SPEAKER_00: Have you ever tried to read the Bible but had no idea where to start?
SPEAKER_00: And then if you did, what was your strategy?
SPEAKER_00: Was it the Bible roulette strategy where you just spin the pages and you land on a topic and you're like, this is it.
SPEAKER_00: This is what I'll be reading today.
SPEAKER_00: Or is it the Instagram verse of the day strategy where your entire spiritual diet is one verse?
SPEAKER_00: Or for you, is it the speed read strategy where you start in Genesis and you're like, how far can I get?
SPEAKER_00: And by the page three, you're checking on Zillow at houses you can't afford.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe your strategy is, I'll get to it tomorrow, strategy.
SPEAKER_00: It's hard to know how to read the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's all jokes and fun until it's not.
SPEAKER_00: You know, until you start asking the question, is it just me who can't read this thing?
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you start asking other questions like, is God not speaking to me through this, but other people?
SPEAKER_00: Here's what's at stake.
SPEAKER_00: If we don't know how to read the Bible for ourselves, what will end up happening is that we will back away from our faith and a personal relationship with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So today I have a conviction to answer a specific question.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the question: how do I read this thing?
SPEAKER_00: How do I read the Bible for myself?
SPEAKER_00: So if you're taking notes, this is the question we'll be at answering today.
SPEAKER_00: I will give you three ways to read the Bible so you can make it accessible for your everyday life.
SPEAKER_00: We've been in a new series called You Guessed It, How to Read the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: We've looked at what the Bible is, why should we read it in the first place, and today, how do I read it?
SPEAKER_00: As we jump in, one thing you need to know is that we are a Bible-believing, Bible preaching church.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, if you're a first-time guest, man, I'm so glad you're here.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I met a couple of you before the service.
SPEAKER_00: If you uh desire a free gift, which I don't know why you wouldn't, uh, I'd love to give you a free gift after the service at Create Corner and talk to you for a little bit after the service.
SPEAKER_00: Today we'll be in the book of Mark, chapter 4, verse 30 through 34.
SPEAKER_00: We'll also have it on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: It all begins with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He's teaching at the Sea of Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: At this point, there's so many people that he has to get into a boat and gets out from the shore, and he uses the water as like a natural amphitheater or megaphone for his voice.
SPEAKER_00: So he's standing in a boat, and all the people are standing on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, waiting to hear what the Messiah has to say next.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: What shall we say the kingdom of God is like?
SPEAKER_00: What parable shall we use to describe it?
SPEAKER_00: This is how Jesus begins.
SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
SPEAKER_00: What image shall I give you today to describe the kingdom of God?
SPEAKER_00: I'm imagining him pontificating, standing in a boat, and you'd think, I mean, he's God.
SPEAKER_00: Like you'd think he'd start with a doctrinal statement, maybe a strategy for saving the world, right?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe a mission statement, uh, a four-piece of paper proposal.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: What does Jesus start with?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, let me give you a parable.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Jesus so often does.
SPEAKER_00: We think he came to give us rules, and what Jesus really did come to give is the pictures, images to use our imagination of what it could look like if I really followed Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Why would he do this?
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is more a library than it is a rule book.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what Jesus is trying to show us.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible offers many different types of writing to invite you into this story.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus used parables, but there's poetry, there's wisdom, there's lament, there's history, there's letters.
SPEAKER_00: And you don't just obey a poem.
SPEAKER_00: You don't just follow a parable step by step.
SPEAKER_00: You don't reduce wisdom literature to bullet points.
SPEAKER_00: You ask the question: what is God trying to teach me here?
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is supposed to be your conversation partner when it comes to developing a relationship with God more than a rule book to be read once and never go back to.
SPEAKER_00: And this conversation partner, this library prompts, it challenges, it confronts even, and it guides, and it comforts.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's get back to the story.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: What shall I say the kingdom of God is like?
SPEAKER_00: Standing in a boat, everyone's waiting to listen.
SPEAKER_00: And I could imagine people are getting a little excited at this point because for hundreds of years there's been this idea of a Messiah coming and saving the world.
SPEAKER_00: Naturally, people thought that this would be someone to launch a movement, uh, a religious leader, someone to overflow overthrow the government.
SPEAKER_00: People were pretty excited about what this could look like.
SPEAKER_00: So when Jesus said this next part, this is when I could imagine there might have been some audible gasp in the room.
SPEAKER_00: So maybe it's not all those other things.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the kingdom of God is like this.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Not a great start for the thing that's supposed to change the world.
SPEAKER_00: Yet when planted, it grows.
SPEAKER_00: It becomes the largest of all garden plants with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.
SPEAKER_00: A revolution speech?
SPEAKER_00: Marching, uh, Rome falling.
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says the kingdom of God is a tiny garden seed.
SPEAKER_00: What is Jesus trying to say?
SPEAKER_00: There's three things that a mustard seed is it's small, it's ordinary, and it's familiar.
SPEAKER_00: Yet, this mustard seed grows unexpectedly larger than the size of its seed.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, it grows in a lot of unruly ways.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, uh, people didn't love mustard seeds that much because whatever your expectation was, they were always bigger than your expectation.
SPEAKER_00: And they would always be forming in weird ways, kind of like the kingdom of God surpasses all human expectations and grows in wild ways you could never ask or imagine in your wildest dreams.
SPEAKER_00: And for anyone right now who has a faith that is very small, or a faith that you seem is just familiar like anybody else's story, Jesus is saying that's how every story in the kingdom of God starts.
SPEAKER_00: Small, familiar, maybe even ordinary.
SPEAKER_00: And the kingdom of God, he is saying, is like a mustard seed.
SPEAKER_00: So imagine any action that you put in to forming yourself in the way of God, that's like the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Anytime you go to church, you're putting a little small mustard seed in the ground.
SPEAKER_00: So congratulations.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you just did.
SPEAKER_00: Something small in the ground that doesn't really seem like much.
SPEAKER_00: Anytime that you read the Bible, anytime that you pray, small mustard seed, a small investment into the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: And when you do this, it grows you into the character of God.
SPEAKER_00: Better decision making, emotionally resilient, clearer decisions, stronger relationships.
SPEAKER_00: But what did Jesus say?
SPEAKER_00: It's even better than that.
SPEAKER_00: You're growing this small investment of the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: But if you keep doing this, what ultimately happens is that this kingdom, the person you're growing into, it doesn't just benefit you, right?
SPEAKER_00: What did Jesus say?
SPEAKER_00: It's almost like a large tree, so large that little birdies can perch themselves on the branches.
SPEAKER_00: So you keep growing yourself in the way of Jesus, reading the Bible, praying, being vulnerable in community, serving all the things that you do.
SPEAKER_00: And what happens is that the spiritual growth doesn't become insular, it becomes an ecosystem for all the other people around you.
SPEAKER_00: Then all of a sudden, you become a place of rest and a place of nourishment for the other people in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you want that to be a person of stability in the chaotic world for the people that you love the most?
SPEAKER_00: This is what it looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Small daily actions that produce this type of life.
SPEAKER_00: But sadly, everybody knows this.
SPEAKER_00: It does not look like this at the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, it looks like the opposite.
SPEAKER_00: I was talking to a young man, and I loved his honesty.
SPEAKER_00: He's like the kind of like the hustler type, hardcore, high achiever, does a lot of amazing things.
SPEAKER_00: And he's going for it in life.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00: And he just was very honest.
SPEAKER_00: Every time I read my Bible, it just feels like a waste of time.
SPEAKER_00: This is what he said.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll be honest, sometimes reading the Bible can feel like a waste of time.
SPEAKER_00: What am I doing?
SPEAKER_00: Reading something that was 2,000 years ago plus doesn't even relate to my life anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And as he was saying this, I couldn't help but smirk.
SPEAKER_00: Because I know of so many men and women who've dedicated themselves to reading the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And I saw them before they started reading the Bible, and I know them after they start reading the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And what I've almost always seen, specifically, if you read the Bible four times a week, that's what stats so.
SPEAKER_00: All the good stats go up, all the bad stats go down.
SPEAKER_00: It's stats.
SPEAKER_00: What happens is that they become people who make better decisions, more emotionally stable.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't happen all at once.
SPEAKER_00: It's like gradually and then suddenly.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it looks like when you read the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: It's like you're doing it every day, maybe four times a week, as the stats show.
SPEAKER_00: Gradually, over time, reading it, and then suddenly you become the type of person that people go for when it comes to advice.
SPEAKER_00: Oh.
SPEAKER_00: I'm that, I'm like, okay.
SPEAKER_00: That's pretty nice.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's you become the type of person that when things are stressed, they go to you because you are a non-anxious presence.
SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden, you become the person people lean on in hard moments.
SPEAKER_00: You go, you can't download this, you can't shortcut it, you can't hack it, you have to plant it and let it grow gradually.
SPEAKER_00: And then what you'll see one day is that everything changes suddenly.
SPEAKER_00: So, how do we read the Bible?
SPEAKER_00: In light of all of this, this is how we read the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: We read it personally for life change.
SPEAKER_00: Not to collect information, we're not trying to check religious boxes or win arguments, but we allow the small daily seed to be planted in our lives so we can become that person where other birdies perch themselves on, because that's how strong our faith is and how rooted it becomes.
SPEAKER_00: Let's continue.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the next verse.
SPEAKER_00: This is Mark 4:33.
SPEAKER_00: With many similar parables, Jesus spoke the word to them as much as they could understand.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever re-watched a childhood movie and then realized that you simply just missed half of it when you were younger?
SPEAKER_00: Uh Lion King, you watch it as a kid, and you're like, cool lions, weird monkey, right?
SPEAKER_00: But the older you get, you watch it and you're like, oh, this is like about grief and loss.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is about the struggle for your calling.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is about toxic advice from your uncle.
SPEAKER_00: Don't even get me started with all the Disney jokes that are clearly for adults and not for the kids.
SPEAKER_00: What changed?
SPEAKER_00: The movie didn't change.
SPEAKER_00: You changed.
SPEAKER_00: Just like the movies don't change, the same is true for the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, I've read that verse before.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's you.
SPEAKER_00: I've heard of that before, but you're not the same person that once read it.
SPEAKER_00: You are completely different.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible didn't change, but you've changed.
SPEAKER_00: That's why it's a library.
SPEAKER_00: It's meant to be explored continually, not a rule book meant to be read once and left.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I want to do a small practice here.
SPEAKER_00: Let's see if this works.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, what I would love to do is put back on the screen the passage that Jesus was pontificating standing in a boat on the shore of Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you, someone bold enough, or several people that are bold enough, to give me one sentence of what this means to you.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna read it together, and I'm just gonna ask a couple of people, uh, the ones who raise their hand, I'm not gonna force you to answer, but if you're bold enough to say, hey, this is what I think it means in my context, that's great.
SPEAKER_00: I would love to hear that.
SPEAKER_00: So let's read this together, and then I'll pick on a couple people who are bold enough to give me one sentence.
SPEAKER_00: So, one, two, three.
SPEAKER_00: It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth.
SPEAKER_00: Yet, when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the bird birds can perch in its shade.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, moment of truth.
SPEAKER_00: Bold moment.
SPEAKER_00: Is anyone willing just to give me like one sentence?
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, this means this to me.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Ooh.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: So good, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Something small inside can create a lasting change outside.
SPEAKER_00: That'll preach right there.
SPEAKER_00: You should get up here.
SPEAKER_00: That was good.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, let's do a couple more.
SPEAKER_00: It could be just one sentence.
SPEAKER_00: Something super simple.
SPEAKER_00: Not as amazing as that one.
SPEAKER_00: Like it could be anything.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, DJ.
SPEAKER_00: Trusting God with my kids.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's an interesting take.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Well, like exponential growth, which is the math of the kingdom of God, like going time travel.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Did you just see what just happened here?
SPEAKER_00: The same verse.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing changed.
SPEAKER_00: What changed is the person reading it.
SPEAKER_00: The eyes of Evan or the eyes of DJ, they just shared, are completely different than my eyes.
SPEAKER_00: I would never have thought of time travel or DJ's kids.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: I would have never thought about that.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the reality: the Bible is like a diamond.
SPEAKER_00: You move it a little bit and it shines in a different way.
SPEAKER_00: Move it a little bit more, it shines in a different way.
SPEAKER_00: The same verse could have dozens of meanings depending on the person reading it.
SPEAKER_00: Any English teacher in the room right now is getting excited because they know this is true.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, there are multiple lenses that we read the Bible through.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a couple.
SPEAKER_00: This is the chronological lens.
SPEAKER_00: A child might read this and say, wow, maybe one day I'll hit puberty.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe a first-time parent reads this and says, Wow, the person I'm caring for right now can actually make a difference for somebody else one day.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the contextual lens, someone growing in poverty might hear one small resource can compound over time.
SPEAKER_00: Someone battling illness might hear healing.
SPEAKER_00: I just need one piece of good news right now to get me started.
SPEAKER_00: A Padres fan might think growth is slow.
SPEAKER_00: I've seen it.
SPEAKER_00: Social lenses.
SPEAKER_00: Someone overlooked by the world may hear, man, God can start with me, how small, how unf how familiar I am.
SPEAKER_00: God can start it with me.
SPEAKER_00: Someone in a position of leadership might think the kingdom of God can grow steadily if I just keep on the same track.
SPEAKER_00: Notice, are all any of these wrong?
SPEAKER_00: They're not wrong.
SPEAKER_00: They're just different ways of perceiving the same wisdom literature.
SPEAKER_00: And not only are there different lenses from you, the Bible was written for you, but it wasn't written to you.
SPEAKER_00: What do I mean by that?
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't written to your specific context as a college student, as a father of four, as a so we have to realize the writers are writing in their own lenses, their own historical context.
SPEAKER_00: What the heck was happening at the time, right?
SPEAKER_00: Rome and the Middle East.
SPEAKER_00: They're thinking through their cultural lenses, their own metaphors, a substance, customs.
SPEAKER_00: They're thinking through the literary lens.
SPEAKER_00: So are they writing in poetry or parable or history?
SPEAKER_00: Some more letters.
SPEAKER_00: Why do I say all of this?
SPEAKER_00: This is why, here's a second way that we read the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: We must read the Bible carefully in the context.
SPEAKER_00: Not only the context of the time and the writer, but our own context and our own lenses that we read the Bible through.
SPEAKER_00: And if we read the Bible carefully, we hold both sides, our own lenses and the writer's lens, we realize the Bible is not a book we graduate from.
SPEAKER_00: It's something that is continually providing wisdom in ways that we couldn't understand maybe a month ago.
SPEAKER_00: Because we're a different person now.
SPEAKER_00: It's like returning to the same movie years later and suddenly realizing the story was far deeper than you first understood.
SPEAKER_00: So we go back to the ancient scriptures, we read it, we hear it, we pray over it, and we live it and we see what God could do.
SPEAKER_00: So here's a question for you.
SPEAKER_00: When was the last time you sat with a passage in the Bible and reflected?
SPEAKER_00: Hey, if you've never read the Bible, this is a perfect place to be.
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you're here.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've been a Christian for 40 years.
SPEAKER_00: Regardless, the question is when was the last time we just sat with a passage in the Bible and reflected on it?
SPEAKER_00: This could be in multiple ways.
SPEAKER_00: You could write down what it means to you, like word for word.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I do in my journal oftentimes.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe for you it's highlighting.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe for you it's rereading the same verses over and over again for greater understanding.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you get with a friend and what we call a Bible study, you actually read over a passage, which we have multiple dozens of groups all across the city doing this.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm telling you, there is no greater feeling in the world when you read a passage, maybe that you've read before, and all of a sudden it's like, oh my gosh, I see a whole different lens than I did not before.
SPEAKER_00: And it's almost like, yeah, the Bible makes more sense, but it's almost like you start hearing the voice of God for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: This is what God wants for you through reading the Bible, and it gives you clarity and confusion, wisdom in a relationship, peace in a season that you don't know how to navigate.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the Bible wants to give you.
SPEAKER_00: And that's when the diamond catches the light.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, let's continue to our last section today.
SPEAKER_00: We've looked at the first three chapters or verses of this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Today I want to look at, or I want to look at the next one, Mark 4.34.
SPEAKER_00: It says this Jesus did not say anything to them without using a parable.
SPEAKER_00: But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.
SPEAKER_00: He explained everything.
SPEAKER_00: There's someone in church history, his name is Martin Luther.
SPEAKER_00: Very famous in church history was someone who knew the scriptures, like the back of his hand, and he read and read, and yet the scriptures still felt like a rule book to him.
SPEAKER_00: It still felt heavy.
SPEAKER_00: One day he was in a monastery tower, and what he says, it was like the heavens.
SPEAKER_00: Opened up.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, this is hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
SPEAKER_00: He said that it's like the heavens opened up.
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden he realized that the Bible, it's a gift to access the wisdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: He's read the Bible for hundreds of hours.
SPEAKER_00: Why was it this time that all of a sudden the heavens opened up?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But what I do know is that wouldn't have happened if he wasn't in community with God, if he wasn't in an intimate relationship with God and learning how to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever noticed that?
SPEAKER_00: That intimacy often is unlocked when it comes to, or wisdom is often unlocked through intimacy.
SPEAKER_00: If you're married, you know this is true.
SPEAKER_00: You can't listen to a podcast about marriage and learn everything.
SPEAKER_00: Shocking.
SPEAKER_00: You have to fight and then find a way to make up and then do that over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: You learn a lot about yourself and the other person.
SPEAKER_00: Wisdom unlocked through intimacy.
SPEAKER_00: You know this through your first job.
SPEAKER_00: I remember my first job.
SPEAKER_00: I remember getting off the plane, and my boss picked me up, and I had a book to impress him in my hand, so he knew that I read, you know.
SPEAKER_00: He had a rule for me.
SPEAKER_00: This is no joke.
SPEAKER_00: Like Evan, this is honest.
SPEAKER_00: He had a rule for me that I couldn't bring up books anymore because I was so annoying.
SPEAKER_00: Well, my previous book that I read said this about leadership.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna learn just through doing it.
SPEAKER_00: You've done the studying.
SPEAKER_00: Now you just have to live the life.
SPEAKER_00: I learned a lot about wisdom through my mentor, way more than I did in college.
SPEAKER_00: Both were helpful, but it was through my intimacy with my boss that I actually learned the ways of being a pastor.
SPEAKER_00: You know this when it comes to working out.
SPEAKER_00: You can't just go on YouTube and figure out what it looks like to bicep, curl something, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like that's you do that, that's helpful.
SPEAKER_00: You have to fall in love with what?
SPEAKER_00: The process.
SPEAKER_00: You have to get intimate with the process.
SPEAKER_00: This is what it means.
SPEAKER_00: Wisdom is often unlocked through intimacy with the content.
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what's true with the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, there's one more lens that I didn't tell you before when it comes to how we read the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: I would say this is the most important lens.
SPEAKER_00: This is the spiritual lens.
SPEAKER_00: Hours before Jesus died, he said something fascinating to his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: He said this.
SPEAKER_00: But you can't bear it now.
SPEAKER_00: When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.
SPEAKER_00: He will not speak on his own, but will tell you what he has heard.
SPEAKER_00: He will tell you about the future.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want that.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we call the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Father, God, the Son, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, which the Bible often calls as our helper.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the Holy Spirit does.
SPEAKER_00: It makes these complex words words for us.
SPEAKER_00: One of the prayers that I read when I open my Bible is I pray, God, would you use these words of Scripture and somehow translate them for to words for me through the Holy Spirit today?
SPEAKER_00: That's a prayer that I pray.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit helps us understand what the Bible means.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the third way that we read the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: We read it personally, we read it carefully, and then we read it prayerfully with the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: With the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Another prayer that I pray at the end of my time with God, uh, in devotions, we're always with God, is I'm j I journal, that's how I how I do it.
SPEAKER_00: And at the end, I always write, Holy Spirit come.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I always say, Holy Spirit come.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm a little weird, but for me, mental images help.
SPEAKER_00: I use my imagination.
SPEAKER_00: I pretend that I'm in the safest place I've ever been.
SPEAKER_00: For me, that's on a lake in Maine, and I'm sitting in a lawn chair, and and God's right next to me.
SPEAKER_00: And that's how I just picture it.
SPEAKER_00: And when I say Holy Spirit come, and what I do is I wait.
SPEAKER_00: I sit and I think, all right, God, do you have to say anything to me right now?
SPEAKER_00: Through the passage I just read, through me reflecting.
SPEAKER_00: And right now you're thinking, Yeah, Jake.
SPEAKER_00: But it could have been the oatmeal that you ate that morning, not God, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's true.
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes we don't know if it's the voice of God or not, but what I can say, if you're in partnership with the Holy Spirit, this is how you get to hear the voice of God for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you want that?
SPEAKER_00: To hear the voice of God.
SPEAKER_00: That voice might come through nature, it might come through several conversations over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: The same thing keeps coming up.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, this could come through the Bible, which it often does for me, or when I'm journaling, writing insight of my previous day.
SPEAKER_00: It could come through community, it could come through the musical worship at church.
SPEAKER_00: Hearing God's voice can look very different for very different people.
SPEAKER_00: I love what Proverbs says.
SPEAKER_00: It says, it is God's privilege to conceal things and the king's privilege to discover them.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, there are some truths that you can't handle right now.
SPEAKER_00: You can't handle the truth right now.
SPEAKER_00: You can't handle the wisdom that God wants to give you and be able to steward it well.
SPEAKER_00: So there are things that God, in his grace, conceals from you right now.
SPEAKER_00: Because you won't be able to handle it.
SPEAKER_00: So what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: We must go and discover it.
SPEAKER_00: One of my greatest theologians, I say this almost every week, is grace is not opposed to effort.
SPEAKER_00: It is opposed to earning.
SPEAKER_00: You can't earn your way to God, but God's not opposed for you putting effort.
SPEAKER_00: You put effort in in the gym, put effort in with your Bible, right?
SPEAKER_00: We work for our spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I I read about this man, his deepest regret, he was on his deathbed, and he said this.
SPEAKER_00: I just never got around to my spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: I just never got around to it.
SPEAKER_00: Because it takes a lot of work to develop an intimate relationship with Jesus where the unlocking of wisdom happens for your life.
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, it's our job to go discover the secrets that God has for our relationships, for our own emotional roller coasters that we're on, for our jobs, for our careers.
SPEAKER_00: Now, at the same time, this idea of hearing the voice of God, there's been a lot of hurt happened in the church when someone says those famous three words.
SPEAKER_00: God told me, Oh gosh, here we go.
SPEAKER_00: What did God tell you?
SPEAKER_00: God told me to Venmo every person in my contacts.
SPEAKER_00: God told me to reach out to my ex for closure.
SPEAKER_00: God told me to move away from San Diego.
SPEAKER_00: Are you sure about that?
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, God can tell you any of those things, maybe besides the first one.
SPEAKER_00: Please don't venmo everyone in your contacts.
SPEAKER_00: How do we make sure, is this the voice of God or is this the oatmeal that I ate this morning, right?
SPEAKER_00: How do you do this?
SPEAKER_00: Several different ways.
SPEAKER_00: The first way is you measure it against the character of God.
SPEAKER_00: It says in the Bible there's fruits of God's character, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness.
SPEAKER_00: If if it doesn't align with those, it's definitely not from God, actually.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, secondly, does your community confirm it?
SPEAKER_00: You can have a crazy idea and you go to your community and say, that is not from God.
SPEAKER_00: I can guarantee you that.
SPEAKER_00: You think you have a great voice, but I don't think the worship team is your best fit, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's what they say on American Idol all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Like, you think God told you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you, maybe you should reconsider this.
SPEAKER_00: So you look at your community.
SPEAKER_00: But there are ways to test the voice of God for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite memories in the past several years was when Keely and I both separately were listening to God and we heard that God told both of us to plan a church.
SPEAKER_00: It was like this weird thing that happened at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: And we went to our community, our mentors, and they said yes, and amen.
SPEAKER_00: If they said, No, this is not right for you, that would have been a big deal for us because God's voice speaks through multiple different layers in order to get our attention.
SPEAKER_00: So, my question for you is when was the last time that you felt God spoke to you?
SPEAKER_00: My hope and my prayer for you is that you would be able to tune your ears to God's voice in the specific way that He might talk to you.
SPEAKER_00: And I guarantee you it's gonna take time and there's fumbling your way through it, and you feel like, is it is it God's voice, is it my voice?
SPEAKER_00: But I will tell you, this has been my greatest guide to hearing God's voice for myself.
SPEAKER_00: Because this isn't a rule book, it's a library, and it's a conversation partner to get closer to God, and he tells me the secrets of my life through the intimacy.
SPEAKER_00: As we finish, I'm gonna invite the band to come up.
SPEAKER_00: It says this earlier in the chapter, and this part scares me.
SPEAKER_00: This is this is something that makes me scared.
SPEAKER_00: It says this.
SPEAKER_00: When when he was alone, the twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables.
SPEAKER_00: He told them, The secrets of the kingdom of God have been given to you, but to those on the outside, everything said in parables, so that they may ever be seeing but never perceiving, ever hearing, but never understanding.
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, they might turn and be forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: Man, in a world of 30-second TikToks, news anchors that have opinions about everything, instant gratification culture.
SPEAKER_00: You will not hear someone say, hey, pick this up for 30 minutes four times a week.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make sense.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't fit an information culture.
SPEAKER_00: But God doesn't just want to give you information, He wants to give you transformation, and it takes time.
SPEAKER_00: It takes time.
SPEAKER_00: And my greatest fear is to listen, is to read these words, and to not understand what the Holy Spirit is trying to tell me.
SPEAKER_00: And my relationship with my wife suffers, and the wisdom for my future is at a detriment, my own emotional health.
SPEAKER_00: I want to tune my ears to God.
SPEAKER_00: So we must learn how do we read the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And we read the Bible in three ways we read it personally for life change, we read it carefully in context, and we must read it prayerfully with the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why we've issued an all-church Bible reading plan for the first time.
SPEAKER_00: And we're reading through the book of Mark, which is about the life of Jesus, and it's 15 chapters.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to go a little crazy, you can read it all in 30 minutes.
SPEAKER_00: But what I would challenge or invite you into today is would you consider reading the Bible four times a week?
SPEAKER_00: Or only reading three or four chapters at a time.
SPEAKER_00: This week, if you're reading the Bible with us, and if you want to tune your ears to the heart of God, we're reading chapters eight, nine, and ten.
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
SPEAKER_00: If you're like, oh, I'm behind, if you read the previous chapters, it'll take you ten minutes.
SPEAKER_00: But would you come along this journey with us to discover the person of Jesus, to read the Bible prayerfully and carefully and personally, and see what just might happen in your life because of it?
SPEAKER_00: I want to ask if you could stand with me.
SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the things that we do for these 60 minutes that we have together is we use a variety of different ways where the Holy Spirit might speak to you personally, and maybe God has already done it through a metaphor, maybe God's already spoken to you through a challenge, maybe he's already spoken to you through the worship.
SPEAKER_00: But another mechanism that the church has always used for God to speak directly to you is what we call communion.
SPEAKER_00: Communion is an opportunity where we discover what Jesus has done for us.
SPEAKER_00: And right now, you might say, I've heard about communion.
SPEAKER_00: I've even taken these communion several times.
SPEAKER_00: But just because you did it before doesn't mean that God doesn't have something different for you now.
SPEAKER_00: Just like the Lion King movie.
SPEAKER_00: What new thing does God want to just help you discover today through the sacrament of communion?
SPEAKER_00: The night before Jesus died, he took the bread and he said, This is my body broken for you.
SPEAKER_00: He took the cup and he said, This is my blood shed for you.
SPEAKER_00: He realized that we can't find our way to heaven ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: There's no way.
SPEAKER_00: So God sent his only son to be that bridge for us so that we can have heaven on earth now and for eternity.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we call the good news.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we call the gospel, and everything in this whole book leads to the gospel, leads to the person of Jesus, and everything after reflects on the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The whole Bible is the good news of what God has done for you.
SPEAKER_00: This gigantic rescue mission, the greatest love story of all time.
SPEAKER_00: So as we take communion, would you be reminded of how God has rescued you?
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you're a person right now that says, I want that.
SPEAKER_00: You can do it because we practice open communion, which means anyone, anyone can come up.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus talks about the church being a hospital, not a place for the perfect, it's the place for the people who are hurting, who want to hear the voice of God, who want to be transformed.
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to be transformed today?
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna take 10 minutes, and we're gonna take communion, and after we take communion, we have gluten-free options as well.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we're gonna sing a couple of songs, and as we do this, uh, would you just invite right now the Holy Spirit to come in?
SPEAKER_00: I know it might sound a little woo-woo a little weird, but usually on the other side of courage is the transformation you're looking for.
SPEAKER_00: Would you be courageous today and say, I'm gonna maybe build a little bit of a relationship with this Holy Spirit thing and see what God might have to say to me today?
SPEAKER_00: So, if you're courageous enough, would you just open up your hands like this?
SPEAKER_00: This is a posture of receiving what God might have to say to you.
SPEAKER_00: What will he have to say to you right now about your calling?
SPEAKER_00: About your budgets?
SPEAKER_00: About your emotional health?
SPEAKER_00: About your body image?
SPEAKER_00: What do you need from God today?
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit knows and he wants to help.
SPEAKER_00: So would you, on the count of three, say three words with me?
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit come.
SPEAKER_00: Three, two, one, Holy Spirit come.
SPEAKER_00: God, we invite you in, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: God, you've helped millions and millions of people across history, from Martin Luther and this monastery tower to the disciples trying to understand these parables that you've spoken to now in 2026.
SPEAKER_00: God, you want to help us understand the mysteries of God, and we just want to say yes.
SPEAKER_00: We don't just want to see these things, we want to perceive them.
SPEAKER_00: We want to understand the mysteries that you have for us about our relationships, about our budgets, about our mental health, about our emotional resilience, about our future.
SPEAKER_00: We want to know, God, would you give us the things that you have concealed from us out of grace?
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to say, God, we're ready for whatever you have to say right now.
SPEAKER_00: We're discovering it, we're putting in effort to hear the voice of you, our Father, through the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So, God, would you come through the sacrament of your body broken, of your bloodshed, as a reminder of how you've rescued us, and how you will always rescue us.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you.
SPEAKER_00: And we're open, Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Come.