Acoustic (Stand Alone)

In this stand alone message, Dre takes us to John chapter 3, that famous conversation between Jesus & Nicodemus, to be reminded (and refreshed) that the foundation of our daily lives is not "spectacle" - it's the love of God

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, RPYA. My name is Ember. I'm really happy to be with you tonight. We get to read a wonderful passage. So if you could open your Bibles or apps to John 3:1. We're going to go all the way to verse 16. I'll give you a second. Okay. John three. Now, there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus, who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. No one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him. Jesus replied, Very truly, I tell you, no one can sing the no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. How can someone be born when they are old? Nicodemus asked. Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother's womb to be born. Jesus answered, Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born, unless they are born of water and the spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, You must be born again. The wind blows where it pleases, you hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone, so it is with everyone born of the spirit. How can this be? Nicodemus asked. You are Israel's teacher, said Jesus, and you do not understand these things. Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify of what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I've spoken to you of earthly things, and you do not believe. How then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven, the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake into the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. For God so loved the world that he gave his only his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Thank you, Humber. I appreciate you reading that for us. RPYA, it is good to be back with you this evening. I took last Sunday off to celebrate 20 years of being married to Megan, but I'm excited to woo her. Do you think it's easy living with me? It's not. But I'm excited to be back with you here on our Sunday nights. And I want to welcome those of you that are brand new. There are a lot of new faces here this evening, a lot of returning faces that have come home for the summer. I see you. It's exciting to have you back. But welcome to RPYA. If we haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name is Dre. I'm the young adult pastor here at the church at Rocky Peak, and I want to tell you a little bit about what you've gotten yourself into. RPYA stands for Rocky Peak Young Adults. We are a ministry designed specifically for 18 to 25 year olds and that meets every Sunday night here in this building at 6.30. And the reason why we exist is that we believe wholeheartedly that Jesus wants to unleash a movement, a passionate Christ-following young adults. We believe that while there is a lot that's being said and written about your generation with words like anxious, words like detached, words like broken, we believe that there is much more to you and your story. We believe that with the power of God behind you, you can be the generation that changes the world around you. And so one key way that we partner with that are these Sunday nights. We designed these Sunday nights to be an opportunity for transformation, an opportunity for real people. And hear me on that is what we spent this whole weekend talking about in our weekend services. Real people, not an idealized version of you, not a fantasy version of you, not a desnified version of you, but a real person to come into this place to be surrounded by other real people and to meet a very real Jesus where you are at your R, because that's where Jesus wants to bring change. And for some of you, being real is that you're walking in a good season of life. For some of you, being real is you're exhausted. Finals wrecked you. Stuff at home is exhausting. For some of you, you're very real, but I don't even know if I believe in any of this. I kind of think you're all nuts. Awesome. I'm glad you're here. All of you, I'm glad you're here. And especially those of you that are not only here for the first time, but those of you that came by yourselves, can I say honest? Like you're you're my heroes. It's not easy to walk into a room where seemingly everybody already knows what's going on and knows each other. And it takes a lot of courage and bravery to do that. And not just you, but for all of you that are here tonight, you're here for a reason. There's never any accidents with the Lord. And tonight, especially those of you new, you're catching us on what I would consider a beautifully unique night. There's a lot of things going on that have been impacting RPYA in some beautiful and joyful way. One, it's Memorial Day weekend, and so a lot of our usual saints, brother and sisters, are not in town this weekend. Secondly, about two hours ago, I officiated a wedding for two of our RPYA brothers and sisters. And so there are many, you're welcome, there are many of our fellow saints that are over there at that weird cowboy town by see at the end of Simi Valley next to the target that are hopefully dancing the night away and enjoying their evening. So we're a little more intimate this evening. And I gotta tell you, because we're usually a larger ministry, I actually really look forward to those rare nights in which we're smaller. Because there's something a little bit special about getting to be able to be smaller and intimate. And this is kind of a chance to take our breath because as Peyton and Oliver shared, next weekend is the summer kickoff. I'm so excited on a number of levels. One, the summer kickoff marks one year that I've been a part of RPYA, and I'm excited to start the next season and year two, but also the summer kickoff is beautifully gonna bring a chaotic summer. We're gonna get some new faces, we're gonna kick off a brand new teaching series. I'm excited and expectant for what the Lord is going to do, but I don't want to look beyond this moment, Jesus, because I'm excited for you and the reason why you're here and you see it on the screens. This one night, this standalone, we've called it acoustic. Because intentionally everything from top to bottom this evening has kind of been stripped down. But as I'm gonna talk about in a moment, sometimes when you pause and strip things down that are normally louder, you get to experience a beauty in it that we tend to miss. And so I'm gonna pray to lead us into our time. And as I do that, can I invite you, would you just take a breath or two? For those of you that are new to me or new to RPY, I usually ask you to do that before we go into a time of prayer. But there's nothing magic or mystical about that. Just taking a deep breath is an opportunity to pause and focus. So would you take a deep breath? Would you close your eyes? And before I say anything else, in this moment of silence and focus, just in your own heart, would you pray to the Lord God? And would you ask him to open your eyes to show you why you're here tonight? None of you are here by accident. But all of you are here led by the Holy Spirit for different reasons. And so would you take a few moments in silence? And would you just ask and listen, God, would you show me why I'm here tonight? Jesus, some of us are here tonight because you wanted to show us what it means to be filled with courage through your Holy Spirit. Some of us are here tonight because we need to be reminded of who you are, maybe through community, maybe through prayer, maybe through worship, maybe through this time of teaching and opening up your word, which is living and active. Some of us are here because we've been lost. We've been lost for a while. We've been lost because of life, distractions, temptations, and sin. Some of us would say, I have no idea why I'm here tonight. I don't know how I found myself. I don't know why I'm in these seats. But there's a reason why. And would you show all of us, myself included, why we're here this evening? And ultimately, would you show us you this evening, King Jesus? So as we go into your word, as it was already read over us by Ember, your word is living and active. I pray the words of John the Baptist, my hero in scripture. I pray that as a communicator, even though I'm leading this time, that I would become less. I really have no interest in people walking out of here going, Man, Andre's a really good speaker. I pray that you, King Jesus, would become much, much more. And we would walk out of here going, We have an amazing King. And so thank you for this opportunity to learn and grow alongside my brothers and sisters in RPWA. And it's in your name, King Jesus, we all said, Amen. Hey Anna Gloria, would you do me a favor and reset the clock, please? Hey, so something that I've shared over the years many times is something that I have a strong affinity for is music. How many of you would say like you just love music? Now I'm not asking you, are you musical? I am not musical in any way, shape, or form. That is not a gift the good Lord has ever given me. But I love music. I've loved music for most of my life. In fact, I started getting into music when I was in seventh grade when I was given my first CD, which was a Queen album, which is one of the greatest bands of all time, right? But I don't just love music, I love almost all music. There's only one genre I can't stand and I don't like, which is country. And if you like it, I'll pray for you. Don't give me that attitude, RPY. But I love everything, and so often when I have my phone or my playlist on shuffle, I love how beautifully eclectic it is. When I'm listening to music, it can go from Metallica to a Broadway musical to an indie songwriter that's very sad, to Adele, to InSync and boy bands and all of that, all in one shot. And I love that. And so I enjoy experiencing music and songs. In fact, whenever I find myself in real life, if I'm at Target, going to Starbucks, running errands, and I'm by myself. I don't have any of my family with me. I always have headphones in. And the reason why I have headphones in, well, one, I'm an introvert, but secondly, I have headphones in because life is just a lot more exciting with a soundtrack. Life is just a lot more exciting for the soundtrack. So I want you to take about 10 seconds. I want you to turn somebody around you. And the next time you go to Target, if you had headphones in, what song do you want to be the soundtrack of your Target experience? 10 seconds, go. All right, I'm jumping back in. I'm jumping back in. I'm jumping back in. And by the way, I hope you knew that just because it's church, you didn't have to say worship, but if that was your heartfelt answer, you're welcome. You're welcome to. But you know one of my favorite experiences in music? One of my favorite experiences is when there is a song that I love that is loud and big, and those same artists put out a really well-done acoustic version of it. I love when there is a song that I love that is loud and is big. And then those same artists put out an acoustic version of it. And what I love about that, especially when it's done very, very well, is I hear the song in a new way. I hear the song, and often I hear the story or the heartbeat of the song in a way that I tend to miss in the noise, in a way that I tend to miss in the spectacle, and this isn't really a word, but just go with it in the loudness, if you will. So let me let me give you an example of that. I've got some happy helpers in the back that are gonna help play a couple of songs. So, one of my favorite genres of music of all time, because of my age and having lived through it, is I love early 2000 punk and emo music. I love early 2000. Like, if it's emo, if it's about coffin and heartbreaks and eyeliner, I am all about it. I love that. And so there's this band called Brand New that they really had this one song that when I was a young man in about 2001, 2002, I'm 18 and 19, they had this song called The Quiet Thing That Nobody Ever Knows. And it is just loud. It is young guys in a garage just screaming. It is spectacle. I love it. Nick, can you go ahead and play some of it for me? Absolute banger, right? It's gonna end up on your Spotify playlist after this evening. And I, especially when it first came out, I would play that car over that song over and over again on my way to school because it got me hyped and because it woke me up. I loved it, and I was always envisioning what it would be like to be in a band performing that song, the different guitars, the lighting cues. I always envisioned the spectacle. So I've been listening to that song, no joke, for over 20 years. And then about a year ago, I came across the fact that they made an acoustic version of it. And so I was really excited because I listened to it, and it was like I had never experienced the song before because I didn't hear the spectacle. Instead, I heard the words. And so, what we're gonna do now is we're gonna play you the exact same portion that we just did, just acoustically. So I've been screaming those lyrics for over 20 years, and it was listening to that version of it that I realized for the first time this is a song about a relationship falling apart. This is a song about emotional wounds, this is a song about heartache and heartbreak and distance, and the fact that often we're not emotionally healthy enough to talk to somebody when we're suffering. Not bad for early 2000s punk, huh? And so my point is that often an acoustic version takes something that we know, but it lets us hear the heart of it in a way that we tend to miss in the noise and the spectacle and the volume. And the reason why I share that as an opening illustration is that same principle is true in our faith with Jesus. When it comes to our faith with Jesus, a lot of us envision that it's always supposed to be big. It's always supposed to be a spectacle, it's always supposed to be emotional, it's always supposed to be these large, ex large dramatic moments. And there's times when it is. There's times when it's beautiful, there's times when there's tears, there's times when there's voices, there's times when it's joys, there's times when there is a lot going on, but the problem is we can live in a distorted view of faith that faith is always supposed to be spectacular. Faith is always supposed to be a spectacle, faith is always supposed to be emotional, faith is always supposed to be a mountaintop, but the reality is that's not real. Because life is not always meant to be lived all gas, no breaks. And often we find ourselves chasing moments. We find ourselves chasing the spectacular that we fall in love with moments rather than falling in love with the God who's the reason the moments are being celebrated. And so as we pause before we head into our summer, as we pause before we head into what I call this beautiful storm of RPYA summer starting next week, I wanted to take a moment to refocus ourselves on the heartbeat of our faith to go acoustic, so to be, so to speak, and get back to the foundation. And so if you've got your Bibles open, if you got your apps on, let's go back to John chapter three. John chapter three is that is the passage, or at least the verses we're gonna look at is the passage that Ember read over us. And what I want to do is I want to set up the scene for you. If you're new to the Bible, if you're new to the idea of the Bible, the second half of our Bible, what we call the New Testament, it begins with these four books that are called the Gospels, which are biographies on the life and teaching of Jesus: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And John is very unique. The first three Gospels are called the Synoptic Gospels. Now you just learned a really intelligent sounding word. It's called the Synoptic Gospels. And what that means is the first three have a lot of similarities and a lot of carryover. You're gonna find a lot of s the same stories told from different points of view in those first three. John is a very different beast. John is about 93, 94% unique to itself. And John actually gets very philosophical in a beautiful way in which Jesus begins to kind of teach us a bigness of what it means to follow after God. So in John chapter 3, we have a very unique conversation between Jesus and a religious leader named Nicodemus. First of all, what an epic name, right? His name is Nicodemus. I gotta imagine he's like Gandalf, you know, just kind of looks like that in some way. But the religious leaders at the time of Jeson were often his opposition. The religious leaders are the ones that were opposed to him, are the ones that are butting heads, are the ones that eventually led to the murder of Jesus. But Nicodemus is a unique individual in this, that he's a religious leader, but he knows and he acknowledges there is something different about this teacher named Jesus. And so he meets with Jesus in the cover of night. He meets with Jesus in secret, away from his fellow brethren, his religious leaders, so he can't be seen, but he's curious, he's curious. And if you saw in those opening verses, he even acknowledges, hey, there's something about you that I have to admit is different. There's something about you I haven't seen before. There's something about you that I don't fully know how do I explain it. And he begins to ask him essentially, who are you? And think about that question. When in your life did you ask that question? If you're here as a believer in Jesus in a room this size, not all of us are, and that's okay. But for those of you that would identify, I'm a believer in Jesus, at some point that journey had to begin with that question: who are you really? Some of you were raised in this. I'm a proud father of three kids, two of which are teenagers, and we've been raising them in the faith. But one of the things that I've often let them know is just because your parents are Bible-believing Christ followers doesn't mean that gets passed to you by osmosis. At some point, you have to choose and you have to make this decision for yourself. For some of you, you were not raised in this. I was not raised in church. For some of you, you came to this through other means. And it led you to this point of us, wait, wait, Jesus, who are you? Are you who you say you are? And the thing about Nicodemus, did you catch his confusion to Jesus' answers? And you know what I love about that? Because Nicodemus is us. We want a very nice, neat, small, understandable Jesus. C. S. Lewis, who wrote one of my favorite book series of all time, The Chronicles of Narnia. And he wrote many other great books like Mere Christianity, the Screwtape Laters, Agreed Divorce. C. S. Lewis was a man of academia, a man of intellect. He didn't come to the Lord until uh he didn't come to the Lord until he was an adult. And there's this legend of C. S. Lewis that I don't know if it's fully true, but it sounds very plausible, that he began using his academic prowess to study world religions. And one of the things that he did in his study of world religions was that if he studied their faith, their doctrine, the theology, if he could fully understand it, then he would cast it aside as a man-made hoax. Because if he he just looked at it very beautifully, if we're meant to believe that there is a higher power, that means there are going to be things we don't understand. That means there is going to be mystery, that means there's gonna need to be areas in which we show faith. And so Nicodemus is experiencing this because as you cast that Jesus tells him the fundamental of faith is that you need to be born again. And how does he take it? Literally. How do I go back into my mother's womb? You gotta imagine the confusion in Nicodemus. Right? He's like, this seems implausible. Like, I don't, I that's an awkward conversation. I don't know how to do this. But not only is Jesus speaking to Nicodemus, Jesus is speaking to you, Jesus is speaking to me, Jesus speaking to everybody, because he very famously gets to John 3.16. And the danger and the temptation of John 3.16, it is the most famous Bible verse in the entire world. We know it even if we didn't grow up in church, even if we're going on, there are signs held up at sporting events that say John 3.16, and it ends with, I have no idea why. But people do that in support of their sports team. And one of the dangers is we can hear something so often that we become numb to it. And so we need to take these moments to go back to the foundation and the fundamentals of our faith. And what does he say in John 3.16? You are loved by God. For God so loved the world that he sent his one and only Son, so that whoever believes in Jesus will not die. We're talking about eternal death, but will have life. And actually, he goes on, Pastor, to talk about what this means. Which means you don't answer, just think and reflect and going in. Do you know that you are loved by God? And there's probably a better way to emphasize this. But I mean, do you know? Not simply in a factual way, but do you know in a lived experience way that you are loved by God the Father? There is a significant difference between intellectually knowing something and actually having lived in experience with it. Lived experience often is worth far more than simply intellectual knowledge. Let me use a really silly example, but it's really silly, so it's gonna stick with you and you're gonna remember it. Uh, I'm a theme park guy. I love rides, I enjoy going to theme parks. I also love big thoroughlies. I'm a roller coaster person. Is anybody roller coaster people? Anybody you're the opposite? Absolutely not. There's vomit and everything going in. I see you, Anna Gloria. So two years ago this month, through the generosity of just some incredible uh spiritual parents in our lives, my family. So I'm the father of three kids, my beautiful wife. We were blessed with being able to take our kids out of school for a week and go to the universal theme parks in Florida. And I love the universal theme parks. We love universals here. I'm more of a universal person than a Disneyland person because Disneyland costs like five grand just to park. So I love the universal parks. And the Universal Parks have multiple parks, and the second one that they have is called the Islands of Adventure, and they have this roller coaster based on the Chris Pratt Jurassic World movies called the Velocicoaster. And so I have never in my life been on a roller coaster quite like this. And so here's how this tends to work: you get in and it's a launch coaster, but it launches you at 80 miles per hour, and immediately it launches you to hit a giant hill and to go down. And you're going through these corkscrews, you're going through this. And one thing I did not know, I did not expect, and it caught me off guard and it was beautiful. That halfway through the ride, you hit another launch, and it just launches you again. And I remember we got off of it. In fact, we got the picture from the ride. It's me and Gabriel, my oldest, just giant smiles on our face. And we got off the ride, and I went to the we had to put our phones in a little locker. So I got my locker, I got my phone in my locker immediately. I called Meg and I'm like, where are you? She's like, I'm over here with our younger two, Lucy and Isaiah. I'm like, I'm coming to you. And I get over to her. I'm like, I don't even explain anything else. I'm like, I will watch these two. You need to go with Gabriel and you need to experience this. You need to experience it. She's like, why was it good? I'm like, nothing I can tell you is gonna adequately explain this experience. You just have to do it. And she did it and told me she would never do it again in her life, but she still did it. And I'm sitting here explaining this to you in your roller coaster people, like, man, that would be awesome. And I'm not even doing a good job because the truth is there's no way I can put words to it. You just have to live it. Do you know that you are loved by God? Do you know that Jesus was sent so that you could not only intellectually know that you are loved by God, but so that you could live it each and every day in that truth. You are not simply loved by God when you're here. You're not loved by God when you're obeying. You're not just loved by God when you're doing something spiritual or holy or something like that. You are loved by God full stop. When you are being tempted by that sin in your life, when you are giving in to that sin, you are still loved by God, and that love wants to forgive you, and that love wants to break the change of bondage. When you are cursing someone out because they've hurt you and they've wronged you, and that is wrong and sin, you are still loved by God. When you are stressed out about your future, and you feel like at 18, 19, 20, and 21, I have already tanked my life. You are loved by God. When you when you feel like your family, your friends, your dating relationships are falling apart, you are loved by God. That is God's invitation to you. That is the foundation of our faith. And the mistake that we make as Christ followers is in a sense we try to move on for a minute. We view the love of God as being like the kindergarten class, like as something fundamental. Be like, okay, now let's get to the advanced class. Now let's get to the theology. Talk to me about revelation. It doesn't matter without the love of God. Do you know that you are loved by God? And that his vision for your life is to live in that love. One of the things that I tell my children regularly is I love you dearly. But my love is never gonna come close to how much God loves you. And I want you to know that. Every way I'm here because I love you dearly. But my love for you is never gonna come close to how much God loves you. And so, do you know that you are loved by God? Because when you do, that changes everything. And so let's unpack that a little bit. Because the truth is, love in our culture and our world today is actually really confusing. And some of you have heard me say this before, especially in the English language, love is kind of a junk drawer. Do you have a junk drawer in your house? Do you know what that is? It's usually like a drawer in your kitchen, your garage, in which you throw in things that don't really have a place anywhere else. Like usually junk drawers have things like batteries, have screws in them, have broken bottle tops, have coupons to something or menus. That's the point. Sometimes a pancake, that's the point of a junk drawer. And often in the English language, the word love is a junk drawer because we use it across a variety of different things. We will say I love you to a family member or a spouse. We will then say I love tacos. We will then say I love dogs. We will then say I love emo music. We will then say I love my sports team. We'll then say that. And and we mean different things, but functionally we're using the same word. And often people co-opt the word love and define it however they want it to be defined. It's kind of like the hunger games when it comes to that word. But the Bible, the Bible, you gotta understand, was not written in English. It is a translated work. And so the second half of the Bible, the Greek word, the second half of the Bible was written in ancient Greek. And so in ancient Greek, their language is actually far more helpful to understand love because they had specific words for specific types of love. And so, for example, they had a word called phyllo or philio, which was all about a friendship or a brotherly love. Have you ever heard of the city Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love? That word is rooted in the Greek. They have a word called Eros, which is a romantic, a romantic, a passionate, or an erotic sexual love. And they have a unique word that appears in the New Testament more than in any other ancient work of literature, which is the word agape. And that describes the rarest of loves, which means you are loved regardless of the circumstances, regardless of what you've done, regardless of how good you are, how holy, how put together. Do you know all the right answers? Did you know there are 66 books of the Bible? Can you tell me them in order? All of that. So when we read John 3, 16, for God so loved the world, for God so agape the world, he gave his one and only son, so that we would know that we are loved. And I gotta tell you something about the love of God. It's why nobody else will ever be able to match that love. That as a dad, I ain't sacrificing my kids for any of y'all. Let alone for my enemies, for the ones that have rejected me. And God so loved the world that he gave us Jesus. And so, what does it mean that God loves you? Well, just a couple points to that. One, love is an undeserved gift. Love is an undeserved gift. This is God's gift to us. Love is an undeserved gift. That's beautiful. That isn't just some poetry. That's reality. That's the reality you're invited in. Because how does love work in the world we find ourselves in? Well, love is usually transactional. I will love you as long as you give me a reason to. And if you stop being worthy of my love, then I will stop. And in the world we live in, that makes sense, doesn't it? I will love you as long as there is a reason to. In fact, many of us in this room, we're children of divorce. And we live in a world that divorces simply normalized. A lot of times people just no longer love each other. And that's normal, so move on. But God's love is an undeserved gift. God wants more for you than what sin does, because sin only wants death. But yet God loves you in your sins. Do you notice that God didn't send you a letter from far away and said, hey, get it all together and then come meet me on the mountaintop? Do you know what God did in love through Jesus? He sent Jesus to step into our broken, messy, sinful lives to come after us. You know, for us that live in Simi Valley, we had the fire experiences last week, right? And you know what I'm always thankful for? First responders. Because those are the ones running in to the places that I'm running away from. And they're coming after people to help the save. God sent Jesus into your life. Jesus didn't just come into our world, he comes into your life so that you know you are loved. And you don't need to do it, you don't need to say this amount of prayers, you don't need to be this, you don't need to limit yourself to three sins a day. God does want to change and transform you. But the beginning of the foundation is love, and it is an undeserved gift. That's the first thing that we learn in John's in Jesus' conversation, Nicodemus. The second thing is that love is meant to transform. This is a big one. Do you know why many of us functionally don't know that we're loved by God? Because we're not willing to change, to be changed by God. We're not willing to be changed by God. Because here's the trap some of us fall into. We don't actually want God's love to change us. We want God to love us. We want all the benefits that come with God's love, and we want to functionally stay the same person we've been. We want to be the same person we are. Maybe we're like five degrees different. Maybe I'm pretty much the same person as me, but I try to curse a little bit less. I try to show up to church as long as it's convenient. And, you know, like maybe uh I try to shoot up a prayer every so often and be like, oh great. But at the core of our heart, we don't want to change our lives. We don't want to give our sin over to God. You know, in our time in RPY, never out of guilt and shame, but just out of truth and conviction. Something I've often talked about is pornography, which is not just a guy issue. This has got its hooks in women as well, in the world we live with. And the truth is for many of us, we can say, yes, I want to see God change that in my life, but we're not willing to give it up to him. We're not willing to come out of hiding, to come to brothers and sisters, to go to counselors. We're not willing to go to God, we're not willing to delete apps, we're not willing to put our phone away. We're saying, no, I want this. We're speaking a big game, but we're not willing to actually bring transformation into our lives. For some people, we look at the brokenness of relationships all around us and we go, man, that person sucks, that person sucks, that person sucks, and we miss the common denominator as me. So maybe I have a part to play in this brokenness too, but we don't want to acknowledge, no, because that would mean that I need to change. That would mean that maybe I need to apologize. That would mean that I need to redo something. That would mean that me, no, no, I'm I'm okay with that. Some of us sit there and go, yeah, we get excited about serving, get excited about serving in kids' ministry, get excited about going on missions, we get really emotionally excited for like 15 minutes, and then we realize, oh, to do this, I need to actually do something. But I I got plans. That's gonna cut into my lounge and around time. I was gonna come in. I could go on and on, but but do you see that? When Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus, what does he say? To really experience the fullness of God, you need to be born again. That means you need a do-over, you need a full reset, you need to become a radically different person. The death and resurrection of Jesus was not for you to be a slightly better version of who you've already been. The death and resurrection, the love of Jesus is for you to be a radically new creation that no longer resembles who you once were. I have a dear friend that is older now. Children, married. I first met him when I was one of our youth pastors, and he was a freshman in high school. And the entire time that I've known him, I've also known his parents. And his dad in particular is one of the most kindest, gentlest people I've ever met in my life. If you know who Mr. Rogers is, like, this is like his dad. Like, never raises his voice, was a school teacher for years, just one of the most caring and compassionate people. And I found out something a couple years ago. He was sharing, me and this friend of our, we were in life group together. And he was talking about the transformation and the change that Jesus does. And he's like, hey, most of you know my dad. You know that he's so kind and gentle. He never raises his voice, he's this, he's that. Here's the beautiful thing about what Jesus does. Before Jesus came into my life, my dad was the angriest person you would meet. My dad was the most bitter person. My dad was violent. My dad was aggressive. My dad was and look at what Jesus does. There are so many people in our churches that would go, yes, in my previous life, porn had its hooks on me. In my previous life, hurt from family had its hooks on me. Anxiety, depression, anger, bitterness had its hooks on me, but look at what Jesus has done. And so to be loved is to be loved where you are. But Jesus loves you far too much to leave you that way. He wants his love to change you from the inside out. And so for many of us, if we don't know how loved we are, there's a question of is it because we're unwilling to be changed by his love? And so that's the second thing. And then the third thing I just want to highlight is love requires a response. Love requires a response. Some of you have experienced this, some of you have seen this in movies, but there's like an awkwardness when somebody goes, I love you, and the other person didn't do anything. Or says thank you, or something like that. Love requires a response. So how do you respond to Jesus? Well, one, it's an acknowledgement. And for some of you sitting here tonight, I think that's the starting point. Whether you say that for the very first time, or some of you, maybe you needed to be reminded. And it's been a while that you said that. And notice that this is not a question, do you love me? No, no, no, this is a statement. You do love me. For some of you, maybe your response tonight is to walk away from here and to go, Jesus, how does your love want to change me? Does your love want to bring a type of freedom into my life? Does your love want to bring a hope that I've been lacking? Does your love want to bring a conviction that I've needed? And hear me, conviction is very different than guilt and shame. Conviction is the love of God wanting to transform us into something more. Does your love want to encourage me? You know, I've shared this. Some of you have heard me say this before, but there's a very wise woman in uh the Christian leadership world. Her name is Trish Harrison Warren. She is a leader in the Anglican tradition, and she wrote this beautiful book called Liturgy of the Ordinary. How every day and every seemingly mundane moment is extraordinary because God is with us. And so at the beginning, she encourages Christ followers to say this simple prayer. So I want you to imagine tomorrow morning. I want you to imagine when your alarm clock goes off or however you wake up. And I want you to imagine opening your eyes. And before you do anything else, before you sit up, before you reach for your phone, don't reach over your phone, before you do anything else, when you open your eyes tomorrow, simply make this prayer of declaration, Jesus, you already love me today. And you know why Tish invites us to do that in the morning as soon as we open our eyes? Because it's a reminder that we're loved before we've even done anything. We haven't earned it. We haven't done any good. We haven't helped any old ladies across the street. We haven't performed, we haven't earned the grades, we haven't earned an attaboy at work, we haven't done anything. We do not look cute. We are not presentable in any way, shape, or form. And yet, the moment you open your eyes, you will all you are already as loved as you could possibly be by Jesus the King. And so by saying that prayer tomorrow morning and the next and the next and the next, you are now choosing to start your day in the love of God. And and can I be an older brother? Can I speak to you as a father? I'm not your dad. I'm not trying to be your dad, but can I speak to you as a spiritual father a little bit? When we start our day with our devices, we are inviting different emotions to begin to be, to begin to be what wakes us up. We are either inviting a need or a compulsion for entertainment. We are inviting stress of missing a text message, of emails, of schools. We are inviting stress as we read the news of what's going on around us. Think about how when we start our day with our device, it is bringing an emotion into the beginning of our days and usually. Not a good one. And the emotion, the way that we start our day has power over us. So practically, I'm a big fan of you buying an alarm clock and using that as your clock. But imagine with me, what would your days start to look like? What power would have what power would be unleashed in you if you began your days in the love of God, in the love that God has for you. And that leads me to just one practical step, which we just talked about, is choosing to remember. For many of us, our response has to be an intentional choice to remember because we are forgetful people. We are distracted people. We are people that live in a lot of noise. And so we need reminders. As to go back to my life as a dad, I am constantly telling my kids that I love them. Because I know that life can be busy. I know that they're running hard. I know that there's a lot of noise. And I know that they need to hear it from me. They need to be reminded that you are loved. And I tell them that in the mundane. I tell them that when they do good and they're succeeding and they're bringing home awards from school. I tell them that in some of our toughest conversations, in discipline, in hurts and groundworking. I need them to know that in all circumstances, you are loved by your father. And so Jesus has done his part and continues to do his part. The invitation is for us to grow the flaws in our memory, to grow our focus, to grow away from distraction and to choose to remember that I am a loved son, I am a loved daughter of God the Father because he sent Jesus after me. And so how can you practically remember that? Well, there's a couple different ways. One, the morning prayer that I encourage you to do that. The second thing is memorizing Scripture. And you know how important it is to memorize Scripture? Because we live in a world that is constantly trying to tell you who you're supposed to be, but there's only one voice and one voice alone that gets to tell you who you are. And that's the voice of God, and He's already told you that you are loved, you are forgiven, and you are unleashed to be part of the kingdom. And so we need to remember that. And so scripture is not simply a book or a collection of letters and stories. Scripture is the word of God spoken into our hearts. And so when we remember scripture, when we memorize scripture, we are putting a megaphone of truth in our head and in our hearts that is always going to be with me. And hear me. My memory is flawed for so many of us, and hear my voice. I'm not trying to be a voice of guilt or shame, but we sit there and go, Well, my memory doesn't work. I'm bad at memorizing. Stop. It's an excuse. I don't care. Whatever your who your the your path needs to be. There's no right timetable on this. Just take it one step at a time. One word at a time. But if you were to memorize a scripture like John 3.16, then in your head and in your heart, whether your Bible or your app is near you, you will always have the truth that you are loved in you. And so choose to remember. And again, my memory is sometimes pretty flawed, and so ways that I've memorized scripture, so I'll spend a couple minutes in the mornings just reading and rereading some of the verses I'm trying to memorize. I'm tactile, so it helps me to write it out. That's a way that I remember. I'll write it out on like post-it notes or pieces of paper, or often in my iPad or in a journal. I would set it as my lock screen sometimes, so that I see it when I'm going on my phone. Sometimes Megan taught me this one. She would set verses that she's memorizing to be part of her reminders. And so it would pop up like throughout the day, just with the verses, and you get to do it. Another way to memorize scripture is to do in community, to do it with other people, to be like, hey, let's commit to try to memorize something together, one word at a time. But again, think about the power you're unleashing by remembering that God loves you. And so choose to remember. And so we're about to kick off a brand new season, not just as in this ministry, but you're about to start a brand new season in life. Some of you are coming off of a pretty hectic season, good, bad, everything in between. And the thing about a new season is that it's just that it's new, meaning we don't know what's ahead. In the next week alone, there are going to be unexpected twists and turns in your life. And sometimes the unexpected is beautiful, is rich, is awesome. Sometimes the unexpected is a nuance, nuisance, nuisance. Sometimes the unexpected is downright painful. Everything is changing. But you know what never does? This put the love of God in your life. I came from that wedding a couple hours ago. And one thing that I love in Christ following weddings is when uh now husband and a wife choose for the very first act uh for their very first act of marriage to be one of worship by taking communion. And so usually they'll go off to the side and take communion while we get to just pray, and there's a worship song playing in the background. And the worship song that they had chosen is one that we sing often in RPO. It's a song called Center, and there's a line in it that hits me every time in which it says that if my days, my life were to tell a story, let it be of you only. And so, do you know what happens when we choose to remember that we are loved by God? Our lives begin to tell that story to people around us. Our lives begin to tell that story for people that have yet to experience the love of God in their lives. And so when we are choosing to remember who we really are, how God sees us, how God loves us, then that begins overflowing into us, and we begin showing other people in our lives that just as God loves us, he sent Jesus for you as well. And so this has beautiful ramifications, not just for you, but for the world around you. This is what we pray for at RPYA to be a generation that changes your generation. And you're not gonna change them by winning an argument. You're not gonna change them by bullying and muscling them into Jesus. You're gonna change them by pointing them to what love is all about. That is what changes the world. Do you remember when you're in history class and you studied the Roman Empire? And for those of you that paid attention, do you remember the fact that the Roman Empire, starting with the Greeks and Alexander the Great going into the Roman Empire, they had conquered the known world. There was no greater empire, and as we sit here hundreds, thousands of years later, if I want to see what's left of the Roman Empire, I need to go to a museum and see ruins. But what started in the midst of the Roman Empire was the movement of Jesus, the church. And why are we still here after all this time? Because of love, because of true love, because of the love of God. That is an eternal, a powerful, and a sustaining love. And so I'm gonna go ahead and invite the worship team actually to come on up. I'm gonna pray for us and we're gonna sing one last song. And as we go into this last time, let this be your time to just experience the love of God in your life. Maybe you're gonna experience that best by singing. And remember, God's not judging you whether you're in tune or not. This isn't like spiritual American idol or anything. Maybe for some of you, you're gonna experience the love of God by sitting and receiving these words being sung over you. Maybe some of you, you need to turn to somebody around you, to a fellow saint, and say, could we pray together? Would you pray for me? Whatever this is, whatever you need it to be, this is an invitation to experience the love of God, however, He's experiencing you to do that. So let's pray.