Come into the Light W/Pastor Shawn England

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Pastor Brent. Thank you all for welcoming me into your church. Um when I chose this passage a few weeks ago, uh I did not know until this morning that this is one of the foundational texts for this church, in this building. I I knew something of the history of this building, but I didn't know you guys were a part of it, and it's amazing to hear that. So join me as we read 1 Peter chapter 2, verses 4 through 10. As you come to him, the living stone, rejected by humans, but chosen by God and precious to him, you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says, See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame. Now to you to believe who believe, this stone is precious, but to those who do not believe, the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone, and a stone that causes people to stumble, and a rock that makes them fall. They stumble because they disobey the message, which is also what they are destined for. But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness and into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be indeed. Everybody in here is a living stone. Your obedience to God's word and your presence here proves that. And through you, he builds something that the world sees. When I walked past here this morning looking for this place, I noticed that this edifice is beautiful. It looks like a house of worship when you walk up those steps. And that's what our lives look like. This is what Peter is trying to tell these churches that are struggling with what it means to live Christian lives. When Pastor Brad asked me to speak here, he said, you know, incorporate your testimony. And I've never done that before. How do you incorporate a testimony in with a word with a scripture that's hermeneutically accurate? It's difficult. Because I was not a person who was a living stone for God. Most of my life, for 42 years of my life, I lived a life where I was a stumbling block for people around me. When I was 18, I murdered a man and was sentenced to natural life in prison. Natural life means just that. I was told when I was 18 years old that the only way I would ever get out of prison is a governor's pardon or a pine box. And for 25 years I lived life accordingly. I was a big guy, so prison was fairly easy. Often you hear these stories about people who are on their knees begging for God's help and save salvation. That wasn't me. Went to the wait pit. I went to my cell. I walked the yard. I did what I wanted to do. Part of that was I tried to make people stumble. I wasn't a Christian and I didn't want other people to be Christian either. I would see them on the yard and it would just anger me. And in a way, I guess they were a stumbling block for me because I couldn't live a life because I saw something that I didn't even understand. Then something changed. In 2014, I met a man in prison who showed me what life in Christ looked like in a way I couldn't ignore. This man had a natural life, just like me. The difference is he was given a commutation by the governor, and then she took that commutation back for no reason. When he told me that, I had to ask, how do you live your life the way you live it? And he said, I'm glad you asked me that. Let me tell you about life in the Spirit. Let me tell you about Jesus Christ. And thus began my transformation. He showed me what life looks like. He showed me what it meant to live a life that other people looked at and wanted. It's a reorientation of who we are through the Holy Spirit. We become something new because the Holy Spirit makes us something new. We are living stones that God dresses and puts into place so that we become this: a church. Because while this building is undeniably beautiful and functional and serves the Lord, you are the church. And the way in which you go about your lives shows the world what it means to be the church of God. And I'll tell you something about yourselves. Pastor Brad talked about the classes, Classes Grand Rapids East. A year ago, the classes that you guys belong to, and Madison was one of the guiding hands, commissioned two men as pastors to the inside church, my church, inside the prison walls. So right now there are two men that the classes has declared pastors in his church. That is amazing. That has never happened before. That is what faithful service to God looks like. It's recognizing that people serve God where they're at, and no wall can stop him. He spoke into the lives of the people of Classis Grand Rapids East and committed them to his service through two men that they don't even know. But they live and serve amongst people who live in a dark and ugly place. This is the day that we have, and it's so beautiful, and I can't help but think about the people that I left in there, who struggle through the darkness on a daily basis. And then I think about the light that is given to their lives every single time people make a choice to show them who Jesus is, who surrender themselves to the Holy Spirit, who live in to the title that Peter has given us. A royal priesthood, a holy nation, and God's possessions. Because we don't belong to ourselves. When Matt showed me what life, his name was Matt, when Matt showed me what life in Christ looks like, I became a different person and I did different things. I was blessed, there's no other way to put it, in being accepted into the CPI program. This is the Calvin Prison Initiative. This is another program that is really spearheaded by the church that we belong to, more than the institution. It was started by people at the seminary who truly believed that it is a reorientation towards Christ that changes people. There's no education in the world that's going to make you better. That's not what does it. That education is not going to dress you out into a stone in God's kingdom. What makes you a better person is recognizing that Christ is your cornerstone. He is the stone upon which your house has to be placed. People will look at you and determine whether you are a strong building, whether or not you stand up to the trials that come at you. In Christ you can stand. And this is what the education at CPI was intended to do: reorient us, make us the buildings that the people around us inside the prison could see. This works because we received mercy. We received mercy, and through that mercy, we return that mercy to the people around us. My life changed because I learned how to serve others. I spent the vast majority of my life serving Sean. When you do that, you don't really care about other people. If you're so inwardly focused, it's difficult to see someone else's suffering. But when I opened my eyes and gazed upon the cross and saw that Jesus suffered for me, it reoriented the way I looked at people around me. Because I see in other people Christ moving in the world. Nowhere more did I see that than the people who came in and visited the prisoner. People like CPI and my church, celebration fellowship, that showed me that not only could you serve individually as an agent of Christ in the world, but together as a church, you could show the world what that looked like. There's a reason that the Bible uses these terms like body of Christ. Because that's what we are. We are the physical presence in the world of who our Savior is. We show them his love and his mercy and his care and his consideration. And through this, we present this beautiful building that people want to enter into through us, with us. And then we show them by serving them in love and care, the same way Christ served us in love and care.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

As we go about our day, we make choices about how we're going to behave.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Sometimes those choices don't live up to the standard. And that's where the stumbling block comes in. Because each of us recognizes when we fall short. Each of us recognizes when we could have done a little bit more to show the person next to us or across from us Christ's love. We want to be a beautiful building. We want to come into the light, but more importantly, we want people to come into the light with us. Because without other people, we don't see the light.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

We continue to dwell in darkness.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

In 2022, the Michigan Supreme Court changed the law. They said that people who were juveniles when they committed their crime could no longer receive mandatory sentences. That was me. So in 2024, I was resentenced. And I was given a turn of term of years. And I was released from prison on December 10th, 2024, about a year and a half ago. And I have to tell you, it's pretty great. Um you know it's difficult really to put into words. Words are sometimes uh um uh uh inadequate, right? To to to describe the beauty that I see in everything because I lived in darkness. Christ freed me in 2014, right? I thought I and I was happy. When I stood on the yard uh in a prison yard, Matt told me a couple of things. One of the things he told me was, all you've got to do is ask. Just ask God for what you want. I didn't ask to get out of prison. I asked that my life had meaning. I wanted my life to mean something. I wanted to be more than the guy who murdered somebody. Because I can't I can't change that. I live with it. But what I can do is change the way I live in the world. So that that's not the only thing I'm remembering. And Christ gave me that. He gave me that in service to him inside. And then he said, I need more from you. And he gave me service outside. This is who our God is, right? He's the God of liberation. He builds with the most inadequate materials. If you just let him. The other thing Matt told me was that my whole life I had it easy. I said, okay. If you say so. He said, look, the devil has left you alone your whole life. He didn't care about you because you were already his. You already lived a life of selfishness and anger and rage. He said, but now he's gonna be looking for you because you got away. So now I walk around out here and I see all the beauty that God has given us in everything. And I think you've got to watch out for the way in which the devil will try to pull you away from the light. Make you see things that aren't there. Make you see darkness where there is only light. I remember sitting at a traffic light a few months after I got out of prison, and I sat there for I don't know how long because the guy in front of me was texting, and I was like, Alright. Place I'm going still gonna be there. This is great, right? Like, this is awesome. Some of that is just freedom. Some of it is that reorientation, because I literally don't care. All I care about is how do I live the life that I'm supposed to live. And ultimately, what is just mind-blowing is that it's not me. Because of myself, I'm an idiot. I always make the wrong choice. But in Christ, I make the right choice. I allow myself to be guided by him, changed by him, shaped by him every single moment of the day. And it's easy. This is the beauty, this is the secret, right? The possession that we are, the stone that we are, the edifice that we are, is not something that we do. This is the work that the Spirit does in us. And every single time I think about where I am now compared to where I was a year and a half ago, I praise God. I once read of this guy named Brother Lawrence, right? 12th century, 13th century Catholic. So was Matt, so it's cool. And he was a monk, right? And he he worked in the kitchens and he washed dishes and he cleaned and he cooked, and he said he prayed constantly. Every single thing he did was a prayer. He was being dressed as to us into a stone that would fit into the kingdom. And now I think back to what I read about him, and I think, how is my life constant prayer? How is everything I do a prayer to God? How do I show in every action that I want to be that edifice that people see and say, I need some of that, like Matt was for me. I want people to look at me and say, Yes, this is what I need in my life. This is the truth of the world. Because we receive mercy, we can give mercy. Mercy. You know, I grew up in the 80s. I don't know how many of you guys grew up in the 80s, right? Mercy is for the weak. And yet, only in mercy do we find who we really are. The mercy that Christ has shown us gives us a clear picture of who we are. Not the fake mirror that the devil wants you to see yourself in, right? But the true picture of who you are, a stone that God is using in his kingdom. A beautiful stone. And I can tell you that every single person who lives and breathes and works for Christ is a beautiful stone. Because people want what you have, they want that peace, they want that joy, they want that life. Because everything outside of Christ is not life. So we live life because we have Christ. We have we can show mercy because we have received mercy, and we are the stones that show what Christ's kingdom looks like. Thanks be to God. Join me in prayer, please. Heavenly Father, we ask that every day you shape us anew. You make us into your image. You show us what life in your kingdom looks like, and you help us to show others who you are as we walk through the world. Help us to keep in mind that you are the stumbling block. And every time we act in ourselves, we're brought up short. We recognize that our lives are not our own, but yours. And thank you, God, for bringing us out of the darkness and into the light of your glorious kingdom. And in Christ's name we pray.

unknown 20:46

Amen.