SEP 24 2023 | Fellowship S1E2 | Radical Counter Culture

Sea Change Church · Fellowship S1E2 · "Radical Counter Culture" · September 24, 2023
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Acts 2 42 through 47. They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, and to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, the many wonders and science performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.

Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily, those who were being saved. The word of the Lord. And you're gonna make some friends as you join a small group this week, and, uh, excited about what God's doing.

Lemme just pray as we jump into the scripture again. Lord Jesus, bless your word. As you always do, let us, each of us hear a word for the community and a word for ourselves as well. Be with us as we preach the word in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. I've, um, in the second week of a, uh, a three week series on community to launch our small group season for this fall.

And really, um, looking at the early church, how did the original early church live in such a radical way that it changed history? I mean, really, the church in Jerusalem lived in a way that was replicable, that actually changed history, and it was completely counter-cultural Last week. The key word was devoted. We looked at four things that the church was devoted to.

They were devoted to prayer, the teaching of the apostles, which was the word of God, uh, fellowship of, of the believers. Uh, and to prayer, it says that the, the, in verse 42, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and to prayer. And the key word last week was devoted. Now, this week, there's another key word, and I try to give you a key word each week so we can get a sense of the main thing that this, that I'm trying to get outta this text, trying to, the word is jit, is the word to pull out. Like you get the juice out of a lemon.

And so the word this week, wa, is together. And as we, it says, um, go to verse 44, all the believers were together, circled together, and had everything in common. There's a main idea along with that word of together. So last week we're devoted. We wanted to be devoted. And I know as a church, uh, this week, or as a leader of a church, I really tried to be devoted to those four things.

It's really easy to be devoted to other things in the church. It's really easy to be devoted to strategy or other type of things in the church and miss these essentials. And there was a lot of essentials that could have been added. But for some reason, when Luke wrote the book of Acts, he just put four. And I thought, you know, we better major on these four.

Not that it's a prescription, uh, it's probably more of a depiction of what was happening. These, they were living in an actual commune. I don't think the scripture's calling all of us to live in a communal form or a kibbutz idea. Like the, like the Jews lived in. You could if you wanted. Um, but I think it's good sometimes to look at what the scripture says and what they do and to follow that pattern. So personally, that's something I tried to do this week, to try to kinda lean into those things more. And what that did, as we lean into those things, it's gonna be impossible not to have community, not to have the Greek word. There was koinonia, that fellowship word meant koinonia. This is a deep community, a deep togetherness. And so we're looking at togetherness.

And that togetherness in the name of Jesus, in the bold proclamation of Jesus, which was attached to it, changed history. Um, and a lot of times we feel like history's against us, right? You, you can feel like history's against you, not knowing that it's just takes one act of the kingdom, or perhaps one group of people. Uh, as you know, cultural change always starts with a minority. It never starts with the, with the majority, because that's the culture.

So it always starts with a majority. And this was a minority that made a difference. Now here, put the main idea here. Being a counter-cultural church means living out Christian values and beliefs in a way that challenges societal norms and trends. Prioritizing faith over fear and obedience over conformity. Lemme say that again. It's a pretty radical statement, being a countercultural church. And they, these were definitely countercultural believers that we wanna model our church upon that first church means living out Christian values and beliefs in a way that challenges. It sets up a challenge, an antithesis, societal norms and trends, prioritizing faith over fear and obedience over conformity. As I was thinking about this idea of being countercultural, right?

What does that mean? I mean, you can just be annoying and some people are just annoying, and it creates a counterculture. I don't think that that was trying to just be a protest movement. I don't think the early church was trying to be a protest movement. They were actually just trying to live the values of Christ. And they did it in such a real and dynamic way that it created an upstream effect within the culture of the things that were happening in that culture.

And the Lord added to their number every day. If you go to the end of this passage, it basically says that church growth, if you wanna call it church growth or soul, soul growth, or people being saved or following Jesus, whatever term you want to use happened because the church was radically committed to this type of living. We need to make a decision.

And as a church, I mean, one leadership needs to make a decision. Are, are we gonna set the table for this kind of radical living? Or are we just gonna give, you know, real sugary sermons that you can, you know, come home and you can kind of, you know, just like we're a buffet, you come get your worship. Or if you don't like worship, you just show up a little bit late, you know, or you like the teaching or you don't like the teach and you come and you kind of harvest enough to just make it another week. There's that kind of church, and that's really consumeristic. Um, or we can have the kind of church, whereas leadership, we try to set up community, the opportunities to pray, opportunities to be together, opportunities actually to live the life of, uh, of Christ together as a, as a, as a church. Now, the question then is, will the congregation respond to that? And that's what, as you as congregants need to, to decide, this church will become what you decide it is, because there's more of you than there are of us.

And so what we want to do is give the opportunity to live that first church model and then say, invite the congregation to say, what kind of church do we want? Do we want a church that lives close knit together, that keyword together in that quantity fellowship? Or are we just looking for something that kind of, we can harvest our needs, it's good we have some conversations in between, uh, you know, the church, but do we really live together? This is what was radical.

These people were living together in a deep, deep community. They knew each other's struggles, they knew each other's problems. They knew when people had lack, and they were willing to meet that lack. And because of that, the world saw what was happening in a powerful movement of the Holy Spirit happened. And the city, the nation, the world and history itself was transformed.

One of the things I liked about being counterculture, as I realized, as I was thinking about counterculture, I was thinking, what does it mean to be countercultural? And I started thinking about pop music and rock music throughout the last 50 years, and I realized that it's become less and less, um, counter-cultural matter of fact as I look back. And I thought it's becoming, you know, as I look back at like Joan Baez, right?

She was this anti-war movement. You have Neil Young, right? You think about these people in the sixties that were singing these ballads. None of them were like government shills, right? They were all kind of saying the exact thing they were against war. Matter of fact, in my generation, you had Sting remember that song, uh, the Russians, where he's singing about nuclear war and he's against war.

Um, you had all these different people that were singing against that. And as I looked at like rock and pop culture today, I realized there's not many people that are like counter-cultural anymore. And I don't know why that is. I don't know why there's so many politicians on musical rock stages. I remember listening to The Clash when I was young. Like, I don't think they would've had Margaret Thatcher up, you know what I mean?

On the stage with the class with M**k Jones, come on, Margaret, come on. You know, or The Sex Pistols with God Save the Queen. I saw this huge counter-cultural that has actually shifted, and I thought, what has actually happened? The reason I thought about that, it was really interesting. I was trying to find, you see it in country music a bit, a little bit of counterculture, but when I began to think about it, I thought, has the church lost its edge too?

I mean, has the church just become so ingrained in pumping out sermons and podcasts and worship music and all these things that we've actually lost our edge? And when people look at us, they don't see any difference between us and the other things that are happening in the world? There's a couple points here in this sermon, in this scripture that I want to just put before you, um, to look at.

And the first is this two points today, because I'm trying to be the master of the two points sermon, um, it's important to me might not be important to you. Number one, members of the early church were blurring the lines between autonomy, that's self-centeredness, autonomy, not always self-centeredness and community. They were blurring the lines between what's mine and what's yours and what's ours. They were just taking that whole, like, if you were to take a, um, you know, a lead pencil and draw out a picture of you and a picture of the community and the church you were in, imagine taking your hand over that lead pencil and just kind of just, you know, like a big, you know, number two pencil or a soft lead pencil, and they just rubbed it until it was so blurry.

There wasn't defined lines anymore. A really good question. Do do you really wanna be in a church like that? I mean, I'm not always sure I do because I want to, I want to, I want my time, right? I want my time, I want my, you know, I'll give what I can. But to actually blur that they were radically blurring those lines. That's way different than American individualism. So that's the first point.

Members of the early church were blurring the lines between autonomy and community. And the second one is this radical generosity was a feature of the early church. I mean, it was just radically generous. You see this? They saw every anyone that had need, and they, they met the need. No one had lack. It was a church that had an abundance mentality.

They would sell their homes, they would sell property, they would just radically care for one another. So we'll look at those two things. Number one, members of the church were blurring the lines between autonomy and community. And radical generosity was a feature of the early church. Before I start, lemme just ask you in your own instance, rhetorical, do you really want to, I mean, do you really wanna be a part of a church like that? I mean, seriously, like really wanna be a part of it?

It's one to look at it in the sermon and just think, yeah, that's amazing. But when push comes to shove and you're like, Hey, I was gonna buy this thing for myself, but so and so has a need, so I'm not gonna buy it. I'm just gonna care for that person and pay for their bills. Like that's what they were doing. I mean, do you, I mean, the question is, do you really wanna be part of that kind of community?

And to be honest with you, the answer for me is sometimes, but we live in a culture that is, that, that is so, this is so counter-cultural. This is so radically counter-cultural. And I think as a church, we're at a precipice where God is asking us the question. He's asking me the question, and he's asking our staff the question I think he's asking you, the question is, do you really want that kind of a church? Is that what you really want?

Because that kind of church costs, it costs more than just throwing a check in the offering or showing up to something. It really costs of the giving of yourself. Number one, let's go to the first point. Members of the early church were blurring the lines between community, uh, between autonomy and community. It says all the believers, verse 44, if you would, all the believers look at that unity circle the word all man, they had buy-in. I love that. Buy-in all the believers.

Now they have a little problem with Anani and sari. A couple chapters later, we can get into that. We're not gonna hit that. But at the moment, it was all the believers. It became most of the believers in about a chapter or two. But here, it's all, all the believers were together. I love that word together and had everything in common.

One of the reasons they did this is because they thought Jesus was coming back in the next 36 months. I mean, I, I don't know what the exact timeframe was, but they really believed that Jesus was gonna, I mean, he had just left. They had seen him. They believed that he was gonna be coming back soon. They believed that Jesus was gonna be coming back.

And so they gave everything away. They sold their businesses. Um, they did all these things, um, in order that they thought it, that, that that was happening By chapter eight, there's a massive persecution, and this entire church is scattered. Uh, and then there's just a remnant of people that are left. And it becomes such a poor church because the businesses are taken away.

There's a persecution. They have no more way to make money that Paul, remember, he actually has to go to one of the poorer regions in Macedonia up in Europe and go take from an a, an offering from them to bring an offering to the Jerusalem church may remember you remember that there was this radical cost. And so when you live like this, there's actually a risk to your personal finance.

There's actually a risk to your personal time. There's just a, it, it, it, it, it becomes the, the boundary lines of not that you don't have, you know, we, we believe in good boundaries and, and being healthy people. And so let's have that caveat, but it really kind of puts you at risk because you're willing to maybe go into need or into lack for yourself, for someone else.

Ask you again, do you really wanna be a part of a church like that? Um, I'm not saying that we become a commune, because I don't think this is, is what the scripture is being prescriptive, but this is something that that church did. I put they had everything in common. Members of the early church were blurring the lines between autonomy and community. Now, this word together, as you as, as you look at it, I did a little research on this word, and if, if you want, write this down in your notes, if you've never done this, if you do a Google search of blue, just put blue letter Bible, acts 2 44. Just go and you Google search that, and then it's gonna give you the top link. You're gonna hit it, and it's gonna take you in to be able to dissect that verse.

Look at all the Greek words, what it means. It's a really good Bible study tool. So in the morning, as you're studying and you have your computer there, if you're disciplined enough not to go search for real estate while you're doing your homework, if your computer's open with the word, go check that out. And when I was looking at this word together, the word together implies not only unity, but proximity. It means they were living near each other.

If you go on to more chapters, they were, it says that the apostles were regularly in the homes of the people that, that they were caring for, that they were in their homes. They were, they were sharing meals together. They were living together. So this idea of implies unity and proximity, proximity of, of physicality, meaning you're spending time with people.

You look at social media right now, nothing probably is as, as ill named as social media. It is not social. Um, it allows you to put up perfect posts that aren't real. It allows you to hide it. It it causes you to not see other people's imperfections. And you see, especially with young girls, uh, you know, as they're comparing themselves as this depression, anxiety, all these things are going off the charts. Nothing has made us less social, in my opinion, than social media.

I think if the church has a strategy, a biblical strategy, in order to be radically culture countercultural, it's to begin to live in proximity again. To begin to be with people within the brick and mortar walls of their homes, or in a coffee house or at the park, rubbing shoulders with people. I made it a point this week to just be out with people, to be out calling people and meeting with them in their homes and taking walks and talking and praying and just being with people. And I gotta tell you, it's amazing the effect that we'll have. It'll change your perspective.

You become less isolated in your own opinions when you're by yourself all the time. It's easy to agree with your own opinions. Constantly. We, we become so, um, we become, I know I myself become, um, enslaved to my opinions. And it isn't until I get some other perspective from some other wise believers or other people, or they have a different parenting style, or they have a different financial style, where all of a sudden I hear them, I'm like, whoa, I could take that on board, that could bring some change into my life. They live together.

This word together means, implies unity, proximity of physicality, proximity of emotions, that you cry when they cry, that you know what's happening and you're deeply concerned. We have a friend right now who's struggling with, um, some colon cancer. And somebody in our congregation is in that prayer chain with me and us, and they said, I'm learning how to finally pray because I, I'm just praying for this person regularly. They keep coming to my mind.

And I didn't realize how often you could pray. This has taught me how to pray. And I thought, that doesn't happen without proximity. Proximity of emotions. You know, when you're, when you're caring for other people and alongside in their emotions, you have less time to think about your own emotions all the time. And we need to think about our emotions.

We need to know where we are on the map. We need to understand when we're sad and we need empathy. But when we're thinking about ourselves constantly, that can become just a, a, a death spiral of constantly thinking about ourselves. It removes us out of ourselves. They were in proximity, in physicality. They were in proximity in emotions. They were in proximity spiritually.

They prayed with each other. They locked shields together. They knew that there was other people. I would say as I was out with people this week, and they began to tell me the things that they were doing. And in the church and moving and, and around the city, I began to get lighter. I began to feel my own spirit light. And as I thought, Hey, there's, you know, it felt like there's somebody else coming.

You ever had tug of war as a kid and you're playing tug of war and then like some other people keep joining in on the rope, and pretty soon you're losing. But the next thing you're starting to, to to win. In the tug of war, I felt the more time I spent with people, the more people kept coming to the rope, kept pulling, and all of a sudden life just got a lot easier. It's not always easy.

There'll be challenges and struggles, but they were together. What kind of church do we want? Do we want that kind of church? That kind of church is hard. It's hard in a different way. Being isolated is hard as well. Being isolated is super difficult. It's it you just alone in your own thoughts. And it's just, you know, I like my company, but I don't like my company that much.

I spend way too much time with myself. And eventually I get to the point where I'm like, dude, break out of this, you know, going down that rabbit trail of my own thoughts and emotions. So the first was a proximity in together, and then the next thing was they had everything in common. This implies that the early church was living as stewards rather than owners. That's a massive difference, right?

Between being a steward, a steward is like, Hey, I've been given this to like, this is what God has given me, and I'm gonna care for this thing and I'm gonna use it. It's God's and I'm gonna use it as God would, would have me use it, as opposed to like, what's mine? I I, I don't live as a steward often. I mean, I tithe, right? I have my like stewardship and, but he, you know, now God gets that percentage, right?

But then there's this other percentage where I'm like, now what's mine's mine now? Right? I think when you're living with a first century mindset in regard to caring for one another, there's no mind and no gods. It isn't like, you know, you get to a place and you're like, you know, God, we just, we're gonna cut it off right here, you know? And then the rest, you know, I got, I gotta get mine. I think it's completely a different, it's, it's constantly just ho holding on. And it's actually, it's incredibly freeing.

It's incredibly freeing to live like that. It's also somewhat terrifying on occasion. And I'm always, I don't know about you, but I'm always of the mindset that God just wants to like, to like, make things as hard as possible for me to like, to make my life just as miserable as possible. I remember when we was a kid, there was always this saying like, oh, I hope God doesn't send me to some island to be a missionary. I'm gonna, he's gonna send me away to be a missionary and live in a Hutt. You know?

And then I have missionary friends that God hasn't allowed them to go to the missions field. They're like, why won't you send me to the island? God, maybe you know, those people, they were, they, they were living as stewards. Imagine if we, I guess the question is, again, do you really wanna live like that? I mean, imagine if you got up in with your day and you're like, okay, God, what do you have for me today? What divine appointments?

I want to challenge you, by the way, to pray for divine appointments every day. God gave me so many divine appointments in Israel, and since in the morning I've been getting up and saying, God, gimme divine appointments. It'll start, you'll start feeling like you're living in an episode of Stranger Things. Like you will, you'll walk around a corner and you'll be, I've just been thinking about somebody. And you'll walk into 'em.

You'll be like, whoa, what? And your life will get really weird really quick. It'll get really filled with the spirit really quick. Just say, God, my time is yours. What if you did that in the morning? God, my time is yours. Every penny I have is yours. You want my house? You can have it. You have my car, you can have it Once again.

Do you really want to live like that? I mean, there's some incredible benefits, but it's also incredibly challenging. But ask God on a regular basis, God help me live as a steward today. I love, one of the things is that this started outside of the church, but where this really started was within the church. These people were deeply devoted to one another.

I don't think there's anything wrong with being deeply devoted. First of all, to like your family, your core. You know, that little, you know, platoon that is the center of government. And the center of the world is the family. The family is the center of all governance in society. It always has no matter how much governance wants to come against that.

But then secondly, for believers after family, I think we should probably as well, at least these believers did, if we wanna follow them, is prioritize one another within the church. Because there is a d there's a different culture that's happening there that you can harvest in order to live that in the other cultures that you're a part of.

These people didn't stop going to the market. They didn't stop having, you know, all of them businesses, they were still, they were in a very pagan culture. But the fuel to live in that pagan culture came from being committed to one another. So the question to you is, within your little, your little, you know, crew here at church, who are the people that you would say, I feel that they're committed to me.

Like these people have just shown that they're deeply committed to me, or to who am I deeply committed to? Granted, you can't know everybody in a church our size, but is there a group of people that you're like, Hey, how are you doing? You're regularly contacting them, making church community a priority again. Uh, that's a good word for me as well.

You can run a church and still be on the sidelines of its community. If you haven't been a pastor, lemme just say that again. You can run a church and still be on the sidelines if it's a community, especially when it gets to a certain size and no one expects you to show up anymore. I was invited to the, they did, somebody's people in the church did an impromptu prayer thing just, um, two nights ago on Friday night. And I got a text and it's like, Hey, do you want to come? It's a last minute thing.

And I think 30 people showed up and there was worship, and Olin was there doing worship, and people just showed, it was last minute potluck. The food was amazing. And the person who who started it said to me, Hey, I wasn't gonna invite you because I just thought you were too busy and I didn't want to ruin your Friday night. And I thought, you know, there was a time where I would've thought that way, like, thank you for not inviting me, and I'd rather be watching Miami Vice. No, that was in the 87. Thank you so much.

Um, but I, I was like, when they invited me and I went there, I was so, I was so elated to be there as the Koinonia and the fellowship, and people were hugging and praying, and I was like, that is so awesome. That is incredibly awesome. So they had this together, they were living together. They had everything in common, living as towards Now the final point is this, the next thing is radical generosity was a feature of the early church.

If you're a programmer, and I should have started programming, I was in seventh grade. They're like, you wanna take programming? And I was like, they had a little ball bouncing around the screen and it was like 1980, whatever. And I was like, no, that's not gonna go anywhere. Um, Ai, um, and there's a, there's a saying in the programming world is, oh, that's a feature.

It's not a bug. And what that means is, is sometimes you're playing a game, super Mario Brothers, and there'd be like something where you press the button and Mario jumps over something and you can like, skip like four levels. And it was never meant to be in the game. It was a mistake. It was a glitch in the system, it was a bug, right? It just, it happened and they just left it in there.

But then developers started putting these things called Easter, Easter eggs in game where they would actually create it, and it's called a feature. It's not a bug. They actually embedded it into the code where it was a feature. When you look at the early church radical generosity, it was a feature, not a bug. It wasn't just like, Hey, there's a need here. Oh, we had one, we had, you know, we, we encourage everyone with a good sermon, and the person we, you know, the nicest person in the church got sick.

And so everyone had a big campaign and we gave tons of money and it wasn't that great. Now we can go back to this, keeping all of our stuff and being selfish. Um, no, it was just, it was just a radical feature of the church. And you see that, go to verse 45, they sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Wow. They, they sold property and possessions to give to anyone that had need. Now, just so you know, if you go to the book of Thessalonians, you go to First Timothy, you go a little further on in acts, they had some boundaries to that. I mean, Paul says in Thessalonians, Hey, if you're not willing to work, like we're not just gonna give you money.

And like there was some, you know, younger women, they're like, Hey, I wanna get on the list of widows. And they're like, in acts, and they're like, no, I think it's Thessalonians. No, you should just go get a job and find a husband, and you're, whatever age you are, you don't need to be on the list of widows. So then they had these rules.

So it wasn't just like you had all these people just freeloading and giving. There was, there was wisdom. They wanted to make sure that people had godly character and they were helping people that were truly in need. But that's, that's a radical verse. And I do think it's descriptive more than it is prescriptive. It's not telling every single church to do this, nor do you see that commanded anywhere else in the New Testament.

It isn't like there's seven other places in the New Testament where it says you need to give everything away and live in a commune. It doesn't say that. So this is more descriptive, but I put radical generosity was a was not a bug, it was a feature of their church. And then radical generosity is giving so generously that it transforms lives and changes the status quo of toxic self-centeredness.

Few things will rip you from the clutches of toxic self-centeredness. Like gen radical generosity, radical generosity is giving so generously that it transforms lives and challenges the status quo of toxic self-centeredness. And I, I know that what radical generosity means, I think it means giving more than you want to at first.

I think if you're committed to radical generosity, you'll get to a point where you're just looking to give and you're just, I've met people like that. They're just like, here, everything. Yeah, I don't, whatever, whatever God says, if God tells me to do it, I'm giving it. And they're so overjoyed, they're like these joyous givers.

But when you're beginning to grow that as a feature and not a bug in your life, I think it means probably often for me, it's giving a little bit more than I want to give. Like there's a line and I kind of know what that line is, and it's stepping over that line and saying, I'm gonna move into that. Whether it be to help somebody with their medical bills, whether it be to, you know, to bless your church, whether it be to bless an organization, whatever it is, but it's just radical and it's not just finance.

I think our time is really important as well. I, I'm, I'm really selfish with my time. Just, I just am. I just, maybe you're not, I, but I I tend to like, you know, here and then there's, but there's not with all my time, but there's certain blocks, you know, and I think we need to have a Sabbath and there's times where boom, we do need to say, this is God's time and it is blocked off.

This is my family time. And it would take something, you know, sacrosanct in order to change that time for me to miss my family dinner would take something incredible. There'd have to be a huge need for that to happen. But the rest of it, I got a lot of leisure, you know, time, morning, whatever it is where it's kind of open and I kind of like it.

I don't know about you. I kind like me time. Anybody else like me time, I like me time. They were radically generous in their time. The listening ear, the being willing to, to hear, to care, um, for that as well. I got a Tim Keller quote, and he, and this is, it's pretty radical. Tim Keller just passed away. I really like Tim Keller. Um, he put Isn't, he got such a great quote. He's talking about the, the, the early church versus the pagan culture. And you're, if you're not aware, you're living in paganism again right now, our cult, our culture is ramp pagan, like absolutely pagan go study the roots of paganism.

And it's all happening now. I mean, it's just absolutely pagan the blurring of lines of, of, of, of roles and, and all types of, you can just go do the study on your own. But this is what Tim Keller said. The early church was strikingly, I love that word, different from the culture around it. In this way, pagan society was stingy with its money and promiscuous with its body.

A pagan gave nobody their money and practically gave everyone their body. And the Christians came along and gave practically nobody their body, and they gave practically everybody their money. That's so different. Imagine if you were at your coffee house and you overhear somebody behind the counter mention that they have a medical bill, they can't pay, and you're like, however you want, you just send a check. You just pay for it.

You get no credit for it or whatever, however you do it. Imagine if you just started looking for any, imagine if you prayed and said, God, give me the ability to, you know, give away a thousand dollars this month or whatever the thing is. Just pray for an opportunity to give money to be radically generous. Would you pray that there's some danger?

You feel like they're dangerous prayers? They're actually not. Like when you, when you pray prayers like that and you live like that, God just is like, let's go. He like shows up and gets into the game. You know what I mean? Not that he's not always in the game, but it's so, it's so radically different. Praying for divine appointments, praying to be radically generous, praying to, you know, that God would just give you all this ability to live in koinonia.

Two practical takeaways and we're done. One, live your life. Live your faith, excuse me, in ways that challenge the prevailing values of our modern culture. What does that mean? It means praying in public. I'm not saying being annoying in public. There was a group of church people in the nineties and I'd go out to dinner and they kept on showing up at, I don't know where they kept gonna, the restaurants I was at, and they would walk in and stand up on the tables and start preaching the gospel as people were having dinner, like yelling. And I was like, I don't think that's the right way, bro. You know what I mean? Like, I'm just trying to eat my pizza. I'm not saying, but being willing, maybe, maybe holding hands as a group or having a Bible study at a coffee house or wherever it is. But like praying in public, being willing to pray for somebody.

Like if somebody tells you they have a need, you just met 'em. Hey, do you mind if I pray for you? Praying for them in public, having your Bible in public? How about smiling counterculture? Try that. Walk from here to the code and say hello to every person that walks by you and see what happens. Who's that weirdo offer to serve?

Listen, listen. Without thinking about where you have to be next, listen, my wife says she does, has this thing where she just pictures roots in her feet and roots herself into the ground and just wants to be like a tree that can just soak in all the oxygen and everything, you know, um, that is, that they are saying. And just be there and listen to people deeply. Say the name of Jesus, like, use Jesus name in conversation, just however it comes up.

Just use the name of Jesus. Bless people. When I leave people, people, I always say, Hey, may you be blessed today. Hey, just be blessed the name of God today. And they'll be like, thank you so much. That's amazing. Final one is, is this, explore radical generosity. Explore ra. Like what is and and radical is different for you than it might be for somebody else. Be generous.

Be generous in your heart and your mind and your soul and your time. Just live a life, you know, 'cause that does, it's free. You're not on guard. The Bible says guard your heart. I'm not saying you don't have wisdom. I'm not saying don't be wise. Wisdom knows how to use generosity. Well explore that. Well, lemme just pray. If you would stand.