Let’s Get Real

Transcript

Welcome And A Childhood Church Skit

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Thank you so much, and good morning, everyone. Let's try again. Good morning, everyone. All right. It's a real honor for us to be here. And my wife Doreen is here with me. Raise your hand, Doreen. And I was introduced already as the parents of Josiah and Anna, who were both singing here this morning. And I just thought I'd tell a quick little funny story as a parent, you know. We pastored for over 40 years in the same church, and of course, our kids grew up in church. And I remember a moment, I was out with when we were very small as a church, I would preach, and my wife was a worship leader, and our kids did everything else that needed to be done. So when our kids were very little, we had an old home and we redid a family room out of a porch. We made a family room out of a porch, and it had two steps down to the family room. And our kids would every now and then, you know, play there and do stuff. And one day we saw, and I'm guessing they were maybe eight and six or seven and five, something like that, age-wise. I saw Josiah and Anna, and they were pretending they're doing church. And so up on the second step, that was evidently the podium. And so Anna was up there and she was singing away, she's leading worship. And Josiah's back there with his arms crossed like this, waiting to preach. And uh so Anna's up there, she's singing, and Josiah goes, Okay, Anna, that's enough. You're done. She said, No, not done. More songs. So she would do another song, and he'd be like, Okay, you're done. And she said, No, one more song. I'm not done. And so she went on and did the song. And I was watching through the kitchen, and I saw Anna flying horizontally through the wall through the family room, landed on the couch against the wall, and Josiah promptly stepped up and said, I said you're done, now you're done. I'm gonna preach. And I thought, you know, uh that that was a pretty fun way to think about that. But uh anyway, uh it's great for us to be here, and uh I want to just say a thank you to uh whoever it was, uh Pastor Cameron and whoever who invited us. It's always an honor to come and preach. Our church back in Boston, as well as some other churches that I'm associated with, have been and will continue to pray for Pastor Mac, his family, and all of you. So please know that there's a lot of people supporting your pastor and your church. And like that song talked about, there's a lot of arms helping hold people up, and that's really a beautiful thing. And so this morning, it is uh my privilege to speak to you along with your series, Maturing in the Mess. And I'm gonna be talking out of 1 Corinthians chapter 4. And the message I want to share with you this morning, I've entitled Let's Get Real. Let's get real. Now, before we get into it, I'm going to ask a little of your indulgence because, you know, I want to share a little bit. I'm a guest speaker, and I don't imagine you have a whole bunch of them. So I want to share a little bit about my life and where I came from, but I want to indulge that just a little more than normal because I want to use it as an on-ramp to what Paul was talking about when he talked to the Corinthians. So I hope you'll listen with uh a little grace to my introduction this morning.

Growing Up Small And Finding Jesus

SPEAKER_00 3:23

I want to talk about the small world that I grew up in. Cameron talked about us being pastoring longer than he's alive. And I was born in 1960, and I grew up in a tiny little town called Millador, Wisconsin. Will you raise your hand if you've ever heard of it? You've heard of it. Look at that. All right, Millador, Wisconsin, it had a little sign outside that said population, 289 people. That was the city. We grew up in the country on a dairy farm, then kind of an old broken-down dairy farm. And uh it was a very small world for me. All 12 years of my school were at the same school in Auburn Dale, Wisconsin, from first grade through 12th grade. Um, once or twice a week as a little boy, we made it to town, the town being Millador. Otherwise, we're stuck on the farm. And the way I got to town was usually on the fender of my dad's tractor as he was driving some grain into the feed mill to get it ground. Now, today they'd arrest him for, you know, wrecking a child's life by letting him, but we that's how we did things. And and riding on that tractor, going to town, hoping I could talk him into buying a treat at Mansell's grocery store, the little kind of a general store. And then once a month, we'd go to the city. And the city was maybe Stevens Point or Wisconsin Rapids. That was big city stuff for us. Once a month we'd go there. And of course, everybody in our neighborhood knew everybody else, and they knew everything about everybody else, too. It was a very small community. Now, some of you, you're gonna have to be older. I don't know if any of you here can relate to this, but first of all, that was back in the day where we had phones on the wall with wires connected to them. Some of you do know that. But it was old enough that when I was a kid, we had a party line. Who knows what a party line is? Look at that. All right, I feel not quite so old today. And so that meant that there were more than one people on the same line, more than one family. So if you picked up the phone to call somebody, you might just get Mrs. Richardson talking to Mrs. Hedsey about you. So you had a, you know, and so if you were careful, you could pick up the receiver real carefully. And as you were talking, you'd hear a little faint click, and you think somebody's listening in, you know, and and then you'd have to be careful what you talk about. But that was my small world. It was a small and a confining world. Everyone knew everything about everyone. In 1978, I had a real Jesus moment. I went through the whole hippie, rebellious end of the 60s thing and got involved in drugs and problems and trouble. I was looking for the answers and meaning in life, and all I found was frustration and anger. And then my mom in 1978 invited her teenage, rebellious, drug-crazed son to watch a Billy Graham TV show on our little black and white TV. You had to adjust the rabbit ear antenna to get it just right. And we watched that thing, and I remember listening to that, and I realized Jesus is what I'm looking for. And I went back in our old farm bedroom and I prayed. I prayed every prayer I'd been taught as a kid. And for the first time, even though I went to church every day, every Sunday, Jesus became real in me. And he became so real that by the next morning, all my drugs, all the bad stuff, all the anger, all the hate, all of it was gone. And it was a turning point that set me on the path I'm on today. Even my mom, my dad had passed away before that, and all of my family asked me the next morning, What's different about you? I didn't know what to say other than Jesus. And from that moment till today, I've done my best to make Jesus known to everyone I could. From my family to our little Millador community, Millador, pretty small town. They didn't appreciate it, but they had the only thing going on was a softball game every week at the local softball diamond. All the old farmers would sit up on the bleachers, drink beer, and watch softball. And here would come little Paul with his Jesus tracks. And I'd go up and down on those bleachers and hand them out. Say, Do you know about Jesus? He changed my life. And they look, we know you, you live right. What? It was really awkward, really awkward. But I did my best to make Jesus known. Over the last 50-some years, from that moment, I tried my best to grow my small world. And I think some of you have done the same. By God's amazing grace, in 1985, we started a church in Mauston, Wisconsin. And uh, you know, starting a church, you know, today we use words like we planted churches, you know, we just risked everything. We had $400 to our name, moved to Mauston, had to rent a house, had to find a place to start a church, had 20 people to start with, but we did it. And by God's amazing grace, that church is growing today to be a great influence in our whole area, now pastored by one of our other sons that you probably haven't met. In 1982, I married my beautiful wife, and we begin a family. And I have a picture up here of our family presently, and uh we have four married children and 16 grandchildren, and uh there they are. Although they look a little bored right there, a couple of them, they're all faithful in church, and it's it's the joy and crown of our life to know that our kids and grandkids are following Jesus after all these years. We have ministered through these years, and that is when it's gonna sound like it. I'm bragging and I'm not. I have a point in sharing this. I've ministered since that point in about seven different nations. We have preached, I know this because I had to do some research for a degree I was working on. I preached just under 7,000 sermons in my life. Uh we have pastored a church that has grown to influence our community in a great way. I've studied, I've received degrees, our church has grown, our kids have grown, our family has grown. And then last year in October, I retired our position at our church after 40 years of being there. And I kind of felt like, you know, Lord, I really worked at bringing you to others and growing my world. And I'm talking about let's get real, because in a moment we're gonna read Paul's challenge to these Corinthians. So I retired and I'm trying to make sense of my whole world as it was and as it is now. And then I was, I had to go to a funeral. And the funeral was for a cousin of mine. The cousin was 92. On my father's side, there were only three remaining relatives, me and two other cousins. One of them died, so there were two still alive. My brothers are gone, everybody, everybody's gone. My mom and dad, uncles, grandpa, everybody's gone, except the three of us. My one of them died. So I went there to the funeral, and I just came from being really busy, you know, retiring at church, my world's spinning with all the big things happening in my life. And I go there and I meet my one surviving cousin whom I hadn't seen for years. And he recognized me. I hadn't seen him for a long time, recognized me, and he's 85, and he comes walking up to me, and he looks at me and he goes, Oh, it's Polly. And I thought, Paulie. And it just took me all the way back to my dad's tractor and riding on the fender because the only person that ever called me Paulie was my dad when I was about this big. It's kind of like how you young people feel when you go to somewhere and say, Oh boy, you're getting big. I remember when you were this. It was one of those moments, and it made me think, Paulie, the little boy on the tractor in a tiny small world. Or Pastor Paul, who planted the church and who's preached all over, and who's got hundreds of people who call you pastor and want to talk to you and feel like you have things to offer. Who am I? Am I Polly? Or am I Pastor Paul? And I think that identity struggle was some of what the Corinthians were going through, and I think a lot of us go through that.

When Success Becomes A Mask

SPEAKER_00 11:56

I think we try so hard to grow our small world into success that we can very easily hide behind what we've created and forget who we really are. And the danger of that is not that God's angry at us for trying to succeed, but that we hide our real self from a real Jesus because we're trying to make us something more. And all he wants is the real us, the real you in your small world.

1 Corinthians 4 And Real Faith

SPEAKER_00 12:35

So this morning I'd like to read our passage. And the passage is 1 Corinthians chapter 4, and we're going to start reading in verse 6. I'm going to read right through a bunch of it, so I hope you'll follow along. I'll just highlight a few words as we read this passage, Paul writing to the Corinthians, verse 6. Now, brothers and sisters, I've applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, do not go beyond, note those words. Do not go beyond what is written. Then you will not be puffed up, two more words to remember, in being a follower of one of us over against the other. For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not? Already, he said, you have all you want. Already you've become rich. He's becoming sarcastic here, if you can't discern it. You've begun to reign, and that without us. How I wish you really had begun to reign so that we might also reign with you. For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like those condemned to die in the arena. We've been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to human beings. We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ. We are weak, he said, but you are strong. You are honored, we are dishonored. He was warning them, you've created a persona for yourself that's not real. To this very hour, he said, we go hungry and thirsty, we're in rags, we're brutally treated, we're homeless, we work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless. When we are persecuted, we endure it. When we are slandered, we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world, right up to this moment. Why is he saying this? He's trying to get them to get real. Because they had inflated who they were. They were wise, they were rich, they were masters of their world. They had all this beautiful success in their Christian testimony. And Paul said, Who are you? You're wearing a costume. You're not real. Verse 14, he said, I am writing this not to shame you, but to warn you. The reason we want to take some care to be real is that we have so much to offer. You have so much to offer people. Your own families, your neighbors, your friends, those who you don't even like that much, people you work with. You have so much to offer them. But if we're just putting on a costume, they're not going to see what you have to offer. Even if you had, Paul said, even if you had 10,000 guardians, another word for that is teachers. Even if you had all the great teachers, because by this time they were thinking that maybe Paul's not the man for us anymore. He's not quite quite what we want. If you had 10,000 guardians, teachers, later he calls them super apostles. If you had all of those people in Christ, you don't have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus, I've become your father through the gospel. Paul said, Don't you remember? I'm the one who introduced you to Jesus. You wouldn't even know who he is. But when I came, I was fleeing from trouble. I often got beat up. I got thrown in jail. People didn't like me, but I told you about Jesus, and that's why you're a Christian. He said, Please don't forget that. Therefore, I urge you to imitate me. For this reason, I've sent Timothy, my son, whom I love, who's faithful in the Lord. He will remind me of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere and in every church. The desire to grow our worlds, especially the influence of the gospel, is not wrong. Can somebody say, Amen? It's not wrong to say, hey, we want to bring Jesus to our world. We want our churches to grow. We want our influence to grow. I would like to be a success in my life and not a failure. I want to have a good family. I want to have a good career. We want to retire well. We want to do all these things. Those are great goals. However, we never want to hide in that success who we really are. And when we feel like we have to go to God and present him with our list of successes, we're actually putting on a costume. And he's looking at who's behind that mask? Who's the real you? Is that Polly? Or is it Pastor Paul talking to me today? The Corinthians were creating an inflated persona for themselves, drawing on the personalities of who they were following. Remember, they were, I belong to Paul, I'm following Peter, I'm Apollos. Well, I've got Jesus. They were creating for them a costume to wear. And Paul said, that's just fleshly, that's carnal. That's not growing up Christian, that's baby Christian stuff. They had divisions because of what costume they were wearing, who they were following. And it happens in today's church as well. All the time. We have today in our world superchurches, megachurches. Call them what you will. Nothing wrong with growing your influence. But we have super churches. We have super pastors. We have super musicians. You've got some great musicians here. Um we have super administrators, great programs, phenomenal facilities, and enormous amounts of wealth and generosity. We have all of these things, and that's great. But we can't hide our real lives behind those things. Our real lives need to relate to Jesus as a real person with your faults, your failings, your fears, your victories, your success, all of it.

Stop Watching Others Lift The Weights

SPEAKER_00 18:59

And the reason why it's easy to hide is this little example I want to share. Um I'm sure some of you have, maybe most of you, who's ever watched the uh the competition called the World's Strongest Man? Would you just raise your hand if you is it kind of fun? I mean, those guys push jets down the room, you know, they pull jets and they lift enormous amounts of weight. And uh, you know, I watched, I watched one YouTube video of, I think it was Brian Shaw at the time, years ago. He was the world's strongest man for a number of years. And it showed him working out in a gym with like two or three other people, you know, and and I'm I'm not the really the gym guy. I I try to be fit. Some most often I fail, but I try. And so I watched this Brian Shaw guy, and he's working out at this gym, and you know, they're putting more weight on that bar that I could even not roll it, much less pick it up, you know, and they're doing all this stuff, and I thought for a second, how cool would it be if you could go and work out at the gym with the world's strongest man? How cool would that be? And you know how cool it would be. I know how cool it would be. You'd be watching, you'd be like, man, look at that. Look at that. He'd picking up 800 pounds like it's nothing. And you'd go home, and your shirt would be tighter on top, your arms would be bigger, and you'd be like, I just worked out with the world's strongest man. But you wouldn't be even one iota stronger. Because you didn't lift any weights yourself. You just watched the strong people work out. And our churches in our country are full of a lot of people watching the world's greatest pastor and feeling like, man, I really got this Jesus thing down. We go to this church, you should see our pastor. Great. But have you lifted any of your own ways? Have you done any of your own workout? Have you done your own praying? You read the Bible for yourself. Are you real about your relationship? Or are you counting on someone else? Divisions so often happen in churches today because of our pride, because of who we associate with versus who we really are. And the Christian world sometimes looks more like a costume party than having real unity. And if you ever really want to see that, you should come to some pastors' meetings. I've been to hundreds of pastors' meetings, and I can, you know, sometimes it's just pretty tough because you walk in the room and go, Hi, I'm Paul. Oh, hi, I'm Jim. Where are you from? Oh, I'm from Boston. Well, I'm from XYZ town, and and we have this many people in our church, and we're running this many people in Sunday school, and we're building a new building, and I have six degrees, and I speak four languages, and you just go on and on. And it's like, okay, is there a real person in there somewhere? Or are you just, you know, Mr. Superpastor? But it's not just pastors. I meet people all the time. Oh, are you a Christian? Oh, yes, I'm a Christian. I go to the finest church in the city. Our pastor has two doctorates, and he's a great preacher. And you should see our worship team. Josiah and Anna do a great job. They do do a great job. And anyway, but you should see who we have, and that's great. But it's not a substitute for lifting your own weights, being your own, having your own faith. And uh sometimes it takes a little encouragement to make this happen. Um, years ago, when our church was quite small, we had just built a little building. It's probably the size smaller than some of your houses, but it was all we could do at the time. And we were trying to fill it with people, and in a little bitty community, you know, there weren't a lot of people to pick from. And in one week, I got a call from two people that had important positions in our community. They were the school superintendent and the district attorney for the county. And they both called and said, Well, I'd like to meet with you. We're considering coming to your church. And I thought, okay, well, saddle up. Come on over, we'll meet. And uh they came and met and they talked about church, and and I I they both loved church and they both decided, okay, we're gonna come to church. And I could just kind of sense, but this is just me, you know. I anyway, this doesn't have to be anybody else, but it was me. And I looked at him and I said, you know, before you leave, I'm really glad that you want to be a part of church. But let me just help you see something important here. Oh, what's that, Pastor? And I said, Well, both of you hold important positions in our community, and that's great. And I respect that. I said, just want to let you know that when you walk through those doors on Sunday morning, you as well as everyone else are stepping up into a way higher position than district attorney or school superintendent. You're stepping up to the position of a child of God, and so is the poorest single mom that comes to this church. And so is the most mentally handicapped young man that's gonna walk down this aisle. And you should just know that I will honor those people equally or even more. Don't expect me to hold your hand and usher you down into the front because you're important. If you see me giving that kind of importance, I'm gonna give it to the least of these. And if you don't like that, there's plenty of other churches for you to go to. And I thought, I thought, well, we'll see what happens. But they all came. And then we baptized, one of them wanted to give his life to Christ, and he wanted to get baptized. And so, you know, now we have nicer systems, but our baptism back then had a small building, we didn't have a baptismal, so we took the truck and went on down to Farm and Fleet or Fleet Farm. And we got ourselves a cow watering tank. And we filled that thing with ice cold water right out of the tap, and we baptized hundreds of souls in that thing before we got something better. And the district attorney one day said, I'm gonna get baptized, and he looked at that tank and he goes, He's suit and tie every day. He said, Is that what I'm gonna get baptized in? And I said, Oh, yes, it is. And the part of you that right now is recoiling, fighting, and thinking you're gonna lose your dignity, it's the very part that Jesus wants to die in that water. And he went, You're right, Pastor, you're right. I wanna.

Unity Without Status Or Costumes

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Our unity in Christ is not based on our common interest, our success, our race, our political persuasion, or anything else. Our unity in Christ is based on the fact that regardless of where or who I am, I'm a sinner that needs a savior, and so are you. And that unifies us. The Corinthians needed to see that. I got three quick ways today that we can help bring Jesus into our real world by being

Get Real About Jesus In Life

SPEAKER_00 25:45

real. Three quick things. Hope you're ready. Number one, how can we bring Jesus to our real and sometimes small worlds? Let's get real about Jesus. Everyone say, would you do it for me? Say, get real about Jesus. Let's get real about Jesus. You know, I know some of you here are probably Star Wars people. I never really was a Star Wars, you know, all those old movies, now they're remaking new ones. Never really, anyway, but but I re I'll never forget going to the theater and I saw the very first opening line, stars in the background, and these words come across. Some of you remember it. It said, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Now they put that lead line in there because they're hoping you can leave reality for a moment and go into the make-believe world of Star Wars. A lot of us pick up our Bible, and that's what we see a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Who are these people? What kind of things? I mean, donkeys that talked and splitting the Red Sea and crazy stuff that happened in this Bible. How does that? We need to get real about Jesus and realize his world was a lot smaller than we think. I'll try to be quick. Jesus spent most of his time in a little province called Galilee. I looked it up. I've been to Israel seven times, leading tours, and some of you have been to Israel too, I'm sure. And if you've been there, Galilee, the province of Jesus, is about the size of a larger Wisconsin county. Maybe Jefferson County. That's Galilee. Jesus spent 90-some percent of his time there. That's where he lived, that's where he did everything. Three times a year he went to Jerusalem for the different feasts. He was a practicing Jew. He went there and maybe a couple more trips. But that was it. Galilee. Eleven of his twelve apostles were from that little spot in the world. Only Judas came from Judah, Judea, the bigger, the other province. Of Jesus' 12 apostles, four of them were two sets of brothers that knew each other. James and John, Peter and Andrew. They were buddies. They all had a fishing business on Galilee. Get this James, John, Matthew, Peter, Andrew, and Philip all lived in one of two tiny little towns, Capernaum and Besseda. These towns were not towns like Waukesha and you know something else. They were towns like Exonia, Sullivan. There you go. We got somebody here. They were tiny little towns. I've been there. You can see Besseda from Capernaum, you can walk from Capernaum down to the shore of Galilee. These were tiny little towns. All these people knew each other just like me growing up in Melador. Everybody knew everybody. And what made Jesus so unique is that he didn't go to the rabbi schools in Jerusalem and pick his followers. He went to the boys in the small world and picked them. And said, Hey, want to follow me? If you do, I'm going to make you a fisher of men. James and John, sure. Andrew said, I'll go, I'm going to go get my brother. It was a small world. By the way, you can fit the geographical Israel of Jesus' day and today seven times inside of the state of Wisconsin. So it's a very small world. It wasn't a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Jesus had real things just like we do. Mary Magdalene, people preach whole sermons about her, like she was a prostitute and she had this terrible life, and now she's. Mary Magdalene, when the last time we were in Israel, we saw on the shore they were excavating a whole archaeological dig site. And they said, Would you like to know what's on this site? And we said, Yeah, what is it? And they said, Well, we've discovered here on the shore a fish processing plant, the only one on the whole shore of Galilee, and it's over 2,000 years old. And we looked down after we excavated it, we found a little corner room that must have been an office, and we found a stamp for a seal that had the name Mary from Magdala with her husband's name with it. And they said, we now believe that Mary Magdalene and her husband owned the only fish processing plant on the whole shore of Galilee, which meant Peter, James, John, Andrew, and all the other people there knew her, which also meant she had a lot of money. And you remember how it said Mary Magdalene supported Jesus out of her own means? Why am I saying that? It's a small world. Which just means Jesus wants to be a part of your small world. You don't have to achieve some degree to get to know Jesus. You don't have to be financially successful to really understand who he is. He's real and he wants to be a part of your real small world. Maybe your world is made up of diapers if you've got little kids and chasing toddlers around the room or cleaning houses. Maybe it's made up of busy office stuff. My son manages and is the leader of a whole secure treatment facility, and he said, Dad, sometimes I feel like going to work is like Normandy Landing. I just got to get ready for the thing to be open. I'm going to get shot at all day, and then I got to get back on and hope I survive the day. Maybe that's your day. Or maybe you're older and retired, and your day is like my mom said, I'm just waiting for the phone to ring that somebody may call. She says, Sometimes I call myself and hang up and hope it'll ring just so I think somebody knows I'm here. Whatever your world is, Jesus wants to be a part of it.

Get Real About The Bible

SPEAKER_00 31:42

Number two, let's get real about the Bible. Let's get real about the Bible. One of the most important things, I've teached it, I've taught a number of Bible classes through the years, and I always teach this one. One of the most important things that you can learn as a Christian is what the Bible is and what the Bible is not. The Bible is, we call it, the Word of God, and that's true. The word there used is Lagos, the Lagos of God, the Word of God. Not a word, but the whole story about God. What the Bible is, is a complete and accurate record of God and his dealing with man from the beginning to the end, preserved, flawless for us. That's the Bible. A complete, perfect record of God dealing with man. What the Bible is, is everything we need to know about God. But get ready, it is not everything there is to know about God. There are things the Bible doesn't address that God is. That's okay. We've got everything we need to know. The Bible is not primarily a rule book for us to keep. It contains rules and we need to keep them. But it's not just a rule book, right? Wouldn't you agree? It's not just pick up and oh, yeah, section number 25, page number 13, paragraph two. It's not primarily a rule book. It has rules. The Bible is not primarily a scientific account of all creation and history. It contains science, it contains history, but it also contains poetry and stories. And some of the stories are of people that did the stupidest things. Right? I mean, isn't that in the Bible? You read about people's ridiculous failures and you think, how'd you get in the Bible acting like that? You know, and that the Bible isn't just science and history. The Bible is not a pure dictation from God. It is God's word and he sanctions it. But if you just pick up your Bible and flip through the pages and put your finger down, it's not, you're not necessarily going to get a dictation from God where He's, you might, you might have Job talking foolishly to his friends, which he did for about 16 chapters. So learn what the Bible is and what it isn't. And here's my favorite treat the Bible like a mirror. If you hold it at just the right angle, you can see your father's face in heaven. But if you turn it at the wrong angle, all you're gonna see is your ugly self. Or your beautiful self, and you'll be puffed up with pride. Hold the Bible at just the right angle. I see Jesus on every page. That's what the Bible should be. Let's get real about the Bible.

Get Real About Ministry And Pressure

SPEAKER_00 34:43

And lastly, let's get real about ministering to others. What church and ministry really is. Now, when I say that, I'm speaking to myself. I'm not coming here just, let me just unload on you guys. I I pastored for a long time. When Paul in the Bible made his strongest appeals to people, he never cited how successful we were. He always talked about his failures and his weaknesses. Do you remember that? When we are weak, he is strong. He talked about his persecution. Three times I was beaten with rods, five times I was whipped by the Jewish people. I've been imprisoned, I've been shipwrecked, I've been hungry, I'm naked, I go from trouble to trouble. And by the way, would you like to join church? Paul made his strongest appeals by sharing his real life struggles. That was ministry to him. Today, we do it differently. Like the Corinthians, we try to polish ministry to an unreal degree. It's okay to, I mean, you know, it's okay for me to comb my hair and take a shower before I come up here. So you know, it's all of that's fine. But when we try to polish ministry to an unreal degree, we hide our faults and struggles because we're afraid if anybody sees them, they won't want to listen to us in order to get rid of respect we think we need. Paul didn't do that, Peter didn't do that. The Corinthians were doing it, and Paul was telling them, let's get real. When we try to polish ministry to that degree, here's what happens: it often creates an unbearable pressure on pastors and leaders that leads to burnout and sometimes even moral failures. I've listened to the tragic stories of large church pastors that ended up in a moral failure. I've heard some of them say that the pressure of this ministry was so much that looking back, they said, I feel like I engaged in this bad behavior because I couldn't take it anymore and I needed to get out. That's awful. People weren't designed to be superstar pastors, leaders. We're all just human beings. We're not designed to be celebrity worship leaders or whatever. We're just Pauli telling you about Jesus and hoping you can get a hold of him like I did. Willing to share my failures and my struggles, willing, you willing to say, hey, want to come along and follow Jesus? If he can deal with a screw up like me, he can deal with you. That's what ministry should look more like. It's when others can see God working in our real lives that he begins to work in them.

Real-Life Stories That Make Faith Click

SPEAKER_00 37:37

I had two stories and I'll close. Our worship leader at our church in Boston now is uh used to be Josiah, and now you have him. We have a man by the name of Dan, and he's also very talented, very good man. And we're there's just something about good worship leaders, you know, they play and they sing, and you go, how do you do that? Man, that's awesome, you know. And we got a lot of people in church. And so Dan's got that, and then Dan also, he's very young, I think he's mid-20s. He just there had just had their first child. And so Dan also uh leads our small group uh called for young adults. And I've been at a couple of them, and you know, he might go from singing to 600 people on Sunday to having 15 people in their small group. So he's in the small group, and he said, There's this new couple that started to come, new young married couple, and he said, the wife really liked church. The guy was kind of like, hmm, I'll come. She wants to go, I'll go to church. And he said, he really struggled because he was coming to church and he was like, I just don't get it. I mean, you guys sing like God's really there. You love church, you talk about God all the time. And I come to church, it's cool, I like it, it's great, but it's just not clicking for me. And Dan said he came to the small group and he looked at me and he said, Dan, I want to share a story. What's that? He said, Well, my wife really liked church. This is I told you. I couldn't get it. And he said, I listened to the sermons, they were great. I loved your worship, it was awesome. I liked the programs, the church was great, super friendly people, everything was good. But then you asked me if I could help you paint your cabinets, because they just got an old house that they needed to redo. So he said, I came over and I'm helping you paint your cabinets, and I watched you, and I saw how you loved your wife, and I saw how you interacted with your baby, and you helped, and and I saw how you handled things when you spilled paint and you didn't freak out. And I saw, and he said, When I watched you in your real world, it all clicked for me. And now he's going to get baptized and follow Jesus. It didn't happen by listening to the sermons, it happened by watching his real world. Jesus was often asked by people, how do I inherit eternal life? He was asked spiritual questions. What do I need to do to be right with God? You know what Jesus never did? I'm glad you asked. Come back Thursday because I'm going to give you a little insight. On Thursday, we're going to be on this mountainside. There's going to be hungry people, and there won't be anything to eat. I'm going to do something awesome with fish and loaves, and you are going to love it. You just need to be at that Thursday meeting. Did Jesus ever say that? He said, follow me. Come where I am. Live with me. Oh, Lord, I'll follow you. Oh, great. Well, come to the big meeting. No. You want to follow me? Great. Just one little problem. You got some greed going on. I think you need to sell everything and give it away. Then let's do it. Let's get real, is what he was saying. Let's not just join a big movement. Let's have Jesus in our real world. Last story. Our real testimony, our real lives impact people greatly. There was a Sunday night when we just started our church. We didn't have a building. We didn't have any money. It was every week praying for literal weekly bread. And we had maybe 25, 30 people come into church, maybe 40. And a young man had started to come and he was troubled. He was in and out of trouble. He was doing drugs and he was causing trouble. He had been in a youth reform school, etc. But now he's coming to church. Name was Tony. And he was so excited. And Tony would be there for about four weeks and then he'd be gone for three weeks. And when he was gone, he was gone. It was bad. I mean, he was in trouble. And he was gone for three weeks. And one Sunday night, it's 11 o'clock or later. My wife and I are just going to go to bed. The phone rings. Hey, Paul. Yeah. It's Tony. He's bawling on the phone. Can I come over right now? And I thought, oh. It's 11 o'clock at night. Okay, come on over. So Tony comes rushing over. Comes in our house, 11:30, eyes red with tears. He's crying. He said, You can't believe what just happened. He said, God just really talked to me. And I said, Well, cool, what happened? He said, I don't want to say. Well, you gotta say. He woke me up. You gotta say. And he said, Well, I shouldn't have been doing this, but I was I was doing drugs again. And I went to this dealer who was selling drugs, and and his name was Rock. And he said, and I and I went and talked to Rock and he said, I have had one of these moments where I'm telling the drug dealer, I really shouldn't be doing this. I'm starting to go to church now, you know. I know God has something better for me. I don't know what I'm doing here, and blah, blah, blah. And he said, Rock, the drug dealer, just put up his hand and said, Stop. He goes, Stop what? He said, Don't talk to me about religion. He said, I'm gonna tell you about religion. He said, Really? And he said, Yeah. All kinds of years ago, when I was in high school, there was this crazy kid that used to do all these drugs, and he found Jesus. But he didn't do what you did. His whole life turned around. And he started preaching in his high school and preaching everywhere. And now I think he's preaching in a church. And Tony said, Well, who is this guy? He said, It's Paul Schurik. And Tony said, Oh no, my God, you've got my number. That's my pastor, and your drug dealer is telling me to go back to my pastor. And he said, That man saw Jesus change his life and it affected me forever. I want to tell you that if you let Jesus affect your real world, he's gonna affect all the real worlds of people around you. And there are people that need him. Our world in Juno County is a little different than this county, not that much, but a little. You have a lot more people. I think your your standard of living probably a little higher, maybe. I don't know. But I'll tell you what doesn't change the hearts of people, your neighbors, your family, your friends. They all need Jesus just like we all do, and they will find him when you let him be a part of your real

Prayer And Sending Blessing

SPEAKER_00 44:00

world. Would you bow your head and pray with me as we close here today? Lord, we thank you for this day, and I thank you for these dear people that are here. And I thank you for all the people that they know, their friends, their relatives, their family. I pray that you give them grace. I pray that you help us to re examine our world and to be honest with you about who we are, so that you can come into the real us and change us. I pray that you help them and bless each one for the rest of this week in Jesus' name. And we all said, Amen. God bless you, you may be dismissed.