Speaker 1: Amen, amen.
Speaker 1: We are gonna be in John 11 today and, if you're new, we're in this series right now about emotions, called Stability, how to Emotionally Thrive in an Emotionally Unhealthy World.
Speaker 1: And you might be thinking, pastor Nate, why are we talking about emotions?
Speaker 1: The reason why we said we're talking about them is, first of all, we all have emotions.
Speaker 1: Right, If you have emotions in this room, raise up your hand.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's great.
Speaker 1: There's no AI creatures in the room.
Speaker 1: Okay, we all have emotions.
Speaker 1: Two, god talks about them.
Speaker 1: And three, most of us have no idea how to handle them and our world is not emotionally healthy at all.
Speaker 1: I mean, turn on the news for like five minutes and see what's happening in our world, or scroll through your social media feed for like five or ten minutes.
Speaker 1: It's like what is happening and we have said there's a better way, and the way is to be spiritually, emotionally healthy.
Speaker 1: Now, what we've done is we've described emotional maturity this way Emotional maturity is the ability to feel what you feel without judging yourself, but not allowing those emotions to control you.
Speaker 1: Now here's something that you know and I know Emotions are pretty powerful, aren't they?
Speaker 1: I mean, for example, take a sports fan.
Speaker 1: That, in theory is a pretty stable human being.
Speaker 1: Put them in a living room in front of a TV watching a football game that happens to be their favorite football team in the Super Bowl.
Speaker 1: Losing the Super Bowl again.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm sorry, this is my personal trauma.
Speaker 1: Um, thank you for receiving this.
Speaker 1: You see them lose again and it's amazing what emotions will just do to an otherwise semi-sane human being.
Speaker 1: They're powerful, right?
Speaker 1: Emotions are powerful.
Speaker 1: Go San Francisco 49ers.
Speaker 1: Come on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, come on, let's go.
Speaker 1: And while emotions are powerful and we know they can mislead us at times, we also know that emotions can be or maybe you don't know they can be powerful forces for good.
Speaker 1: So, for example, last year I went to the Grand Canyon for the first time.
Speaker 1: Who's ever been to the Grand Canyon?
Speaker 1: You guys ever been?
Speaker 1: Oh, a lot of y'all been there.
Speaker 1: So you guys know you go there.
Speaker 1: It was my first time going there and I was just like jaw dropped.
Speaker 1: I'm like is this even real?
Speaker 1: It was just so vast, it was huge.
Speaker 1: I'm like this is amazing.
Speaker 1: And what happened?
Speaker 1: Is it produced in me when I saw this?
Speaker 1: It produced this emotion in me of awe which led me to have worship come out of my heart of the greatness and majesty and the just, sheer amazingness of God.
Speaker 1: And what produced that was an emotion.
Speaker 1: An emotion produced that, and emotions are powerful because emotions allow us to connect with God and with other people in ways that nothing else can.
Speaker 1: We are made in the image of God, so because you're made in the image of God and I'm made in the image of God, we were made as relational beings, so we were made for community.
Speaker 1: Now, not only does God tell us this and scripture tells this, but also science tells us that we need people.
Speaker 1: In fact, loneliness, statistically, is as bad for you as smoking an entire pack of cigarettes every day.
Speaker 1: It is insane, the effects of loneliness day.
Speaker 1: It is insane, the effects of loneliness on people.
Speaker 1: What emotions allow us to do is they allow us to connect with people in deeper ways.
Speaker 1: And what we want to do this morning is we want to go to John 11 and look at a setting in Scripture that shows this.
Speaker 1: The setting was not a pretty setting.
Speaker 1: It was a death, a brief illness, an unexpected illness, a death that nobody saw coming.
Speaker 1: And Jesus walks on the scene and, as you can imagine and understandably, there are people that are crying and hurting and all over the place, and they're distraught and Jesus walks onto the scene and I want you guys to see what Jesus does.
Speaker 1: In John, chapter 11, verse number 20, we're going to pick it up.
Speaker 1: If you're ready for the word, would you say amen?
Speaker 1: It says as soon as Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him, but Mary remained seated in the house.
Speaker 1: We have two sisters, mary, martha.
Speaker 1: Martha said to Jesus Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died.
Speaker 1: If you've experienced the death of a loved one, you know the feelings that Martha was, feeling that her brother had just passed away.
Speaker 1: She's hurting and she goes to Jesus not in a way where she's rebuking Jesus or angry at Jesus, but just from a place of hurting, saying Lord, you were here Could have healed him.
Speaker 1: Yet verse 22, even now, I know that whatever you ask from God, god, the Father, god will give you.
Speaker 1: So that's her tone, her heart is you weren't here, but I know that whatever you ask the father, he can give it to you, he will give it to you.
Speaker 1: And she tells him.
Speaker 1: Jesus tells her in verse 23, your brother will rise again.
Speaker 1: Your brother will rise again.
Speaker 1: Martha didn't fully understand what Jesus was talking about, because Martha said this Martha said I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.
Speaker 1: Now, what Martha's referring to is a time that scripture teaches when all who are believers in Christ, who put their faith and trust in Jesus, are followers of him, all those who have died.
Speaker 1: When Jesus comes back, what's gonna happen is they are going to be resurrected.
Speaker 1: They're gonna be resurrected.
Speaker 1: That's what Martha's referring to.
Speaker 1: Martha says I know that's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: Jesus says to her he says I am the resurrection and the life.
Speaker 1: The one who what's that next word?
Speaker 1: The one who believes.
Speaker 1: That word just means trusts.
Speaker 1: So a lot of times, when we think of belief, we think of intellectual.
Speaker 1: This word is a heart trust.
Speaker 1: The one who trusts in me, even if he dies, will live.
Speaker 1: Hmm, what does this even mean?
Speaker 1: Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.
Speaker 1: Do you believe this?
Speaker 1: Huh?
Speaker 1: Well, jesus, like it's kind of kind of confusing.
Speaker 1: Well, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: This doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: This is is what Jesus is talking about here.
Speaker 1: He says if you believe in me, you will never die.
Speaker 1: He's talking about a spiritual death, a separation from God for all eternity, in a place the scripture calls hell.
Speaker 1: And Jesus says if you have believed, if you have trusted me, you will not go to hell.
Speaker 1: You will not experience separation from God for all eternity.
Speaker 1: And he says this.
Speaker 1: He says if you will, if you believe in me, if you trust in me.
Speaker 1: He doesn't say if you trust in your good works, your good works will be enough.
Speaker 1: He doesn't say if you trust in yourself and your intellect, then you'll be in heaven one day.
Speaker 1: You won't have to be in hell.
Speaker 1: He doesn't say if you trust in your baptism because you got baptized when you were a baby, you're good.
Speaker 1: No, there's one way trusting in me, trusting in Christ.
Speaker 1: And this is Martha's response.
Speaker 1: She says yes, lord, yes, lord.
Speaker 1: She told him.
Speaker 1: I what's that word?
Speaker 1: I believe, I trust that you are the Messiah.
Speaker 1: Messiah all that means is that Jesus was the anointed one.
Speaker 1: He was the one that was the forgiver of sin.
Speaker 1: In the Old Testament, all throughout the Old Testament it's pointing to a coming Messiah.
Speaker 1: So the Old Testament it's not just about coming Messiah.
Speaker 1: So the Old Testament it's not just about, it's not just a bunch of like random stories.
Speaker 1: It's like I can't believe this is in here.
Speaker 1: Here's the here's what the Old Testament was doing.
Speaker 1: It was pointing towards a Redeemer, pointing towards a Messiah that was going to come and be the fulfillment of prophecy that God made.
Speaker 1: So what she's saying by saying I believe, I trust that you're the Messiah, she's saying all that was written about by the Old Testament prophets, all that was prophesied about you are him and my trust is in you.
Speaker 1: You are the son of God who comes into the world.
Speaker 1: Having said this, she went back and called her sister, mary, saying in private the teacher's here and is calling for you.
Speaker 1: As soon as Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him.
Speaker 1: Jesus had not yet come into the village but was still in the place where Martha had met him the Jews who were with her.
Speaker 1: So obviously she's got friends that are mourning with her.
Speaker 1: She's got friends that are going through a hard time with her, her friends that are with her.
Speaker 1: They are in the house consoling her, saw Mary got up quickly and went out.
Speaker 1: They followed her Like Mary, where are you going?
Speaker 1: What did they suppose?
Speaker 1: They supposed that she was going to the tomb to cry there.
Speaker 1: As soon as Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and told him Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died here, my brother wouldn't have died.
Speaker 1: And when Jesus saw her crying and the Jews who had come with her crying, he was deeply.
Speaker 1: This is a really powerful word.
Speaker 1: This next word he was deeply what's the word?
Speaker 1: He was deeply moved.
Speaker 1: He was moved.
Speaker 1: You know what this word means.
Speaker 1: It's an intense feeling of compassion and concern.
Speaker 1: He saw this and he was filled with compassion in his spirit and he was troubled.
Speaker 1: Where have you put him?
Speaker 1: He asked Lord.
Speaker 1: They told him come and see.
Speaker 1: And then we get to verse 35, which is the shortest verse in the entire Bible.
Speaker 1: Little Bible trivia for you.
Speaker 1: It says Jesus.
Speaker 1: What's the next word?
Speaker 1: Jesus wept.
Speaker 1: Now, with this weeping here, this is not like I got a little teary-eyed.
Speaker 1: You know I got to cut this out a corner of my eye.
Speaker 1: I know some of you guys are.
Speaker 1: You know you get a little.
Speaker 1: Maybe you start crying and you're like I don't want anybody to see.
Speaker 1: It's not this.
Speaker 1: This is weeping.
Speaker 1: This is crying hard and you think about it.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting If you know the story.
Speaker 1: What is Jesus about to do to Lazarus?
Speaker 1: Somebody tell me he's about to resurrect Lazarus.
Speaker 1: Tommy, he's about to resurrect Lazarus.
Speaker 1: Jesus knows that Lazarus is about to be resurrected and he's going to do it.
Speaker 1: That's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: Then why does Jesus weep?
Speaker 1: Why would Jesus?
Speaker 1: You know what Jesus was doing.
Speaker 1: He was meeting those people, right where they were.
Speaker 1: Jesus could have walked on the scene.
Speaker 1: He could have said hey, don't worry everybody, I'm going to resurrect Lazarus from the dead, stop crying.
Speaker 1: He could have said just relax.
Speaker 1: He could have said hey, other people have it worse than you.
Speaker 1: Heard that one before.
Speaker 1: Jesus doesn't do that.
Speaker 1: He goes and he cries with them because he's compassionate.
Speaker 1: You know, a characteristic of Jesus is he is a compassionate person.
Speaker 1: Time and time again in Scripture, he goes to the marginalized, he goes to the outcasted, he goes to the forgotten about, he goes to the sick, he goes to the people that everybody cast away, and Jesus has compassion on those people.
Speaker 1: Jesus doesn't go to people and say when you get yourself together, then I'm going to come to you.
Speaker 1: When you figure things out, then I'm going to love you.
Speaker 1: When you get your act together, then I'm going to look at you a certain way.
Speaker 1: No, no.
Speaker 1: Jesus meets people with compassion right where they are.
Speaker 1: And it could be possible that you're in the room and you've been looking for somebody to be compassionate for you your entire life and you've tried relationship after relationship and you've gone to this person and been disappointed and been betrayed and been let down and you're looking for somebody that'll be compassionate.
Speaker 1: Can I say Jesus is compassionate, he is compassionate.
Speaker 1: And if our view of Jesus is anything less than one that is filled with compassion, then we have a distorted view of Jesus, Because Jesus is a compassionate person.
Speaker 1: Jesus is compassionate to all.
Speaker 1: And when the Jews see his compassion, look what they say in verse 36.
Speaker 1: The Jews said see how he loved them.
Speaker 1: How was his love so evident?
Speaker 1: He loved him.
Speaker 1: How was his love so evident?
Speaker 1: Because he had compassion and he met those people emotionally where they were.
Speaker 1: And here's what you have to see.
Speaker 1: You got to see this.
Speaker 1: Jesus empathized with the experiences of others.
Speaker 1: Jesus chose empathy here.
Speaker 1: Others.
Speaker 1: Jesus chose empathy here.
Speaker 1: The most powerful person to ever walk the face of the earth, he could have done anything he wanted.
Speaker 1: This is what he did in the moment.
Speaker 1: He didn't try to fix everything right away.
Speaker 1: He chose empathy.
Speaker 1: What is empathy?
Speaker 1: It's the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person.
Speaker 1: Empathy says I'm going to feel what you're feeling.
Speaker 1: Jesus doesn't walk on the scene and give them a cliche.
Speaker 1: He doesn't even walk on the scene.
Speaker 1: He didn't walk on the scene and give them a list of things to do.
Speaker 1: He doesn't give them a sermon.
Speaker 1: This is what he does.
Speaker 1: He gives them empathy.
Speaker 1: He the scene and give them a list of things to do.
Speaker 1: He doesn't give them a sermon.
Speaker 1: This is what he does.
Speaker 1: He gives them empathy.
Speaker 1: He initially empathized with them.
Speaker 1: He was living out what Romans 15 tells us to do, which is rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.
Speaker 1: One of the most powerful things we can do when somebody's going through a hard time is not to show up and try to give them the right word, but just to show up and be present for them.
Speaker 1: It's not to show up and say, okay, well, I was reading the bible this week, so let me give you this verse right now, because I know you need it.
Speaker 1: And even though they may need scriptural encouragement, saying the right thing at the wrong time is still the wrong thing to say now, because I know you need it.
Speaker 1: And even though they may need scriptural encouragement, saying the right thing at the wrong time is still the wrong thing to say, and sometimes what we have to do is we just have to show up and empathize and be present.
Speaker 1: Show up in somebody's text messages, send somebody a text message, say hey, just want you to know I'm here for you.
Speaker 1: I know you're going through something and I'm praying for you.
Speaker 1: Show up in somebody's messages, in somebody's Instagram or Facebook DMs, let somebody know, hey, hey, just so you know, I'm just here for you.
Speaker 1: If you love somebody, tell them that you love them, tell them that you care about them.
Speaker 1: This is what happened.
Speaker 1: Jesus empathized, he wept with them.
Speaker 1: And here's what concerns me.
Speaker 1: I think in us as a church community following Jesus in 2024, is everybody, all of us, are so busy, aren't we?
Speaker 1: And we can be so busy that we can miss out on opportunities to minister and love other people around us, or what can happen.
Speaker 1: Another thing that concerns me is sometimes I feel like people are trying to express themselves to us, giving us opportunities to love people and, whether intentionally or unintentionally, sometimes we can shut them down by trying to give them a quick fix or by trying to say a quick word or something like that, instead of just being present and loving people.
Speaker 1: Let me kind of give an example of this is when I grew up.
Speaker 1: On the way to school, every day we would listen to the radio.
Speaker 1: Anybody still listen to the radio?
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 1: This is awesome.
Speaker 1: If I was in youth group and I asked that question, they would say what is the radio?
Speaker 1: So we listened to the radio.
Speaker 1: Now this is back in the 90s.
Speaker 1: You guys remember the 90s Wonderful times.
Speaker 1: I remember I had my personal CD player in the 90s.
Speaker 1: I thought it was so cool and I had my pack of CDs.
Speaker 1: They had the little slits in them.
Speaker 1: You know, you put the CDs in there.
Speaker 1: You guys remember that.
Speaker 1: Okay, a couple of you guys do.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, this was great and we would listen to the radio.
Speaker 1: We would listen to.
Speaker 1: My mom would have us listen to talk radio every morning, because we all know that's exactly what I wanted to listen to.
Speaker 1: Going to school every day, we listened to a station I don't know if you've heard of it KFBK 1530.
Speaker 1: Is this it?
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, I don't know if it's still around.
Speaker 1: So it was on.
Speaker 1: It was obviously it was 1530.
Speaker 1: It was on the AM frequency AM right Now.
Speaker 1: If my mom wanted to listen to KFBK 1530, she had to be obviously on the AM frequency.
Speaker 1: If she was on the FM frequency she could have gone to every single channel on the FM frequency.
Speaker 1: She wouldn't have gotten to KFBK at that time because at that time KFBK was only on AM.
Speaker 1: So she wants to listen to this on AM.
Speaker 1: She could have started at 87.8 and gone all the way through.
Speaker 1: She would have never connected because she was on different frequencies.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we try to communicate and connect on the frequency of logic, when people are on the frequency of their emotion.
Speaker 1: And if you're trying to connect with somebody logically and they're on the frequency of emotions, you're never going to be able to connect with them.
Speaker 1: There will always be this gap.
Speaker 1: Pastor Nate, I told them, I said this.
Speaker 1: I said that why don't they get it?
Speaker 1: Because you're on the wrong frequency, bro.
Speaker 1: I said all of these things to them.
Speaker 1: Hey, you can say the right thing, but at the wrong time it's still the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: And sometimes there's a gap in our connection with people because we're on different frequencies.
Speaker 1: And what Jesus did here is Jesus met them emotionally, by weeping with them, by having empathy towards them, by having empathy towards these people that were in a hard time and you might say, man, pastor, nate, okay, empathy, I can do empathy sometimes with certain people.
Speaker 1: Okay, empathy, I can do empathy sometimes with certain people.
Speaker 1: But other times I can't do empathy because sometimes those people are like just hmm, can't do that Because they're out there, they're wrong.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing about empathy.
Speaker 1: You know, empathy is not about agreeing with someone's behavior, worldview, but meeting them where they are and seeking to understand them.
Speaker 1: Empathy is not me saying I agree with you about this.
Speaker 1: Empathy is just me saying I understand you and I want to meet you there.
Speaker 1: And what Jesus did is Jesus showed empathy.
Speaker 1: And empathy makes a difference in a world that's drawing lines of division and in a world that's picking sides and in a world that is so quick to point people out, empathy says hey, I'm going to meet you right where you are, no matter whether I agree with you or not, simply because I love you.
Speaker 1: And Jesus showed empathy.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting is for Jesus to show empathy, he had to know what these people were going through.
Speaker 1: Notice number two there are emotions that were communicated from Mary and Martha.
Speaker 1: So here in the text, verse 32, she tells him Lord, if you'd been here, my brother wouldn't have died.
Speaker 1: What Mary and Martha could have done is, when Jesus came to the scene, they could have said we're good, everything's fine.
Speaker 1: No, they weren't.
Speaker 1: They weren't.
Speaker 1: Lazarus just died.
Speaker 1: What they could have said?
Speaker 1: They could have said no, no, we're fine.
Speaker 1: No, they opened themselves up.
Speaker 1: Now here's the thing, and this whole part.
Speaker 1: I'm really just talking to myself here, okay.
Speaker 1: So y'all just listening to me, talk to myself.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we cannot share our burdens with other people or things we're going through, because we don't want to be a burden to other people.
Speaker 1: I don't want to burden you with my stuff.
Speaker 1: Or, for some of us, we were raised in a home where we had to look good, we had to have ourselves together.
Speaker 1: If there was any chink in the armor, it was a dishonor to the family name.
Speaker 1: We had to present an image.
Speaker 1: Some of us, we find our personal worth and identity in looking a certain way and always having ourselves together.
Speaker 1: So because of that, we can never open up to people and never say I'm going through something, because we all know that all of us go through something every now and again.
Speaker 1: But sometimes our identity is found in what we do and how we look and what we perform, rather than what Christ has done for us and really it's a pride thing so we can't open up to people has done for us and really it's a pride thing so we can't open up to people.
Speaker 1: But you know what the church is supposed to be.
Speaker 1: A healthy church is supposed to be a place where we are bearing each other's burdens.
Speaker 1: Galatians, chapter 6, verse 2 says this.
Speaker 1: It says carry one another's.
Speaker 1: What's that word?
Speaker 1: Carry one another's burden.
Speaker 1: What's a burden?
Speaker 1: Anything of excess.
Speaker 1: We're supposed to carry each other's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.
Speaker 1: And we can't be a church community that's just looking out for other people.
Speaker 1: But we have to be people that are open to sharing what's going on in our own heart sometimes.
Speaker 1: We have to be people that just say will you pray for me, will you pray for me?
Speaker 1: We have to be people that are humble enough sometimes after a service to go to a prayer.
Speaker 1: Next steps banners and just ask somebody to pray for us.
Speaker 1: Not a big deal.
Speaker 1: It's normal.
Speaker 1: We all need prayer and this is what families do.
Speaker 1: Families pray for each other because we are better than me.
Speaker 1: We are a spiritual family.
Speaker 1: Here, guys, we can't have this fake spiritual religious facade.
Speaker 1: We have to be open and say, hey, will you pray for me?
Speaker 1: Now here's the reality.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about this and I understand why some of y'all are like I don't do this because you've probably gotten burnt doing this before.
Speaker 1: You're like, nate, I tried that and that didn't work out very good.
Speaker 1: Or I asked somebody to pray for me and I was like hey, I just want to share this with you, will you please pray for me.
Speaker 1: And then that person went and told like 10 other people and you're like right, and can I say you don't want to open up to everybody?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 1: But I also want to lightly get in your business in the name of Jesus this morning that if you think you can't open up to anybody, you need to reject that thinking, because that's not healthy and that's not biblical.
Speaker 1: We have to learn to take steps in being a little bit vulnerable with people and asking people to pray for us.
Speaker 1: And asking people when things aren't going well and asking people when we're having challenges in our family because none of us have ourselves together.
Speaker 1: I was saying a few weeks ago, we have to get to know each other.
Speaker 1: We can get to know each other by showing up a little early for service, hanging out after service for a little bit, and not being like a ninja and jumping out of here in your car, you know, right after the final amen or whatever.
Speaker 1: Talked about trying to meet maybe one person, one new person, every week when you come here.
Speaker 1: There's a deal If you try to meet one new person when you come here every time every Sunday, you're probably going to meet some crazy people.
Speaker 1: Just going to say it, because we're a church, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Like some of us are a little, but you're going to meet some really great people too.
Speaker 1: But we have to be intentional.
Speaker 1: We have to be intentional to form relationships, to bear our burdens with each other.
Speaker 1: And here's what you're gonna find when you intentionally do this and take little steps in doing this, you might discover like, oh, I can actually talk to that person a little bit.
Speaker 1: You might ask somebody to pray for you, and then the next week they see they're like hey, by the way, I prayed for you.
Speaker 1: I just wanna see how it's going.
Speaker 1: It's like that person actually prayed for me this week, like that's huge.
Speaker 1: But what you have to do is you have to learn to open up a little bit.
Speaker 1: You have to learn to be a little vulnerable, just a teensy bit.
Speaker 1: You don't got to share all your life story and everything that happened when you were a kid.
Speaker 1: You don't got to share everything.
Speaker 1: It's just like, hey, will you pray for my sister because they're having surgery?
Speaker 1: Just something small.
Speaker 1: And here's what you're going to find Is being vulnerable gives people permission to be vulnerable.
Speaker 1: So when you open up to people, it gives people permission to open up to you, and a lot of times we think that we're the only people going through what we're going through.
Speaker 1: You're not, and when you open up, it allows other people to open up to you as well.
Speaker 1: It allows you to be known, it allows you to be encouraged, it allows you to receive love, it allows the church to be the church, and growth happens one step at a time, and for some of us, our step is to be a little vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Now I don't have time to talk all about this, but we see Mary one more time in Scripture, and that's in the next chapter, in John, chapter number 12.
Speaker 1: And this is where we see her.
Speaker 1: We see Mary, the brother of Lazarus, mary the sister of guys.
Speaker 1: This is service number two.
Speaker 1: Okay, y'all be praying for service number three.
Speaker 1: Okay, y'all know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Mary is washing.
Speaker 1: It's so fascinating.
Speaker 1: She's washing the feet of Jesus with perfume that was the equivalent of the cost of one year's wages.
Speaker 1: Why would she do that One?
Speaker 1: Jesus was her Lord.
Speaker 1: But the second reason why she did this is because there is this deep relationship she had with Jesus.
Speaker 1: She opened up to him, he empathized with her.
Speaker 1: They're like this and this community had been formed because of that.
Speaker 1: And now, in the next chapter, even the disciples of Jesus are like why is she doing this?
Speaker 1: What is going on?
Speaker 1: She ain't worried about that because her and Jesus are close.
Speaker 1: Why there's been this emotional connection?
Speaker 1: And you can have that too by opening up to people and by showing empathy to people.
Speaker 1: So three questions and we're done.
Speaker 1: Question one how are you trying to build community at FCC?
Speaker 1: Maybe you're in a group, that's awesome, that's great.
Speaker 1: You're in a group, that's a great way.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're saying, okay, the way I do it is.
Speaker 1: I'm going to meet one new person every time I come here.
Speaker 1: Awesome, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's something else, but are you intentionally, intentionally trying to build community or are you like a ninja?
Speaker 1: You come in, come out real quick once or twice a month, right, like, how are you trying to build community?
Speaker 1: Listen, community is not something that just happens by accident.
Speaker 1: You don't just find it, you have to form it and you have to forge it.
Speaker 1: Question number two who can you take a step to be a little vulnerable with?
Speaker 1: Who do you need to ask hey, can you pray for me?
Speaker 1: Who do you need to talk to just a little bit, just open up just a teensy bit.
Speaker 1: Who can that be?
Speaker 1: Take a step.
Speaker 1: Maybe you haven't done this for years.
Speaker 1: You're like I'm so uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Just a little step.
Speaker 1: Question three and this one can be an oh me for a lot of us have you tried to fix when you need to try to feel?
Speaker 1: Have you tried to fix because you say I just don't understand why they don't get it Empathy, put yourself in their shoes, put yourself where they're at.
Speaker 1: Put yourself in their shoes, put yourself where they're at, feel with them and see how that draws you together with them.
Speaker 1: Let's have a moment of prayer right now.