How Can I Take A Step Towards Christ? | Parker Jones | Definition Church

The Collective 3/16/2026

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Thank you so much for being here. Hey, if we've never met before, my name is Zach Hudson. I have the privilege of serving as the college pastor here at Definition Church. I missed you guys last week with spring break, but we are so excited to be back at the collective. I know the tornado threw some people for a loop. Didn't know if they'd show up or not, but we're still here. We're still rocking. What a better, what better place to get sucked up in a tornado than God's house. Come on. But guys, I get the honor and privilege to introduce our guest speaker tonight. Guys, he is someone that is genuinely on fire for Jesus in such a unique way. I love him so much. I'm not just saying that because he writes my checks. I genuinely love this man. He's an incredible husband, incredible father, an incredible figure in my life. So, y'all please give a hero's welcome to the one and only Mr. Parker Jones. Sweet. Well, Parker, we got a tradition here. Anytime someone guest speaks, we pray over them. So, everyone, if you could extend a hand out to my brother Parker. Father God, thank you for Parker. Thank you for who he is. God, thank you that he doesn't need to do anything else but be himself and you love him. So, Father God, I just pray a blessing over him from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. Father God, anoint him, anoint his words. God, may his words pierce sharper than any double-edged sword. God, may he lean into the gifts that you have given him to speak to these students. And Father God, I also just pray over him as a father. God bless him. I cast away any insecurities he has comparing himself to any other father, any other husband. God, thank you that you've designed him to be who he is today. So, God, may he speak to our hearts tonight in your holy, almighty name. Amen. Y'all give it up for Parker one last time, though.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

All right, what's up, everybody? Yeah, cool, cool. Yeah, I love that. That's great. Um, man, the Nader weather, come on. I sent a uh I sent a uh a text to our staff team today because I got to work and everybody was freaking out. I'm from Alabama, and so I texted them and I said, Will there be naders today? Probably. So what should you do? Saddle up, because we used to ride these bad boys to school, you know what I'm saying? Alabama was tornado valley, and uh I've seen quite a few. And it was just like another another day in Alabama, you know, it's great. Hey, D-Money, what the world you ain't gonna tell nobody when you're back in the town and you're just gonna show up. You two in the town of the whole road. It's crazy. Man. Hey bro, you single? Yum, yum, yup. You single? Yum, yum, but yum. You should be pulling up on stage? No, I'm just giving, I'm just gonna be dang. I just felt like I slipped right back into my youth pastor days, right with that. Um, okay. So today we are um uh real quick, I do not have my clock, and if I do not have my clock, I will preach for three hours. So if anyone can help me with that, yeah, y'all are like, please love, put that clock up. Oh my goodness. Um thank you, appreciate it. Um okay, so today we are kicking off a message, or we're kicking off a series where we are talking about spiritual gifts, uh, which is very fun. Um, I already had my message and I was very excited about it. I was I was actually in Alabama this weekend as I was driving back and I was kind of like praying over this and processing this message, and I felt like I got to such an exciting you know place with it. And then last night, um, I had this crazy dream. And my my spiritual gift and and on our staff, um uh Steve, who you'll hear from uh in a few weeks, uh Steve and I were on a prophecy team together. We prophesy over our staff and try to lead prophetic ministry for our church. Um, and uh uh dreams is not an abnormal thing uh for me, but last night I had this dream, and I've got to share it with you guys because I think it's just so like God, where you start talking about things like spiritual gifts, and God just likes to find very opportune moments to show up and show out, you know what I'm saying? And uh it's kind of like when you go off to a retreat, uh, like we did, we went to Camp Collective a few weeks ago, right? And so it's like, of course, the Camp Collective crowd is the whole crowd that's here for a tornado night, you know what I'm saying? Uh but when you go, there's something about raising the level of expectation that you have for God to move in your life, right? And so when we skip when we kick off a series about spiritual gifts, uh I feel like it's just a maybe a part of God's humor and character of how he pairs those things together. But I had this dream last night, and uh in the dream, I stepped outside and it was pitch black in the middle of the night, and I looked up in the stars, and God had written things in the stars, and and it was like this this like book, this this listing of all these different things that you're reading, and what he wrote in the stars was the things that he longs for his people to say about him. And so it was like these words of worship in the stars of creation, it was this wild kind of experience, but in the middle was a reverse statement, it was what God says over his people, and he said this phrase, and it was funny because I woke up and I was like, because the it the dream just shook me so much. There was a whole lot about this dream that that I won't get into detail about tonight because I believe there's a specific portion of it that's for you. Um, but there was a a phrase that that I saw right in the middle of all of that, and it was what God says to his people. And and I woke up and I was kind of like in and out of consciousness, and I felt like God, I not audibly, but I've I've believed that he spoke this to me so strongly, he said, Write this down, and then gave me the phrase because I kept trying to think of the phrase that I saw, and I couldn't, I was like, man, what was that phrase? And then he gave it back to me, and I was like, Oh, that's what it was. And I woke up and I was like writing it down. It's like 3 a.m. and Mikael's like, What are you doing? you know. Um, but uh I'll tell you the phrase in just a second, I'm not gonna leave you on a cliffhanger. But y'all like, what's the phrase? Um, but a part of the dream that was very significant is I was when I was gazing up at the at the stars and looking at this, there was a man who came up to me and he was a martyr. And he came up to me and he was showing me the gun that killed him, and it was like really intense, but he was so nonchalant about it, you know. He was just like, he was like, Yeah, and like this is the gun that killed me. And I was like, what are we talking about right now, you know? But it was the this conversation of the martyr, and I was like, I remember at the very end of the dream, my last thought of the dream was if this is God's plan for some people, then how can God really be good? Like, what is I I just remember wrestling that with for a moment, and then God just resolved it. And I and I think that we'll I mean we'll talk about this uh within the message as we go throughout tonight. Uh, but the phrase that I didn't understand in the dream, but now I very much understand. Uh I saw this before the martyr came up, so this was like the kind of climax of the dream, and then he came up and then the dream ended. Uh, but the phrase was this the phrase was, I choose my six eight beloved. And I was like, you gotta be like six foot eight. Like I'm like you, you know, you start trying to like work in your in your human brain, out the prophetic, you know, you're like, I don't really understand all this, whatever. But so I started praying about it. Literally, it's 3 a.m. I'm I'm really tired. I'm like, I'm like, okay, what is this? I'm gonna pray about it. I'm just gonna like note it down. And and then it just the first thing that popped in my head, y'all, this is crazy. The first thing that came to my head, I was like, we are in the book of Acts in our church right now. We're going through the first half of the year, we're going through a series of the book of Acts. And I was like, man, that's what God's doing in our church right now. Let me go to Acts 6.8. And Acts 6.8 is the first sentence that introduces the first martyr of the Christian church. Acts 6.8 says, and Stephen, full of grace and power, was performing great wonders and signs among the peoples. He was the first martyr that was operating in his gifting apart from the apostles in the New Testament church. And then I was processing, but I'm still I was confused on whether or not this was for tonight, you know. So I was like, I mean, you know, let me process it with Zach, whatever CD he thinks, and because I mean he's your pastor, you know what I'm saying? And uh and I went and had dinner with Michaela, um, my wife's parents, before I came here, and I and I shared with them, I was just like, hey, you guys can be praying about this, because I feel like this is a very unique thing. I've never done this before like sharing this, and um, and and I and I told them, you know, kind of what what it was all about, and he was like, That's crazy that you say that. And I don't know if this was like he read this today, or this is like his life verse or something, or whatever. I I'm not super clear on that, but he was like, he was like, the the very first thing I thought of was Romans 6 8. Romans 6.8, the whole the whole chapter of verse 6 is about you die with Christ. And verse 6, ver chapter 6, verse 8 says, Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we also shall live and rise with him. And that is what God spoke to me at the end of the dream to resolve the martyr. When I started wrestling, like, God, how can you be good if this is the end of some people? And it's because I feel like God slapped me across the face, and it was like, every person, regardless of whether or not you die at the hand of someone else to leave this earth, everyone is called to be a martyr. Romans 12, one through one through two, the entire picture is present your bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and acceptable to God. Right? So it's this idea of full surrender. So I think it's very unique that God's kind of you know pairing some of those things together, but for to kick off the sermon and series that we're going through, we're not actually going to be talking a whole lot about spiritual giftings tonight. What we will talk about is the thing that is most important if you want to discover what your spiritual gift is or how God wants to use you. So here's what we're gonna do the main, I'm gonna go ahead and give you the main idea of this entire this entire message because we will repeat it a few times tonight. The main idea is this you can write this down. Before God teaches you how to work, he teaches you how to walk. Before God teaches you how to work, he teaches you how to walk. And if you don't haven't gotten that yet in your journals, don't worry, we're gonna say it like 700 times throughout the end of this message. But here's the idea is that college students today, you, somebody say me, you are constantly asked one very loud primary question all throughout your college career, and that is this what do you want to do with your life? And some of you, your anxiety rises just hearing that because you don't know. You're like, yeah, I'm a I'm a super senior and I ain't figured it out yet. Look, no hate to the super seniors. Y'all are like, oh, he's getting on him. I'm not getting on him. I'm just saying, we all ask that question, right? And we're fighting against this fake timeline that we've put ourselves up against. What do you want to do with your life? Pick a pick a major, pick a career, pick a spouse. Can I get an amen, somebody? Pick an identity. What's your brand, right? Build your future, whatever that looks like for you. There's about 5,000 different options that you can pick, right? So most of us, this is the trap that we get involved in. Most of us spend years trying to create ourselves. But scripture asks a very different question. It does not ask what should I create myself to be, but how has God already designed me to serve his body? Very different question. Many Christians are trying to invent themselves when God is just inviting them to discover who he's already made them to be. And that's the invitation that is here for you tonight. It's not just discover your purpose and calling and spiritual gifting and makeup, it's not just that. A part of that design does include spiritual gifts. But if we misunderstand gifts, we miss the whole point because gifts are not just supernatural abilities that you've been given from God, they are invitations to know the giver. They are invitations to build his church. So the passage we're gonna go to today is Ephesians 4, chapter 1, verse 13. Sorry, what did I just say? Ephesians chapter 4, verse 1 through 13. That's what I meant. I don't know what I said the first time, but what I meant to say was chapter 4, verse 1 through 13. Oh, let's do what Zach does all the time. Hold your Bibles up if you got your physical Bible. Where's it at? Where's it at? Where's it at? Man. God, that does look good. It just does something for the soul when you see some Bibles in the air. You know what I'm saying? All right, here we go. Ephesians chapter 4, verse 1 through 13 says this. I'm gonna read the entire passage and then we'll kind of break it down. It's on the screens as well if you don't have your Bible, but you do. Okay. Therefore, I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy. Somebody say worthy of the calling with which you have been called. With all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another and love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us, somebody say us. Grace was given. What was given? Grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. Your gift? Christ's gift. Therefore it says, when he ascended, this is referencing the passage in the Old Testament. Therefore it says, when he ascended on high, he led captive a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men. Now this expression, he ascended, what does it mean except that he also had descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is he himself, also he who ascended far above the heavens. So he went down and he went up, so that he might fill all things. And he gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of service, to bid to the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. So these gifts will remain until the work of the building of the body of Christ is done. That's essentially what that end is saying. Now, there's a few things that I gotta point out about this passage. Paul is writing to the church, and he's explaining how the spirit forms a healthy church community. So notice the order of this passage: walk in humility and love. And then he progresses. Protect unity in the church, and then he progresses. Then spiritual gifts are given for the purpose of growing the church into maturity. The church then grows into maturity. The order is incredibly important. Paul is showing this order, character first, unity second, gifts third, and then ministry. So again, before God teaches you how to work, he teaches you how to what? He teaches you how to walk. Point number one: God designed you to contribute to his church. Let's define that. What does that mean for you? God did not just save you so that you could attend the collective on a Monday night. He saved you to contribute to the body of Christ through the gifts he has already placed in you that you are called to discover. 1 Corinthians 12, 7. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. Every believer has been given a grace gift. A grace gift. If you look in the Greek and of all this stuff, this is what it literally is defined as a grace gift. You did not earn it, you do not deserve it, and you will never deserve it. It is from what we just read earlier, to the measure of your gift, no, to the measure of Christ's gift. It was not dependent upon you, and it never will be. That's why I love what we did at Camp Collective a few weeks ago. I mean a whole week about the cross, where everybody, I mean, the cross and the grave are the great equalizers. You go before the cross, and if you think at all that it had something to do with you, you've lost it. You've missed the whole point. And if you believe that you will take anything from this life into the next life, apart from your relationship with Jesus and the impact that you've made on the kingdom of God, you've lost it. The cross and the grave are the great equalizers. Every believer has been given a grace gift, not from what you've done, but from what Jesus has already done. And it is not for personal status or influence or TikTok followers or whatever, but for the good of the church. For the good of the church. So think about this. This is actually an illustration that Paul uses later on in scripture, but think about this. Imagine a human body where every part decided it wanted to be a hand. Hands trying to see, hands trying to walk, hands trying to digest food. It doesn't matter how talented those hands are, the body would collapse. A body works when each part does what it is designed to do. And he specifically says that in his letters. In 1 Corinthians 12, 12, he says, just as the body is one and has many members, so it is with Christ. God did not design the church for competition, he designed it for contribution. It is not competition, it is contribution. So if you see someone that's a hand and you're thinking to yourself, Man, I want to be like that person, instead of asking God, who have you created me to be, then also you might have missed it. Because you're not competing against them. The greatest kingdom impact that you have for the rest of your life may have nothing to do with what the other person does. If you see someone on stage, if you see someone speaking or leading worship or leading a small group or in small group leadership or whatever, and you feel like your gift is something different and you feel bad about that, go to the cross. Go back to the cross. It is the great equalizer. The thing that God can do through one act of service that you surrender to and are obedient in is greater than 50 messages that someone just tries to put together. It's not about competition, it's about contribution. So ask yourself, what currently are you contributing to the body of Christ? What am I contributing to the body of Christ? Now I'm not asking you this so that you can go and like check a box. I'm asking you this so that you can begin to evaluate and begin the journey of self-discovery. What currently is the thing that I most contribute to the people around me that are in this community? What are the people, what are the things that people often come to me for? What are the things that people often say, hey, I really just wanted to talk to you because of this? Because you're a safe space, because you listen well, because you give really great advice. There's a bunch of different examples that we can put there, but what is your can what is your contribution currently to the body of Christ? Point number two. God forms your character before he empowers your gifts. He forms your character before he empowers your gifts. What does this mean? Well, Paul defines this chapter or begins this chapter in Ephesians 4, not by talking about gifts like we just said, but by talking about how believers should treat each other. So the character item that we talked about, where he starts with, it is specifically talking about your relationship with the people to the left and to the right of you. So if you want to be used by God, evaluate your relationships to the people that are in his body. Ephesians 4, 1 through 2. Walk with humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love. So before gifts, before influence, God forms character. Because gifts, without character, will damage the church. It will not build it. Think about someone who is extremely talented in something. Even if it's something that you want to be talented in, think of somebody who's extremely talented but extremely arrogant. Their talent is going to impress a lot of people for a moment. But their character eventually is going to push people away. And they're gonna get to the end of their lives and they're gonna say, Man, I was really talented in this thing, but again, the grave is the great equalizer. You get to the end of your life and you look back, and you are you are face to face with the legacy that you have left behind, what you thought you were about to bring to the cross, and the idea I'm about to go face Jesus. What did I do with the people that he gave me? The Spirit is not looking for the most talented people, he is looking for the most surrendered people. He is not looking for the most talented. Paul later warns in Ephesians 4, verse 30, he says, Do not grieve the Holy Spirit. Well, how do you grieve the Holy Spirit? Again, how you treat his people. The things that grieve the Holy Spirit are specifically listed as relational sins, bitterness, anger, slander, unforgiveness. These things destroy the unity that the gift of the Spirit is trying to build within the church. So ask yourself this question. Is my character helping build unity in the church or is it damaging it? Do not evaluate your gift in this question, evaluate your character in this question. Is my character helping build unity in the church or is it damaging it? Guys, this is this is this is like my story. I mean, I grew up I grew up in the like deep South Southern Baptist Church. Uh actually the name of the church was Parker Memorial Baptist Church, and I'm pretty sure my parents named me after it, but they won't say that today. But uh I so I grew up in that church for the first 12 years of my life, and then basically from 12 all the way until college, it was we, my mom, she experienced the the power of the Holy Spirit, and and and I think God just did uh crazy work there, and it was good, but we didn't know how to move wisely, and so basically we jumped from one extreme to the other. So I went from uh Sunday school Bible verse memorization to 4 a.m. basement home church holy ghost throwdowns where I was like, demons are getting cast out. I'm 13, I don't even know what's happening right now. You know, it's like it's like overwhelming, it was kind of scary, you know. Anybody can relate to that? Like some some Holy Ghost throwdown church? Yeah, come on, praise God, come on. And it was it was interesting because I kind of got into this space where there was a lot of freedom, but there was no structured wisdom counsel, right? There was no pastoring happening, and so for me, there was this inability to move my spiritual maturity along with my emotional maturity. My character was not forming. That was an easy way to say that. My character was not forming, but I was exposed to all these different things. I was exposed to the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I was exposed to prophecy, I was exposed to speaking in tongues, I was exposed to all these different things, which, don't get me wrong, I am very thankful for. But at the end of the day, there was this character struggle that if I was put on the stage at that moment, the as Christine Cain would say, the light within me would not have been able to withstand the light that was on me. I would have been crushed by it. So for me, it was church every weekend and sometimes every night of the week, depending on what revival of what church we were going to. You were just kind of in that circle, right? So you were in church all the time. And it was this that I and I strongly believe that I encountered the the presence of God in ways that I just want to, I don't think I'll ever be able to explain. But also, you know what I was doing at the exact same time? I was dating every girl that I could and sleeping with every girl that I could. I was acting some kind of way in the locker room. I was a quarterback of the football team, and so I was just doing whatever I wanted to do, no conviction, no character, no integrity. The word integrity didn't even make sense to me in that season of my life. I was so broken and busted with my lack of character, but there was this space where God was trying to form me, right? And so spiritual gifts, like we said, they're not just something that can be used and not sustained. Because can you imagine if I got up and I started preaching and started doing the things that I'm doing now while still living that lifestyle, it would ruin people. There would be again, the light within me would not be able to sustain the light that was on me. I was not formed. That's why, I mean, literally, even in our preaching, in our small groups, in our experiences on Sunday mornings, what we're doing is we're trying to help people be formed into the image of God. Because you can't just be gifted and talented. We don't put people on the stage just because they're gifted and talented and look pretty. I mean, everybody on stage today did look very pretty, but that's not why they were up here, right? So there's a gap there. Okay, and we've got to be careful with it. Even as leaders in the church, we've got to help people understand this. So, point number three. Your gift, this is probably the most important thing about a gift. Your gift is an invitation to know the giver. Why is why do I know that that's true? Because of the purpose of the gift. The purpose of the gift. So let me say it this way uh this is an illustration that I was talking about with Zach, and I was trying to figure out like how do I do this in a way that that would work. And I came up with these illustrations. Think about this. Imagine someone giving you a key to a massive bank vault, millions of dollars of gold bars and and and cash and all that kind of stuff in there. You carry the key everywhere, and you boast to people, I have access to millions of dollars, but you never use the key to open the door. You have access to the treasure, but you never experience the wealth. You have access to a lifestyle that yet you never experience. And many believers live like this. And if we're just being honest, I'm not talking about the whole generation, I'm not talking about America, I'm talking about the people in this room. Some of us live this way. We wear Jesus on our shirt and our hats and our chains, but we don't experience the access that we have to the full life that He came to give us. So they might even have gifts and talents, but they're not living close to the giver. Your first gift from God, your very first gift. Some of you right now, you're wondering, it's like, well, I don't even know what my gift is. I'll tell you what your first one was. Your first gift from God was not a spiritual ability, it was salvation. Ephesians 2, 8. For by grace, again, grace gift, for by grace you have been saved. It is the gift of God. So you cannot begin to discover, God, how have you designed me and made me and gifted me to empower your body apart from the one who died to give you the gift? That is your first gift. The greatest gift that God ever gave you was Himself in the form of Jesus on the cross, and everything else that you do for the kingdom of God flows from that one fact. So here's what we're gonna do. Instead of asking the question, what's my gift? If we would be, we would, we again, I I gave some examples of how people could have lost it along the way of like what they thought they would take into eternity, or how they think that maybe they had something to do with the work of the cross. But how we as current Christians can miss it. Is we can begin looking at the, or even as leaders and pastors of this ministry of the collective, we could look at a series like spiritual gifts, and we could say, well, we could start by helping them discover what their spiritual gift is. That is the least important question in this moment. So instead of asking what is my gift, start asking what step can I take toward the giver? Because if I do that, the mission statement of Definition Church, the mission statement of our collective Christian community, our lives, is that if every moment of my life I will learn how to be with Jesus, then I will become like the person that I spend the most time around. So if I can be with Jesus in every moment, I don't even have to work at it. I don't have to try. It's not up to my ability anyway. If I just be with him, I will become more like him. I'll start to talk like he talked. I'll start to have compassion on the people that need compassion. I'll begin to weep at the things that Jesus weeps at. Everything in my life, the inside, the outside, everything will reflect the glory of Jesus. If I can be with Jesus, I will become like him. It is not an if, and or but. You will become like him. And if you become like Jesus, guess what? You will begin to do what Jesus did. You will not just cry over what he weeps for, you will be convicted and compelled to take a step towards the people that he has compassion for. You will begin to speak life into dead situations. You will be able to bring your light into darkness. You will be able to do the things that he did, and actually, a crazier promise from the Bible, from Jesus Himself, is that you won't just do the things that I did, you'll do greater things. You are, I've set the bar, and I'm not just hoping that you'll meet it one day. I'm hoping that you'll exceed it in every area of your life, that you'll be Jesus to your kids, that you'll be Jesus to your wife. The goal of spiritual gifts is not self-expression or influence, it's kingdom contribution. How can your life be given to God in a way where he can use you to impact people beyond yourself, beyond your circle, and impact people that you're gonna get to the other side of this thing. And you're gonna stand before Jesus. And he's gonna say, Well done, good and faithful servant. That's not all you're gonna see. You're gonna be able to see the fruits of generational impact that you never knew you could have. And it's not like you can't have it unless you step up on this stage. I would actually go to say that the people that have impacted me the most in my life, it has never been on a stage. It's when they met me in my worst moments. And they were sitting across from me in my living room, watching me make a mess of my life. But saying, I'm gonna meet you here and I'm gonna help you out of this thing. Not by fixing it for you, but just by being with you and pointing you to Jesus. God did design you with something that his body needs. But before God teaches you how to work, he's gonna teach you how to walk. The closer you walk towards the giver and with the giver, the more clearly that your gift begins to make sense, that your life begins to make sense, that your pains, your purposes, your excitements, your weaknesses, your failures, your successes begin to make sense. And so I'm not I'm not gonna prolong this thing. We're gonna go into a response moment. And if you have been sitting here, the question I want you to ask yourself is what how can I take a step towards Christ? Now, for some of you, some of you it's this idea of the martyr that we talked about at the very beginning, right? Where again, it does not matter for you how you end this life or how someone would end your life for you to be considered a quote-unquote martyr. God is asking you to lay down everything. Romans 12, 1 through 2 says, You present your bodies, not your career, not your hopes and dreams, you, your person, everything that makes you up, including the way that he's designed you to contribute to his body. Everything about you, your past, your present, your future, your strengths, your weaknesses, your insecurities, all of those things that you don't want to talk about. All the things that you hope people would see, all of that, you present it before God. And you say, I give my life to you, I lay it all at the cross. He's choosing people that are fully surrendered. If you want to be used in the body of Christ, surrender. If you want God to do something in your relationships, in your marriage one day, if for your kids one day, surrender. Don't try to fix it, don't try to do something for God, surrender, surrender, surrender. That is the call of your life. Be a martyr. For me, I woke up all day and I'm thinking, man, I need to be a martyr. There's things in my life that I'm still holding on to. There's things in my life that, oh, maybe if somebody came and killed that thing or put that thing to death for me, then maybe I could be where God wants me to be. But it he's not asking somebody else, he's asking me. He's asking me to lay that thing down. I've got to choose, am I gonna do what Romans is commanding me to do? And present to God my whole life and say, use me and help me become whoever you want me to become. A few weeks ago at Camp Collective, we asked everybody to come up to the altar and to lay physically things down that were holding us back, things that we had not yet sacrificed. We can't be a partial martyr. That is not how that works. We can't do partial surrender. Partial surrender and full talent. That's the modern-day Christian life. That's what we're hoping God will look at. He cares nothing for this. You think that he cares about talent? He's the one that gave the most talented people in the world their talent. But you know what he can't get? What he can't force on them is the surrender. He's looking for people, the eyes of the Holy Spirit wander the earth to and fro to look for someone whose heart is fully devoted to him. Not partially, but fully. So the question for you what in your life? What what what is the thing that you need to do to take a step towards Christ? Your relationships, you're trying to fix it, your career, you're trying to fix it, your your hopes and your dreams, you're trying to fix it, you're trying to plan, you're trying to scheme, you're trying to do all these things to create the person that you think that you should be in 10 years. Surrender it. Surrender the whole thing. Stop trying to fix it, stop trying to create something. Surrender your life and come and discover the person that God has called you to become. Because He's creating it, you're not creating it. We have nothing to add to the work of God in our life. All that we can do is give him a vessel to work with. That's what we can do. So, what we're gonna do is we're gonna go into a response mode. I want all the small group leaders to come up so that we can pray. Ask yourself the question: what's my step towards Christ? What do I need to surrender? How do I become a martyr? A Romans 12, 1 through 2, kind of Christian, where my whole life is surrendered to him. You might have been a Christian for your entire life, but guess what? Up until 16, 17, 18, I would have said the exact same thing, but I knew how I was living. And so for us, God is gonna teach you how to work for the body of Christ. But first, he's gonna teach you how to walk. So, how do you take a step towards Christ today? Well, it's easy. We're gonna, there's a physical step where I need to get up out of my seat and I need to walk down here to somebody at this prayer team, and I need to tell them this is the part of my life that I've not yet surrendered. I want to be used by God. I want to go into the next few weeks and discover my spiritual gifts, but I know that there is something hindering the light in me. There is an issue with my character, there's an issue with my integrity, there's something holding me back, and I've got to surrender that thing. And maybe you've told somebody 10 times before, God's asking you tonight, put it to the grave, lay it on the cross. Come to Jesus and stop trying to fix it. Maybe you'll find full freedom on the other end of surrender instead of fixing. You've struggled with something for 10, 15, 20 years. You know when my addiction to sex and pornography ended? When I stopped trying to fix it. When I went to God and I said, I'm fully aware at this point that I can do nothing about this. So the only thing I'm gonna focus on is just you, every day, you, every moment, you, every relationship, you. Take my life. So if that's you, and you know you've got something that you have left to fully surrender to God, and you know He's inviting you to lay that thing down at the cross, to put it to death. This idea of the martyr, if that's you, I'm not gonna count down, I'm not gonna do a fancy prayer to kind of get you up here. I want you to stand to your feet and I want you to walk down to this altar and pray with somebody as a small group leader and confess these things. Lay them down at the foot of the cross. Hey, one thing I want to do before we dismiss the small groups is John 10 10. You know, as we kind of talked about the martyr thing, where it's like, man, what's God has asked you to lay down everything. And that seems like so much. Where it's, God, you you're asking me to give my whole life. And it's listen, it's not just because Jesus gave his life, it's not just because of that, it's because Jesus knows that the thing that you can do with your life is so much less than what he can do through you. There is a fulfillment, a life, a joy. There is this fullness of life that God has come to give you as the gift. But also in the Bible, it is very clear that he says, No one, not no builder would ever build something without first counting the cost of what it would cost to build. So as you're looking at building a life with Christ, building a life that is a kingdom impact life with Christ, kingdom legacy. If you're when you're looking at that, that is not something that you can do by yourself or alone. It is the gift of God for you. John 10 10 describes this: that Jesus came not just so that you could sacrifice your life and lay your life down at the altar because that's what Jesus did, but it's so that there can be the ultimate exchange where you give ashes and he returns beauty for them. You give weakness and brokenness and he gives you blessing in abundance. There is a John 10 10 kind of invitation, and I don't want to just skip past this because what these people did and what these people are doing right now is they have they have said, I've stopped trying to fix this stuff. Like, literally, what's happening is you're trying you're taking these broken pieces of clay and you're trying to put the pot back together. And he's saying, Give me the pot so I can give you this beautiful garden. You're missing this for this. And what these people have just understood is it's not up to me to put this thing back together. I will lay this life down so that I can in turn receive the beauty that Jesus has for me. And so, all that I want to do is I just don't want to skip past that moment. I want us to celebrate with every person that just came up here and that just prayed with somebody. Put your hands together and celebrate with them. Come on, a giant tin tin of life. I just love, I will forever use this example, and then I'm gonna let Zach dismiss the small groups. But I'll forever use this example where Kennedy she shared after uh her uh after her experience in the collective, and you know, she is so I didn't even ask her about this, but you shared the last time I'm like, okay, I guess I can share it. But you know, she she came up and she laid these vapes down and this stuff, and she felt so like so some way about it because like I'm in leadership and this kind of stuff. But I was like, Kennedy, what you just discovered. I was like, Kennedy, what you just discovered is the thing that will allow you to make it to 90 because you know it's not about you, you know it has enough. To do with how good you are. You discovered what Paul discovered, where he says, I boast in my weakness. I boast in everything that is broken and wrong with me, because that means anything good from my life, anything good that has contributed to the kingdom that came through me is because Jesus had grace to do it through me. See, I'll give it up for Jesus. Come on.