SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome to the Refinery Church Sermon Podcast. We're so glad you've joined us today. Our prayer is that this message will help you grow in your pursuit to love and follow Jesus for life. If you'd like to learn more about the refinery, find ways to get connected, share a prayer request, or explore resources to help you grow deeper in your walk with Christ. Visit us online at refineryohio.com. Now let's dive into today's message. Well, good morning. My name is Pastor Jay. I get to serve as the Connections pastor here at the refinery, and I'm particularly excited for this series and talking about my faith story. We got to hear a little bit about uh a few of those at the church last week, hearing some from Jenna and Emily, and um I have the opportunity to share today. We'll we'll hear from our founding pastor, Brad Coaches, next week, and then Pastor Bailey will kind of close out our series. Um but the whole goal and hope of the series is that you too would reflect on the story of God in your life, um, because this is a working matter. It's not a past matter. Your story of God is always a present and future matter as well, because the work that God began, He wants to continue in and through you. Um and so we are thrilled that we get to kind of share as a staff what God has been up to in our lives and hope that that might invite you to deepen your own walk as well. Uh I know the saying is that our treasures are in heaven and not on earth, but when it comes to church softball, I don't think God had that in mind when he said that. Uh we got some hardware here. Congratulations to our refinery orange softball team. We've got about 40 guys that play softball overall. We have three teams. I was not on Refinery Orange. They beat us to get to this title. Um, but the last shall be first, and the first shall be last. Okay. Um is there anybody from Refinery Orange in the house? J.R.I. could you just grab this from me, please? So congratulations. Awesome stuff. Um fantastic. Uh a few other housekeeping things. Uh, Pastor Landon, our lead pastor, he's uh sabbatical right now. Uh he'll be out for four weeks. This is Sunday number two that he's gone. I would just ask um, I don't know what your prayer rhythm looks like. Would you would you just pray for our lead pastor? Um pray that God would renew his mind and his heart, that he would come back refreshed. Um not that he was tired and dragging, but this time away, it it it I'm excited to see what God teaches him and and what he's gonna come back and kind of bring for our team. Um so would you just would you pray for him? Um the excited the announcement that I'm most excited to make though is today is an awesome Sunday because today is the 10-year anniversary of Emily Hauser being on staff of the church. Emily, would you come forward? Would you give her a round of applause? So we surprised her in first service uh saying, hey, by the way, uh happy 10-year anniversary. Come up on the platform, your favorite thing. Um and so we have a little gift for you from our team. And but uh hang up here for a minute, because I just want to say things. So if you don't know Emily, um here's what you need to know about Emily. Anything that you see, especially if you've ever made the comment, oh, that looks nice. It's her fault, okay? She's the reason things look so good. Um, and you you've done every job under the sun here at the refinery. Um, she's been a part since it was Life Point. So the rebrand, the new space that we're in now, um, it has her fingerprints all over it. Um the thing, and I said at first service, I'm gonna say it again because it's true. Um I'm a better pastor because of Emily. All of the things that she does, usually correcting things that I've done, uh if if it looks good and if it sounds good, it's probably Emily's fault. So um the other thing I would say though, this church, we wouldn't be where we are without your investment. So I just want to say thank you on behalf of the church. And folks, would you please give her a round of applause? Thank you, Emily. Um she's great at things with the church, she's also a great travel agent. So if you need some travel plans, you know, you know who to you know who to talk to. Um have you ever had somebody give you advice on how to do something that they've never done themselves? Like I think of maybe somebody who's they they're trying to show you how to hit the ball and they've never played a day in their life. Or somebody who's who's trying to show you what to do on the job and they've never done that work themselves. It's kind of a pet peeve of mine. But where I see this um most hysterically come true is people before their parents telling and giving advice on how to parent, and then they have kids and they're like, ooh, so that's that's not what I thought. Uh Faith and I have experienced this in our own life because experience is so often the only way and best way to learn. You gotta get in the game in order to learn how to play. And I found that to be true, especially when it comes to parenting. And then you have a kid and you think you know it all, and then you have a second kid, and God's sense of humor is gonna make them the opposite of your first kid. So you have to relearn everything all over again. Maybe one kid that you have, if you whisper at them too loudly, they will cry and melt. And the other kid that you have is diabolically scheming on how they're going to get their brother in trouble for the thing that she broke on the wall. You'll never guess which is which in our house. Experience is the best teacher, though. Um, and and and truthfully, Faith and I we're very blessed with our two kids. We have a four-year-old Clara, or sorry, she'll tell you four and a half. That's important now. We've reached that stage. So she's four and a half, our son Beckett is two, and they're both of our kids are great in their own way. But something that I did not realize before parenting about parenting, you always have to be on your toes. In fact, the quieter it is, the calmer it is. They're up to something. Like you buckle up. You might want to leave the house. Uh call the squad. I don't know. Like you the quieter it is, the more dangerous it is, but you always have to be on your toes as a parent. For Beckett, uh, a brief video. Here's kind of what that looks like for our son. So for our son Beckett, yeah. That's what it looks like for him. But for our daughter Clara, staying on your toes, it looks a little bit different. Um I'll share this story. A few weeks ago, we were having a difficult morning. Our daughter Clara was, and you would have thought we were like making her decide on what future career she wanted, but we were just trying to figure out breakfast. Uh, and as we're deciding, I'm I'm maybe running out of patience a little bit, and I look at her sternly, and I speak sternly, and I say, All right, Clara, we have two choices for breakfast. You can either have pancakes or you can have waffles. And she looks back at me with that same sternness and she says, I want waffles, and flips me the bird. Because that was the second choice. Pancakes was one, waffles was two, that finger was waffles, okay? I mean, you can't blame her. But whatever serious moment we were having, it just went out the window. Uh, and Faith and I like both leaving the room in laughter because we we just didn't know. Uh so if you are ever over at our house for breakfast, don't be offended if you that it just waffles. So we use that in our home now, and it just means, yep, waffles for breakfast. So um I but that's not a public view of that symbol, so don't use it, you know, in other spaces, okay. Um nothing would have prepared us for that moment as parents, right? Experience is the best teacher so often. Um we more fully understand something when you experience it. And this is true with parenting, it's true with sports, it's true with a job. Um, it's the best way to really learn something. It's also true in our pursuit to follow Jesus, I've found though. Your experiences shape what you know and how you've come to understand what it means to love and follow Jesus. And while all of us have different experiences, that does not mean that we get a different version of Jesus, or we all just know different things about him, or that he's different for you than he is for me. But here's the best way that I would kind of describe it. Um there are things that we know about Jesus, and then there's things you know about Jesus. And this is the experience category where there are things that I know about God that I've read my Bible, I've studied, I've gone to school, I've done. So sure, there's things I know, but there's certain things that you know it differently when you've walked through it. When you've walked with it, when you've wrestled with it. If you've ever read scripture, maybe you're coming back to a scripture verse that you read years ago or that you've read multiple times, and you read it, and all of a sudden something comes out that you never saw before, or you you begin to understand it more fully. Most of the time, that has to do with the experiences that you have now had. You are reading that in a different light and from a different lens and a vantage point where God is able to teach you something that you are now ready to more fully understand about Him or following Him or the scriptures or things like that. Experience is what helps us teach that. And so today, as we kind of jump into, I guess, me sharing a bit of my story. Um, sure, I I went to college, I studied, I've I've taken a variety of classes. Um, one could say that, in that experience, helped me know some things, but today I'm not really gonna share about what I know. I I I really just I want to share about what I what I know. Um what I've had to walk through, um, what God has taught me on that journey, which is really just uh it's a spiritual fluffy way to say lessons I've learned the hard way, is kind of the another way to say that. And so my hope and prayer today for you is that you too would reflect on your own story, that you would begin to know Jesus more fully as a result of that. Um I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, Bellbrook to be specific, it's a suburb of Dayton. Um I grew up in a Christian home. Um I had great parents. I have two older sisters. One lives in Mason, Ohio, the other lives in Lexington, Kentucky. They're both married and have kids. Um in my family, we grew up and we did we did all sorts of great, awesome, fun things together. We went on trips. Hilton Head Island was kind of like our go-to vacation. Um, we were involved in sports. We were, you know, they took us to church every week. I grew up going to Parkview Church of the Nazarene in Dayton, Ohio, off of Far Hills Avenue. Um, and it everything that I kind of had come to know about Jesus and faith growing up was from that space, and so many wonderful people poured into me, and um that was instrumental in my life. In third grade, I went uh to church camp and I accepted Jesus into my life. I asked for the forgiveness of my sins. Jesus came into my life and and I began my relationship with him. Two years after that, in fifth grade, I decided to take the step and to be baptized. And really a big component of me wanting to get baptized is I think I understood what it meant to take the plunge and for my sins to be washed away, a public decoration of God's inward grace in your life. That was the spiritual answer, but my friend Travis was getting baptized that day, so I thought it'd be cool to get baptized too. Which is also a great reason to be around people who are pointing you towards Jesus and wanting to jump into what they are doing. Don't undervalue that. So I got baptized in fifth grade, and my walk with Jesus, I would say at fifth grade, so about 11 years old, is just kind of starting to take a life of its own. I'm starting to begin to recognize, not fully, but okay, I'm not just somebody who gets drugged to church by my parents, I'm somebody who also has a faith that Jesus wants to help grow. But in that same season of what does this look like on my own? What does this look like of growing in my faith and the steps that I'm taking in sixth grade? Well, let's just say the enemy also wants to work really hard to point you to a direction. And I was introduced to porn in sixth grade. Um this is before smartphones. This is before I think parents were as aware as they are now, just because it wasn't as pervasive. Um but very quickly, what was a one-time thing snowballed into an addiction in middle school that I didn't know I was capable of. And it steered me in a way and down a path and in a direction that I never thought I would be. And I didn't even fully understand it at the time as a middle schooler. You knew that you felt shame, you knew that it was wrong, you you knew that it was not framing your mind and heart in a healthy way whatsoever, but you didn't know how to stop. You didn't know how to talk about it. Nobody ever talked about it. And so you feel ensnared and trapped. And that was much of my middle school journey. It was an addiction that nobody could knew that I had, and that I didn't know how to talk about. You certainly weren't gonna talk about it at church. And so I hid it. And I just carried on with my life, probably no longer following Jesus, but following my own way instead. At some point in my eighth grade year, I don't remember exactly when. By the grace of God, um, he helped me bring forth the question in my mind, my eighth grade year. If I continue on this path, I don't think I'm gonna like where I end up. I don't know how I had the recognition as an eighth grader to understand that. Um, but I think God helped lead me to that point, and I didn't know how to get out of that or how to change or how to find a new path. I just knew that I needed to change something. Something had to be different. And in my mind, I wasn't going to tell anybody this, uh, but I was gonna figure it out myself. And so I go to my parents eighth grade year and surprise them when I asked the question, hey, would it be okay if I transferred from the school that I'm currently going to and I transfer to Dayton Christian? I had a couple friends that went there, but really the motivator and how I kind of helped convince my family this was a good idea is basketball was everything that I wanted to do in life, it revolved around basketball. My hope, my goal was to get a scholarship, play in college. Um I was playing um competitive AAU ball and had the opportunity to be on some phenomenal teams. Um Dayton Christian, my eighth grade year, made the state final four. They had a fantastic coach. So everything kind of pointed to if I if I kind of put my cards or my you know fruit in this basket, my my parents are gonna be happy to take this step, and so we did. I transferred to Dayton Christian, my freshman year. And on the outside looking in, it was all for basketball. But I had this secret internal reason, and that reason was I don't know, I don't like the path that I'm on, and I just know I have to do something different if I'm ever gonna get off of it. But I still didn't really have the answers to do that. And so I transferred from where I was going to Dayton Christian to play basketball, but in hopes of finding a new way. And the shift was really important for a lot of reasons, but but let me explain to you just kind of what I understood about faith up to this point. Here's what I understood about following Jesus: you're either following Jesus or you're not following Jesus. Kind of a fork in the road framework where it's either you follow God or you don't follow God. Um, and that's it's very reminiscent of what scripture actually says to frame it that way. I think of in 1 Kings chapter 18, verse 21, it'll it'll be on the screen, the prophet Elijah, he charges the Israelites and he says, How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him, but if Baal, then follow him. And up to that point, I had kind of recognized in myself, well, I'm just I'm not following Jesus, and I I want to figure out what it really means to follow Jesus or how to get back on track. So this is where the fork in the road I thought I was. But scripture has more examples. I think of Psalm chapter one, there's this um intense contrast between it's either the righteous path or the way of the wicked. And there's there's no in-between. It's either this way or it's that way. Jesus has a rather forthright declaration in Matthew chapter 12, verse 30. He says, Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. And of course, uh, I think of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 7 in particular, you see this contrast in the way that Jesus speaks in that moment. You see there's two gates, wide and narrow, there's two trees, there's two paths, there's uh two houses. There's, you know, the one built on sand that's gonna wash away, the one built on solid rock that's gonna stand firm. It appears scripture is is really clear on this. It's this way or it's that way, and deep down I knew I was just headed down the wrong path. So I needed to make a change and hit the reset button. Um transferring schools is not the right decision for everybody. It's it was a decision that I felt I needed to make, though. And it did help. It turns out the environment that you put yourself in influences you. It turns out the people that you hang around shapes who you become. Would you would you believe it? It reminds me of saying, show me your friends, and I'll show you your future. And so the environment, the the teachers at Dayton Christian, uh, the culture, I mean, just overall, it it helps. And if there are two ways to live, this way or that way, it appeared that I was now living for Jesus. And I use that word intentionally. Um my first two years at Dayton Christian, freshman year, sophomore year, um, I began to learn something about Jesus, and I didn't have language for it at the time. But I I like what Paul has to say about it because uh there's something Paul talks about in his letter to the Romans, just in the first two chapters. Uh while categorically speaking, they're yes, right, you're either following Jesus or you're not following Jesus. According to Paul, there are actually two ways to not follow Jesus. Let me explain. So in Romans chapter 1, verses 18 through 32, Paul talks about what's called an unapologetic idolatry. And this is often what we think of when we think about choosing the path that doesn't follow Jesus. When we think of the fork in the road, this is the path that opposes Jesus. And here's what this way of life says I live for myself and I'm proud of it. Meaning, I live for myself and I like I don't really need anything to do with Jesus. I'm gonna choose my own way. I know I'm choosing my own way, other people know I'm choosing my own way, and it's just clear that I'm not following the right path. This is what Paul talks about in Romans 1, 18 through 32. But then Paul in chapter 2 introduces a different way that people might not be following Jesus. And this is important for his context and the people that he is talking to, but it's what Tim Keller calls the third way. That if way number one is to follow Jesus, way number two is to oppose Jesus and not follow him, there's a third way, and here's what the third way says I live for myself, and nobody can find out. Way number one says I live for myself and I'm proud of it. That's one way to oppose God. But the second way is I live for myself. And nobody can find out. So let me let me point out something rather important here, and um you'll have to apply it to yourself. Um I switched schools. That is not the same thing as switching paths. Your environment is not what makes you a Christian. Who you follow is what determines that. My environment doesn't determine my eternity. Your environment can help. Mine did, a hundred percent. But they are not the same thing. You can go to church and not follow Jesus. You can be, I oversee the greeting team, you can be on the greeting team, sorry for picking on you, and not be a follower of Jesus. You can join the mom's Christian Facebook group. That doesn't make you a follower of Jesus. Following Jesus is what makes you a follower of Jesus. Not your environment. Actually following and submitting yourself to Jesus is the only way. And here's why this difference is important and why it's dangerous, I think, to distill not following God just to opposing God. It's for this reason, and I like what Tim Keller says. He says the reason this is important is when we distill not following God just to opposing him, it risks leaving religious rebels comfortable in their sin. So here's what that meant for my life. My exterior life, my environment showed others that I followed Jesus, but inside I was going my own way. I even knew more about Jesus than I'd ever known before. And and in fact, that's you know, you begin to accumulate that you know enough that you convince yourself that you know him, but knowing information and knowing the Savior are not the same thing. And if you look at how Jesus interacts with the Pharisees or Paul with the religious leaders, this is the primary audience in a way that they're trying to address. In fact, I would argue it's an even more cancerous path to take. There is more internal enslavement to a life that tries to cling to both the appearance that I follow, but the lifestyle that you don't, and always having to have that facade and exterior on. It's what we hear about in Revelation from John as he writes to the to the church and over here from the church of Laodicea. It is better that you be hot or cold. It's better that you're cold. It's better that you oppose than for you to be lukewarm. Here's why living this way is cancerous. The longer you live that way, where you just think your environment is enough of your spiritual stake in the ground, the longer you live that way, the harder it is to turn from it. Because the more you stack your life up on that false identity that you don't really have, the higher it climbs, the further you fall. And so the harder you work to keep it going. But the easiest it will ever be to restart your life, to renew your life, to clean things up, to leave that behind you. The easiest that gets is is today. I have told myself thousands of times I'll do that tomorrow. And tomorrow keeps showing up, and I keep saying that. Well, next week I'll just feel lighter about next week keeps coming, and I'm still trying to navigate the same lies, the same shame, the same hangups, the same my own life, while my exterior works extra hard at showing something different to everybody else. Um I want to be clear about something though. Uh I'm I'm not just, when I say all this, I'm not just talking about secret sin that you're hiding. That's a component of it. Um but we're capable of burying and withholding thing other things from God as well. And I know this from experience. Um many of you know this part of my story because you kind of got to witness it firsthand to some degree. Um but four years ago, so I've been here for four years now, four years ago, my uh dad unexpectedly passed away. Um he was my best friend, he was my coach, he was um my spiritual mentor and leader. Um who I am today is very much a reflection uh of him. And I was working on a sermon. It was gonna be my last sermon at the church that Faith and I were previously at. And so this is a Thursday. I'm sitting at Cavu Coffee off of Tylersville Road in Westchester, and I am the sermon that I was writing in this moment was was all about God's faithfulness because he had been faithful to us in the journey that Faith and I had gone through while at Westchester Naz, the church that we came from, and we believe that he was faithfully leading us into this new step in relationship with the refinery. Um so we're 10 days away from our first Sunday at refinery and being welcomed with open arms. But as I'm typing out my final message at our church, um I get a call, and that call is as my dad was driving on his way to work, he had a heart attack and died. Um nothing will prepare you for that. Here's what I here's what I learned in that season. Um I learned that I work really hard at appearing as if I'm always doing great. Um and truthfully most of the time that's absolutely true. Rarely is that not true. Um, but in this season, there were there were times where that certainly was not the case. Um but thank goodness for my wife who could see through the cracks as I wrestled with not wanting to talk about my loss with everyone, or with anyone, I should say. I mean, after all, um I'm I'm a pastor. What what what do I have the privilege of doing as a pastor? I get to walk with people and navigate uh things with people that are difficult, things like this. Um and that is a that is a privilege uh to be able to listen and to hear and to pray and to to kind of journey in that way with other folks. Um but I'm also a pastor. It it to to show my cards at how I'm really doing and how I'm really feeling is to show the cracks in my own relationship with Jesus. I can't let people know that I'm struggling with the fact that my dad just passed away, which is so baloney. But it's what the enemy kept telling me, and so I would hold it in. And so whether it was because of my vocation or the fact that I'm a man and I can't show emotion or from the way that I was brought up, and we have to look great and your Sunday best, kind of like I don't know where I picked up fully on that facade, but I had convinced myself that this was true, and so I buried my grief, then I stuffed my grief, and I would, and faith had to deal with it. But I had built this in my head, but thank goodness for my wife who kept pushing me to call friends, to see counselor, to not hold it in. Um God wants that part of your life too. So whether it's grief, whether it's sin, whether it's shame, anything that we withhold from God, that we keep to ourselves, keeps us from the fullness of life that God has for us. And so there's many different categories that you can do this with, and all it does is clutter your heart and your mind, but surrendering these things are what frees you. So let me go back to let me go back to my junior year of high school briefly, and then I kind of want to push us towards a closing because we're gonna take some time to reflect in a moment. Um because there's another layer to this thread that that I want to highlight. We already said your environment does not determine your eternity, whether or not you follow Jesus does, but a parallel truth in life to that would be this: your success should not be your spiritual barometer. Uh junior year was a good year in the sense that um all of the reasons that I wanted to go to Dayton Christian, um, they were starting to kind of come to fruition. I was very fortunate enough to be on a good basketball team with a good basketball coach. I was the captain of that team my junior year. Um, I was the captain of our golf team as well, um, and um found favorable spots and opportunities at that level, and things were going well for me. I had a lot of great leadership opportunities at the school, I had leadership opportunities at the church. So, by my estimate, in that season, my life felt like it was going up and to the right. But you can be up into the right in your life on your outside life, but absolute bottom in your spiritual life. But in January 2012, that all changed for me. Do you guys remember? Have you ever been a part of like old school revival services? Like, do you know what I mean if I if I say that? Um so I grew up in a church where we would do revival services, and uh you would have a speaker come in, a revival speaker come in, and they would speak Sunday morning, Sunday night, Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night. I mean, you were at church five times over four days. Um and so it's it's similar to like our youth go to a conference, right? And that you bring a speaker in, and that's kind of what it was for your own church. Uh well, my junior year in January 2012, um, a speaker came in by the name of Reverend David Gallimore, and here's the scripture he read that day, that Sunday evening. Psalm 139, verses 23 through thir through 24. Search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. That night I invited Jesus to search my heart. And let me tell you, that's a dangerous prayer. And that evening I fully surrendered my life to Jesus. If there was sin I was aware of, I asked for forgiveness. If there was shame I was carrying, I gave it away. If there were plans that I had marked out, I handed him the pen to take over. If there was unforgiveness, I was holding on to, he softened my heart towards it. When I allowed Jesus to examine my heart and search my heart, all he did was show me a better way and said, if you let go of this, I promise there's a better, fuller, more fulfilling life ahead for you. But it has to start with surrendering to him. And so I did. Six months after that, almost to the day, I was at a conference that's called um Nazarene Youth Conference. In fact, we just had 16 students from our church go to Nazarene Youth Conference. They just got back last week. Uh when I went, ours was in Louisville, Kentucky, which isn't that exciting. They got to go to Salt Lake City, Utah, which is way more fun. Um, but when I went, it was at one of those services, six months after I fully surrendered my life to Jesus and said, look, if there's any part of me that doesn't um reflect you, I give you permission to work on it, Jesus. Um I was Jesus called me, God called me into full-time ministry at that conference. He changed my life. I wouldn't be standing here today had he not done the work previously and leading up to that conference. Uh, and it's fun even to hear, this is a conference that happens every four years. It I've been able to chat with some of the students. God has done some really incredible, awesome things in their life, confirmed calls to various vocations, um, people surrendering their life to Jesus. Uh, there was one gal who got baptized from our church at that conference, which was a huge celebration. Um, it it it they had an awesome experience. Um actually, in fact, that reminds me, I know hard pivot here, August 23rd. We're having baptism at our church. We've already got a couple people signed up. If you've not taken that step to give your life to Jesus, I encourage you to do that. I think there's a oh nice, okay. There's a QR code behind me, or you can get on our website. Um, but it is the best decision you will ever make. So um I yeah, I just want to take a moment and highlight that. Um here's where I want to land the plane. So I fully gave my life to Jesus in 2012. We are 14 years down the road from that day. So what does that mean? Maybe the question, right, like so if you fully surrendered your life to Jesus 14 years ago, you you have you just been cruising ever since? I wouldn't call it that. I heard this quote and I think this describes this describes it well. The hardest part about being a Christian is that it's so daily. Can anybody resonate with that? Full surrender to Jesus is a daily decision. Right. It's a daily evaluation, it's a daily relationship. The hardest part of following Jesus is that God's so daily. But I want to add this component to that quote. The best part about following Jesus is that it's so daily. To walk with him daily. Because when you walk with him daily, guess what? You recognize his grace daily, and when you walk with him daily, you experience forgiveness daily, and when you walk with him daily, you feel his peace daily, and when you walk with him daily, you see that he works all things for your good daily. Sin, shame, grief, every part of your story and experiences of how you've come to understand Jesus. When you surrender to him, he takes all of those daily moments the hang-ups, the shakeups, the good times, the bad times, and he uses it daily for your good so that you might know more fully know him. Following Jesus is so daily, but praise God that following Jesus is so daily. The more I walk with Jesus, the more grateful that I am that it is so daily.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

Thank you so much for listening to today's podcast. If you're ready to take a next step in your faith, please reach out to us through our website, refineryohio.com, or you can email us at office at refineryohio.com. We hope you have a blessed day.