What does your "But God" moment look like? /// Heaven & Earth: Part 2

We're so glad you've chosen to listen to our online experience! Here at Plum Creek, we’re all about changed lives, changing lives; and what that simply means is that what Christ has done in us is not just for us, but it’s for us to share with others in our community and around the world.

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If you're using this teaching for a Home Groups setting, we've included discussion prompts to help guide your conversation:

1. What does your own "But God" moment look like, and where have you seen God step into a story that seemed stuck, hopeless, or over?

2. How does it change the way you see grace when salvation is described as a gift from God rather than a reward for good behavior?

3. Where do you most need to move from a me mindset to a we mindset in the family of God?

4. Think about the Miller family story. What does it reveal about belonging, acceptance, and the way God welcomes people into his family?

5. Read Ephesians 2 this week and notice every place Paul describes what we were before Christ and what we are now in Christ. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Fleet Creek Church Podcast. We're so thankful that you're listening along with us in this way. If you're a returning listener, welcome back. If you're new or newish, we'd love to become part of your listening relationship. So be sure to subscribe and follow to be notified when you have a season revealing. Now, before we get into the message, we want to remind you of one thing. Hungary Church, we are all about changed lives, changing lives. We really believe that if Jesus is right about God, about life, about the soul, then it only makes sense to rearrange our lives around what he says is true. Because if you choose to follow Jesus like that, it really does change everything, including the lives around you. Okay, let's posture our hearts for what God has in store. This message.

Message Start

SPEAKER_01 0:59

So before we jump into my message for this weekend, I felt like this would be a good weekend for me to give you a couple of family updates from the Miller family. These are a couple big things happened this spring. And so I want to first show you a picture of our third son, Zach. He got married to a young lady named Isabel. Um, right uh the week after uh Easter, we couldn't be happier. She's amazing. She's felt like part of our lives for quite a while already, and now she's official. And then just a few weeks later, Beth and I flew out to uh Boston area because our second son, Luke, graduated from seminary. So he graduated from uh Gordon Conwell Seminary, and two very special moments for us a son starting a new family and a son uh embarking on new ministry, and Beth and I are just incredibly grateful. So, now if you have your Bibles, you know we've been in a series, uh we started it last week, and we're still we're unpacking this letter that this guy named Paul wrote to one of the churches that he started in a community called Ephesus. So if you have your Bible, would you please uh open up to the book of Ephesians? And before we do, I want to take a second and give you a little context for this letter. It's important for you to know first: this Paul guy has had this radical conversion. God has done a work in him, and he just went from heading in one direction to heading in a completely other direction. Anybody experienced that in your life? I mean, this dude, radical salvation, amazing. And God set him on a course as a church planter, and he started, he was a prolific church planter, and one of the places extremely strategic that he chose to plant a church is this community called Ephesus. And he's writing from prison, and this community is one of the largest and most influential cities in the Roman Empire at the time. Here you can see where it would be located on a map in what we now would call Turkey. When Paul wrote to the Ephesians, uh, Ephesus was a major harbor city on the Aegean Sea. And I want to show you some pictures too, because Ephesus is now in ruins. You can go there and you can still see much of what it would have looked like in Paul's day. And over the centuries, the harbor began to fill with silt. So now the city of Ephesus is no longer on the coast, it's a few miles off of a few miles inland. Now, historians and theologians will tell us that we don't know specifically on this, but there would have been between 150 and 250,000 people that lived in this community. And now again, it's an archaeological site that you can go to. And so many times when you're gonna read what Paul is saying, he'll use this term to describe a group of people, and he will use this term Gentile. And I want you to make sure to know what a gentile is, because look at me, you're looking at one. Because I did not grow up in a Jewish family, I'm a Gentile. It's likely, unless you grew up in a Jewish family, you're you're a Gentile too. And so when he talks about that, we're gonna find ourselves in this story. So when Paul wrote this letter to this church, Ephesus was this bursting city full of influence. There was lots of commerce that was going through this area because of their ships, and I believe that Paul chose this area strategically, knowing that if this church could get this right, then the gospel could go from there into other regions. Make sense? So it's a strategic place to start a church. But it was also a complicated place to start a church because it was filled with people that had uh competing in differing religious and cultural and philosophical and worldviews that were very different. So it's a very different group of people. And Paul, what his intentions are, we're gonna see this today as we read this letter that he wrote, is to try and get these people to understand how to do life together. And it's beautiful. So many of the Gentile believers who had stepped across the line of faith and said yes to Jesus are beginning to wonder, how do I fit into the context of this community, into the local church? How do I fit into God's story? They were wondering, can I really be part of God's family? Because it felt like that was just for the Jews. They're somehow second-class citizens. They felt that way, literally felt that way compared to the Jewish believers. And so it's into this tension that's very real that Paul writes one of the most beautiful letters in the entire New Testament. Remember, he knows this church must get these things right for the gospel to advance into this region, in this area. So when he writes this letter, he's reminding them that God's grace doesn't just make dead people alive, it creates a whole new family. And that was his intention in writing this letter to help the church figure these things out. And that's really what the second chapter of um Ephesians is all about. Now, Pastor Tommy did a great job kicking off the series last week, did amazing. Chapter one is is it was a we we landed in this spot, and Tommy told us that there are some things that are different about us now that we've stepped across the line of faith because of what Jesus did. We are chosen, we are free, we are marked, and we are sent. That's what Tommy talked about last week. But what I really want us to continue is this idea that Tommy shared with us that there's this thread that continues to be woven throughout the entire letter that we're studying this summer, and that's this the church is meant to be a living picture of God's new creation breaking into the world, the local church. Now, I want to pause for a second because there's a danger here to think that's just about this church all those years ago in Ephesus, and that's not true. The same is actually true right here in Castle Rock at Plum Creek Church. This church is also meant to be a living picture of God's new creation breaking into this community around us, too. So, uh, as I was reading chapter two over the last several weeks, the question that I started asking myself is how are we gonna get there? How are we actually gonna do this? How does this theme that we see the Apostle Paul challenging this church all those years ago become this theme that we embrace together as a church too? How do people who are once far from God become his people? How do people who were spiritually dead become spiritually alive? And here's the big one how do strangers, even in some ways enemies, become family? That's what Paul is talking about. And here's what's so fun. Chapter one, like I just shared, tells us who we are. Chapter two tells us how to get there. This living image of God's new creation to the world around us. And Paul's gonna take us on this incredible journey in chapter two, where he's gonna say things like, We were dead, but God made us alive. We were far away, but Christ brought us near. That we were divided, but God made us one. That there was a time when we were strangers, but God makes us now family. And by the time we get to the end of this chapter, listen, I'm so excited about where we're going today. Because at the end of this chapter, we're gonna discover something beautiful. And this is what we're gonna discover together. God didn't just save us from something, He saved us into something. That's important. So, as important as this was for the church in Ephesus, it is for Plum Creek today. So let's jump in. Ephesians chapter 2, starting in verse 1. So Paul writes these words Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. You used to live in sin just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil, the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. All of us used to live that way, following the passionate desires and the inclinations of our sinful nature. By our very nature, we were subject to God's anger, just like everyone else. Now I gotta stop for a second and tell you, if if you have, and I hope you have, read chapter one last week, you can see this one's completely different. Chapter one starts off with this like kind of encouragement, this celebration, this reconnection to who we are, chosen, free, marked, and sent. And then Paul starts the second chapter with these words, you were dead. And you're like, Well, bro, like, thanks for the encouragement, right? Like that seems pretty harsh, but here's what I don't want you to miss. Paul's not saying these things to shame us. He's not saying these things to beat us up or to make us feel terrible about ourselves. In fact, the the emotion in which he's writing is completely different. What he's trying to do is invoke in us not guilt, but a deep sense of wonder, awe of what God has done in your life and mine. The goal isn't for us to walk away thinking, wow, I'm a lot worse than I thought I was. The goal is for us to walk away saying, Man, God is way better than I could have even dreamed possible. Because before Paul tells us what we should be doing, what he wants to do is remind us about what God has already done. What a great place to start. Now, we have some work to do today because one of my favorite things about CCK this week was when the teaching times came, the kids were all jam-packed in this room. It was awesome. And when the teachers would talk about something that that uh was a describing a characteristic of who God was, the kids would all cheer very loud, all together, Wow God! And they just learned that this was part of what they were supposed to do throughout the week. So I thought we could try it. Can we try it? Just say wow God real quick. Can you say that? You know, okay. Um honestly that was pathetic. So, what's really cool about kids is they say stuff like that like they mean it. So we're gonna practice together, okay? I think we can do better. Here we go. Before Paul talks about our response, he celebrates God's rescue. Okay, okay. Before he talks about our behavior, he reminds us of God's grace. Before he talks about what we do for God, he shows us what God has already done for us. Okay. I think the kids would have been proud of you. I also think they may uh that might not have been possible, but you did it. That was awesome. And that's what Paul is doing here. He's taking us back so that we'll never forget where God found us. Not so that we will feel condemned, but rather so that you and I will be amazed at what God has done. And Paul begins with this reality that every single one of us must face. You and me together. And this reality is this apart from Jesus, we weren't just struggling. We weren't just sick, we weren't just in a bad season of life. Paul says this you were spiritually dead. Now let's be honest. We hear the word dead and we're like, geez, bro. Seems a little, I mean, that I'm not sure that's how I would describe myself before Christ. Confused, lacked some understanding, broken, or maybe even the word lost, but very intentionally, the apostle Paul says to this church, listen, before you knew Jesus, you were lost spiritually, and more than that, you were dead. Wow. Why would he say that? Dead feels extreme, and here's why dead people can't help themselves. You're dead, you're dead. You can't improve from dead, you can't educate your way out of dead, you can't rescue dead, and dead people are completely out of luck, and that's what Paul was saying. Listen, there was a time where you were spiritually dead, and something needed to change. The problem wasn't that we just needed a little spiritual coaching. It wasn't that, hey, buckle down and get some new habits and see what we can do about this life, this deadness that we have spiritually, or just try harder. The problem is, and scriptures are very plain about this. We talked about this uh not too long ago. Apart from Christ, you can do nothing. Paul wants us to understand something here that our culture sometimes struggles with, and that means there's times that we've struggled with this too. Our salvation is not about what we do. You need to be reminded of that today. Our salvation is all about what he's done. That's where it starts. And that's part of why this chapter is so beautiful. Because the story of following Christ is not people climbing their way back to God. It's not that at all. Instead, it's God coming after people who had no chance to climb after him on their own. And before any of us gets uncomfortable with Paul's diagnosis of our deadness, remember what he's doing. He's not causing us to want to feel worthless. Instead, he wants us to feel wonderful about what God has done. Not magnifying failure, but magnifying the rescue that is the work of Jesus on the cross. And he's setting us up for one of the greatest turns that I believe we can see in scripture. And I love this. There are two words that are embedded in here. Before I get to that, can you imagine if Paul's letter stopped in verse 3? It would be a little depressing, quite honestly. We just read them together. He says we're dead. Disobedience, obeying the devil, following the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature, dead, subject to God's anger. You're like, whoa. But here's where I see this turn, this turn in scripture. There's two words that Paul uses as he describes who we were and now where we're going. And these two words are this, but God. But God. So let's take a look at it. Ephesians chapter 2, look at verse 4. Here it is. But God. That's the way it was, but God, so rich in mercy that he loved us so much that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. Friends, that might be two of the most hope-filled words in all of scripture, but God. Oh, you were dead, but God. You were separated from him, but God. You were hopeless, but God. You were lost, but God. That's just the good news right there. But it's important that we see that the apostle Paul did not say this to his church. Listen, you were in a place in your life where you were dead, but boy, did you figure it all out. That's not what Paul wrote. He doesn't say, listen, you were separated and you just got your act together. That's not what Paul says. You were hopeless, and boy, did you just keep trying harder and eventually made your way out of the mess. Or you were lost and you just became very religious. That's not what Paul says at all. No, we must never forget this. The hero of the story of your faith is God. The hero, the subject of Paul's sentence is God, the initiator is God, and the rescuer is God. And Paul wants us to understand that salvation begins with his initiative, not ours. Why? Well, just look back at what Paul said. Beautiful. This is why because God is rich in mercy. God acted on our behalf. Okay, there we go. And God rescued us. See, that's grace. And some of you know exactly what but God feels like. You understand because you had a marriage that was hanging by a thread, but God came in and made a difference. Addiction had a grip on your life, but God. Finances, a mess, but God. Your story you thought was over, but God. And so we keep going. You need to see what Paul says here in verse 8. But God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can't take credit for this. It is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things that we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God's masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus so that we can do the good things that He planned for us long ago. Paul continues by reminding us, and we need to know this: you didn't earn this, you don't deserve this, you don't achieve this. This is something that's given. We receive it from him. It's not a trophy for good people, it's not a gift for people who desperately need his grace. You didn't work your way to God. You didn't rescue yourself, God rescued you. That's grace. And I hope you know what I mean when I say grace. Do you know what grace is? The unmerited favor of God. What does unmerited mean? It's a His decision to give you what you don't deserve and you can't earn on your own. That's grace. And grace is a gift. You know why it's a gift? So Dougie can't brag about it. Neither can you. It has nothing to do with me. Nobody gets to look down on anyone else. And nobody gets to claim that they earned their place in God's family. Why? Because every single one of us are standing on the same ground. The firm foundation that you and I stand on is God's grace. And as they say, the ground is level at the foot of the cross. Nobody gets a better spot. We're all in desperate need. And then you see Paul transitions now and he begins to add something important. He God didn't just save us to forgive us, and we talk about this a lot at Plum Creek. He saved us to transform us so that we would become completely different people. We would think different, we would, we would feel different, we would care about different things. Good works doesn't produce salvation, salvation produces good works. And we don't obey God. Listen to the motive shift here. We don't obey God so that God will love us. We obey God because He loved us. And just when you think that Paul is finished talking about all of this stuff, because he's been talking about this individual thing that's happened in your life and mine that's so beautiful, he makes this next step. He shifts the entire conversation and he moves it from me to we. And now he's gonna talk to us collectively. And he says this in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 11. Don't forget that you Gentiles, who's a Gentile? Dougie's a Gentile, you're probably a Gentile too. Don't forget that you Gentiles used to be outsiders. You were called uncircumcised heathens by the Jews who were proud of their circumcision, even though it affected only their bodies and not their hearts. In those days, you were living apart from Christ, you were excluded from citizenship among the people of Israel, and you did not know the covenant promises that God had made to them. You lived in this world without God and without hope. Now here's another transition statement. Look at verse 13. But now. So that's the way it was, but now things are different. What is different? He says this. But now you have been united with Christ Jesus. Once you were far away from God, but now you have been brought near Him through the blood of Christ. So Paul looks at these Gentile believers and essentially says this, I don't ever want you to forget where you came from. You can be proud of that. You can be proud of where you came from. You were outsiders. There was a time where you were excluded and separated. And for the people reading this letter, that wasn't just some kind of uh verbiose way of talking about this distinction. It was their reality. This is how they truly felt because of the way things in the context of this community. The Jewish people, you see, were God's covenant people. The Gentiles were the outsiders. Oh, but God, through Jesus, changed everything. Paul says, Once you were far away, but now you've been brought near. Church, listen, that's true for you and me too. There was a day when we were far away, but he said, Come near, come near. What is it that he was saying, come near to? Come near and be religious? That's not what he was saying. Was he saying come near to some kind of temple or a building? No. Sign up for some kind of denominational involvement. No, that's not he was saying, come near to me. We have an opportunity to be near God Himself. And every one of us knows what it feels like to be far away and to wonder, is there any way that I could belong? Am I enough? Will I be accepted? Um, is there is there something here that I need to change? Paul says this distance has been removed and you've been brought near to God Himself. Look at verse 14. For Christ Himself brought peace to us, he united Jews and Gentiles. Into one people when in his own body on the cross he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. Now, this is important because we're used to people going in and trying to negotiate a peace deal, right? Like, is there a way for us to go in and negotiate a peace deal between the Jewish people and the Gentiles? And that's not what Jesus did. He didn't negotiate a peace treaty. He didn't say, hey, let's all just try and get along a little better, okay, guys? Rather, he destroyed the wall itself and he created something entirely new. Look at verse 17. He brought this good news of peace to you Gentiles who were far away from him, and peace to the Jews who were near. Now all of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us. So he's explaining what Jesus did by dying on the cross to break down this wall that would separate these two people groups. And then, as though that's not enough, he takes it one step further and he says, Christ himself has brought us peace. He's the one that brought the peace. The specific peace that Paul is talking about here is the peace between people that had every reason to be divided and to remain divided. And it's too easy for us to miss how monumental this was during this time. The change that Paul says Jesus died for, these Jews and these Gentiles, they had different histories. They had different traditions, they had different cultures and different assumptions and different stories. And Jesus takes these two groups that had spent centuries divided, and he creates what Paul now calls one new family. In church, that's the gospel. That's what the gospel does. Not, hey, go be a better tribe. No, we're gonna be a family together. Don't just figure out how to tolerate each other, we're gonna work towards true reconciliation, not just coexistence, but rather a new kind of unity that can only come through Jesus Himself. And this is what makes friends, Jesus followers, so unique. Because you and I both know this culture that we live in is really good about division. Really good. You feel it, you see it, you hear it, you read about it every single day, if not multiple times a day. This world knows how to categorize and build up walls and point fingers. But our Jesus, you see, he specializes in tearing those things down. And then Paul arrives at this destination in verse 19 that he's been leading us towards the whole time. And he says this another transition word, so now. All of that was the way it was. So now, pay attention. So now, you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners, you are citizens along with all of God's holy people. You are members of God's family. Wow. So now it looks different, friends. So now you're no longer a stranger. So now you're no longer an outsider, you're no longer a foreigner. Rather, we are members of God's family. So you need to hear this today, straight from the Apostle Paul that comes to the heart of your heavenly father. We're family, friends. That's what we are. And if you've said yes to Jesus and you've stepped across the line of the faith, welcome to the family. That's who we are. So I was thinking about this this week and trying to capture in my own heart the reality of being accepted into God's family. And I want to show you another picture. Since we're Doug's bragging on his kids' weekend, um, this is a picture of our youngest, our daughter Megan, on the day that she got married a couple of years ago. It was an amazing May day, um, down in Larkspur at this beautiful venue. It was incredible. The day was awesome. Um, lots of amazing memories. And the next day it snowed almost two feet. I was like, thank you, Lord, that didn't happen on my little girl's wedding day, right? But I'm an early morning guy, so I had gotten up early and I went to the spot where I spent some time with the Lord in the morning, and I had I was on mission, and there was something that I knew I needed to do, but I didn't want to do. It was hard. And uh I grabbed my phone and I opened my contacts. In particular, I opened my daughter, my daughter's contact, Megan Miller. There was a problem. She wasn't Megan Miller anymore. That was super hard for Daddy Doug. But I knew that I knew that I knew that I had to change her last name. This was a bittersweet moment for me because I was so grateful. It had not my my angst in changing her name had absolutely nothing to do with her amazing husband, Brett. He's absolutely what we prayed Megan would find. He's amazing. It had nothing to do with Brett, it had to do with this heart, and that that little girl was my responsibility. But it was different after that day. And I knew that just for me, I had to change her last name to Johnson. And so it took me like 40 minutes, lots of tears, like one letter at a time, deleting. Like, oh, this is so hard, this is so hard. And after those 40 minutes and lots of tears, I changed her name to Johnson. Someone said uh yesterday, why didn't you just make it Megan? Um, or daughter. That would even be better, right? So much easier. But I knew, listen, I had to do this. This was something that I had to do to kind of this monumental moment. So, fast forward to last April. This is the picture of Zach and Isabel again. Isabel's amazing. Um, like I said, she's felt like family for quite a while. And the next morning I woke up, just like I did after Megan's wedding, and I sat down in a quiet spot at the house we were staying at in Arizona, and I uh I opened my phone to Isabel Trainer's name. Easiest thing I've ever done in my life. There were no tears shed. It was a very exciting moment for me, and I was like, gosh, this is so much easier this time. Delete, delete, delete so fast I got all the way into her first name, you know? And I had to put some letters back in, Isabel, and it was not Trainer anymore, it was Miller. And I can tell you there was no hesitation in this. Uh, this was easy. It took a fraction of a second, and I was excited and I was happy and I was thrilled to do it. Why? Because all I was thinking about was thank you, God, I have another daughter in my family. Isabel is now a miller. That's awesome! Easy thing for me to do. And listen, Isabel is not a second-rate miller. She's all in in my mind and my heart, all in. And I assure you, she feels the same way. Now we stick together as millers. And there are benefits of that, and there are also responsibilities of that. And as I was thinking about what Paul is saying in Ephesians chapter 2, listen, this is probably the closest thing that I can get to the heart of our God here. He says, You're in. No hesitation. And some of us we think, we imagine that he's like reluctantly, reluctantly letting us into his family, and that's not it at all. We think he's putting up with us, maybe tolerating us, but Paul says something entirely different, friends. He says, Listen, you were a stranger, but you're not a stranger anymore. He said, Listen, there was a moment when you were an outsider and now you're not. You were foreigners, but now you're in the family of God. So don't miss this. God didn't just save us from something, He saved us to something, into a family. To a group of people, a new humanity, a place. Listen, where you can belong. Oh, it's so beautiful. And so, some of you have heard me talk about this before. When the kids were little and they would head off to school, we would say these things to them all the time: walk with a king today and be a blessing. Be a leader, and I would always finish it with this. The millers stick together. And the boys were always very passionate about that one. The millers stick together. And it's true. That doesn't mean that we always agreed. It doesn't mean that we never hurt one another, and it doesn't mean that we never had conflict. What it did mean was this we're family. And family doesn't quit on family. Family forgives. Family shows up. Family gives grace. Family does everything it can to protect the relationship. Family chooses to work through the hard stuff. And Palm Creek, hear me. We're God's family. Wow, God! And it's supposed absolutely and it's supposed to look exactly the same way in the context of the way that you and I do life together. Because our world knows how to cancel people, how to walk away, our world knows how to divide, and it almost seems like sometimes it's something enjoyed by the culture around us. But the family of God is called to be different. We love one another. We choose to forgive one another. We bear with one another, we care for one another. Listen, we fight for each other instead of fighting against each other. We treat each other with honor, respect, dignity. We protect relationships, and listen, we refuse to let secondary things become the ultimate things. Why? Why do we choose to live life this way? Because Jesus didn't shed his blood to create a collection of individuals. Jesus shed his blood to create a family that looks so compelling and different to the world around us. Families stick together. So, church, we must never forget the stakes are high. How high are they? Well, listen, go back to what Pastor Tommy said is the thread that's woven throughout this book. This is so important. The stakes are high because the world is watching. And these are the things that should put this new creation of God's work on display to the world around us. And here's what breaks my heart. Far too often, you've seen it too, far too often, what the world sees when it looks at the big sea church is not this life that Paul's describing in Ephesians chapter 2. It's not a family, it's not unity, it's not reconciliation. Instead, they see division. Instead, they see fighting. And listen, Christians attacking Christians. Churches splitting in judgment with no grace. They see what we yell so loud about what we're against. Instead of they see the passion for what we're for. And they see people wearing the name of Jesus while treating one another in ways that look nothing like the Jesus way. And so, Plum Creek, listen, we have to admit something. This letter that Paul wrote to this church all those years ago in Ephesus needs to be read by Plum Creek. We need to say, well, what is God trying to communicate to us? Because, friends, there's nothing attractive to the world around us about that church, that big seed church that's not doing it the Jesus way. Nothing compelling about that. There's nothing about that that would make a person say, Boy, do I want to be part of that family. And every time, every time we refuse to live the Jesus way, we're hiding the very gospel that we've been called to proclaim. So this is how, Plum Creek, this is how we become that living picture of God's new creation breaking through to this Plum Creek Valley. Every time we choose forgiveness over bitterness, every time you and I choose unity over division, when we choose reconciliation over conflict, you see, when we do these things, we're leaning into and showing the world what Jesus is like. So the church should be one of the most beautiful pictures of family on the planet. And I pray that our church will be exactly that. Not because we're perfect, but because we're learning to love one another the Jesus way. I promise you, people will want to be part of that. So when people walk into Plum Creek, my heart, and I hope yours is too, is that they see something very different. This week, when all those families came here for their dropping their kids off, I hope they saw something different. And friend, listen, in just a few moments, when we disperse from this place and we go into this valley, we head into our work week, there should be something very compelling and very different that our folks in this community see about you and I. Because when the church looks like family, the gospel becomes visible. And church, listen, that's why all of this matters so much. Because there was a day when you and I were dead. But God, now we're alive. Listen, Paul told us, we know it's true. There was a day when we were far away. But God said, I'm near. And there was a day when we were divided. Now we are one. And there was a day when we were strangers. When people see you, and when they see me live in the Jesus way, you cannot stop what will happen in this community. When we as a church decide to live that way. Father, well, I thank you for Paul. Uh his words, they're they're hard and uh and yet so encouraging. And if we'll take time to reflect this week, it'll it'll change the way we think. It'll help us to see some things differently. And will you help us, Lord, to make sure that we just don't read this book and think it's an old book, this letter that was written thousands of years ago that somehow it doesn't have application to Plum Creek in my life today. But then we would take this mandate from Paul seriously and know that just as high as the stakes were there in Ephesus back then, they're just as high right here in Castle Rock today. And uh, we have a responsibility and we'll be held accountable to living this Jesus way. So, Lord, will you help us this week to truly live like family, to care like family, to love like family, to do this your way? Will you help us when our thoughts go to a place that they shouldn't, that we would catch those thoughts? When we're about to say something that doesn't contribute to the family in a way that would honor you, that we would guard our mouths, for getting ready to post something that doesn't contribute to putting Jesus on display in this valley that we would check ourselves and not make the post. And Father, I pray for someone that can hear my voice today that has heard us talk a lot about family and has heard us talk about God's grace and the importance of this decision, this but God moment that you can have right now where you have an opportunity to step across this line of faith and say yes to this Jesus. And in your heart, what you know, because God created us this way, there's a passion and a desire to be in this kind of community that we've been talking about today. And this is your butt God moment. And so, in your own words, I know you don't have it all figured out, neither do I, but I'm compelled by the picture of living the Jesus way, and I hope you will be too. So today, if that's you in your own words, just say, Lord, I need my butt God moment right now. And there's lots of reasons why I would see and feel that I'm exempt from being in the family of God, but today I make a decision. It has nothing to do about me, it has everything to do about what you've done. So I say yes to you today. Thank you that you've paid a price on that cross, and now will you help me to grow in my understanding of what it means to be in the family of God? And Lord, I pray. I pray that this week there would be someone in our community that sees this family differently than they've ever seen anything before, and something sparks inside of their soul, and this becomes the greatest marketing strategy for the gospel ever because they say, I want to be part of that family too. Lord, will you help this to be that kind of week for us? We love you so much, and all God's people said.

SPEAKER_00 40:22

Thanks again for listening. Our prayer is that this message encouraged and challenged you in your journey to follow Jesus. If you'd like to learn more about our church, please check us out online at plumcreek.church or if you find yourself within driving distance of Castle Rock, Colorado, we would be honored to see you in person on a weekend. So until next time, grace and peace in the name of Jesus.