No Fear - Wise Older Saints

One of the ways God gives us courage for our future is by inviting us to not step into our tomorrows alone. We step into our future with Jesus, AND, through church community, Jesus has given us the gift of older wise saints who have lived through more tomorrows than we have. In this message we'll unpack the impact that has and how to begin seeking those relationships. 

For more info about RPYA check us out on Instagram @rpyoungadults or at our landing page on rockypeak.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good evening, RPYA. My name is Holden. If we've not gotten the chance to meet, I'm a life group leader here at RPYA. And today I'm gonna be reading some scripture to you guys. If you guys would open up your Bibles to Proverbs chapter 2. I'll give you a few seconds. Alright, it's chapter 2, verses 1 through 11. My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understand. Indeed, if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom, from his mouth come under come knowledge and understanding. He holds success in store for the upright. He is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for he guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones. Then you will understand what is right and just and fair, every good path. For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. Discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Thank you, Holden. I appreciate that. You've got you've got such a good broadcast voice. I'm very jealous of that. Hey, it's good to be with you on this Sunday night. I always like to say this because it's true. It's always such a privilege to gather together and to be a part of what God is doing in this community of young adults. And so if you're here for the first time, for the first time in a long time, welcome to RPYA. If we haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name is Dre. I am the young adult pastor here at Rocky Peak. That is my Halloween costume from this past year. No matter how old I get, I will always be an early 2000 emo kid at heart. So while I look like this right now internally, that's where my heart is beating with some of my chemical romance going on. But if you're here for the first time, I want to tell you a little bit about what you got yourself into. RPYA stands for Rocky Peak Young Adults. As you saw in that bumper video, we exist because we believe that God wants to unleash a movement of passionate, Christ-following young adults between the ages of 18 and 25. And one of the primary ways that we partner with God in that are the Sunday nights. We gather together every Sunday night in this building from 6.30 to about 8-ish. And the whole reason why we gather on Sunday nights is to design a place for you to be able to come and encounter Jesus. But as we say that, what we mean is we want this to be a place for real people. And the truth about real people is that real people are not perfect. Real people have doubts. Real people have failures and struggles. Real people are messy. And real people are the people that Jesus came for. And so when we get together on Sunday nights, we don't have any expectation other than you coming as you are. And in a room this size, we've got a fairly full house this evening. You're coming from a lot of different places. Some of you are coming from a season, a week, a couple of months, of things going pretty, pretty well and exciting, and that's awesome. Some of you are coming from a season of exhaustion, a season of being numb, maybe even a season of pain and suffering, even a season of doubt. Some of you are coming into this place and you're like, I have no idea how I ended up in a church. I don't know what I'm doing here. I think you're all insane. Awesome. I'm glad you're here because wherever you are at, our hope is that Jesus meets you this evening. But not only meets you, our hope is that you learn a little bit more about how Jesus sees you and that you go out of here with some new things to think about. And so along those lines, we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna go into a time of teaching. This is up when we open up the Bible, which is the living and active word of God, and we see what it has for all of us. Because whether you've been in church or not, the Bible is God's word to you as well. And so we get to learn in that together. So I'm gonna go ahead and pray for us as we get started. Before we do, as I usually do, would you go ahead and take a breath or two? If you haven't done so already, I would also encourage you to throw your phones on silent just to protect your attention during this time. Would you go ahead and close your eyes? And before I say anything else, would you just in your own heart, in your own head, there's nobody listening but you would you just pray Jesus? Show me who you really are. Simply ask, show me who you really are, Jesus. Jesus, that's our prayer. Some of us are walking into this place, and the honest answer is we don't know who you are. We don't know who you're supposed to be. We haven't been around church, we haven't been raised in this. And so our prayer is show us who you really are. Jesus, for some of us, maybe we've been in church. Maybe we've been plugged in growing up and going into this, but even somewhere along the lines, maybe we forgot who you are. Maybe we forgot because of how fast we've been running. Maybe we forgot because of the temptations in life. Maybe we forgot because of sin and failure. Would you show us who you really are? Jesus, for some of us, maybe we've been around church for some length of time, but we've kind of built some images of you that actually aren't accurate or aren't true. So would you break through that and would you show us who you really are? And we could go on and on with the different people in this room. But again, that is our prayer. That's why we're here. That's why we exist. That's why there is no single person that isn't supposed to be here tonight. Because it has nothing to do with me or the band or anybody else, but it has everything to do with you. So show us who you really are tonight, King Jesus. And it's in your name we all said. Amen. Amen, RPY. So if you haven't done so already, there is a message note sheet that you sat down on. You got some pens as well. I just like to be able to write things down, to be able to remember anything from this time of teaching. But as I kick things off, what I want to do is I want to take you back to when I entered middle school for the first time. And I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one, that that transition into elementary to middle school, that was terrifying. Did anybody else, would you be able to relate that that was terrifying, hands up in a certain way? It was a terrifying transition. And the key reason why is because I was leaving behind what I knew. I had been in my elementary school since kindergarten. I'd been around these people since kindergarten. I was leaving behind what I knew, and what I knew was safe. And I was transitioning into mystery. And as we've been talking about the last couple of weeks, mystery doesn't feel safe, right? Because I don't know what to expect. When I think back on the time, I knew recess, I knew Dodgeball, I knew the people I was growing up with, but now I'm going into a whole new world. Just like most of us, I didn't know periods and passing periods, I didn't know lockers, I didn't know PE. And when you're a kid, it's horrifying when you first find you have to change around other people, right? But I also had some other complications in my transition to middle school. Because of some difficulties in my family, I was being sent to a private school for the first time. And so now I'm going to a school away from anybody I know. I know I'm walking in not knowing a soul. And I was not a believer at the time. I did not come from a believing family. I'm now walking into a school in which they have a completely different religious worldview than what I knew. So I was terrified when I first transitioned in my time into seventh grade. In fact, I still have my school ID from that. Good looking from the start. You're welcome. You're welcome. But you know what was an incredible help when I made that transition? What was an incredible help was my older brother. See, some of you may not know this, but I'm the youngest of three siblings total. And my older brother, my older sister, they're several years older than I. My brother's eight years older. I wasn't part of the plan. But here we are. And because when I transitioned into middle school, my brother was finishing up at Season. I often looked to him as another parent, as another source of wisdom, if you will. And I remember that my brother helped me. That's my brother Ed. He taught me very practical things. It was my brother that sat there with me with my locker lock and showed me how to open it for the first time. It was my brother that was teaching me how to use my locker so I could maximize my passing period well. It was my brother that was teaching me what to kind of look out for in different friendships, that was giving me advice. And here's what I deeply appreciated about this. He was telling me something, not in a hypothetical, but he was giving me information that he had lived himself. He had gone through it himself, and he could tell me as somebody who had lived it. And what I deeply took away from that is it didn't take away all the fear, it didn't take away all the terror. But not only did it give me a sense of confidence that I'd been missing, it wasn't just for that first day. It gave me someone that I could go back and talk to and go, what would you do? How would you do? How did you do in this situation? And so I was incredibly thankful because as I look back, the words I would use is what was my unknown tomorrow was a day he had already lived. What was my unknown tomorrow was a day that he had already lived. And the truth is, in a sense, in a spiritual sense, when it comes to our journey with Christ, that is a gift that the Lord gives us when it comes to stepping into our future. For those of you that are here for the very first time, you're at week three of a four-part series called No Fear of the Future. And the heart behind this series is that when it comes to thinking about our future, when it comes to thinking about our tomorrows, for many of us, there is a lot of anxiety, there is a lot of confusion, there is a lot of fear, if not abject terror. And one of the things we've been doing throughout this series is we've been doing some myth busting. One of the reasons why we have so much anxiety about the future is we believe a lie about what the future is supposed to be like. We've gone to this chart that we believe that the future is supposed to be this neat and tidy, straight line with easy-to-see signposts that we're not gonna miss as long as we keep going in one singular direction. That is not real life. It's not the life you've lived up to this point, it's not the life you're gonna live past this point. We've been talking about the reality that the future is this. The future is an unpredictable mess with twists and turns and stops and starts going in every different direction. Some of those twists and turns are really, really good. Some are just okay or meh. Some are incredibly painful. But the reason we've been going through this series is that God's invitation to each and every one of us is to be able to step into our tomorrows without fear being in control. And the only reason we can do that is because God is inviting us to root ourselves in what will never change. The problem is that we often root ourselves in what is ever changing, which is our circumstances. But what never changes is who Jesus is. And so our opportunity is to root ourselves in the never changing and to experience the courage and the peace that that has. And a big part of that is that we have been given a gift that when we step, we're one of the reasons why so many of us are so afraid of the future is that we believe that we need to step into our tomorrows by ourselves, but that is not God's design for us. We don't take a step by ourselves. We get to step into our tomorrows with the presence of King Jesus, the resurrected Jesus with us. But not only that, Jesus gives us the gift of community to step into our tomorrows with us. It's something we've been talking about in the weekends, in our weekend services here at Rocky Peak, that our future is not individualistic. Our future is together as a community. We have been given the gift of peers, which is a beautiful topic. We'll come back to in another time. But today, our focus is that when it comes to our future, we can have a supernatural courage as we step into it because God has given us through church community the gift of older saints who have already lived more tomorrows than we can and are there to walk with us as we take one step at a time. In other words, it's an invitation to take wisdom into our tomorrows. And so let's unpack that because we've been around that word our whole lives. Whether you've been in church or not, you've heard the word wisdom. But wisdom is one of those words that gets said in a lot of different ways and is defined in a lot of different ways. I bet you if we went around this room and said, hey, how do you define wisdom? We're gonna get about 120 different answers. And so what we want to do is ask the question, how is wisdom defined from a biblical standpoint? And that leads us back to the scripture that Holden read for us today, which is in the book of Proverbs. Now, if you're new to the Bible, the Bible is divided into two halves. The first half is called the Old Testament, or another way of saying testament is the word promise. It is the first promise that God made to us. The second half is called the New Testament. And what that means is not that it's replacing, but Jesus fulfilled the original promise. And now we are being gift the gift of the next one. But as we go to the Old Testament, it contains this book called Proverbs. Proverbs is all about wisdom. What does it mean to live a wise life? And so what we need to understand is that Proverbs is written through a couple of different authors. But in the beginning of the opening chapter, King Solomon, who often is the paragon of wisdom, so to speak, he's talking to his son. And before he gives any necessarily practical wisdom, he casts vision to his son. This is what wisdom really is, and this is why wisdom matters. But to understand, to let the Bible change our hearts, we always need to ask what's our starting point. And so I want to go back to that question I got initially asked, and I want to give you a couple seconds to talk to somebody around you. If somebody walked up to you right now and said, How would you define wisdom? What would you say? And I don't know is a completely acceptable answer. But if somebody walked up to you right now and said, How would you define wisdom? What would you say? You're on the spot, take ten seconds, turn to somebody around you. How would you define wisdom? Good. So here's my guess. My guess is that for a lot of us, how we answer that question comes down to the choices we make. And there's truth to that. But then it leads me to a follow-up question. How is wisdom different than advice? Because good advice and wisdom are actually two radically different things. And I think a lot of times when we think of wisdom, we do think of that. We think of, are you capable of making good choices? Or we think that that's something that happens in age. You know, again, we don't realize it, but we often think of wisdom as advice and say, Oh, I'm gonna give you another ten seconds. How would you differentiate wisdom from advice? Good job. You know what I love from my perspective is I love listening to you process because that's part of life. And I love listening because if you notice, it started really, really quiet, and then some of you started building on it. To be like, oh, okay, yeah, so that's the beauty of community, right? Is we kind of share answers. So what I want to do is I want to give you a definition of wisdom that I think is gonna benefit us, but I want to be able to set the guardrails for what I mean. Because often when we think of wisdom simply as like our choices or our behavior or again what we do, we are starting way too small. And so here's the guardrail I want to give you. Wisdom does not start with our choices, wisdom is all about a person. Wisdom is the person of Jesus. And that's it, there in your note sheet. You've got a section titled, What makes wisdom distinct? And here's my definition of it. Wisdom is seeing and choosing Jesus in our real life. Wisdom, and hear me, you need both is seeing and choosing Jesus in our real life. Wisdom is not you having the right theological answer. Wisdom is not simply you knowing the right thing. I would say we're actually starting fifteen steps too far. Wisdom is all about the person of Jesus. And wisdom is the process of the Holy Spirit opening our eyes to see Jesus in your life and then to choose to follow his leadership. Because too often in the Christian life, one of the things that really holds us back is the first part. We get the first part, and we get it when we're at church. We get it when it's easy, we get it when it makes sense. Some of us we pride ourselves thinking we're wise because we can answer questions on an academic test. But there are some people that know a lot of theology that are some of the most unwise believers on earth. Because it's not about what you know, it's about who you follow. I've said this before. If you want to get healthy, you need to both walk into a gym and then do something. You can be in the right environment and have nothing happen. And that's the problem with too small of a definition of wisdom. Is that often it's like, well, I'm supposed to have the right answers, I'm supposed to know what to say, or I can pass this like Christian basics test. No, no. Do you see Jesus in your real life and are choosing to follow him? Hear me, wisdom is all about knowing that Jesus is bigger than this room, Jesus is bigger than RP Way, Jesus is bigger than Revolution, Jesus bigger than Rocky Peak, bigger than Shepard, Jesus is bigger than Christmas and Easter. Jesus is bigger than obeying him in the area of money and not in the area of pornography. Jesus is bigger than obeying him with the right words, but not when it comes to your pride or your future. That is wisdom. Wisdom is a heart that says, open my eyes to see that Jesus is real. And he's with me at COC, Pierce, C Son. He's with me at my job, he's with me with my family, he's with me when I'm smiling, he's with me when I'm crying, he's with me when I'm bored out of my mind. Wisdom is all about Jesus. And hear me and hear my heart on this. Theology, which is the study of God, that matters. But theology does not matter if your heart is not living it. And so wisdom is all about Jesus. Seeing and following Him. In fact, in one of the passages we read in verse 6, for the Lord gives wisdom for From his mouth comes knowledge and understanding. If you look at those key words, there is no separating wisdom from the person of Jesus. For the Lord gives wisdom. And hear his vision for you in this. If wisdom is seeing Jesus in every part of my real life, then that means his desire is to give you wisdom in every part of your life. His desire is to give you hope, to give you power, to give you purpose. One of the key aspects of wisdom is not a right answer, but it's remembering who you are, that you are a son and daughter of Jesus the King. Wisdom only comes from Him. There is no wisdom apart from Him. And so hear me. Yes, it is a good and beautiful thing, but knowing the right answer is never more important than living with Jesus. And so that's what wisdom is all about. And as we jump ahead a little bit in the scripture, the holded red, verse 8, for Jesus guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones. If you look at that, what does wisdom do? Wisdom gives us what we need for our future. To be on a course, to be following a way means to take steps forward, to take steps into tomorrow. And so wisdom is absolutely essential for where we're going. And this has been the beautiful thing we've been emphasizing this whole series. We don't know what our tomorrow holds until we there, we're there, but we do know who holds it. We do know who will be there. We do know who's already with us and already there. And we know that we can take wisdom into tomorrow. But if you caught this in the passage that Holden read, to live in wisdom, God has done his part. We have a responsibility as well. Look at this passage, going back to verse 1. Solomon says, My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands, within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding. Did you notice we've got four verbs? In our culture, we see wisdom as something that just happens automatically. What we're seeing in Proverbs is no, no, no, God is doing his part. God continues to do his part. God does the heavy lifting, as I call it. We have to do ours. We are invited to do ours. And that actually leads me to the first bullet there in your note sheet. Wisdom has to be accepted. Wisdom has to be accepted. And at first glance, some of you might be sitting there going, well, of course, like, why wouldn't we accept wisdom? And here's why, if we're honest, and again, church is not meant to be a museum for seemingly perfect people, it's meant to be a home for the honest, messy people. Why wouldn't we accept wisdom? Because wisdom challenges what we already think. Wisdom challenges what we already feel. Wisdom challenges what we already want. Wisdom challenges how we already go about the world. If I were to sum it up in this way, if you want to write this word down, wisdom challenges our pride. Because it introduces the possibility that I may not be right. And so let me ask you this question. And this is a rhetorical question, it means don't answer. It's a question I've asked before in different settings over the years. So some of you have heard this before. Do you remember how old you were when you decided that you knew everything about everything? Do you remember how old you were when you decided that you are the smartest person in your life and that there is no one that knows anything in particular about your life more than you do? And let me illustrate what I mean. When someone is growing up, when you are young, they have trust that other people know things. They have trust that adults have information. If you've ever been around kids, my kids are mostly teenagers now, but when they were young, they were question after question. Why is this? Why is that? It was kind of like living with the Riddler from Batman. They're asking these questions and they trust that we know the answer. But then something changes, and it usually changes around the time we're teenagers, where we go from trusting that adults, that older people know things, to realizing I know everything, and every adult in my life is an idiot. And if you think about it, even currently, that is the core root of why we come into conflict with the adults in our lives. Why are we fighting with parents? Because we think they don't know what's right for my life. They don't know my experiences. They should just let me take the car and we'll be fine. Why do we fight with teachers and coaches? Because again, we go, you don't know. Why do we fight with church leaders? Why did we fight with Tim and Trent or me and Michael because we're sitting there going, I know more than you. I love this in young men because it's adorable. Because young guys around 17, 18, and 19 often think, hey, guess what? I have solved 2,000 years of church conflict and problems. Jesus is so lucky he has me. Okay. We think we know. Because we feel, because we envision, because we want that straight line. Because if we don't know, then that means accepting the reality that that line isn't as straight as I want it to be. That I don't know where it's gonna go. And so for many of us, that is why we resist wisdom. And when we resist wisdom, what's the alternative? Sin. For many of you in this room right now that are stuck in sin. My guess is that if we traced your life, it probably had a starting point of rejecting wisdom, of walking away from what is wise and good and true because I feel this, I know this, I want to go into that. And so wisdom has to be accepted. And not only that, that that involves humility, and that leads me to the next fill and the next point about what makes wisdom. Wisdom embraces our limited sight. I wish there wasn't pride in my heart right now that wanted a fight against that truth. But I have to be honest. I want to know. I'm a control freak. I don't like surprises. I've never liked surprise parties. I don't like not knowing what people are getting me for Christmas or my birthday. Because what if it's not right? Megan would always give me a hard time because whenever we would travel and go into a new state and we'd fly in there, I would spend a little bit of time studying airport maps because I didn't want to not know. I didn't like that feeling of not being in control. Wisdom requires humility. Wisdom requires the humility to say, I can't even see past this moment. Have you ever like thought about that? I talked about this once before RPA. Have you ever thought about how limited we are? That literally the only thing we know to be true is this moment right now. We have ideas and thoughts about what's gonna happen next or later tonight, but there are a thousand different variables that could change that. You literally cannot see the next 10 seconds. That is our limitation. And so why am I trying to depend on that guy to prepare me for my tomorrows? When instead I can trust the one that has no such limitation. If you weren't here on the first week of the series, we were out of the prophet Ezekiel, in which he said, Sovereign Lord, you alone know. He was faced with confusion. He was faced with a seemingly impossible choice. And what does he do when he responds to God's seemingly impossible question? He says, You, God, know what I don't. You, God, see what I don't. Sovereign Lord, I am in need of you, and I am in need of others that can see what I can't. And so that's the foundation of wisdom. And so the thing is, God has given us a gift in community, going back to what we were talking about earlier, of the fact that God has given us in church community people that are older than us, that have lived many of the tomorrows we're about to step into and are able to speak real life wisdom into it. That is a gift that God gives us so that we don't have to step into our tomorrows alone. In fact, there in your notes, I like to convey, I like to affectionately call them time travelers in our lives, and I'll explain what I mean by that. But here's the first fill in an essential source of wisdom in our life are older saints. An absolutely essential meaning, hear me when I say this, and this is going to be strong because it's true. We are not gonna live the Christian life well without this. An essential source of wisdom are older saints. And below that, let me define what I mean by older saints. An older saint is a passionate Christ follower who has lived more tomorrow than you have. An older saint is a passionate Christ follower who has lived more tomorrows than you have. In some cases, it's a few more, a year or two. In some cases, it's several years, even decades more than you have. But what I like to say is somebody who has lived more tomorrow than you have and survived. And they're still here to be able to talk about the experience. And this is why I like to affectionately call them time travelers. So growing up, reading and loving movies, books, comic books, even songs about this, I am a sucker for time travel stories. I am an absolute sucker for time travel stories. Like Back to the Future is my favorite movie of all time. Things like Terminator, all of that. And in particular, I am a sucker for a time travel story in which somebody from the future has to come back to the past to present, to prevent like the world ending, to prevent a giant calamity. In fact, one of my one of my first exposures to that was growing up, I loved X-Men comic books. I love the idea of the X-Men, and they had this story called Days of Future Past, in which all the X-Men were killed off in this really terrible future, and they took Kitty Pride, Shadow Bat Shadow Cat, had to send her in the past, and she had to tell the X-Men when they were young, you can't do this, or this will happen. And the thing that I the reason why I call them time travelers is because the gift of older saints means that when they talk to us about our tomorrows, they are not speaking in the hypothetical. Your friends and your peers are awesome. We can gain wisdom from your friends and your peers, but understand something, they are as limited as you are. So we also need something in addition to our friends and our peers. Not to replace, but we need something in addition. We need somebody who's not speaking in the hypothetical, but who is speaking in the I have lived in this. Let me illustrate this. Do you know one of the okay, there are a lot of problems with social media, right? And this is kind of a sidebar. If you come to RPO, you're gonna hear me say this every week. Your mental, emotional, and spiritual health are probably gonna be better if you just delete your Instagram, all right? You know one of the biggest problems about social media, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, is that you have people claiming to be experts who have no business talking about anything. And usually they started their page or their channel a month after they got into whatever they got into. You see this a lot with like fitness and going in, people's like, I just started running two weeks ago and I can tell you exactly how to do this. You see this a lot when it comes to like interest. Have you ever heard of a movie called Star Wars? I just watched it an hour ago, and I'm gonna tell you the definitive run of it right now, right? Or it's like, man, I have my first dating relationship, and now I'm gonna tell you how to end up in marriage, even though I'm not married yet, right? And actually, one of the things that truly is damaging is this happens a lot in Christian social media, is that we have younger believers that are speaking large truths that they don't understand the nuance to. They're creating theology, they are creating pathways, they are creating beliefs that are not what the Bible is telling us. Because the Bible is a lot more comfortable with the mystery, messy, and nuanced than YouTube tends to be. And so think about it. What a gift, what kind of gift would it be in your life to have an older saint that could say, Man, I know what it's like to be worried about school in the fall, to be starting a new school, to be changing your school plans, to switch your majors. I know what it's like to walk away from school because maybe it wasn't a fit. I know what it's like to fail classes because you weren't showing up or you just weren't doing the work. I know what that's like and how to come from that. What kind of a gift would it be to have an older saint going? I know what it's like to be a child of divorce. I know what it's like to not see one of your parents. I know what it's like for warm to be a war zone, for it to be like a screaming match. I know what it's like to not know what your siblings are up to or to not know how to relate with them. What would it be like to have an older saint to say, I know what it's like to have to worry? Am I making the right choice? Is this the right school? Is this the right job? Is these the right friends? I know what it's like and I know the temptations that go with it. What about having an older saint going? I know what it's like to experience the heartbreak of friendships ending. I know what it's like to say goodbye to our friends that are going to college or away. I know what it's like to experience the heartbreak of a breakup in a dating relationship. I know what that's like. What about having an older Saint going? I know what it's like to experience the difficulty of confessing our sin, to feel like you are so stuck in a pattern of sin that it feels like you're drowning and you can't get your head above water. I know what it's like to have to take that step to owning the choices I've made. I know what that's like. What about somebody say, I know what it's like to move away? I know what it's like to walk into church for the first time and to be in an environment where it feels like everybody knows each other and I'm the odd person out. I know what it's like to choose church when it's hard and you feel like you have nothing to give. That's the gift of older saints. I know what it's like. I know what it's like. I know what it's like. And I know what Jesus is like through it. RPYA, revolution, our age-specific ministries, they're a gift. But they're not enough. RPYA, revolution, wildlife, it's meant to be a catalyst into something more. It's meant to be a catalyst into intergenerational learning to be community together with people that have already walked into some of our tomorrows. And what I love about that is that that's when God unleashes power. Not because we have the answers, but because we know we're not alone anymore. And sometimes, have you ever experienced it? Sometimes there's something so healing to be around an older saint and to go, you get it. You get what it's like to cry for this. You get what it's like to give into this temptation, you get what it's like, and you survived. It's a gift that unleashes the power. And so if we go back to that villain, an older saint is a passionate Christ follower, has lived more tomorrow than you have. But did you know this was an ellipsis? Because the statement isn't done yet. This is the next villain. And loves you enough to tell you the truth. Not in a belittling sort of way. Not in a way that's intended to make you feel strong or be a jerk. And the reality is we live in a world that prides itself on echo chambers. Only be around the people that are gonna tell you what you want to hear, only be around the people that you already agree with, only be around the people, and in a sense, our world is coddling us because we're not growing, we're actually falling into immaturity, and this is another reason why to get off social media. Everybody on social media is pretty angry, huh? Everybody on social media is yelling at people that don't think like they do, even amongst Christian influencers, so to speak. Social media is all about anger. Either you agree with me or you are a complete idiot. And the reality is it keeps us from finding people that are gonna tell us the truth. But they tell us the truth in love. But the re but and but that's a choice that the older saint has to make because they are rooting for you enough that they're gonna tell you the truth. Because hear me, wisdom is a challenge. Wisdom can hurt to hear, but wisdom is needed. Because hear this when it comes to Jesus. If you're following a Jesus that never challenges how you think, how you see the world, how you feel, you're following the wrong Jesus. Because you're following one that you made up. And wisdom reminds us of this. Let me give you a couple examples of what I mean. I've been on staff at Rocky Peak for almost 24 years now. And being a pastor on staff, often people want to meet with you for quote, wisdom. And one of the number one topics that people meet with me over time is trying to gain wisdom when it comes to conflicts, conflicts in their life, conflicts with friends, conflicts with families, conflict with the Lord itself. And there's a lot of different situations, but often I tend to come back to one thing. I listen to what they're talking about, I listen to their frustrations in the other person, I ask questions, and then I tend to come back to this same statement. Have you talked to them? And about 90% of the time, the answer is no. But it's not just that the answer is no, about 90% of the time they're almost offended at the question. Well, what do you mean? Well, you're in conflict with a person. Have you talked to them? No, I'm not gonna talk to them. Well, why not? Well, no, I mean because of what they or because of this or because of that. Sometimes they even bring the Bible into it. They're like, no, no, no, this and that. I'm like, I don't have anything else to tell you. But go and talk to them. Because that's how we learn how to do this. And when I talk about 90% of the time, it sounds like I'm trying to be little and minimized, and that's not my heart. But what happens is again, that's not what they want to hear. In that moment, wisdom hurts. In that moment, wisdom feels bad. And the question is, what are you gonna do with it? Let me give you another example. When it comes to making choices for our future, whether it's school-based, whether it's job-based, even as young adults, sometimes in dating relationships, the word marriage comes up often, and it often comes up way too quickly and way too powerfully. But something that I hear often when people are making choices when it comes to their future, is that their primary motivator is fear. If I don't get married, I'm not, I'm gonna lose this person. If I don't get into this school, my future's gone. If we don't solve this, if we don't fix this, it's gonna be there. And so when wisdom is being like, hey, can I ask you something? What if you didn't make a choice? What if you just waited? Why? I can't do that. It's like, hey, what if we talked about fear? What if we went into that? No, no, no, I can't do that. Again, it's not as easy to digest. Let me give you another example. Another example is leadership. As a church, we want to be a place where people can volunteer, learn how to use their gifts, learn how to use their talents. But in particular, something when people ask me, as somebody who's been a leader for a long, long time, what's one of the biggest advices you would ever give to a leader? And I would say heal. A lot of us are hurt and wounded. And there's times in our wounding where we need wisdom to be like, this may not be the time to lead. This may not be the time to be on a stage. This may not be the time to lead a life group. This may not be a time to launch an initiative or an organization, because this is the time to heal. Because the danger is hurt people will hurt people. And again, what happens sometimes is well, that's hard to hear. No, I don't know, no, I no, I I have this opportunity, or I need to do this, or you don't know what you're talking about. Again, wisdom is a challenge. But man, the saint that's telling us that it's because they love it. Us. It's because they're rooting for us. It's because they want to see us experience the best that God has for us. You know, I gave my life to the Lord when I was 15 here at Rocky Peak. And one of the things to get involved at church, at our church, is getting in a life group. And we do that from junior high on. And I love my high school life group later. In fact, he's one of our elders here at Rocky Peak, and I'm indebted to him. And I remember this piece of wisdom he gave me that was hard to hear when I was a teenager. I had dated this girl for about a year, which in high school math, that's like 15 years, right? I was dating this girl about a year, and in high school, what do you think when you date a girl that long? We're gonna get married. We're gonna spend forever. And just a quick note I've been married to my wife for 20 years, not that girl. So and I would always kind of talk about her, I would always do this. And I remember he's driving me home from life group one night, and he's such a gentle guy. But he's like, Dre, can I say something? I'm like, of course you can say something. I love you. He's like, you are often talking about her like she is the best thing in your life. And it's not that it can't be good, but I think you need to watch your heart in this. Because I think you're getting close to this becoming an idol in your life. And when he said that, I got really quiet because it hurt. When he said that, I got really defensive. And I didn't say this out loud, but in my head, I'm like, you don't understand. You don't get it. You don't know us. You don't know who we are. I'm gonna prove you wrong, but I was also confused. And you know why I was confused? Because I knew he cared about me, and I had a very low view of love that, well, if you care about somebody, you would never disagree with them. If you care about somebody, you're not gonna say anything that could hurt them, and that is not true in any way, shape, or form. And you know what happened a few months later? It didn't. And to be fair, she broke up with me. It blew up in our face, and you know what I realized? He was right. And then it made me curious man, if he's right about this, what else could he be right about? And it changed my demeanor. And I began asking more questions. Hey, what would you see? What do you think? How would you go about this? And I'm about to be 44 years old. He's still a source of wisdom and older saint for me in my life today. Because he loved me enough to tell me what I needed to hear. And so on your notion, you've got a statement called Neon Lights. Every week we have this one statement that if you don't remember anything else, remember this. That today's wisdom calms the fears of our tomorrow. That doesn't mean you know what tomorrow's gonna bring, but it means you know Jesus, and it means you got people. You got some saints in your corner. And today's wisdom calms the fears of tomorrow. And so as we wrap things up, just in the last few minutes of our left, so we've talked a lot about wisdom, we've talked a lot about the essential nature of older saints. Now the action steps is how do we actually pursue this? Because again, we have a responsibility. This isn't gonna just fall in our laps. We've been invited to pursue this. And so, if we want to be a person of wisdom, if we want to be somebody that has wise older voices in our lives, how do we pursue this? So, real quick, you got three fill-ins on your note sheet. Here's the first one is you need to be intentional. Again, this doesn't just happen. And so here's what I mean by intentional. If you want to begin developing relationships with older saints, that means you gotta choose to be where they are. You gotta choose to be where the herd gathers. You gotta choose to be in their environments. And in fact, one of the best and one of the easiest environments is weekend church services. If Rocky Peak is your home, our weekend services on Saturday night or Sunday morning. If Rocky Peak is not your home church, but you have another one, your weekend services. Wherever you are going to find intergenerational community, that's what it means to be intentional. That is a first step walking into a weekend service here or at your home church, sitting down and it's nervous and it's awkward and it's new, but it begins the fall week after week, and there's a time that most churches do, which is a greeting time, in which you get to introduce yourself to somebody that you wouldn't have. You're around them. And then you start narrowing the circle too, and something we call life group or small group. This is a smaller group that meets once a week with an older saint usually leading it, that helps us learn how to do life together. And the beautiful thing about being adults is that we have RPYA branded life groups, but you're not limited to the RPYA branded life group. There are seasons in your life in which being in life group with your peers is amazing and important. There are seasons in your life in which you need to be the youngest person in your group. Because that's where you're going to be exposed to more wisdom. And another step to take to be around the herd of older saints is serving. We've been talking about this on the weekend service, but serving because it exposes you to people you normally wouldn't be exposed to. One of my favorite places to recommend for you to serve those of you that call Rocket Beak home is the cafe. It's slinging some donuts. I love seeing the young adults there every Sunday, serving coffee, serving donuts. I love seeing the smiles, not just because donuts are a heavenly gift, but because they're building relationships with people they normally wouldn't be building relationships with. And so if you want to pursue wisdom, you gotta go where there's gonna be some older saints. And as a church, we've got opportunities for you to do that starting next weekend. Come and be a part and be intentional about that. So that's the first one. The second thing is be proactive. And what I mean by that is some of us picture the like shatter glass in case of emergency box, like the fire alarms are usually in. Some of us wait for something to go massively wrong before we seek wisdom. Some of us wait for something to be fundamentally broken or on fire or we have driven off the edge of our lives, and that's when we seek wisdom. So that's called being reactive, and that happens in life. But one of the invitations is to be people that are proactive. If we begin developing relationships now, when those crisis points happen, and hear me, they're gonna happen. We already have a rhythm and people in our life we can go and talk to. And so that's what it means to be proactive. And hear me with being intentional, being proactive, do not wait for this to be convenient. Because it's not gonna be. Part of growing up is that we have to learn to move past the awkwardness. Part of luring up is we've got to not let fear be the boss of me. Part of growing up is we've got to learn to take a step into new, into different, into something I'm not unseen one step at a time. And then the last thing as we're trying to pursue older saints is be flexible. And what I mean by that is older saints are different than you. And in particular, when it comes to their lives and their availability, it's really, really different. And so if you want to be able to spend some time with an older saint of wisdom, be flexible when it comes to their schedule. They often have kids and jobs and different rhythms that they have to give credit to. Right now, when you're younger, you have a gift of time. It may not feel like it in some of your lives, but you do have a gift of time that some of the older saints don't. And so, what I would often encourage is be flexible, meaning be willing to step into their world. And so when people want to connect with me, one of my number one times to be able to do that is early in the morning. Did you hear the sigh in the room? And you know why? Because it's a dad, I'm not giving away my evenings. Because I don't have a lot of evenings and I want to be with my wife and kid. And so, if somebody wants to meet with me, we are meeting early in the morning. And that's when it can happen. When Megan has met with a young lady that's been in the middle of the day in our house, because that's when she's able to do it, and you're able to work it. I remember hearing a story of a young man that really wanted to connect with a person at his church, a person of wisdom. And this man was honest. He's like, I really don't have any availability to do this. So this young man found out that this older saint loved to run. And so he's like, Yeah, I love to run too. He was totally making it up. But he totally, and this guy was like, Really? Well, I run every morning at 5 30. Do you want to meet me for a run? And inside he's like, No, but he's like, if I want to pursue wisdom, I'm gonna do this. And so for the next six to eight months, he was there running with them every morning, and he talks about that was one of the most formative times in his life because he got a cr he got an education in wisdom from being flexible, from meeting the saint where they are. You know, some areas where you need to be flexible? You might need to remind them that you shot them a text. I tell that to anybody that texts me, so you're probably not gonna hear from me for like 48 hours. And after 48 hours, just shoot me the question mark. You know why? Because I forgot. You don't want because there's a lot going on. It's not a personal thing. Just help me out here. I'm 44, guys. I need your help in this. So here's my rhetorical question as we wrap things up. How are you gonna pursue this? I've been saying a lot of bold things, and I say that because I'm rooting for you. If we walk out of here and we don't take any steps, then this was a colossal waste of time. But if we take what the Lord is doing and we choose, okay, I'm gonna take one step. A journey is built on it one step at a time. So, what's your one step to pursue a voice of wisdom in your life? It could be somebody already in your life, it could be a new relationship, it could be coming to church. What's your one step when it comes to this? And so