Unsexy Church
Unsexy Church
Season 3 Episode 03: FBC Tampa Measures - How do you measure success
Have you ever wondered how to truly measure spiritual growth? Church attendance numbers, building projects, and budget goals, Podcast talking about different approach by examining what actually matters in our walk with Christ.
Listen now and join us what truly matters in our spiritual lives. Have questions about spiritual growth or church life? Submit them through the link on your podcast platform for future episodes!
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Unsexy Church Podcast. Glad you joined us today for episode three in season three. Thirty-three, thirty-three.
Speaker 2:How are you?
Speaker 1:doing today, Pastor Bob.
Speaker 2:I'm good A little dragging this afternoon as we are recording this podcast but this will crank me up and get me going.
Speaker 1:I have not had my afternoon coffee yet, so I'm a little draggy myself.
Speaker 2:You don't have morning and afternoon coffee, you just have coffee throughout the day.
Speaker 1:I just have a coffee drip an IV coffee drip yes, I used to be able to do that All day long man.
Speaker 2:I could use some right now Jordan has some kind of black liquid in his cup over here, Jordan?
Speaker 1:what in the?
Speaker 2:world is that.
Speaker 3:Can you tell us yeah, yeah, this is Mass Gainer.
Speaker 1:Mass.
Speaker 3:Gainer, it's like protein shake to try to get some weight on me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can see why you would do that. It's not working. It's not working.
Speaker 1:It's not working. It doesn't taste. It looks like it tastes great.
Speaker 3:Yes, it tastes as it looks, yeah.
Speaker 2:I've gotten that out of my drain and my plumbing before.
Speaker 3:Yeah it doesn't yeah, looks like Okay, yeah, in the morning I take it with water because I don't care, and then at night I need something, so I take it with milk Okay. And that it's better at night.
Speaker 1:So is this a morning drink or an afternoon drink that we have here, right? Now, and that's a morning yeah, so you've been working on this all day.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like from this morning until now. It's not good, I don't even think you have half of it done. Yeah, there's other ways to gain mass.
Speaker 3:Chug it right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, come talk to me.
Speaker 2:I can tell you about gaining mass.
Speaker 1:I've got no problem with that, I need to go the other way. Hey, today just want to again we're glad that you joined us for the Unsexy Church podcast. We're not going to talk about mass gaining shakes today. We're not going to talk about gross things, we're going to talk about something else. But before that, I don't have a fun fact, but I think I do have a joke.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, yeah this always scares me, Jordan.
Speaker 1:I think it's kind of it was funny in the moment.
Speaker 1:I don't know, if it'll be funny now, but before we talk about that, I just want to remind people that we've got a lot of great things going on here at FBC Tampa, and so make sure you check out our website. I know that we've had two or three questions already sent in, so if you have a question for us at the Unsexy Church podcast, make sure you send those in. I think you can click on a link there on your podcast platform. Ask us anything that you would like, and we'll try to answer those in an episode coming up here in the future.
Speaker 2:But the joke, I'm on the edge of my seat. I can't wait. This is more of a.
Speaker 1:Uh, my funny bone is ready. This is more of a fun story than it is a joke okay, even um, but you'll see where I'm going with this will we, I think you will.
Speaker 1:Um, we just got back. We had our our first uh episode in this. Uh in this season was about about short-term mission trips. We just got back from South Africa a month or so ago and on our way back we got rerouted and delayed in Paris. We did so a few of us got to run out of the airport and visit the city of Paris, run around, and one of the gentlemen with us was Miles Mano. Love Miles Mano. He will talk to anybody. He was my roommate the whole time and my plane mate pretty much the whole time, and so I got to know him a little bit better than I knew him before. But he asked a Frenchman and Jordan, you'll be able to attest to this because you're French.
Speaker 1:Nope, but you'll know where I'm coming from here, he got to talk to a Frenchman and he asked again he can talk to anyone, he's got great questions. And he asked this Frenchman, how would you pronounce my name in French? And he said well, what's your name? He said it's Miles and the guy just looked at him. He said kilomiters, that's a long setup for that.
Speaker 2:I thought that was hilarious. Come back for more.
Speaker 3:I'm here all week right Unfortunately.
Speaker 2:Can you do the conversion kilometers to miles?
Speaker 1:I cannot do the conversion. It's like 0.6, I think, yeah, there's a formula, but I don't know what it is.
Speaker 2:Miles in the States or in France is 0.6.
Speaker 1:0.6, that's right. Kilometers, Kilometers, kilometers, kilometers, that's right. How would you say it? How would a Frenchman say it?
Speaker 3:A Frenchman, I don't know but a Belgian Kilometers.
Speaker 2:We would probably say kilometers, kilometers.
Speaker 1:So anyway, Speaking of units of measure, see how I did that.
Speaker 2:Smooth man Really.
Speaker 1:Today we're going to be talking about our measurements at FBC Tampa.
Speaker 2:I'm 6'3". Is that the measurements we're talking about?
Speaker 1:No, that's not what we're talking about right 32 inch waist. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Those days, for me, are long gone. I haven't seen 32 in a while. You said our measurements, I meant our measures, right.
Speaker 1:Last week, last episode, we talked about our vision and we're going to do a little series about our measures. If you've been coming to FBC Tampa for a little bit, you'll see across the slide across our screens. At the very beginning of our rolling announcements there's a series of what we call measures. And when we say measures, what are we talking about? Pastor Bob, what would you think that we're talking about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're really trying to figure out a metric for success, right? So how do you?
Speaker 1:measure how much money we're bringing in. How many people are in the pews?
Speaker 2:What is the right metric for the church's success?
Speaker 1:That would be what the sexy churches are looking for, but the unsexy churches.
Speaker 2:So whenever you're trying to accomplish something, you want to be able to step back and see am I actually doing what I think I'm doing, Am I accomplishing what I'm doing? So if you're an athlete and you're trying to get to a certain mark in running or whatever, you can step back and there's measurements that you can look at. Many people may not know this. Prior to you becoming a full-time, accepting the call to ministry, full-time, you were what was it that you did? A professional pickle packer. That's right, he was a professional pickle packer.
Speaker 1:JL DeGraff, and Reed and Son shout out.
Speaker 2:And you did that for many years and I'm sure there were measurements that you guys used to make sure that your pickles were packed properly.
Speaker 1:I started out in QC in the lab man there you go All kinds of measurements.
Speaker 2:So there's metrics that you use to measure whether you're being successful. I did not.
Speaker 1:If you're going to put a slice, a pickle slice, on a Burger King, a hamburger, it has to be between a one inch and two inch diameter.
Speaker 2:I knew that because I've heard you say that before Anything over that is a defect.
Speaker 1:Anything over that is a defect. Anything under that is a defect. That's the measure. That's one of the measures.
Speaker 2:That's a pretty broad standard, actually. One inch to two inch, pretty good.
Speaker 1:Some of them are less than like inch and a half to two inch.
Speaker 2:So a measurement for your success as a company in sending pickles to Burger King, they had to be between one and two inches in diameter.
Speaker 1:It's been so long. I think that's right.
Speaker 2:Not giving false pickle facts out here are we I?
Speaker 1:hope not.
Speaker 2:So, again, you're trying to figure out how are you successful at something? Well, that's more elusive when you look at the church and decide. What are the metrics that we look at to determine whether a church is successful? So you were mentioning, you know, people in the pews, budgets, buildings. Are these true, genuine measures of success of a church, and are they, or could they be false measures? Right, so you could draw a crowd and not really be faithful to your mission. You could have a big budget and not be faithful to the kingdom of God. So what do you do as a church to measure? So, as a church, we've come up with these questions, these self-evaluation questions Correct, where our mission is connecting people to a thriving life in Christ. So then we need to ask are people actually thriving in their walk with Christ?
Speaker 1:How do we know that? We have to have some way to measure that right To see. So we're going to talk about the first one today, and it's a pretty broad one. But we're not going to exposit all of this because we have scripture proof for every measure that we put up and we're not going to be, and for this particular one it's Romans, chapter 12. So we're not going to be able to exposit every single verse and go in depth, but we do.
Speaker 1:We will kind of run through and kind of bullet point. But before we do that, let's talk about maybe where, where did these? How did we come up with these? Where did these measures come from? Do you remember?
Speaker 2:A lot of prayer and discussion. Yeah yeah, it was a staff retreat several years ago where we spent time just going through this question how do we measure the success of a church and what are the things that we would want to see in our own lives as we are walking with Christ? So that's really kind of, and it ended up with I think we have eight questions. We probably had many more than that at some point and we just whittled it down to these eight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and these are probably even not exhaustive.
Speaker 2:No, of course not.
Speaker 1:But these are things that we want to concentrate on and things that we think are indicative of someone who has a thriving life in Christ Sure and, like you said, they're all based in Scripture.
Speaker 2:So we're looking in the New Testament, we're looking in the Bible to see what does it look like? What do the examples of those who are walking with Christ closely, what are the parts of their life that stick out?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so I can remember we this was like one of the first trips. It may not have been the first trip, but it was like one of the first things that we did. When I got here on staff, this was one of the first things that we did all together. We left town, spent some time, a lot of time in the Word and in prayer, together, just trying to come up with what does it look like to have a thriving life in Christ? A thriving life in Christ, and the very first thing, the first measure that we'll see come across the screen in our church services, is a question is my character a reflection of Christ's character, which is huge? Right, we're called Christians because we're supposed to be like Christ. So maybe, before we dive into this, when we say, is my character a reflection of Christ's character? What is? What is character? When we say that, what do we mean? I've been called a character.
Speaker 2:Well, you are a character, I'm not sure that's what we're talking about. I don't think Character is just the essence of a person that demonstrates itself in action. So we define our mission as connecting people to a thriving life in Christ, and we talked about this last time that we define that as magnifying God or making much of Christ so that people see something of him in us and we bring something that seems far away closer. And so we want to reflect the character of Christ, who he is, the essence of who he is, in our transformed lives, not because we can do it on our own, but through the Spirit who has transformed us.
Speaker 1:So I mean thinking about that. How do we know what the character of Christ looks like? If we want to reflect Christ's character, where do we find that?
Speaker 2:How do we know? Sure, I mean. The obvious answer is you know, he is the word this is a softball.
Speaker 1:That was a softball.
Speaker 2:He is the living word of God and his life is recorded and reflected for us in the gospels, in the New Testament. And so if we want to reflect his character, we got to know his character. And in order to know his character, we have to know his word.
Speaker 2:You know, we have to spend time with him. We did a sermon this past week about Jesus drawing the disciples to him so that he might send them out. And before he sends them out on assignment, he spent a year with them so that they might know him, learn him, learn his teachings, learn who he was, so that they might become more like him before they went out and tried to represent him. So we've got to spend time with him to get to know him, and the best way to do that is in his word.
Speaker 1:He reveals himself to us through his word right, and so I think maybe that can be a pushback for us. I hear sometimes people say well, I'd like to think of God as, and then they fill in the blank right, and we don't have that right?
Speaker 1:We can't. God has revealed himself to us through his word. We don't get to make him up. We're made in his image. We don't need to make him like us. Right, right, yeah, exactly. And so we go to his word to find out what he's like. And so, specifically for this measurement and we could have chose lots of them we could have went to the Gospels, we could have went to Philippians even, and I think we did as we were kind of discussing things, but we ended up we kind of settled in Romans 12, right, and there's a famous section in there.
Speaker 1:People have done sermons and series on the marks of a Christian, the later part, but we did the whole chapter, and so we won't again, we won't exegete every single thing, but we'll just kind of blow through some of these real quick, if we can. Just the very beginning of the chapter Paul is just saying, in light or in view of the mercy of God, thinking about what he's done for you, thinking about His Son Christ and how he's demonstrated His love I mean, he's built a whole case in chapter 11 and even before of the love that God has for us. I think he's like think about all those things and then offer yourself to him in Thanksgiving as a living sacrifice. Right, this is your spiritual act of worship, he says there.
Speaker 1:This is your spiritual service. What does it mean to be a living sacrifice? Why would he put that there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the whole letter of Romans is Paul writing to that church, just making sure that that important church knew the basics of the gospel. It's just a treatise about the gospel. And so, after he spent all this time telling them of the gospel, you know just, it's just a treatise about the gospel. And so, after he spent all this time telling them about the gospel, he says therefore, in view of that, in view of what god has done for you, in view of god's mercy in your life, in view of god's grace in your life, in view of the fact that you are a sinner, separated from him, he has given you life. Separated from him, he has given you life. It is not by your works, it is by his grace.
Speaker 2:In view of that, your spiritual service is and I like the translation that says your reasonable act of service is the only reasonable response to what God has done for us is not to go to church every now and then. It's not even to go to church every Sunday. The reasonable response isn't to put money in an offering plate. The only reasonable response is to offer our lives, offer our bodies, as a living sacrifice. In other words, to say God, here is my life, it is no longer mine, it is yours. I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me. Galatians 2.20. So a living sacrifice is one that is no longer living to self, but living for him. When you think of sacrifice, you think it's something that's dead. Well, we are dead in our trespasses, but God has made us alive, not in ourselves, but in him. So we are living for him.
Speaker 1:And sometimes maybe even thinking our old man, our old self, is dead. Our old agenda, therefore, is now dead, and even our current agenda now is more open-handed. It is open-handed right. Our agenda is. I think Christ kind of sums this up really, really well, in the garden when he is praying If there's any way that this cup can be taken from me, but then he ends that prayer with yet not my will but your will, be done. I mean, he models for us. What a living sacrifice is.
Speaker 1:All throughout the Gospels you hear phrases and sentences like as a 12-year-old boy, didn't you know? I have to be in my father's house, I must be about my father's work, I'm going to do the works that he's already prepared for me to do, those kind of things. And so he just models that living sacrifice lifestyle for us all, and so that's one of the reasons we chose this chapter, and that's kind of a good capstone for all this. This is what being a living sacrifice looks like, and it looks like Jesus right. And then he goes on from there. In Romans 12, paul does and talks about not being conformed to the world but being transformed by the renewing of your mind. Any thoughts about that, how that would help or feed into this Christlike character.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So if I'm reflecting the character of Christ, then I'm not being conformed to what the world looks like. I'm not being changed by the pressures from the outside, which is what conforming is, but rather I'm being transformed from the inside out by the presence of the holy spirit and through the renewing of my mind, which means his word, studying his word. So god is transforming me from the old bob into an image of christ, which is a process of sanctification. So am I in my, in these measurements, you know? Am I more like Christ now than I was six months ago?
Speaker 1:Am I being transformed?
Speaker 2:Am I actively in the process of allowing God to transform me? Am I actively allowing him to buff out the areas of my life that do not reflect him? Well, right, and so I'm being transformed by him and his word. Not by—I'm not conforming to the world.
Speaker 1:And the word picture here, I think, is really good. The word conformed is the idea of being pressed into a mold, right, and that's what the world and this world system that has set itself up against God. They want to press you into that mold, to make you look like that, and there's pressure all the time to act like the world. But then he says but instead be transformed, which is the picture of a caterpillar being turned into a butterfly metamorphosis. Right, that's a different picture than being conformed. Right, you're not being crushed, you're not being conformed or pressed into something, but God is changing you and making you into a new person in the likeness of Christ, and does that through the renewing of our mind, through His Word. That's His means.
Speaker 1:People, I think, a lot of times want to skip over. I want to be like Jesus. How can I be like Jesus and man? You just, there are things you can do, obviously, but you, just you must be in His Word. You've got to be reading His Word, praying His Word, studying His Word, hearing His Word, constantly. Right, and that's what transforms and renews our mind.
Speaker 2:There's got to be a surrender. There's got to be a surrender. There's got to be a sacrifice to it.
Speaker 1:Living sacrifice, right, yep. So Paul goes from there to like he talks. He starts telling them I'm just summing this up a little bit, but in humility, stuart, the gifts that God has given you, you know, and understanding that the gifts that you have are not your talents or abilities, but these are gifts given to you by the grace of God, and use these gifts for the encouraging and the upbuilding of the body and for family life. Basically, what does that kind of tell us about the character of Christ?
Speaker 2:Yeah, christ was always building others up, right, so he was sacrificing himself for others and always seeing the need in others and then seeing their greatest need. So he would meet physical needs in order to meet spiritual needs. And so if we're going to take on that characteristics of always being aware of those who are hurting, in need and in mostly need of him, then we're taking on that characteristic. And as he transforms us, he empowers us with spiritual giftedness through his Holy Spirit. And that's not to draw attention to ourselves, it is to point people to him quite honestly, and so it is to build others up. And so am I using these gifts that God has given me for personal benefit, personal praise, or am I using those in the body of Christ to build up others and make them more like Christ?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think you see this all throughout the rest of the chapter, this connectedness that the picture of the body has, the picture of the family has. As we go into this, you're going to see treat each other with genuine love, brotherly affection, those kind of words right, this idea that we're connected to each other that we are the body of Christ.
Speaker 1:Obviously, jesus is our exalted head right, but we are his body, his body, and there's a relationship that we have with each other that I think Jesus just models so well for us. And again in the Gospels, he's constantly giving himself for the benefit of others, constantly giving himself for the benefit of others, constantly sacrificing in his life. I won't say his agenda, because he knows what he's going to do. What he's going to do, he's Jesus right.
Speaker 1:And nothing. His face was set toward the cross and nothing was going to deter him from his mission, but sometimes he seems to let himself get interrupted to work for the benefit of someone so they could see the way and the truth and the life. Basically, yeah, and I think that's kind of what we're to do with our gifts right To serve the body, to build up the body and build up the church and strengthen the family body and build up the church and strengthen the family. So, verse nine, we kind of start getting into some of the meat of what does a living sacrifice look like? What does a transformed life and a transformed mind look like? What does it look like to steward a gift of grace in humility? And you kind of starts spelling those things out here. The first thing he says is that you need to have genuine love for each other. Right, have genuine love, abhor evil and cling to what is good?
Speaker 1:How does that reflect the character of Christ? I mean, there's some obvious things here, but Pete Sure yeah, I mean just don't. We don't need to overthink what the Word says Just take it at face value.
Speaker 2:Love genuinely. Jesus loved genuinely. There was no hypocrisy in Him. There should not be any in our reflection of His love towards others. It should be genuine care and concern. We ought to mourn over our sin. We ought to hate what is evil and we ought to cling to what is good. You know, think on these things. Whatever is good, whatever is profitable.
Speaker 1:Cling is like hold fast.
Speaker 1:It's almost like the idea of in Genesis, adam and Eve, you know clinging to what is good, not letting go right, and I think in our a lot of times, I think genuine love can be freeing in a lot of ways, because I think of again thinking of the church as a family and as a body like I know the family I grew up in and I know it's not this way for everyone, but I knew that, no matter what I did, my parents would love me. Their love for me was not based on my actions. I mean, could I disappoint them? Yes, and did I disappoint them? Let's not ever have them as guests on the podcast, but, yes, I disappointed them, but I always knew and reciprocated I love them and there's nothing that they could do for me not to love them. I think that's genuine love. And when we have that kind of relationship, I think there's freedom to have some conversations and, uh, that need to be had sometimes in the body Right. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it does. And having genuine love requires you to be vulnerable. Right, you have to put yourself out there. Um, jesus was vulnerable when he he was. He, no doubt, was hurt when people rejected, when people fought back. And for us to do that, we have to do it. But it is part of this communal situation that God calls us into as we transform into the image of Christ together. And his word says perfect love casts out all fear, right, so so when we're loving Christ this way, we don't have to fear that he's not going to love us one day if we, if we fail.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:And that should be the same way within the body of Christ.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Right, we may be disappointed with each other, we may have to hold each other accountable, but it doesn't mean we don't love each other Exactly.
Speaker 1:And and and. If we're loving each other genuinely, we don't have to worry about people doing us evil, because we're abhorring evil, right, and we're working for the good of each other. So that's kind of the way that that works out. All right, let's keep going, just because we could probably camp there for a while, right?
Speaker 2:And then you said we weren't going to exegete this whole passage.
Speaker 1:No, sorry sorry, sorry, sorry. And he goes on. You know, he says to love each other with brotherly affection. Right, genuine love, and with brotherly affection, maybe a way that that's an outworking of that. It says you outdo showing honor to one another, right, can you imagine like being working at a place, or I mean, and I think we do pretty well here, I mean Sure, but I mean I've worked at a few places and the motto was never outdo showing honor to one another.
Speaker 1:You know, so it was more like you know, work harder than the other guy and beat him down kind of thing Right.
Speaker 2:But imagine if an entire culture, an entire group of people all had that same mentality. You know I'm going to outdo blessing you as you're trying to outdo blessing me. We all get blessed. It's like a covenant marriage where you go into it looking out for the best interest of the person you married, not the other way around, not looking for them to meet some kind of need. And when we all are trying to do this and we build a culture of love, Not lagging behind and diligent, but being fervent and serving and rejoicing and persevering man, what a blessing that is.
Speaker 1:I mean again working for the good of others, outdoing, showing honor. Just imagine what kind of unity that can bring to a body. Verse 11, and you kind of mentioned this don't be slothful in zeal right, be fervent in the spirit and serve the Lord.
Speaker 2:Which is the bottom line. As we're doing all these things, we recognize we're doing this as unto the Lord right, because there are times when the people that we need to love we don't want to love them and they don't want to love us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, we need to love.
Speaker 2:We don't want to love them and they don't want to love us. It's a two-way street, but we recognize we're doing this because we're serving the Lord and because we're reflecting his glory, we're reflecting his character, and so, yeah, we serve as unto the Lord.
Speaker 1:Zeal for the house consumes me, right. And so this fervent spirit serving the Lord and you talk about this concept a lot, especially in our First Steps class but just the whole, doing everything as you would unto the Lord, right? Sometimes I think about that as I'm doing something and I'm tempted to cut corners, even here sometimes. Well, I mean, I don't have to pull this sheet of music, they'll know this, that kind of thing. But, man, that's not being fervent, right, it's not the zealousness that I need If I can always picture this verse serving the Lord with zeal, right, doing everything, even pulling the sheet of music, and thank God, I have faithful volunteers who've been doing that for me recently and I don't have to do that much anymore.
Speaker 1:But I mean just even little things like that, just really, when I think about this verse. If I can always keep the Lord before me, right, if I can always keep the Lord before me in all my dealings with others and all my dealings of the things that he's called us to do, man, it's easy to serve fervently. It's hard to serve fervently when I think about my own self and my own agenda.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I sometimes like to just phrase it this way If you forget your why, you'll lose your way. So if you forget why you're serving. If you forget why you're doing what you're doing, then it's easy to to get distracted from doing it or not doing it.
Speaker 1:Maybe even say forget your who Exactly?
Speaker 2:And in Paul's writings he had a tendency in all of his letters to start off with the why before he got to the what right. So in Romans he tells them all about what God has done for us in salvation, and then he gets to the why or he gets to the what. Therefore, walk in a manner worthy, you know, or offer your life as a living sacrifice. He does the same thing in Ephesians. First three chapters Not a single imperative in the first three chapters. It's all indicative. This is what God has done for you. Therefore, walk in a manner worthy. So if you forget your why, sometimes it's hard to keep your way right. It's hard to love when I forget oh God loved me when I didn't deserve it. It's hard to serve. Oh God served me by sacrificing his son. So, yeah, if you remember your why, it helps you along the way.
Speaker 1:Next verse, verse 12, rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation and constant in prayer basically what he's saying here. How does that reflect Christ's character?
Speaker 2:Well, of course Christ was perfect in perseverance.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:James 1 comes to mind Consider it all. Joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces an endurance and endurance produces its perfect results, that you will be perfect, complete. That doesn't mean I'm going to be sinless. It means that it's going to have its perfect result in my life as I'm persevering, I'm enduring, I'm becoming more like Christ. And so to our text here in Romans persevering in tribulation, rejoicing in hope, knowing how can I find joy in those things, Because God is using them to mold me into the image of Christ, so that I can better reflect his character.
Speaker 1:He's transforming us even through those things right.
Speaker 2:Which is his perfect will, right, which is? You go back to verse….
Speaker 1:Romans 8, 28, 29, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, even back in verse 2, don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you will know what the perfect will of God is, so that you will prove what the perfect will of God is. What's the perfect will of God For me? To become more like Christ. That's his will for my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think. Without hope, without being able to rejoice in hope, you can't be patient in tribulation. The book of Hebrews tells us that Christ endured the cross for the joy set before him. Right and remembering what Christ has said, what he has done and what he's preparing for us helps us. It gives us a hope. Something is preparing for us helps us. It gives us a hope something.
Speaker 2:I can go on a diet as long as I know I've got a cheat meal coming up.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. I need some hope to look forward to, and so I think that the hope that we have in Christ is so magnificent and so weighty that it helps us to be patient in tribulation and then it keeps us, I think, constant in prayer, right, when you're in, I know my prayer life is never as fervent as when I'm going through some type of tribulation of some sort, right, just, it makes me go to Him quickly right. And speaking of quickly, I see what I did there.
Speaker 2:We've got to keep moving.
Speaker 1:We've got to keep moving. Contribute to the needs of the saints, seek to show hospitality, obviously. I mean, christ calls us to be generous, calls us to look out for the needs of others, and in that we seek to show hospitality. What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:Well, contributing to the needs of the saints, looking around and seeing other brothers and sisters who are in need at the point, whether that's a physical need, a spiritual need, financial need, whatever it may be, and just being aware of others right, and then practicing hospitality, opening up your home, opening up your life for somebody else, not making room for others in your busy schedule and in your agenda for the days.
Speaker 1:Yep, I think this is interesting to me, that hospitality is a spiritual gift. It is, but he's telling us all to seek to show hospitality. Right. We ought to be looking for ways to do that. Whether that's your gift or not, like, if I say this a lot of times, evangelism is the same way, is the same thing. Right, it may not be your gift, but it is all of our mandate, right and the same thing. Here we need to be hospitable. What, uh what does that look like in the body of christ? Hospitality?
Speaker 2:I, I think I might recognize it more if I see it when it's not being practiced. Then you know it should be the common thing of just an again, an open life that that welcomes people in right being yeah, that's physically in your home and, and you know, into your life, into your well yeah exactly Not keeping yourself boarded off and and right you know, hunkered down away from people, yeah, and this.
Speaker 1:This is the thing that just seek to show I don't know how, how, how intentional I always am about looking for ways to be hospitable and I think we need to be about that. We've got to keep moving. Bless those who persecute you, do not curse them. Right, jordan? I know he's already given me the five minutes. He gave you the five minutes Like five minutes ago probably.
Speaker 2:He says we've got to keep moving like we're the ones.
Speaker 1:I have to keep moving right.
Speaker 3:Bless those who persecute you.
Speaker 1:Don't curse them right. How would that reflect the character of Christ?
Speaker 2:Obviously Jesus, reflecting the character of even those that persecuted him, turning the other cheek and still being kind and loving and presenting truth right Going to the cross Going to the cross for a world that was, you know, for the most part, rejecting him right Right.
Speaker 1:I think sometimes that's the hardest part. We're probably never more godly, though, when we are blessing those who persecute us and how hard that actually is to do right. Yeah, Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. Sympathy and empathy, really Just being aware of people and where they are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you're again this connectedness we're connected to each other in the body of Christ. We're a family, we're the family of God, right. And so I know when people are, when I, you know, I think about my kids. When they would win a game, or win a track meet or something, man, they would rejoice and I'm rejoicing with them. I'm excited If they were hurting, I'm hurting with them, right.
Speaker 2:And so it's the same thing in the body of Christ, but you got to be involved in their lives to do that, and that's.
Speaker 1:But you've got to be involved in their lives to do that.
Speaker 2:And that's say you've got to know people right. There was a phenomenon that came about when we started building houses with attached garages. It's called cocooning. People would pull into their neighborhood, pull into their driveway, garage door would go up. They'd go in, garage door would go down and they would not have any interaction with anybody. Instead of having a neighborhood where they knew their neighbors, we would all go into our homes and we would cocoon. And it can't be that way. In the church we can't be cocooning. We have to be actively involved, rejoicing.
Speaker 1:Discipleship is messy right it is. And you being involved in other people's lives is messy, yeah, and that's part of it. Yeah, verse 16 talks about living in harmony with each other, not to be haughty associate with the lowly. Don't be wise in your own sight.
Speaker 2:I mean. Just Christ humbled himself. He spent time with the sinners of the world, the downcast of the world.
Speaker 1:Have this mind in you. You know, philippians, chapter two, that just that would. That puts others needs above our own. I think not being prideful right, and that's a whole other. We could probably do a whole episode or five on pride right. Do not repay evil for evil. Give thought to what is honorable in the sight of all, right. So again kind of along the same lines of blessing those who who curse you, but uh, um, and this not repaying evil for evil, man, that's like the theme of every movie that I love you know I mean I want to see the bad guy get theirs man.
Speaker 2:Vengeance, yeah, yeah, so. So, instead of repaying evil for evil, what do we repay? Evil with Love, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And again, we want to see how this reflects Christ's spirit.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:I mean, how did God repay evil? Yes, he is storing up wrath for those who reject Christ, but he's also offered away. He sent his one and only son to those who rebelled against him right, right. Sent his one and only son to those who rebelled against him, right so, those who would murder him. Even Verse 18, I like this if possible.
Speaker 2:Oh great, there's an out there right.
Speaker 3:Yeah right, it's not my fault.
Speaker 1:If possible as far as it depends on you live peaceably with all right, it's easy to find the loopholes right I'll try that at home, yeah as far as it depends on you right, live at peace with everyone. I mean, I think that that that shows us that there'll there'll be times that it will be hard right.
Speaker 2:It will be hard, and I think at the bottom line, it is control what you can control. I can't control how somebody else responds to me. All I can control is me. I can control how I respond to somebody else, and so I may not be able to live at peace with somebody, but it's not going to be because I didn't try. It's going to be because they wouldn't accept it.
Speaker 1:It's almost like a posture that you have to have all the time. Is your posture ready to fight and defend, or is your posture ready to forgive?
Speaker 2:and cover a sin? Is your response always to bow up on somebody?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but there is that phrase, if possible.
Speaker 2:You can always say just wasn't possible this time, pastor Bob.
Speaker 1:Oh, but we're about done, we're about finished, verse 19,. Never avenge yourself, leave it to the wrath of God. Vengeance is mine, I will repay, he says right. So how does that help us? Right, by not avenging ourselves.
Speaker 2:How does that reflect this? Yeah, as we're trying to live at peace with people and as we're trying to bless those who curse us. At the end of the day, our job is to represent Christ and his grace to people's life, and whether they receive it or choose to accept it or not isn't up to us. Ours is to represent it, and then we leave them up to God, then we put them in God's hands.
Speaker 1:You know, and he even kind of spells out what that looks like in the next verse a little bit If your enemy's hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him something to drink. By doing this, you heap burning coals on his head.
Speaker 2:Interesting phrase. It is, but it's not an offensive phrase. So we always take that and go whoo hey, this is how I'm going to get them. This is how I get them. It's not intended to be that. I think it's more intended that their conscience will be pricked by the show of love and compassion and grace in the midst of their sinful hate, and there will be a human reaction to that that God has placed in the human heart. It's that conscience, guilt, that can draw people to God Right. It can be humbling right.
Speaker 1:It can be, yeah, when you have acted a certain way and someone responds not in kind, right, and it can humble you, it just kind of wraps it up here and says do not overcome by evil, or do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. And that's not talking about weighing our good works versus our, our sin, right. We're not going to outdo or undo our our evilness by doing good things. What's he talking about here?
Speaker 2:The good, good angel on one side and the evil angel on the other side. Is that what we're?
Speaker 1:talking about. Yeah, who are you going to listen to?
Speaker 2:No, just just allowing good to prevail in your life and not giving the devil a foothold, not letting evil have a place in your life.
Speaker 1:Just some exercising, some self-control. I think back to what God actually says to Cain when Cain is upset that God doesn't accept his offering because Cain didn't do what God told him to do. But he's mad at God for it right, exactly.
Speaker 1:But God says to him hey, sin is crouching at your door and wants to master you, right, but you need to overcome it. He's given us a way to overcome it and that's through the blood of Jesus Christ. Right, and so I don't know, that's quick and I felt like we probably could have talked a lot more and I know we've gone long, but that's the chapter. Any last thoughts about reflecting the character of Christ?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think these questions that we have, we don't really ask them publicly, right. We ask people to answer them privately, and so it's a personal question that I have to ask myself, you have to ask yourself, we all have to ask ourselves is my character a reflection of Christ? When people see me, do they see something of Christ? The way I responded to that man yelling at me, did they see something of Christ? When my wife upsets me, does she see something of Christ in my response? When my kids disappoint me, do they see something of Christ in me? So it's just a constant reminder that we should be growing in our character in Christ and being transformed into his image, right?
Speaker 1:Just a physical or just maybe a real-life application, just if you're involved in a dGroup. These are the questions that we ask each other in our D groups. We ask the question and our measures are all questions. They're self-evaluation questions and we ask each other these questions that are in our D group not to get anybody, but to help someone up right, that's right. Brotherly affection. All right, man, I don't think I have anything else unless you've got anything else I think we went the whole mile there, or kilometer.
Speaker 1:Rest of them won't be so long, but you remember out there, stay sexy.
Speaker 2:No, no, no. Stay unsexy. No, no, no. What are you doing?
Speaker 1:You have to edit that out. You have to edit that out. You have to edit that out. Sorry.
