh that are getting the results of the flesh which is death can now live according to the spirit the spirit of freedom the spirit that gives life the spirit that is encouraging Lord God to move forward we bless them from the top of their heads to the bottom of their feet Lord God wherever they go let them be instruments of you instruments of your peace God we bless them richly may the face of God shine upon you today as you go change the world in the name of the Father Son and the Holy Spirit amen amen we love you guys join our small groups fair there's tons of food out there God bless you bye bye see you next week run to the Father