"Define the Relationship" Week 3

In the final message of our series, Pastor Jake unpacks what it truly means for the church to be a supportive, connected, life‑giving community. We’re not meant to follow Jesus alone — we grow, heal, and thrive when we walk alongside one another.

This week’s message challenges us to lean in, show up, and intentionally invest in the people God has placed around us. When the church lives as a real community, every person is strengthened.

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Manna Church Stafford Podcast, where we're all about equipping God's people to change their world. We're thankful you're here, and we're praying that this message encourages you to love God, love others, and love the world more fervently than before. Now, let's get to it.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Isn't it good to be in the house of the Lord today? Yes? Man, y'all, um, hey, do me a favor. Do me a favor. Say hi to somebody for just a second here. Welcome them. Say it's good to be in the house of the Lord today. I know it's like the most awkward 10 seconds of church, but do it anyways for me. Y'all, we are so glad that you've decided to come and worship with us today. Um, if you're new here, if this is your very first Sunday, I got a really simple step for you to take. There's a disc on the seat in front of you. What I'd love for you to do is just take your phone out. If you tap that disc, it's gonna take you to a connect card. And I would love it if you just filled that out for us at some point during the worship experience so that way we can reach out to you and get to know you a little bit better. Guys, can we give it up for anybody who's joining us for the first time today? Yeah. Awesome. Well, hey, we're gonna do things a little different today. We're gonna flow a little different. I'm gonna ask you to take your seat. I'm gonna dismiss the worship team. Thank you, worship team. Guys, can we give it up for them? Yes, thank you. It'd be awesome if someone could bring up my podium because I think I forgot to ask somebody to do that. Um, and if you're a middle schooler right now, I know you guys want to go to your middle school group, so go for it. We'll miss you guys. Well, listen, you are joining us in week three of a series that we've been doing. It's the final week of a series we've called DTR. Define the relationship. And uh David did a great job last week, kind of uh talking about what we do here as a church when as it relates to equipping. And so what we're talking about is we're talking about the relationship between the body and between the leadership in the body and how we relate to one another. And for some of you, it's a super intuitive connection. It just makes sense. And for others of you, you probably treat the relationship between you and the church with a little bit of suspicion. Am I right? Some of us like that. Um and and some of that is because when we engage with people, even when we engage with family, we have expectations. And those expectations sometimes can be a little bit out of whack. In fact, I'm reminded of one time, it was about 17, 18 years ago. Um I think we had two kids at the time. My oldest, he's 20 now. He was young, he was he was three, I think. And um, I'm on a business trip and I called Danielle to see how she was doing. And if you know, if you've ever had little kids, you know, asking mom how she's doing when dad's away is uh a dangerous question. So uh my little guy Gabriel, he was a hoarder at that point in his life, and so uh he just liked to pack all kinds of things into his room. And so he had he had this little storage bin behind his uh his bunk beds and he would pack stuff in there. Well, this day he had decided to take all of the stuff out of his uh storage area and put it in the middle of his room. Like blankets, pillows, toys, sticks, bugs, everything you could think of, just packed in the middle of the floor. Daniel can't even get into the room, right? And so she's super frustrated. She's like, she calls me, she's oh my gosh, this kid, I can't believe what he's doing. She's like, listen, Gabriel, clean this up. And he said, No, you clean it up. And she said, Excuse me, you are not the boss of me. And he said, Yes, I am the boss of you. You can imagine how well that went. Dad's on the phone, Marine away on a trip, like, oh, let me talk to that kid. Well, I share that to illustrate the point that even at the age of three, my son had some expectations about the relationship between mom and dad and him and what that meant. He had he had some things that he thought. They weren't accurate, but he did have some expectations. And at least part of his expectation was that mom and dad are gonna clean up after me, mom and dad are gonna take care of me, and as a church family, what I think is important is we owe it to each other to explain what the expectation should be among us so that way we don't have some of those moments like my wife had with my son. Amen. Grace for the people who are coming in. I know we usually have a song going right now. We're starting a little early, we're doing a little different, that's okay. Just filter on in. So I shared in week one that when you commit to being part of a church family, there are some things that you commit to or you agree to, and I'm gonna go over those real quick just so we we're all on the same page. Week one, we talked about this. It's number one, we commit to honor Jesus' commands. So we're not asking you to be perfect, we're just asking you to pursue him. All right? The second thing is we we commit to submit to sound teaching as a part of a body of believers. So if you want to know what sound teaching looks like later on in the service, you can tap the disc on the back of the seat and it's gonna take you to a different link, which is our fellowship commitment form. And it's got a statement of faith there that outlines everything that we believe as a church. It's even got our leadership structure if you want to know who are some of the people that lead here. Um, another thing that you commit to is to be present. Now that doesn't mean you're here every week. It just means you're here enough that when you miss, you are missed. Right? Um, it means you prioritize the fellowship's needs. I'm gonna come back to that here in just a little bit. Um, and then of course, there are things that we, we, when I say we, I don't just mean Pastor Jake or the staff. I mean we as a body of believers are committing to you if you decide to be a part of this body. Number one is we give you, we commit to give you the opportunity to walk out all of the one another's of Scripture, to love one another, to serve one another, to forgive one another, to challenge one another, all of the one another. They're all over, all over the word. And we want to give you a chance to do that. We're gonna commit to be responsible for you. So we're gonna feel a burden when you feel a burden. We're gonna be with you. We're not gonna let you go through crazy things alone. We're gonna pray for you, we're gonna set an example for you, and we're gonna be accountable when we fail to set that example for you. It's a very, very important thing. In fact, if you look at our leadership structure, you can see there are men that I am accountable to. So if I am failing to set a good example, those men need to be brought into the situation. Um we we commit to stay true to our mission. We lay that out in growth track. You're gonna have an opportunity to sign up and be a part of that. Kicks off next week. And then as David talked about last week, we're gonna equip you, and then we're gonna release you into greater callings when you're ready. We we are an equipping church, and I hope that you understand the scope of that. If you don't, go back and listen to David's message from last week. And then we want to challenge you when necessary, and we always, always, always will have your best interest at heart. So that's that's kind of what how this relationship works. That's that's the the nuts and bolts of this DTR we want to do. And so, if I could just sum it up in one kind of catchy phrase for everybody, is church isn't a place you attend, it's a people that take responsibility for one another. That's what church is. It's a people. And so, like I said, if you listened last week or you've been a part of any other church, I hope what you heard it encouraged you because I find it to be an uncommon focus in churches, equipping the saints. And David used the parable of talents, and one of the things that stuck with me about that parable, uh I hope it stuck with you too, is that when Jesus entrusted servants with treasure, we're not going to go back and read it all, but when when he entrusted servants with treasure, he had an expectation for them to invest it and not to bury it. And so that's how we, it's how I think about people, and it's how we as a church think about people. You are treasures. Like you're you're precious things that God, He He knows each of you by name, He knows the hairs on your head, He's gifted you with very, very special things, and it's not just for your good use, it's for the body to be blessed. And shame on us if we bury that talent. Shame on us if we do that. We need to equip and release you to walk fully because it's gonna it's gonna bless you and it's gonna bless us. It's gonna bless Jesus church. So I so I just I don't want you guys to have an immature understanding of what this relationship is, like my three-year-old son did way back in the day. So I'm gonna take one more stab today at explaining what spiritual family means because strongest churches, the best ones out there, the best local bodies. We got the big C and then we got local bodies. They're not built on attendance, they're not built on money, they're not built on production, they're built on responsibility and concern for one another. So, what does that mean? What am I talking about? I'm gonna give you, give you a few things it means, and you could take these notes down if you want, it'll help you remember this. Um, the first thing is it means we restore each other. We have a responsibility to restore each other. Galatians chapter 6, verses 1 and 2. It says this, brothers, he's talking to the body of believers. If anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself lest you two be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. So I said earlier, one of our commitments to you is to challenge you unnecessary and always have your best interest in heart. One of the things that I find is just dramatically lacking in the body of Christ in America is um a desire for accountability. Nobody wants to be submitted to anybody. Every single one of us, we are such rebels. I think it comes from our culture, our our country is based on just a rebellion, right? We know it. And so we want to judge our own ways, we want to make our own decisions on what's right and wrong for ourselves. Heaven forbid somebody else tell us. I I just a quick aside, one of the darkest narratives in biblical history was a time where it says everyone did what was right in their own eyes. They had no accountability. The book of Judges, read it, it'll make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, some of the stories in there. It's crazy. They had no real accountability. And so in this verse in Galatians, Paul assumes there are gonna be people in the body that are caught in sin. All right? I don't know if you know this or not, but just because you come a become a Christian doesn't mean you're perfect. Right? It doesn't mean that you just stop sinning automatically. It assumes that there's gonna be some transgression that happens. And he assumes that there's gonna be spiritually mature people around you to help challenge you. In fact, there's entire sections of letters Paul wrote to the church that talk about how to discipline, how to how to disciple, how to correct, how to challenge, all of those things. And so we avoid this topic in churches a lot because we don't want to have hard conversations. And I will tell you this that's wrong. It's weak to not have the hard conversations because it undermines the mission of the church. And at least one of the reasons that we avoid talking about accountability and talking about church discipline is because we've seen churches do it wrong, right? Right? We've seen there are people out there, there are churches, whole organizations that take advantage of people. They lord their position over folks, they manipulate, they rob, they abuse these faithful, good-spirited, innocent people, and we're like, no, we're not gonna do that. And so we over-correct so far. But if you think about that, that's really not a good, that's not a good way to think about how we should operate among each other. That would be like me saying, because there are abusive parents, I'm not going to discipline my children. That doesn't make sense, does it? But that's the way that we kind of do it in church. We're like, there's bad churches, there's abusive churches, so let's just not really, let's not really cover that part of what the church is supposed to do. Not a good way to do it. James chapter 5 says this, my brothers, again, talking to the church, if anyone among you, among the body, wanders from the truth, and someone, presumably among you, brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. This verse, it points to the reason that we discipline or disciple. When we think of discipline, we hear punishment. Really, discipline is just its correction. It's like, man, you're off course. Let's get you back on course. It's like a train that's getting ready to derail. It's gonna cause all kinds of damage. We're like, can you just get you back on the tracks? Right? It's not meant to punish, it's meant to correct. Not so we can have a power trip. So, so all these things in concept are good, but what about in the actual execution? Like, okay, Jake, yes, yes. How does this actually work? I'm gonna give you some stories today. I'm gonna give you several testimonies to explain how we do it. Um, this is a story from right here. All of these are stories from right here in our church. I'm changing the names of these people. Um, we're gonna call them Joe and Susan. So Joe calls me up one day to meet with me. And um he says, Look, man, um let's get together for lunch. We go and meet at Missions Barbecue, that's what I picked. We're sitting there, I'm thinking we're just gonna have some great pulled pork. And he proceeds to unload on me that he made some really, really big mistakes. His wife caught him passing messages between him and another woman on his social media. Uh there's a whole app that he was he was doing messaging on. It's pretty bad. And he he reveals this to me. She caught part of it, she didn't know all of it, and he's just confessing this to me. Just kind of unloads it. Kind of a heavy conversation for Mission Barbecue, a little awkward. Um big tough guy. Um I dig a little bit more. I don't leave it there. I'm like, okay, so let's talk more about this. Like, how deep does the rabbit hole go? We find out it's not just some conversations. There are pictures that have been passed, there's some video chats that have been happening. Like, it's it's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. Um I give them some some challenge there. I'm like, look, do you still want to be married? Like, of course I do. Like, great. Here's what you do You go home and you be humble and you confess everything to your spouse. You let her know what you've done, you tell her, and if she asks questions, you answer them and you don't defend yourself. You don't accuse her of anything, you don't say, Well, I did it because you don't say that. You listen to her because you've wounded her, let her tell you how she feels and apologize. Repent. Turn away from that. That's what repentance means. You pray, he leaves. On the flip side, his wife, super broken. Obviously, right? And she doesn't know all the details yet. She calls and she says, Pastor, I need to meet with you. I'm like, sure, Susan. She's lost all confidence in her husband. She thinks that he was a good guy, and now she's like, he's a liar. I can't trust anything he says. How can I trust any of the details he even gives me that they're true? Because he's lied about so many other things, right? So we meet, we talk, and she's trying to, you know, she's finding out more information. She's been finding out information for the past few days, and she wants to know, should I divorce him? And and in this situation, and it some of you have been in this situation. I we deal with this more often than than I would like. She doesn't want to know what Jake thinks, she wants to know what the word says. Does the word say I have permission to dissolve this marriage covenant? Like, what do I do? I who do you go to for those answers? Therapy's good, therapy's great, like counseling's good, uh, lawyers are good, Chat GPT can be good. But is it gonna tell you what the word says with with clarity? And and and the church is at least the place that God gave us to be able to provide that revelation to one another. So I talked to her, and I'll tell her, I'll tell you what I what I told her. Um I I let her know that based on the interactions that he'd had with other women, I said, look, I think I think that Jesus would, I think this meets the threshold of adultery. And I do think that you have permission to divorce him. And I think you also have permission to forgive him. And the church is gonna support you in either of those decisions, and we're not gonna write him off either. We're gonna encourage and disciple him. So so what we do from there, what proceeds is me setting up some times to meet with both of them individually, to talk them through some things. Me grabbing another couple in the church that they were kind of close with and saying, Are you guys willing to walk with them through this deliberately when I'm maybe not available or when you're not available, I'm there? Can you can you counsel them husband-wife to husband-wife? We don't know how this is gonna turn out. This is what being with each other actually means. And so when things like this happen, details come out in waves. Um they they have this whole process, the husband confesses some even deeper, darker sins that kind of led to this pattern that he's got in his life, which finally allowed him to really give his life to Jesus. He'd never really done it before. And in that moment of confession, knowing that the church was not turning him away, we're just helping him get back on the tracks, he gave his life to Jesus. One of one of my favorite moments as a pastor. What was even more powerful and more amazing than that was after he was accepted by Jesus into his family, his wife showed him a tangible representation of that by forgiving him, just like Jesus did. That couple, they're still together today. They love each other. Their marriage is relatively healthy. Still, you know, they still got some scars they're working through. But but that's that's what the church does. That's how we help each other out. Another thing we do is we carry each other as a church. We lift each other up. We're not just here to challenge, we're not just here to correct, we're here to support you in hardship because just like we read in Galatians, it talks about bearing each other's burdens in this body. That's spiritually, that's emotionally, that's physically, that's financially. All the above, Hebrews 13, 16. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. I don't know if you guys know this. We just shared a bunch of stuff yesterday at the Hope Experience with hundreds of people from the community. We blessed them with food, we bless them with backpacks, we bust them with shoes, we partnered up with Freedom Church that kind of led the event. Fantastic people, fantastic church. And um there were lots of other churches from the community that did it too. We're carrying burdens. And you guys, you're such a generous church, you probably don't even realize this. Um, most of what we do doesn't get a lot of publicity, so people don't hear about it. But but really the thing is not so we get publicity, it's so Jesus gets publicity. Amen. That's why we do the things that we do. So we bless people by helping them with groceries. We put people up in hotels for the night when they're displaced. Um, we help people with rent and bills sometimes when they're when they're like super far underwater and they can't get out from under it. Um when I say, when I say we, I don't mean me like Pastor Jake. I mean we as a church. We have a whole team that takes care of this. They have a process that they use, we have systems in place that make sure that people understand that we're gonna be charitable. We're not a charity, right? There's a distinction. We're not just a charity, we're charitable as a church, and that's a really important thing. So our sole reason for existence isn't just to give money away to the community and address people's felt needs. The reason we do that is because that's a means to an end. The felt needs, if we can address those, then maybe we can help introduce them to a savior. So that's why we do those things. And we do actually prioritize, it's why fellowship is important. We prioritize the needs of this body, the Ecclesia. Let's go back to Galatians. I'm gonna tell you what it says here. Galatians chapter 6, same chapter. We're talking about bearing burdens, correcting one another, getting with one another. Galatians chapter 6, verse 9. Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone. Let us do good to everybody, and especially, if you could underline something, underline especially, and especially to those who are of the household of faith. So we have an especial concern for the people who are here among us. And you guys know, like, this is just natural. If I told you that there was somebody who was like a kid the next county over who someone was harming right now, some of you would get really indignant and you would be like, Man, I'm gonna go take care of that. Most of you would be like, That's awful. Does anybody know about it? If I told you your Kid was the next county over, and he was being harmed or she was being harmed, y'all would get up and be Jack Ryan or Liam Neeson or whatever. Like you would, you would, you would go out, go to work, right? And that's kind of what he's saying here. Like, we take care of everybody's needs, but especially the household of faith. We have a special concern for the people here. Couple examples of this. Just recently, uh Canon TV Tran, I don't know if you guys know them. They have seven beautiful kids now. They just had their seventh, Oliver, and um, our church, man, we came alongside them. We've blessed them. We've taken them meals, we've given them different, you know, things that you need when you have a baby, especially when you have number seven. That's just what the church does. Another great example, Renee. How many of you guys know Renee? Yes, Renee's pretty awesome. I actually met Renee. Well, I met Renee the Sunday before, I think, uh, the Hope experience last year. She's become such a great part of our church. Renee's a grandma, beautiful grandbabies, and they lived in Florida. And there was this whole problem, there was a circumstance that, you know, daughter hadn't made the best decisions in life, and so uh it wasn't the best environment for the kids. And she's trying to work through how do I invite them into my home? What do I do? She's looking for counsel, she's looking for encouragement. Like what does the words say? What's wisdom say? And then how do I practically do this? So for several months, the church came alongside her, blessed her, prayed for her. I was talking to her just last night and she was talking about man, Jim Martin, he blessed me so much because there was a moment I wanted this so bad. And I, but I just I wasn't, I wasn't giving it to God, and he gave me just the word I needed that helped my heart get in the right spot where if this happened or if it didn't happen, I was gonna be okay. Now, I'm happy to say the grandbabies are here with her. And they're getting baptized today. Yeah, it's super cool. But but again, we didn't just pray for her, encourage her, give her counsel. We gave her stuff. She told me, she's like, people still give me stuff. They bring diapers, like, here you go, you probably need these. We that's what we do for each other. We carry each other. And again, it's not me, it's not paid staff. This is just us. It's what the body does, it's what you're committing to and what we're committing to each other for. So we talked about how the church brings correction, how we bring support, how we're here with you. Um, I'm gonna tell you, I do not know how so many of the times of crisis that I've had in my life would have gone if I didn't have godly men and women in my life and connected to my family to help me. Many of you know there's a pastor, I think I've referenced him several times. His name's Dale. He's like a spiritual father to several of the men here. About that same time with the story about Gabriel earlier, where he's he's telling Danielle, yes, you do work for me. Like we were we weren't newlyweds, but how many of you know that marriage can be challenging sometimes? Yes? You have conflict. Sometimes those conflicts just don't get resolved easy. So you know what? I had a pastor that I could call, his name was Dale, and his wife's name was Sue, and I would call him, and I did it at least twice that I can count, that I remember. Like 8:30 at night, I'm like, Dale, we are fighting, and it is not good. I need counsel. He's like, You need me to come over? Actually, yeah. And Dale and Sue drop what they're doing, they come to my house, they sit with Danielle and I. They care for us, they disciple us, they counsel us, they help me realize where I'm wrong. And they help Danielle realize where I'm right. But but that's like, I don't know where else you get that if you don't have believers that you trust. And Daniel and I, we do that very often with couples. Some people who we're just friends with, but a lot of people, a lot of you in here have come and met with us. And we just we just love you guys. We want to see the best for you. We want to encourage you. We always have your best interests at heart. Always, every single time. It also it also means that we grieve together. That's another thing that the church body does. Heard this quote. So the church becomes family the moment somebody else's burden becomes your burden. One of the most difficult pastoral moments for me. But it's one that illustrated spiritual family, maybe more than anything else I could share with you. Um happened a couple years ago. Uh, we had a woman who she'd been attending our church for a couple years almost since the very beginning. Um, she was on our first impressions team. She had two children who came with her, and she had a mother who would come with her occasionally too. Um her name is Angelica. Some of you remember her. Single mom, immigrant from Ghana, and she had cancer. You would never know she had cancer by looking at her. You never know. She was always really well put together. She always had the biggest, the biggest smile on her face. Every single week when she would come in, like such a bright soul. And what would happen is we wouldn't see her for like four or five weeks. She was present enough that when she missed, she was missed. And what we found out is she would she would be going to get chemo during those times, and she just what she couldn't bring herself to get out of bed and get here to church. And so um we would love on her, different people in the church would go check on her. Um there was one time I I remember I just went over there during the day, I was like, hey, I'm gonna take your kids to Chick-fil-A. Like, you get a break, you and mom can hang out, and we took them to Chick-fil-A, played, and then brought them back to the house and hung out a little bit. Like people from the church would do that with her. Um there was there was a point though where I hadn't seen her for an extended period of time. And I'd been texting her, I've been trying to get in touch with her, like drove by the house a couple times. Just like, where's where's Angelica? Um what I found out was I'm sitting in service, worship is happening, and one of our team comes down during the second song, I think, and they said, Hey, there's a there's a man and a woman in the back, there's a family. They don't look like they're they're from here, they've kind of got an accent, I don't know, like but they said their sister or daughter uh was a part of the church here. I was like, okay. They said um she died, and they they need to talk to you after service, and they they would like for you to talk with the kids. So I'm like, okay, cool. Worship happens, um service is over. I go out and they were believers. What what they told me like just humbled me and helped me understand more the responsibility that we have towards each other than maybe any other lesson I've learned. They said she actually wanted to fly home to Ghana because she wanted to die there. She knew she was dying. So she got on a plane and she landed on Friday and died before she even got out of the airport. Her kids don't know yet. We brought them here so their pastor could tell them. Because we we just wanted to find out in the context of like of spiritual people. Where do you where do you go for that? If you don't have to have a spiritual family. You know what we do? Grab Danielle, grab Leanne or Manicins Director, and we go back to the teacher's lounge. We sit down with Kofi and Jocelyn, eight and nine years old, and we proceed to tell them, hey, mom's not coming home. She's with Jesus, she's not suffering anymore. And we pray for them. I don't know where you turn if you don't have a church in circumstances like that. The other thing spiritual family means is it means it means we fight for each other. So you guys know Ephesians chapter 6. It's this great passage. It talks about the armor of the Lord, right? And when we think of this armor of the Lord, we think about putting on the armor to go out and fight the devil, and it does mean that. It says, finally, be strong in the Lord and the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil, because he does want to kill you, by the way, if you didn't know that. He doesn't like you. For we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. How many of you know there is a there is a darkness, a present darkness that we live under? There's the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of our Lord, and they are not, they're not friendly with one another. There's a battle that's happening. It says, therefore, because there's this war happening, therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand firm, stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth. When you're off the path, you kind of get corrected back into truth. Have the belt of truth. Having put on the breastplate of righteousness, having people help you live like Jesus, not perfection, but pursuit of him, that breastplate of righteousness that leads me towards him. And shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. Be ready to bring peace to people like Jesselin and Kofi. Be ready for that. Always have those shoes on your feet, ready to go. In all circumstances, take up the shield of faith. Have strong faith with which you can extinguish all, not some, all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation. That's that that's the most important part. And the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication. Amen, right? That's good. And we get this picture of us doing this like I'm I'm ready to go. That's not the picture I want you to have, though. This needs to be a picture of like a phalanx. No, keep the verse up there. Like a phalanx of soldiers together. You don't put on the armor to fight alone. You put on the armor, this is what he says, to that end, to that end. Keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints. You put on all this armor so you can fight for each other, so we can go to war for the people to our right and to our left. That's what we do. Man, prayer is family business. And we we are committed to praying for you. And I'll be super clear on this. If you want to be a part of this spiritual family, this fellowship, I want you to commit to praying for us too. It's not just I'm committed to praying for you. How many of you guys in here? Um, how many of you guys in here know Tom and Candy Patton? Just lift your hands up high for me. Yes? There's a lot of hands. Look around, see how many hands that there are. You guys know them? Cool. Um Friday a week ago, Tom's last day as an air marshal. He's retiring, super good, so excited for him. He's out riding his motorcycle. Jeep Gladiator pulls out in front of him. Tom goes over the handlebars. Handlebars actually hit him in the legs. The roll bar of the gladiator hits him across the rib cage, break his ribs, uh, puncture his lungs, has serious brain injuries. Candy, his wife, calls. I have no idea what's going on. Like, I don't, I don't know what the the details are. All I know is my husband's getting uh Medevact to Charlottesville, to UVA. I don't know what's gonna happen. I'm like, okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna pray because you're not gonna go through this alone. We're gonna fight for you. Jen Hooth is really close with them. She's getting updates. As she gets updates, I get on a Marco Polo, I send it to all our lane leaders. I'm like, this is what's going on. I need you to pray right now. I call another church that I know that they had connected with. I'm like, hey, look, they were a part of your church years ago. Can you please pray for them? You have praying people there, yes? Cool. Pray for them. They need it right now. Get in touch with some small group leaders that I know they're connected with. Pray for them. We'll send updates as we get them. Jen starts to get regular updates, and she gives them to me. I give them to my people, all those people give them to their people. So you saw how many hands were raised? How many of you prayed for Tom Patton this week? Lift your hands up high. Lift them up. Just so everybody else who doesn't know Tom, they can see that. Look at that. That's what spiritual family does. That's what we do. Candy was blown away at the difference in what she expected and what the doctor said. They got there and there they're like, he's he's probably got a really bad brain bleed because he's barely responsive. Turned out he didn't have like the big brain bleed, he had some smaller ones. Like, praise God. That's so much better than what I expected. When you get in a motorcycle accident, usually you have lots of extremities that are broken. It is very, very hard on your body. The nurses said, Wow, he doesn't look like somebody that just got in a motorcycle accident. He had one broken bone besides his ribs. It was in the big toe of his foot. From his boot, probably. Have surgery. Again, we didn't just stop like initial prayer. Okay, Tom's not dead. We're done. That's not where we stopped. We kept going. Like we're getting updates. Like, okay, let's keep praying. Let's pray more. Now we're praying for the brain bleeds to go away. Now we're praying his lung has actually collapsed, one of his lungs, because the ribs are pressing in. It's like a compound fracture. They're gonna go in and do surgery and put some plates in there. We're gonna pray that it's a good surgery, that it heals him, that that God takes care of it. And we're just going to war. We're fighting for each other to that end. We are making supplication for the saints. We're doing what this word teaches. This is what our guide is. So we're gonna go into a time now. Again, we did this inverted. We're gonna go back into a time of worship. We got some business we're gonna take care of here in between. But I want to give you a chance. Maybe you're hearing this and you're like, wow, spiritual family. I didn't even know that that was a thing. I just thought you kind of came to church and and and you heard a TED talk and they sang some songs at you, and then you left. And maybe if you're really serious, you read your Bible once in a while. Like, no, it's so much more than that. God wants to do something among us, in us, and through us. And the launch pad for all that is his local church. And so we're gonna give you an opportunity. There, the tap disc in front of you. If you tap it, it's got a chance for you to say, like, I want to commit. We're not gonna do this forever from now on, from this Sunday forward. When you go through growth track, you'll get a chance to decide you want to be a member of this church. But if you want to make a commitment, like a fellowship commitment here, we want to know who you are. And so if you tap the disc in front of you, it gives you a chance to fill that out. There's our statement of faith, our org chart, lots of questions you can you can ask after that. But I want to give you a chance to do that. More than that, though, if you've never been invited into the family of faith, if you've never been invited to make a decision to let Jesus be your Lord, that's where it really starts. That's that helmet of salvation. And so what I want to do, like you may hear this and think, like, this is this is what I need in my life. I need Jesus. I want to introduce you to the father of the family, if I can, and the big brother. And the comforter who's with us all the time, the Holy Spirit. So right now, could we all just bow our heads? And the way that this starts, the way that this invitation into the family begins, is you make a decision that God's way of life is the way of life that you now want to follow. And you're gonna walk away from your own pattern and your own way of life and submit to his. So we repent of our sins, we turn from a sinful lifestyle, and we commit our lives to Jesus. And at that point, he invites us into spiritual family. We confess him as Lord. We say that we believe that he's the Son of God and that God raised him from the dead and that he's gonna atone for all our sins. That's here, that's online, that's at our micro sites. If that's you, what I want you to do, I'm gonna give you just a second here. If that's you, if you say I want to commit to that, like I haven't committed ever, or maybe I have, but I don't think I'm living that way. And I want to make that commitment fresh and anew today. If that's you, I'm gonna count to three. And I want you to just slip your hand up and we're gonna say a prayer together. Everybody in this room. Number one, Jesus loves you, he loves you so much. Two, he has a spiritual family he wants you to be a part of. If that's you right now, three, just slip your hand up. Raise your hand. Yeah, come on. I know that there are people here. Yes, it's okay. Slip your hand up. You're not raising your hand to me, you're raising your hand to Jesus. You're telling him yes, like I want to be involved in your family. Man of church, can we pray this prayer together? Loud, every single one of us. Say, Jesus, I need you. I repent of my failures and flaws, and I surrender to you now. I know you lived, you died, and you rose again. All with us in mind, with me in mind. Come into my heart, save me, forgive me, and lead me in Jesus' name and his authority, and everybody said, Amen. Hey, y'all, give it up. Let's let's give it up for Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 41:43

Thank you for listening to the Mana Church Stafford Podcast. If you would like to connect with us, you can find us on the web at manastafford.church or download the manna church app to listen to our new episodes as they become available. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast. We would also love to meet you in person. If you are local, our services take place each Sunday at 10 a.m. We pray you have an amazing week, and we'll see you next time.