unknown: Thank you, Capacity.
SPEAKER_00: Good morning, Freedom Church.
SPEAKER_00: It is such a joy to be with all of you here today.
SPEAKER_00: My gosh, we got a full house here today.
SPEAKER_00: Good for you.
SPEAKER_00: Can we just shout to the Lord for that?
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: This is amazing.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I am really glad to be back here with you.
SPEAKER_00: And for those of you again, if you're here for the first time today, thank you for stretching and coming out.
SPEAKER_00: We're so glad that you're here.
SPEAKER_00: And for those of you who were here last Sunday on that amazing Sunday, and you were here for the first time and you liked what you saw and came back.
SPEAKER_00: Special kudos to all of you.
SPEAKER_00: We're in store for a good day today.
SPEAKER_00: And for those of you who don't know me, I have been around a little bit, but um a really long-term friend of your pastor.
SPEAKER_00: And I come from Tulsa, Oklahoma.
SPEAKER_00: That's the reason you're enjoying this great weather this weekend.
SPEAKER_00: Has this not been amazing?
SPEAKER_00: This is not what I envisioned Williston in the middle of April.
SPEAKER_00: And this is such a pleasant surprise.
SPEAKER_00: But I've been in ministry over 45 years now, and uh 35 of those years, I had the privilege of serving as a pastor in three great churches.
SPEAKER_00: 19 of them was as a senior pastor.
SPEAKER_00: And today I have the privilege of coming alongside church teams like that of yours here at Freedom Church, and just to be able to help them, be able to fulfill God's call to reach your city.
SPEAKER_00: And you guys are doing such a wonderful job of that right now.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just, I know it sounds a little fatherly, but I'm just so darn proud of what you're doing and what God is doing in you and through you right now.
SPEAKER_00: Gail and I, my wife, we were here a month ago for your grand opening and what a day that was.
SPEAKER_00: Just uh just to be able to celebrate all the hard work you have done this last year to enjoy your first permanent location, and it's beautiful, so thankful for it.
SPEAKER_00: And then we heard of the awesome weekend last weekend.
SPEAKER_00: Three great services, hundreds of people that were here.
SPEAKER_00: Just so exciting.
SPEAKER_00: Could we give God a hand for what he's doing in us and through us right now?
SPEAKER_00: So good, so much to be thankful for.
SPEAKER_00: I mentioned my wife Gail here.
SPEAKER_00: I just want her to stand.
SPEAKER_00: Would you let everybody see, honey?
SPEAKER_00: This is my wife.
SPEAKER_00: Gail and I have been married now over 47 years.
SPEAKER_00: That's a pretty big number, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: I said I've been living an assisted living my whole life.
SPEAKER_00: And uh I'm better when Gail's in the room, so uh you all should be thankful for that today.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm really grateful that she's here.
SPEAKER_00: You are in this wonderful series on miracles right now.
SPEAKER_00: Have you enjoyed it so far?
SPEAKER_00: Those of you who call Freedom Church your home?
SPEAKER_00: This has been wonderful, and I love the way that um it has been framed.
SPEAKER_00: For those of you who are just kind of jumping in right now, here's been the working definition that we've been using for a miracle.
SPEAKER_00: I think we all kind of have an idea of what that is, but here's our working definition: is that it is an unusual act of God that not only shows his power, but points us back to him.
SPEAKER_00: And that can be a lot of different things, but if you're like me, don't you normally think of a miracle as being something pretty spectacular?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, something that just really stands out.
SPEAKER_00: We got special effects, we got all kinds of stuff going off.
SPEAKER_00: It is really, really a big deal.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, there's good reason we think that.
SPEAKER_00: We have a lot of great examples from the Bible of that.
SPEAKER_00: I was born in the late, uh in the late 50s, and so when I was a young boy, there were a lot of classic, epic movies that came out.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm starting to realize my age right now because I mentioned it last time, and most of you didn't even know what the heck I was talking about, so we'll see on this one.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody remember that great classic by Cecil B.
SPEAKER_00: DeMille, The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston as Moses?
SPEAKER_00: How many of you have never seen that?
SPEAKER_00: Can I see your hands?
SPEAKER_00: What the heck?
SPEAKER_00: You guys are a deprived bunch here.
SPEAKER_00: All right, dude, I'm telling you, your assignment today is to find where you can stream that somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: It is gold.
SPEAKER_00: My kids were raised on that.
SPEAKER_00: We talk, we quote that movie every single week.
SPEAKER_00: It is absolutely amazing.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it was it it pretty much was cinematic history because the special effects they did there maybe don't rival what we have today with computer-generated stuff, but man, it was epic back in the day.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm telling you, one of my favorite scenes out of this was that story that we all know so well, whether we've grown up in church or not.
SPEAKER_00: But was when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt on that great celebratory day, and then they came up to the Red Sea.
SPEAKER_00: They got Pharaoh's army breathing down on them.
SPEAKER_00: And what are they gonna do?
SPEAKER_00: And God told Moses, stand on that rock, stretch out that staff.
SPEAKER_00: And when he did that, God split the Red Sea so that they could go across a dry land.
SPEAKER_00: Wow, what a sight that must have been! And I'm telling you what, it is burned into my brain right now, the way they did that on that movie.
SPEAKER_00: But I guarantee you that isn't a fraction of how spectacular it must have been when God showed up that day and delivered his people.
SPEAKER_00: And we wonder about that.
SPEAKER_00: We say, wow, I'd love to see something that's spectacular.
SPEAKER_00: How about Jesus' first miracle when he stepped into public ministry?
SPEAKER_00: The Bible tells us it was at a simple wedding.
SPEAKER_00: And at the reception in Cana of Galilee, they were having this wonderful reception and there was a mini crisis that showed up.
SPEAKER_00: They ran out of wine.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' mom, some pulling on his elbow, as moms tend to do, says, You gotta do something.
SPEAKER_00: He looks at her like, uh, all right.
SPEAKER_00: So he instructs everybody to fill up these huge jars filled with water.
SPEAKER_00: And when he told them to go back and to sample the water, spectacular wine had showed up.
SPEAKER_00: Now you guys know the wine process.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't just something you drop in a tablet and it changes color and stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And this wasn't Mogan Daven wine, this was the good stuff that showed up.
SPEAKER_00: This stuff takes a long time, years to ferment and to age.
SPEAKER_00: Happened like that.
SPEAKER_00: Pretty spectacular.
SPEAKER_00: How about wouldn't you have loved to have been there when Jesus raised someone from the dead, specifically Lazarus?
SPEAKER_00: That's another story that I've never really seen depicted in a great way, but boy, you can easily imagine it.
SPEAKER_00: He shows up and he finds out that his friend has been dead for four days.
SPEAKER_00: And in order to prove that he is who he said he was, he said, I am the resurrection and the life.
SPEAKER_00: He told his friends to roll the stone away from Lazarus' tomb.
SPEAKER_00: And when it was open, he said, Lazarus, come forth.
SPEAKER_00: And Lazarus was the first mummy who walked out of a tomb.
SPEAKER_00: Came out.
SPEAKER_00: What a sight that must have been.
SPEAKER_00: So these are the things that come to mind when we think of miracles, and they are miracles.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what I want you to understand from the beginning of our time today.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we can miss the miraculous because we're only looking for the spectacular.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to know that God is often working in ways in our lives that are much quieter and are much more relational, and yet they are just as powerful and just as significant.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, one of the primary ways that God moves within our lives and works within Him, the ways that He does miracles, is through friendships.
SPEAKER_00: It's odd.
SPEAKER_00: I'll bet you've never really stopped to think about that today, but that's what we're going to talk about.
SPEAKER_00: Miracles with friends.
SPEAKER_00: So as we begin today, let me just start with something that I think is very real in our world today.
SPEAKER_00: There is a quiet, widespread issue that is prevalent among us today.
SPEAKER_00: It's almost epidemic.
SPEAKER_00: You've probably noticed it, and it's not just out in our society, it is in our church as well.
SPEAKER_00: And it's isolation, a spiritual kind of isolation.
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: We live in a time where we are more connected than ever digitally.
SPEAKER_00: In between services today, I turned on my phone and I was checking and I was interacting with my brother and sister down in Colorado.
SPEAKER_00: And what an amazing thing that is, that we can be connected with anybody anywhere in the world, just that little box that we can hold in our hand, and yet, as connected as we are digitally, we are finding out that we are more isolated than ever relationally.
SPEAKER_00: It's an oxymoron to talk about social media.
SPEAKER_00: We seem to be so connected with all these friends, and yet nobody knows how to interact with each other anymore.
SPEAKER_00: We're very isolated among ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: A great example of this is you've probably seen it, maybe joked about it before.
SPEAKER_00: You can go out to eat someplace, and you notice that maybe here's a large table of family or friends sitting around here enjoying a great meal, talking for a while, but as soon as there's a lull in the conversation, everybody is heads down looking at their dumb phones.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, I'm guilty as charged.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the chief of sinners.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's an easy thing to do.
SPEAKER_00: This may be at your table as well.
SPEAKER_00: We've created a lot of ways that we can connect without actually connecting.
SPEAKER_00: And the other side of this is that a lot of us have a lot of wounds from our friendships, different relationships, maybe within our family.
SPEAKER_00: We've all been hurt before, we've all been let down, somebody has disappointed us.
SPEAKER_00: And the problem is that oftentimes that can happen within our families or even our spiritual family within the church.
SPEAKER_00: And that's particularly painful because there's a lot of trust that goes along with those relationships.
SPEAKER_00: What do we do in those things?
SPEAKER_00: Well, what most of us do is we're tempted to become defensive and to withdraw and to put up walls.
SPEAKER_00: And we think that we're going to get a little smarter.
SPEAKER_00: We're not going to put ourselves in a position to where that's going to happen again.
SPEAKER_00: All right, I've learned my lesson.
SPEAKER_00: We begin to tell ourselves, I'm okay on my own.
SPEAKER_00: I can handle this.
SPEAKER_00: We do it.
SPEAKER_00: That's just kind of the natural reaction.
SPEAKER_00: We bump up against something, we withdraw.
SPEAKER_00: Now, again, I'm going to show my age here today.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you will be okay on this, but uh uh child of the 70s, back in that day, there was a great singing duo called Simon and Garfunkel.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody remember Sound of Silence and some of those?
SPEAKER_00: They're all considered oldies now.
SPEAKER_00: But there was another great song by Simon and Garfunkel when I was when I was a young guy growing up that really I always enjoyed.
SPEAKER_00: I loved the melody and I love the meaning behind it.
SPEAKER_00: And it was called I Am a Rock, I Am an Island.
SPEAKER_00: And it was all about a guy who had just been burned time after time, romantically and so many other ways.
SPEAKER_00: And as a result, he made that decision like all of us have done before.
SPEAKER_00: I'm tired of going through this.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to do this anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And the last line of that song says it so sadly, and a rock feels no pain, and an island never cries.
SPEAKER_00: So that's what I'm gonna be.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna be a rock.
SPEAKER_00: I want to be an island.
SPEAKER_00: I'm tired of the hurt.
SPEAKER_00: I get it.
SPEAKER_00: It sounds again like such sage wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: It sounds like the intuitive thing to do.
SPEAKER_00: This is reasonable, it sounds so strong even and resilient, but I'm telling you, it is not healthy.
SPEAKER_00: It's not because rocks, maybe they don't feel pain, but they also don't love, they don't laugh, they don't grow.
SPEAKER_00: And the truth is, is that isolation, this withdrawing may protect you a little bit from some pain, but it's also going to prevent you from growth and becoming everything that God has in store for you and for me.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the Bible tells us in the New Testament book of Ephesians, chapter 2, verse 19, it says, you are members of God's family.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many of you actually have thought of that, about that before.
SPEAKER_00: When you're a part of a church like this, that you are part of a spiritual family.
SPEAKER_00: And if you were in relationship with God because you have accepted Jesus' sacrifice for yourself, and you are now united with him, then you have brothers and sisters in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You were saved personally, I'm so glad for that.
SPEAKER_00: I now have personal direct access to the creator, the God of this universe.
SPEAKER_00: I don't need a priest, a go-between, a mediator anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's a very personal individual thing.
SPEAKER_00: And yet at the same time, you were never meant to live your life spiritually alone.
SPEAKER_00: You're part of a family.
SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, God designed you to live in relationship, not just vertically with him, but horizontally with the rest of the family that you've been placed in.
SPEAKER_00: It's an amazing thing.
SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes we cheat ourselves and just say, it's God and me.
SPEAKER_00: That's all I need.
SPEAKER_00: I understand.
SPEAKER_00: Because the rest of this is messy, but this is what God has also intended for us to be able to grow together in this life together in relationship with one another.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just Him, it's with others.
SPEAKER_00: In Luke chapter 5, we have a powerful story here of a miracle that took place through friends.
SPEAKER_00: And I love this one.
SPEAKER_00: And if you have your Bible, you can open up to Luke chapter 5.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't, you can follow along on the screen up here.
SPEAKER_00: It's a little lengthy passage.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to read starting at verse 17 through 26.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a powerful story that I think you're probably familiar with, but I want you to listen to it with new ears today as we understand what's happening here.
SPEAKER_00: How is God showing up in this powerful way through some chosen friends?
SPEAKER_00: In verse 17, it says, One day he was teaching, meaning Jesus, and there were some Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting there who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And the power of the Lord was present for him to perform healing.
SPEAKER_00: And some men were carrying a man on a stretcher who was paralyzed, and they were trying to bring him in and to set him down in front of him.
SPEAKER_00: But when they did not find any way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and they led him down through the tiles with his stretcher into the middle of the crowd in front of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is a wild scene, guys.
SPEAKER_00: And seeing their faith, he said, Friend, your sins are forgiven you.
SPEAKER_00: Well the scribes and the Pharisees began thinking of the implications, saying, Who is this man who speaks blasphemies?
SPEAKER_00: Who can forgive sins except God alone?
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus, aware of their thoughts, responded and said to them, Why are you thinking this way in your hearts?
SPEAKER_00: Which is easier to say?
SPEAKER_00: Your sins are forgiven you, or get up and walk.
SPEAKER_00: But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he said to the man who was paralyzed, I say to you, get up, pick up your stretcher and go home.
SPEAKER_00: And immediately he got up before them, he picked up what had been lying, he had been lying on, and he went home glorifying God.
SPEAKER_00: And they were all struck with astonishment and began glorifying God.
SPEAKER_00: They were also filled with fear, saying, We have seen remarkable, miraculous, spectacular things today.
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty powerful.
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, a miracle had taken place because there is this element of a unique act.
SPEAKER_00: It was spectacular.
SPEAKER_00: This is not something that you see every day.
SPEAKER_00: God showed his power in a great way and pointed back to himself that he is a loving God, a healing God.
SPEAKER_00: But let's go back and see the story from the beginning, because here we've got a man who is paralyzed.
SPEAKER_00: We know that he's paralyzed at least from the waist down because he can't walk.
SPEAKER_00: He had to be carried everywhere, he couldn't care for himself, he's completely dependent on others.
SPEAKER_00: I've never been in that place before.
SPEAKER_00: I can only imagine what that would be like, what life would be like for someone like that.
SPEAKER_00: But as bad as that was, this story doesn't start with his condition.
SPEAKER_00: It starts with these friends.
SPEAKER_00: These were men who had heard the news about Jesus, and the word was spreading he was already doing some pretty miraculous things, and they believed that if they could just get their friend to him, he could do something for him.
SPEAKER_00: So they decided that's what we got to do.
SPEAKER_00: We got to go get our friend, and they did, and they carried him.
SPEAKER_00: They brought him on this stretcher, and when they get to the house where Jesus was teaching, they found that they were a little late.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, Jesus was in there and he was still teaching, but the place was packed.
SPEAKER_00: There was no room.
SPEAKER_00: They had no access to be able to get in here.
SPEAKER_00: Their plan was to get him in front of Jesus, and now they're wondering, what are we gonna do?
SPEAKER_00: We gotta come back on another day.
SPEAKER_00: Uh what does this mean?
SPEAKER_00: Guys, this isn't working right now.
SPEAKER_00: We gotta uh we is this just we tried?
SPEAKER_00: Uh is this the best that we can do?
SPEAKER_00: But that isn't what happened.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't stop.
SPEAKER_00: These guys were bold.
SPEAKER_00: They climbed up on the roof of a house that isn't theirs, and they brought the guy in the stretcher with him.
SPEAKER_00: There they start tearing the roof apart.
SPEAKER_00: This has gone from bold to outrageous.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, these guys are something.
SPEAKER_00: Now their roofs aren't like ours today where it was, you know, plywood decking and shingles and all of that, but it was a roof.
SPEAKER_00: It had tiles on it.
SPEAKER_00: These guys are tearing it up, and they're not just tearing up a small piece so that they can look down and get a better close-up look of Jesus, they're tearing off a whole section that's big enough that they can drop their friend on the stretcher down, and it ends up not going just into the room, but right smack in front of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: These are some friends.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to have some friends like this.
SPEAKER_00: These are not just friends of proximity or convenience or casual friends, fair weather friends.
SPEAKER_00: These are committed friends.
SPEAKER_00: They're out on a limb here, they're tearing up roofs and making themselves a spectacle.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure what they expected, but they were gonna go for it.
SPEAKER_00: And then comes one of the most powerful lines in this story.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says, When Jesus saw their faith, I want you to notice it didn't say when Jesus saw his faith, meaning the paralytic man.
SPEAKER_00: He said he saw their faith, the friends.
SPEAKER_00: Guys, sometimes God moves in your life because of the faith of somebody close to you.
SPEAKER_00: We need those kind of friends.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus says something, he also shocked everybody around, especially the religious leaders, because he said something that was very unexpected.
SPEAKER_00: You would have thought right out of the get-go, he would have said, Guys, this is amazing.
SPEAKER_00: You guys have certainly earned this healing today.
SPEAKER_00: Get up and walk.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what he said.
SPEAKER_00: When he first saw them, he told them, your the paralytic man, he said, your sins are forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: And that rocked everybody.
SPEAKER_00: But what's going on here?
SPEAKER_00: The reason why he said that is because, yes, even though later he says, get up and walk, and that was spectacular, the greatest miracle here was not the physical healing.
SPEAKER_00: The greatest miracle is what this man really needed, and it was spiritual restoration.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I'm going to prove to you that I am doing the greater thing, which was to forgive sins and bring you into relationship with God by doing something that seems spectacular to you, but don't miss the point.
SPEAKER_00: The bigger miracle is the one that we all need.
SPEAKER_00: It is a right relationship with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And in this story, God used friends to bring somebody to Jesus so that that miracle could happen.
SPEAKER_00: So powerful.
SPEAKER_00: That's the power of a friend.
SPEAKER_00: Let me ask you something right now.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that you've had friends similar like this before who have been there when you needed it.
SPEAKER_00: Can you re can you think of a time when a friend just showed up?
SPEAKER_00: Just the right time.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, it was a little bit uncanny.
SPEAKER_00: You're wondering, how did you know?
SPEAKER_00: They call you out of the blue when you needed it.
SPEAKER_00: They encourage you when you're in the depths of despair and discouragement.
SPEAKER_00: You're going, How did you know?
SPEAKER_00: You got a webcam in here or something?
SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
SPEAKER_00: How could this possibly happen?
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: And you feel God's touch at that time.
SPEAKER_00: When somebody steps in and they don't know it, and all they do is listen to you.
SPEAKER_00: When you just need someone to hear your heart, you just need to be heard.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they came alongside when you were going through a particularly difficult time.
SPEAKER_00: We call it a burden.
SPEAKER_00: And it's something that's more than what you feel like you can do on your own, carry on your own, and they're there to shoulder that load with you.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the Bible means in Galatians chapter 6, verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: It tells us to bear one another's burdens.
SPEAKER_00: Every single one of us needs that at some point in time.
SPEAKER_00: We've all needed somebody to come alongside us and to say, Let me help you out here.
SPEAKER_00: This is too much for just one person.
SPEAKER_00: And every one of us needs to be that for somebody else as well.
SPEAKER_00: It's a give and take.
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's moments in this life when God chooses to move in a special way, but sometimes he doesn't do it through a sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes he doesn't do it in a program or an outreach or something organized like that.
SPEAKER_00: He'll do it just through a person, just through a friend who is led by him.
SPEAKER_00: And in those moments, miracles can happen, and they do happen.
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you an example from my own life.
SPEAKER_00: It's something that I hadn't thought about until the last couple of weeks as I was preparing for my time with you.
SPEAKER_00: But it was a big deal.
SPEAKER_00: There was a time in my life that I was in a very dangerous interlude as a young man.
SPEAKER_00: It's over 50 years ago, right now.
SPEAKER_00: I was just 18 years old.
SPEAKER_00: My dad had been recently killed in a car accident, very sudden.
SPEAKER_00: And I had to quit college in the middle of my freshman year just to return home so that I could take care of my mom and my siblings.
SPEAKER_00: And not only was I dealing at that time with an extraordinary amount of grief, obviously, from this tragedy, but I was sad.
SPEAKER_00: I was, it was just the loss of this exciting experience of being able to, I just had a taste of it.
SPEAKER_00: I was the firstborn, getting to go to college for the first time and uh getting some independence with my friends.
SPEAKER_00: Life was just starting to open up, and there was a real loss of that.
SPEAKER_00: And on top of all of that was this feeling of being absolutely overwhelmed with this responsibility that was on me that I was not equipped for at 18.
SPEAKER_00: So I went back home, and sadly, you know, I'm thinking about all my friends who were two hours away at college.
SPEAKER_00: But there was a high school classmate who didn't go to college, and he chose to stay at home and he became the manager of a restaurant there, and he reached out to me.
SPEAKER_00: And we hadn't been that close.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't really run around in high school.
SPEAKER_00: We were a small town.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I knew everybody, but it's not like we were great buddies.
SPEAKER_00: But he knew of what I was going through, and he invited me to come to the restaurant where he was managing.
SPEAKER_00: And I went there several times, and I would just sit, I would have a drink, and as he was ringing out people, he would come back and talk and listen.
SPEAKER_00: And then he invited me to his home.
SPEAKER_00: And then he invited me to a small group of Jesus followers that were meeting regularly together.
SPEAKER_00: And in all that time over those weeks, he listened to me and he kept steering my attention back to a loving God who knows us, knows our feelings better than we know them ourselves, and he cares for us more than anybody else can.
SPEAKER_00: And what I didn't realize at that time is that even though that I had grown up in church, I really wasn't good at trusting God.
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't trusting him in the really hard moments.
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't really trusting him in these dark emotional times that I was experiencing then.
SPEAKER_00: I was not in a good place.
SPEAKER_00: And I could have made some really bad decisions.
SPEAKER_00: There were times that I tried to self-medicate.
SPEAKER_00: There were times that when I wasn't on the front and center out taking care of business, I just wanted to withdraw.
SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to disappear.
SPEAKER_00: And it was touch and go.
SPEAKER_00: And I can't imagine where I could have gone, but I was not on a good trajectory until he stepped in.
SPEAKER_00: But I began to see at that time that being a Jesus follower is so much more than just a Sunday morning thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's life.
SPEAKER_00: This was a relationship.
SPEAKER_00: And God used that friend of mine in a powerful way, nothing spectacular about it.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody would have noticed anything with two guys talking over a counter at a at a restaurant.
SPEAKER_00: But he saved me at that time from a life of bitterness, from a life of bad decisions, from a bad trajectory, and he gave me a hope of a better way in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm telling you, my wife and I thought about it here in the last couple of days.
SPEAKER_00: As a result of that, it may have made all the difference.
SPEAKER_00: I may not, had it not been for that friend, I may not have met Gail.
SPEAKER_00: I may not have chosen to go into ministry.
SPEAKER_00: I may not have the family that I so enjoy today.
SPEAKER_00: It was all because of a friend.
SPEAKER_00: That's what real friends do.
SPEAKER_00: And that's our challenge is to be that kind of friend because that's what we're talking about today.
SPEAKER_00: God working through people, working through friends in miraculous, maybe not spectacular ways, but it is miraculous, just the same.
SPEAKER_00: You know, something else that happens almost throughout the New Testament, every time that we see that a person came in contact with the real Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: When a person encounters Jesus, they don't keep it to themselves, do they?
SPEAKER_00: The reaction was always the same.
SPEAKER_00: It's like it was just uncontrollable.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's anything different than, you know, you discover a great deal someplace at your favorite store, or you stumble onto a new great restaurant, or you go to a concert, or you hear a great song, or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, my gosh, have you been here?
SPEAKER_00: Did you see this?
SPEAKER_00: Did you see that movie that just came out?
SPEAKER_00: It's automatic in us.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we do.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what happened in the New Testament as well.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in the Gospel of John, the very first chapter, we are told how Andrew first met Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And it says in verse 40, one of the two who heard John speak followed him.
SPEAKER_00: Was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother.
SPEAKER_00: He first found his own brother Simon, and he said to him, We have found the Messiah, which translated means Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And he brought him to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So it's just what we were describing here.
SPEAKER_00: What's the first thing that Andrew does?
SPEAKER_00: He runs off and he finds his brother.
SPEAKER_00: And he doesn't just tell him about him, he brings him back to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's what happens with us.
SPEAKER_00: When you have a real encounter with Jesus, the natural response of this is, I got to bring somebody to him.
SPEAKER_00: I got to go tell somebody, you got to hear about this guy.
SPEAKER_00: You got to see him, you got to experience him.
SPEAKER_00: This is too good.
SPEAKER_00: And this happens most naturally through relationships.
SPEAKER_00: You don't run out and just start grabbing people you don't know.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's kind of the image sometimes of what we think is supposed to be in evangelism or something.
SPEAKER_00: We're just running down the streets and grabbing people we don't know.
SPEAKER_00: That is not normally what happens.
SPEAKER_00: It happens through friendships.
SPEAKER_00: It happens through the people that you already know, the people that you already care about.
SPEAKER_00: He ran first to his brother.
SPEAKER_00: We see this time and time again.
SPEAKER_00: So here's what I want you to know today: your friendships are not accidental, they are assignments.
SPEAKER_00: They have been given to you.
SPEAKER_00: People have been placed in your life by God Almighty on purpose.
SPEAKER_00: They are more precious than what you realize.
SPEAKER_00: That is the power of relationship.
SPEAKER_00: There's a word in the New Testament, in the original Greek language in which the New Testament was first penned.
SPEAKER_00: It was in Greek.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the word koinonia.
SPEAKER_00: Why do you want to know that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it has a pretty special meaning to it.
SPEAKER_00: We translate it a number of ways in our English Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it shows up as fellowship.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it comes across as partnership.
SPEAKER_00: But however it's used, it always reflects this really deep connection.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't something just a surface-level, casual kind of acquaintance.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I know that guy.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're talking here about a shared life, that there is a deep connection.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the truth that I want you to know today is that you will never experience everything that God has in store for you in isolation.
SPEAKER_00: You just won't.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're choosing to stay in that place, you are being ripped off.
SPEAKER_00: And you have a choice today, you can change that right now.
SPEAKER_00: Because growth happens in community.
SPEAKER_00: Healing happens in relationship, as we saw today.
SPEAKER_00: Strength comes from connection.
SPEAKER_00: That's what God intended life to be here in this spiritual family.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, I get it.
SPEAKER_00: It requires effort, it requires intentionality.
SPEAKER_00: It means you're going to have to take a chance.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, you're going to have to deal with your relational PTSD, of the fear of getting rejected or hurt or let down.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to have to get past all of those past hurts, but I'm telling you, it's worth it.
SPEAKER_00: Because you don't want to be a rock.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to be an island.
SPEAKER_00: It's a false trap.
SPEAKER_00: So what do we do with all of this?
SPEAKER_00: Let me make this really practical for you today.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, if you don't have the kind of strong Christian friendship that we're talking about today, good news is you can take a step.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that far off, but you need to get connected.
SPEAKER_00: And you need to take responsibility for it yourself and not just wait for something to happen to you.
SPEAKER_00: Join a group.
SPEAKER_00: Get involved here.
SPEAKER_00: Join a serve team.
SPEAKER_00: Sign up for the next event.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care what it is.
SPEAKER_00: Get connected.
SPEAKER_00: Don't wait for it to happen.
SPEAKER_00: Be intentional and God will meet you.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, if you already have a friend like what we're talking about, man, don't take that for granted.
SPEAKER_00: Strengthen that relationship.
SPEAKER_00: You need to keep nurturing those relationships.
SPEAKER_00: And what that means is reach out to somebody this week, somebody you haven't connected with with a while, even if it's just a call or texting them or go get coffee or something, but go first.
SPEAKER_00: Take the initiation.
SPEAKER_00: Because that relationship has mutual benefits.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just good for the other person, it's going to be good for you as well.
SPEAKER_00: So strengthen those relationships that you already have.
SPEAKER_00: And then thirdly, this is a big one.
SPEAKER_00: Who in your life needs an encounter with Jesus right now?
SPEAKER_00: Those relationships, they are strategic.
SPEAKER_00: They're not accidents, they are assignments for you.
SPEAKER_00: These people, they don't need to debate.
SPEAKER_00: You're not asked to debate or to wow them with having all the answers.
SPEAKER_00: You certainly don't want to get in an argument.
SPEAKER_00: They just need to know the love of God in a very real way.
SPEAKER_00: So you stay connected, you show interest, you invest in those relationships, you build trust, and then when the time is right, you bring them.
SPEAKER_00: You bring them to a place where they can experience the love of Jesus in a life-changing way, just as it happened with many of you.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're talking about today.
SPEAKER_00: Miracles with friends.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they're dramatic, sometimes they're quiet, sometimes they're a little bit under the radar, but very often they happen through people.
SPEAKER_00: They happen through these friendships, through somebody who just cares enough to show up, to carry, to bring you.
SPEAKER_00: This week, as you leave here, I want you to set your expectancy a little higher and to expect God to show up in ways that perhaps you hadn't been thinking about.
SPEAKER_00: What might God do this week?
SPEAKER_00: What might God do for you?
SPEAKER_00: What might God do through you to somebody else?
SPEAKER_00: Look for it.
SPEAKER_00: Be a part of it.
SPEAKER_00: Don't miss the miraculous by only looking for spectacular.
SPEAKER_00: It is all around.
SPEAKER_00: Resist that pull of the trap of the isolation and keep nurturing those relationships that you can carry people to Jesus because God can do some pretty incredible, life-changing, eternal miracles just through friends.
SPEAKER_00: So let me close with this.
SPEAKER_00: There's a good chance that some of you are here today and that you're feeling maybe a little bit isolated.
SPEAKER_00: And you've been feeling that for a while.
SPEAKER_00: You've been doing life on your own.
SPEAKER_00: It's tough, but it's all you know.
SPEAKER_00: It's scary to think about doing something different.
SPEAKER_00: And so every day just keeps looking the same.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to do that anymore.
SPEAKER_00: You do have an option before you.
SPEAKER_00: You do have a choice.
SPEAKER_00: And there's also some of you here today, and what you need most is not what's foremost on your mind.
SPEAKER_00: You may be overwhelmed by a physical thing that you're dealing with, it may be financial, it may be a relational pressure.
SPEAKER_00: Those things are real.
SPEAKER_00: God cares about those things.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to intervene in your life and be a solution to that.
SPEAKER_00: But just like this man that we saw who was brought in by his friends on the stretcher, what he thought he needed most wasn't really the main thing.
SPEAKER_00: What he needed was spiritual restoration.
SPEAKER_00: He needed a relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: He needed forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: And he needed Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That can be available for you today.
SPEAKER_00: It can happen in this moment.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together right now.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we are so grateful today for your boundless love towards us.
SPEAKER_00: You loved us enough as we celebrated last week, that you sent Jesus into the earth to die for our sins, to redeem us from our spiritual isolation, that we would have a way to come back to you.
SPEAKER_00: We couldn't do it in ourselves, but you set a friend, friend like no other, who did what we could not do.
SPEAKER_00: He died on the cross, paid the price for our sins, and you prove to all the world that he is who he said he is, the Son of God by raising him from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for that.
SPEAKER_00: We've learned today, Lord, to value those that you have placed in our lives in a greater way.
SPEAKER_00: As much as we're grateful for Jesus, thank you for those that you have placed in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We see them now as more than just casual acquaintances, accidents, coincidences.
SPEAKER_00: They're strategic assignments that you have placed in our lives for our benefit and for theirs.
SPEAKER_00: So, Lord, open up our eyes this week.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to see you at work within us, to see you do something powerful, and yet maybe in a very quiet way.
SPEAKER_00: We're grateful for that.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like for you just to stay in just an attitude of prayer right now, just for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Heads bowed, your eyes closed.
SPEAKER_00: If you're that person that I was talking about a moment ago and you've realized that maybe you never even thought about it that way, but you are just doing the best that you can on your own.
SPEAKER_00: You've hoped that there would be some help, but you didn't know where to go.
SPEAKER_00: And now you're faced with the reality that you never really have entered into a relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the good news is he's aggressing towards you.
SPEAKER_00: He's already done everything that he needs to do to make a way for you back to him.
SPEAKER_00: Why would you not accept that?
SPEAKER_00: Why would you choose to keep doing things your way?
SPEAKER_00: You've proven what you can do.
SPEAKER_00: God wants you to come home.
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to do that right now, I'm going to lead you in a prayer where you can make that simple confession of faith to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And when you do, something miraculous will happen.
SPEAKER_00: Probably won't be spectacular, but it'll happen.
SPEAKER_00: And it is the greatest miracle that can.
SPEAKER_00: You'll become brand new in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to lead you in a prayer right now for you to pray out loud with me.
SPEAKER_00: And I, church, I don't want them to feel ice, you know, uh on display or intimidated in any way.
SPEAKER_00: So let's do this together.
SPEAKER_00: As I lead you in the prayer, let's all pray this prayer together again.
SPEAKER_00: And for those of you who are praying it for the first time, expect Jesus to come into your life.
SPEAKER_00: So let's pray this together right now.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, thank you for sending Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I believe in my heart that he is the Son of God, He is who He says He is.
SPEAKER_00: He died on the cross in my place for the forgiveness of my sins.
SPEAKER_00: You proved He was the Christ by raising him from the dead for me, giving me the hope of resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, I believe this in my heart.
SPEAKER_00: Forgive me of my sins.
SPEAKER_00: Come into my life, make me brand new from the inside out, wipe away the past, give me the hope of future, a hope based on you, the hope of heaven, to walk in the power of the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for what you have done for me today.
SPEAKER_00: Help me to find good friends, to fulfill your purpose in my life.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Can we give a hand to those who prayed that prayer for the very first time today?