Speaker 1: Welcome to the First Love Church podcast.
Speaker 1: This is a collection of Sunday teachings inspired by the revised common lectionary and recorded weekly in Ocala, florida.
Speaker 1: This morning we are going to read from the book of Philippians, chapter 4, verse 1 through 9.
Speaker 1: And there's so much richness in this text, and what I remind us of this morning is this is not just another reading, but this is an introduction that we all can leap right into.
Speaker 1: This word of encouragement, this hope that is here, and as we participate together, we enter into the eternal current.
Speaker 1: Before time was formed, god had a plan for every single one of us, and that it was that we would be whole and holy by love, god's love.
Speaker 1: And so we invite you this morning into this reading.
Speaker 1: May the Holy Spirit reimagine the text for us, may the Holy Spirit re-enchant the text for us and maybe, if you know this passage and have heard it a million times, may it be alive to you this morning and may it bring newness and hope in the way that you experience.
Speaker 1: Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for my joy in my crown, stand firm in the Lord.
Speaker 1: In this way, my beloved, again, the scripture here is reminding us that there is a way to stand firm in the Lord.
Speaker 1: It may be different than the way that you were taught or the way that you currently participate, but this is an invitation into love.
Speaker 1: This is an invitation into newness, this is an invitation into something that is completely different, but completely the way of Jesus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the way of Jesus doesn't necessarily mean the things that you've been exposed to at church your entire life.
Speaker 2: I want you to consider that, because sometimes I think if you're growing up in church you're assuming, well, that's the way of Jesus.
Speaker 2: No, oftentimes that was the way of people and sometimes that was actually a little bit, a lot of bit manipulative and cruel.
Speaker 2: Even some of you have experienced.
Speaker 2: So I really want us to be able to understand that the way of Jesus is something that he might be revealing to us anew, even to those that might have been around for a while.
Speaker 2: I just find even in this greeting something interesting.
Speaker 2: Brothers and sisters, he didn't just go hey guys, oh yeah, the girls too.
Speaker 2: Brothers and sisters, you're who I love, because I think oftentimes we grew up in churches where the guys did everything except for when it came to fellowship times, and the women made all the food and cleaned it up while the guys talked, and that was kind of the thing that maybe you've been experienced and understand.
Speaker 2: The work of Jesus is not the men to do the preaching and the women to do the fried chicken and fellowship time, but there really is a work for us together to do in bringing forth the message of the gospel and sharing who Christ is, and he's revealed just as much through me as he is through Heather, and so for us to understand that, even in the greeting here.
Speaker 2: It's significant because these writings are going to churches that, by and large, are run by women, and so why would it be important that he would greet those women too?
Speaker 2: It's significant.
Speaker 1: And this is the hope for all of us that as we come to the table, as we come to Christ, as we come to newness, that there is an invitation to live differently, to experience the world differently.
Speaker 1: Thomas mentioned this morning a holy imagination, and we are called to a holy imagination so that we can tell a better story.
Speaker 1: The stories that we tell shape us and shape the world around us, and Jesus came to show us a better story.
Speaker 1: In fact, very often the way of Jesus was asking people this is what you know but I'm saying set that way aside and come into something else.
Speaker 1: When the people said this woman is caught in a sin and she deserves to be stoned, jesus said I want you to set that way aside and love her.
Speaker 1: When people were outside of the Jewish faith and people wanted to keep them that way, God said to Peter I want you to include all the Gentiles and I want you to eat with them and I want you to consider them brotherhood.
Speaker 1: And so there's this invitation by the Holy Spirit that we would long for and that we would imagine a community where equality is for everyone.
Speaker 1: And this is the word that you gave us, the gospel, the good news.
Speaker 1: If it's not good news.
Speaker 1: For everyone beloved, it's not good news.
Speaker 1: And the good news is that Jesus came and showed us another way of living, a way of human flourishing, and there's great hope for us in that storytelling.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 1: I urge Udia and I urge Sinti to be in the same mind in the Lord.
Speaker 1: This verse is essential for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1: He's commending these particular women and he's saying have the same mind as Christ, think about this the same way that Jesus does.
Speaker 1: And this has many variations, but it brings us to some classic views or some views that we have now in how we interpret the text.
Speaker 1: And we must interpret the text in the whole context and in the fact that Paul is writing to this church and he's giving them encouragement and he's calling out these women particularly by name, and he says be of the same mind in the Lord.
Speaker 1: Yes, I ask you also my loyal companion.
Speaker 1: We don't know who his companion was, but we know him to be loyal because Paul calls him.
Speaker 1: This is wonderful.
Speaker 1: Help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel.
Speaker 1: So Paul's admonition here is hey, do what you can to support these women, because they are doing exactly the same thing that I am doing together with Clement and the rest of my coworkers whose names are in the book of life.
Speaker 1: And again he adds here this is the hope for all of us that the book of life here he starts bringing eternity into it and reminds us this is beyond work just here in the natural.
Speaker 1: This is work for all of us in bringing God's kingdom here to the earth.
Speaker 2: You know, in context, too, we need to understand what Paul's talking about, because when he's talking about the crown, you know.
Speaker 2: He's talking about the, you know, like the Olympics, yes, the crown that you would have when you win.
Speaker 2: You know, and he's talking about his crown, you know, or what?
Speaker 1: are you doing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he said where you were mentioning that, my joy in crown.
Speaker 1: In verse one, where he is saying, hey, you as the people, you're the crown, you're the reason that I'm winning, but he's giving references to that kind of truth.
Speaker 2: And then back where we are there in verse four, he says yeah or three, there you go.
Speaker 2: He says with Clement and the rest of my coworkers that word since it was changed in the Latin Vulgate after that, but prior to that it really meant a co-athletes and so when he's talking to and we kind of lose the idea of this race that we're running, and then who's running that race?
Speaker 2: Because he's not saying to the guys you're just you.
Speaker 2: You know he's talking in context with these women in the church and I think people have really boiled down to this, saying to all look there there was two women and they have to get.
Speaker 1: They have to quit bickering, they have to get in, because some translations actually say that, ask them to stop arguing, but that's not in the text.
Speaker 1: That is not what the text actually says in context or actually written in the text.
Speaker 1: So there is this.
Speaker 1: There's a bias, kind of, in some of the translations that tell us that the women are fighting, and that's not what he's saying at all.
Speaker 1: He's saying have the same mind as Christ.
Speaker 1: And one of the things in ancient writings that they do is whatever you're doing, that's good, they tell you to do it again.
Speaker 1: Have you ever said that, like to a little person?
Speaker 1: When they're doing something good, you're like, yeah, keep up the good work, buddy, or do that again.
Speaker 1: Because I see that and noticing it so a lot of times in the scripture, when someone is told to do it, it's not because they're not doing it, it's an encouragement to say continue in this.
Speaker 1: I'm asking you to help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my coworkers whose names are in the book of life.
Speaker 1: Rejoice in the Lord always.
Speaker 1: Again I will say rejoice.
Speaker 1: And so Paul is reminding people that there is a great equality in Christ and that he honors and sees these people as co-athletes, and that may not mean a whole lot to us in our particular day, but in this day only the men participated in the games.
Speaker 1: Women were not allowed.
Speaker 1: And so when he says they're my co-athletes, he's allowing them, he's naming them, he's saying they're doing the same work that I'm doing and now I want you to support them in the same way.
Speaker 1: And then he gives us this understanding pay attention, rejoice.
Speaker 2: It's ironic too, because a pulsation is often used to justify why women should not be in ministry, and here he's identifying you as co-athletes.
Speaker 2: And so we need to be really careful about how we receive the word of God, because it's interesting to me that I have seen firsthand the attack on women in ministry.
Speaker 2: Imagine why, and you know what.
Speaker 2: Much of the time and not every time, but I would say maybe even more often my experience has been it's been women who have spoke out against women in ministry and I wondered at first what that was about.
Speaker 2: Why would that be?
Speaker 2: And I don't fully understand that, other than to bring in the question that you know, if you'd silence her, maybe that would.
Speaker 2: I could pass that responsibility off on someone else.
Speaker 2: Let the guys mess it up, and there's a responsibility for all of us.
Speaker 2: And the feminine voice needs to be heard in the church more, because the gentleness of Christ is often more manifest in the gifts that God has given women.
Speaker 2: Not that it should be that way, but it is so.
Speaker 2: Imagine if only part for 2000 years, if only part of his voice and his nature has brought to the church why we struggle the way that we do, why we're not the full body, amen.
Speaker 2: And so let's look at what God is reminding us of and instructing us as the church is growing now, in this day and age, and unless all of us rise up to the place that God is inviting us to.
Speaker 2: Inviting us to this place that's higher, that requires our dependence on him and requiring him to speak through us all.
Speaker 2: Amen.
Speaker 1: Amen.
Speaker 1: This verse has a lot of commands for us as well, but rejoice in the Lord always.
Speaker 1: Again, I will say this rejoice and there is an intention in rejoicing.
Speaker 1: I don't think you accidentally rejoice, I think it's intention.
Speaker 1: I choose joy, I choose to recount things that are worthy of these good thoughts.
Speaker 1: Let your gentleness be known to everyone.
Speaker 1: The Lord is near Beloved.
Speaker 1: This is a text that I think that is underrated in the Christian faith and in our tradition, but this is a direct command to us, for those who are living in this Jesus way.
Speaker 1: Let your gentleness be known to everyone.
Speaker 1: I remind you that gentleness is an evidence of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit living in our lives, controlling us, and you had mentioned earlier that this is something that has often been just given through women, and I encourage all of us to maybe change that perspective and say this is intended for all of us to be gentle, and I remind us, not just gentle with others, but gentle with ourselves, gentle with the way that we speak to ourselves, gentle with the way that we hear God's voice to us.
Speaker 1: But this is what he's saying.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be an evidence and you choose.
Speaker 1: You choose now to let your gentleness be known, not your correctness, not your certainty, but let your gentleness be known to everyone.
Speaker 2: Early on and I like to believe that I've made some genuine strides for this.
Speaker 2: But early on in my family I was so hard on my children and, but you know, honestly, it was nothing in comparison and it was terrible, but it was nothing in comparison to how hard I was on myself.
Speaker 2: And so oftentimes that gentleness it's just an indication.
Speaker 2: If you can't be gentle with tender children, then it's an indication of what's going on and that's something God is instructing you Love your neighbor as yourself.
Speaker 2: Amen.
Speaker 2: You don't know, I was thinking about this.
Speaker 2: I've been a pastor, a youth pastor.
Speaker 2: I've even been asked a few times to teach in children's church when the children's pastor was out of town.
Speaker 2: But I just imagine if you were a teacher some of you have been.
Speaker 2: But imagine if you were, like a sixth grade teacher, and so you had a sixth grade kid and let's say it's a boy and let's say he's one of those that hasn't been taking his ADHD medicine or something I don't know, and they're just, they're on your last nerve and every once in a while you, just you get the thought that you wanna just jab them in the throat or something you don't wanna, or punch them in the stomach where you won't leave a bruise.
Speaker 2: They drive you crazy and you just almost can't take it and you wanna go over and you wanna pop that kid one.
Speaker 2: But all of a sudden, when you went over there, that kid's parents were standing right beside you.
Speaker 2: What would you do as a teacher?
Speaker 2: Well, little Johnny he sure is a pill You'd change your tune, wouldn't you?
Speaker 2: You wouldn't go smack that kid if his parents were right there.
Speaker 2: You might wait until their parents were gone, but you wouldn't do it.
Speaker 2: Now let's be in context with what pastor's talking about here, verse five let your gentleness be known to everyone.
Speaker 2: The Lord is near.
Speaker 2: You know what.
Speaker 2: Maybe little Johnny's parents aren't there, but little Johnny's creator is, and you know every one of the people that we tend to be rude, to, disrespectful and mean to.
Speaker 2: You know what it helps me to remember, and that's a practice I urge you.
Speaker 2: God is present, and when I am aware of his presence I'm less likely to poke one of his kids in the throat.
Speaker 2: Come on now, I'm preaching better in your amen.
Speaker 2: Last night I was driving home and this guy sped up to get in front of me and then put on his blinker.
Speaker 2: He went anyway and then he put on his blinker and barely between me and the car in front of me was there enough room for him to get in.
Speaker 2: And then the person immediately makes a right turn.
Speaker 2: So I'm now stopped and I'm thinking to myself you couldn't have got behind me?
Speaker 2: And all the no cars that are back there.
Speaker 2: You couldn't have all these things.
Speaker 2: And I began to say just out of my loud, just rehearsing this guy is a real jerk driver.
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden I just felt the presence of the Lord there.
Speaker 2: You know, maybe he's not a jerk, maybe he's somebody that made a mistake, was in the wrong lane and realized they've got to get over.
Speaker 2: Maybe they're not from around here.
Speaker 2: And the GPS says turn right, turn right.
Speaker 2: And all of a sudden I began to have a what if compassion instead of.
Speaker 2: That person woke up this morning and said you know what I'm gonna do?
Speaker 2: I'm gonna get in front of this guy, demonstrate.
Speaker 2: I don't know who he is, but my goal is to find him, get in front of him and just make him mad.
Speaker 2: Now I know I'm just talking to me.
Speaker 2: Nobody else experiences any of these earthly things, but I wonder if that awareness for you and I of God's presence could really help us understand.
Speaker 2: Maybe the you know, because I realized he wasn't out to get me, was he?
Speaker 2: He just needed to get over that thing and I happened to be there in that moment.
Speaker 2: And it really has nothing to do with I can make it about me.
Speaker 2: I can honk up, chase him into the Dunkin' Donuts or whatever.
Speaker 2: Or I could realize, god, you wanna teach me something.
Speaker 2: I can live a better life if I'm not attached to those kind of emotions.
Speaker 2: I can live in a higher place.
Speaker 2: I can live in the presence of God, or I can live in the presence of anger.
Speaker 2: And come on, now I'm preaching to somebody here.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's nobody here, maybe it's somebody in there.
Speaker 2: Help us, lord.
Speaker 1: Lord is near, love is near.
Speaker 1: So don't worry about anything.
Speaker 1: But in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about anything Beloved.
Speaker 1: This is graduate level Christianity.
Speaker 1: I just wanna tell you that this is not for the beginners, this is not for young children, this is for those of us who know that there are things to worry about.
Speaker 1: All we have to do is turn on the news, and there's things to worry about.
Speaker 1: All we have to do, all you have to do is love someone, and there's something to worry about.
Speaker 1: All you have to do is love your pet, and there's something to worry about.
Speaker 1: And there is this any time that we love, we are at risk and there is something to worry about.
Speaker 1: But then he gives us this alternative way of living.
Speaker 1: It is not that there wouldn't be anything to worry about, but worry doesn't produce anything, only ulcers and nightmares.
Speaker 1: But this worry that we can do is then offered to us.
Speaker 1: There is another way.
Speaker 1: There is a prayer that is offered to us, a way of peace, which is prayer and everything.
Speaker 1: By prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: Let your requests be made known to God.
Speaker 1: We woke up this morning and it was so beautiful outside, like it was it.
Speaker 1: Just.
Speaker 1: It makes you be thankful, this beautiful weather.
Speaker 1: You're outside and you're like oh, thank you God for this respite from heat and this understanding that practicing thanksgiving, practicing giving thanks, allows us to experience awe, allows us to see the beauty in nature, allows us to rehearse the good things and not just necessarily the things that cause us to worry, but this understanding that the way of Jesus is peace through prayer.
Speaker 1: And prayer that is not just saying I have a bunch of things that I need to get fixed.
Speaker 1: Prayer is a conversation with God, and so, instead of worrying about someone and you're just having your own conversation, it's a little bit of insanity If you have a conversation with God about the person that you are concerned about or about the situation you're concerned about, or about the issue that is troubling you.
Speaker 1: This is an invitation into another way of living, a way of peace.
Speaker 1: Beloved we know this from the beatitude Blessed are the peacemakers.
Speaker 1: We are called, as a people of God, to be peacemakers, to not just be people who experience peace, but people who actually make peace.
Speaker 1: And sometimes making the peace means that you are gonna have to speak up.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to stand up for what is true.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had to make peace between children squabbling?
Speaker 1: I think yes.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had to make peace in your own heart, between ideas that were coming and clashing with each other?
Speaker 1: Yes, but this is the invitation for us that we, as the people of God, would be known for the peace that we make.
Speaker 2: You know, but in everything by prayer and supplication, you know this indicates, in other translations even said, I think, a little clearer that the suggestion here is that you would pray constantly, and you know the pastor saying this, and aren't most people, if you're even paying attention to me, thinking, well, there's no way that he can mean constantly.
Speaker 2: God's not saying constantly, right, not all the time.
Speaker 2: I can't do that constantly.
Speaker 2: And is anyone else justifying this right now in your own head?
Speaker 2: You can't do that constantly.
Speaker 2: Well, I would bring the question to you this way.
Speaker 2: You could worry constantly, can't you?
Speaker 2: You know me and Heather talk about this.
Speaker 2: It's like no matter what you're doing housekeeping or your work you could be doing that, fixing that thing the whole time.
Speaker 2: Worry's just going on, it ain't stopping.
Speaker 2: So what God really is presenting to you is to understand that you need to take that mind under control and do something else with it, or it's gonna continue to torment you.
Speaker 2: It's gonna lead you off into the what ifs my grandma, this adorable old woman, we'd go visit her when I was little and we'd drive from our town there in Illinois to.
Speaker 2: She lived like just inside of Missouri and it was about a 60 mile drive, but on country roads, so it took awhile.
Speaker 2: So back in those days you called on the telephone, said I'm gonna come visit you.
Speaker 2: We should be there in a couple hours.
Speaker 2: Well, a couple hours would come and go and my mom and I would wander off at every garage sale that we saw on the side of the road and all of a sudden, look, there's an apple orchard and we'd go down there and get apples and apple cider.
Speaker 2: So four or five hours later we ended up getting a grandma's house and by the time we pull up she'd bust out of the door and run to the car and go.
Speaker 2: Oh my God, you made it.
Speaker 2: Where we said we were coming, yeah, but when you didn't get her in two hours, I was sure that you had a wreck.
Speaker 2: And she would go into this spiel of what had happened to us, specific to oddly, like she was planning something demising our death, because she had us upside down in a ditch, and which ditch it was and where it was on the road there.
Speaker 2: I mean she knew that dangerous corner and I mean her mind could spin a yarn of our demise in such a fantastic way.
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 2: Because all of us have that ability within our mind.
Speaker 2: If we will let it, it will just go through to the place of utter torment to you.
Speaker 2: Or you can do this instead I can bring that to the Lord when I, well, my family, isn't here yet.
Speaker 2: God, I put them in your hands, I trust you and I can ask you for smooth sailing for them, that you put angels in their path.
Speaker 2: I can pray and I can focus on that, or I can focus on them upside down, in the ditch, you know, and even, like Thomas said, I think really to expand our idea of prayer, to go whatever happens to them, I trust you it's for their best.
Speaker 2: I can really believe God in a way in prayer to help me roll over that care and that burden, because to everyone that we love we have this care oh my pet, oh my parents, oh my children.
Speaker 2: And I have people all the time they're just tormented by the condition they find their children in and their kids say something and their mind goes oh, it must mean they're doing, you know.
Speaker 2: And the next thing, you know, they've spun a yarn.
Speaker 2: What if we could take that energy and bring that to the Lord in prayer, in supplications, which are requests and it's okay to request those things.
Speaker 2: But the place of rest is really that.
Speaker 2: I know he's good, he loves them even more than I do and I can trust him with them and see what that does just to my whole, my whole energy, my whole peace, my whole presence.
Speaker 2: It goes from all keyed up and freaked out of me.
Speaker 2: Oh, my God, I don't know what happened too.
Speaker 2: Amen.
Speaker 1: I think what you're offering us is an understanding that the Lord is near, a revelation of that.
Speaker 1: Because if we would practice awareness, I don't think we'd have to go to the worst case point scenario.
Speaker 1: We would remember that God is with us, love is with us, love is near us.
Speaker 1: If we could sense the presence of love in every situation, that would automatically deal with our worry.
Speaker 1: And he's saying I'm telling you, the facts are this the Lord is near.
Speaker 1: Whether you're aware of it or not, the Lord is near.
Speaker 1: So your choice to practice awareness comes through this ancient practice of prayer where we converse with the divine, where we attend to the idea that the nearness of God.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you had God's physical presence with you, what would you worry about?
Speaker 1: Nothing, because God was handling it, God was working on it, God was here and you were loved.
Speaker 1: And there is such a beautiful invitation into another realm of living.
Speaker 1: Returning to this good understanding that love has beautiful things for us, Do not worry about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your heart and your minds.
Speaker 1: In Christ Jesus, he's saying to you that if you'll offer this in prayer, you will have peace.
Speaker 1: And it won't be just regular peace, the kind of peace that says don't think about it, Don't you love it?
Speaker 1: When someone says you don't worry about it, I always feel like that's just fuel on my fire.
Speaker 1: If you're not worrying about it too, then I gotta worry double.
Speaker 1: And so this understanding is that there's gonna be peace that comes from the awareness of Christ.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be peace that will guard your heart and your mind because the Lord is near, because love is present, because God is working on it.
Speaker 1: This is a promise for us in exchange for this life of prayer.
Speaker 1: We pause here for a moment to thank you for joining us today.
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Speaker 2: You know, and I think it's really important too that we see that he makes a distinguishing.
Speaker 2: You know, in the way that this is spoken, that it guards your heart and your mind, that peace would come to your heart and your mind, because I think that it's helped me to make a distinguishing, the understanding that I am, not my thoughts.
Speaker 2: I have thoughts, but that's not who I am, and for the longest time I just I never heard that being challenged.
Speaker 2: So any thought that I had, I connected it with me.
Speaker 2: So if I have bad thoughts, I must be bad.
Speaker 2: I have wicked thoughts, I must be wicked Instead of understanding.
Speaker 2: Do you understand that God gave you a mind?
Speaker 2: It's this chemical machine that he put inside of your skull and it thinks.
Speaker 2: That's what it does.
Speaker 2: It has thoughts.
Speaker 2: It's how it's designed to do, and then you decide which ones you're gonna meditate on the you, the heart, the spirit, the soul, the person Center.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and he wants to give peace to you and to your mind, because sometimes our mind we just wouldn't.
Speaker 2: It be nice if we just stopped for a minute, if you just go to a little pause on that thing.
Speaker 1: That's the practice of centering prayer, beloved you might wanna join that kind of prayer of going.
Speaker 1: this is what it looks like to sit in the presence of loving God, not to have to say anything, but to sit in the presence of divine love.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate what you're offering us is remembering that, the center of us, that this is where we have a choice, when we ask and we say, as followers, that we're allowing Christ or we're allowing this other way to center our lives, to center our thoughts, to make decisions on how we'll relate in the world, what we'll do.
Speaker 1: And then he says finally, beloved.
Speaker 1: I love that he calls us beloved, that he calls us family.
Speaker 1: Finally, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there's anything worthy of praise.
Speaker 1: Think about these things.
Speaker 1: Whatever is true, beloved.
Speaker 1: Here is a plan for us, because we must question our thoughts and the question that we must ask ourselves is is this thought true?
Speaker 1: And then we must ask ourselves who told us this?
Speaker 1: How do I know this is true?
Speaker 1: And we see this pattern in the garden.
Speaker 1: Adam and Eve have done what they know not to do and they are hiding.
Speaker 1: And God comes to them.
Speaker 1: Love comes to them, love that is near to them, says what's happening, and they recount a story that they are telling themselves.
Speaker 1: And God says to them who told you that?
Speaker 1: So one of the choices we have in our responsibility or in our weaponry, in our arsenal, is asking ourselves the question is it true?
Speaker 1: And then, who told me that it was true?
Speaker 2: Come on.
Speaker 1: Whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure.
Speaker 1: Again, if we look at all of these things, we see the invitation into love your neighbor as yourself, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Speaker 1: Now, this word think to us is kind of I don't know, it's lost its luster in this particular, in the language that we use all the time, but it is this word, this meditate continue to think about these things.
Speaker 1: There are things beloved, whether you wanna admit it or not, that we rehearse.
Speaker 1: And the apostle is telling us here now, rehearse these things, things that are honorable, just pure, pleasing, commendable.
Speaker 1: If there's anything excellent, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Speaker 1: Dennis was listening to something last night as I was falling asleep.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we don't fall asleep at the same time I had listened to music in little headphones and then I was falling asleep and then what?
Speaker 1: I don't know the context for what I was listening, but I became aware of this person talking and they said if you don't like somebody, everything they do is gonna irritate you.
Speaker 1: And I thought well, that's a truth, isn't it?
Speaker 1: But you have to rehearse.
Speaker 1: Why you don't like someone because it's already passed.
Speaker 1: I don't like them because that's what happened the last time or in times past.
Speaker 1: And we rehearse these evils that people have.
Speaker 1: And Paul is saying there's a new way of living, checking our thoughts and saying what do I know to be true?
Speaker 1: That every person is beloved of God, that every person has dignity because they bear the image of the divine, that every person needs forgiveness, because we ourselves need forgiveness.
Speaker 1: And this rehearsing that he's asking us to do, think about these kind of things.
Speaker 1: Don't rehearse someone's faults.
Speaker 1: Don't rehearse.
Speaker 1: I mean, love does not keep an account of wrongs done to it.
Speaker 1: Now, I wanna just flip that back on you too.
Speaker 1: Love also doesn't keep an account of what you've done wrong.
Speaker 1: When you rehearse all the things that you've done wrong, love does not behave like that.
Speaker 1: And so this is an invitation into living differently.
Speaker 1: And he's saying make a choice about what you think about, be aware of your thoughts, and then allow yourself to be centered in God's kind of love and think about these things.
Speaker 2: If I asked in this room how many of you meditate, I would say that a small amount of you would probably raise your hand and that's something that you're interested in.
Speaker 2: And then many of you, the majority, would say I don't meditate, I wish I would, or I'm not sure about that practice, or blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2: But I would have pushed back on that and say that, and I'm confident of this, that every one of you meditate.
Speaker 1: Just on what is the question right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because maybe you need to understand what meditation is, because it might be in your mind that you set cross-legged, turn your hands up and do a chant or something or whatever, and maybe you have some Christian exposure to meditation, and so it is the idea of what you've been exposed to as what Christian meditation is, and though that is a type of meditation or a form of it, what the true sense of meditating is is the thing that you mull over in your mind, and so I would pray over you.
Speaker 2: If I can have a prayer answered today over you, I would ask God that he would give you, from this moment forward, awareness of what you're meditating on, or that you're meditating Because if you just became aware, oh man, that's what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: When I'm driving to work, all day I'm meditating on.
Speaker 2: If that person says something to me, this is what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 2: And then you load up a smart alec response Anyone else besides me, I'm looking right at you, come on now.
Speaker 2: And then, guess what?
Speaker 2: You usually get a chance at some point to use that zinger.
Speaker 2: Oh, it was a good one too.
Speaker 2: Or the worst is when you load up a great zinger and you get ready to say it and the Spirit of the Lord comes and says don't speak like that.
Speaker 2: That's the worst, Because you had such a great one loaded up.
Speaker 2: But I just but.
Speaker 2: The truth is, if you would be made aware you're doing so much meditating already, and meditation really becomes a habit or a practice, or just something that goes on and, as a result of meditation, there's a fruit that will just.
Speaker 2: It's not, it's just like gravity, it's like anything else.
Speaker 2: He's put in us.
Speaker 2: It's functioning right now.
Speaker 2: You're breathing.
Speaker 2: You don't do it on purpose, you're just doing it.
Speaker 2: It's something that's programmed in you All right Now.
Speaker 2: Meditation is something that you learned from your parents.
Speaker 2: They were constantly talking about the neighbor, or they were talking about not having enough money or whatever, or they were talking about, or maybe you were exposed to great people Like Heather sells that wonderful story about her grandmother.
Speaker 2: She locked her keys in her car in a snowstorm, and it was late at night and no one was around, and so her first response was I'm grateful that I have a car that I can lock my keys in.
Speaker 2: See, there's a thought pattern of meditation and you'll eat the fruit of it.
Speaker 2: So I'm asking God to give me and you an awareness of what we're meditating on, and then all you gotta do is shine it in the light of scripture.
Speaker 2: Is it pure lovely of a good report, is it true?
Speaker 2: Is it honorable, you know?
Speaker 2: Is it just Well?
Speaker 2: If not, then let's flip that, one of the things that my wife does my kids.
Speaker 2: Can I'll have them answered out to show you how pounded it is in our head.
Speaker 2: Oh Lord, have mercy right now, when somebody drives in front of us and cuts us off and we wanna say what's your loaded?
Speaker 2: Is there any things that you can shout out in the church, that you can say in church, no, okay, All right, what you call that person or whatever.
Speaker 2: And so I have a lot of things that I like to say.
Speaker 2: But, kids, what does Heather tell us to say, Hello, challenge on, Ha ha, ha, you like cause I'll go and look at that jerk.
Speaker 2: And Heather goes, you mean that beloved child of God?
Speaker 2: Now, this just goes on so much that every one of my children can't help it.
Speaker 2: Now, when someone cuts them off, they go beloved child of God, they're there, and what happens is we can change that and all of those things.
Speaker 2: Now it got programmed in you and it became a habit and just like that.
Speaker 2: It's gonna take some work to dig that habit out.
Speaker 2: But what if from your spirit rose out of you beloved child of God and you meant it?
Speaker 2: What kind of energy would that put in the car versus that I wanna pull over and choke somebody?
Speaker 2: Energy.
Speaker 2: Do you feel Christ in that?
Speaker 2: Do you feel joy and peace in it?
Speaker 2: Oh, there might be a moment of satisfaction before you get carted off to prison.
Speaker 2: But it's not the life of God.
Speaker 2: And I'm telling you, there's a meditation for you and I and it's in everything that we are meditating.
Speaker 2: And if God would, if you'd allow God to begin to awaken you and it's ugly some of you will wanna go back to sleep.
Speaker 2: But if you're awakened and you let him go in there, he'll begin to show you how to change that stuff and you can have a whole different inner and when you begin to relieve other people, you might actually get some relief out of this deal.
Speaker 2: In fact, I know you will.
Speaker 1: Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me.
Speaker 1: Keep on doing Beloved.
Speaker 1: This is an invitation for all of us.
Speaker 1: I know that we all have great starts, but we also often don't finish things, and this is an invitation to keep practicing this goodness.
Speaker 1: Keep practicing the prayers, keep practicing living a life that is aware of the presence of love.
Speaker 1: Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
Speaker 1: I wanted to read to us this same text, but in the Passion Translation.
Speaker 1: I would like my dear friend and burden bearer to help resolve this issue, for both women have diligently labored with me for the prize and helped me in spreading the revelation of the Gospel, along with Clemente and the rest of my co-workers.
Speaker 1: All of their names are written in the Book of Life.
Speaker 1: Be cheerful and joyous celebration in every season of life.
Speaker 1: Let joy overflow, for you are united with the anointed one.
Speaker 1: This is an invitation for us to remember that Christ, who was anointed to be this light to us, to show us another way of life, you are united with that anointing.
Speaker 1: Let gentleness be seen in every relationship for our Lord is ever near.
Speaker 1: Don't be pulled in different directions or worried about a thing.
Speaker 1: Be saturated in prayer throughout each day, offering your faith filled request before God with overflowing gratitude.
Speaker 1: Tell him every detail of your life, then God's wonderful peace that transcends human understanding will make the answers known to you through Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: So keep your thoughts continually fixed on all that is authentic and real, honorable, admirable, beautiful, respectful, pure and holy, merciful and kind, and fasten your thoughts on every glorious work of God, praising him always.
Speaker 1: Follow the example of all that we have imparted to you, and the God of peace will be with you in all things.
Speaker 1: What a beautiful invitation for us to participate in the good work that God is doing in the world around us.
Speaker 1: This is the practice of seeing and the practice of presence that when everybody else has worry, we can live differently and have a great hope.
Speaker 1: That we who have learned to see in the darkness are not afraid of death.
Speaker 1: That when death is all around us, we don't have to panic.
Speaker 1: We can be reminded that love is here, that Christ is present with us and that there is a promise of resurrection Beloved.
Speaker 1: Everything dies and the good news is, but that is not the end.
Speaker 1: In the Aramaic that death, that word, means to exist elsewhere.
Speaker 1: There is for us an invitation to be people of resurrection, people who are not afraid to look death square in the face and remember that there is a redeeming hope for the whole world, that we would look at death, see it for what it is, but remember that there is a greater magic still, there is a greater truth still.
Speaker 1: There is a promise of resurrection, and he's asking us to live like people who know resurrection power.
Speaker 1: That same spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives and dwells in each one of us.
Speaker 1: I am so grateful for our times together here and we get to come to the Lord's table in just a moment.
Speaker 1: But just recently I was on a phone call with somebody who watches online and they called from out of state and they had a lot of questions and they called very early in the morning, like 6.30 in the morning, and when they called they said I really need to talk to a pastor.
Speaker 1: And I said I'm a pastor and they're like I'm really looking for a man.
Speaker 1: That's what they said.
Speaker 1: And I said the men are sleeping.
Speaker 1: And that's what I said the men are asleep, but I'm on the phone right now and I am willing to pray with you and I'm willing to hear you.
Speaker 1: By the end of the conversation, he repented to me in particular and said you were the person that I clearly was supposed to speak to and I am sorry that I asked for someone other than you.
Speaker 1: Now that I know what I have received, and this is the hope for all of us beloved, this is the hope for all of us that we would recognize that, wherever we are, we are supposed to be there and we are to bring light and hope and grace to the world around us, being centered in resurrection, being centered in truth and being aware that the promise might happen in ways that we could have never imagined.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask if there's anybody like me that's not mechanically inclined when it comes to vehicles.
Speaker 2: That's most of us.
Speaker 2: Now, isn't it just terrible when you're driving by yourself and that car breaks down?
Speaker 2: I don't know what to do?
Speaker 2: Sometimes I'll open the hood and look at it like I'm going to all of a sudden be struck with knowledge from on high.
Speaker 2: But the truth is it's horrible.
Speaker 2: But imagine that exact same scenario if your trusty mechanic was with you.
Speaker 2: Man, you'd feel a lot better, wouldn't you?
Speaker 2: And in fact, you would almost be grateful that it happened when they that it happened and they were there, because how are you going to even explain what happened?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Quit working.
Speaker 1: Or you're making noise, you're pretending to be.
Speaker 2: Did it have power?
Speaker 2: Did it not have electricity?
Speaker 2: They're going to ask you all these questions that you don't know, but if the person that knows what's going on is there, it's going to be okay.
Speaker 2: Now I want you to maybe some of you are already tracking with me, but I want you to think about this.
Speaker 2: You know, because I was meditating on this portion of Scripture that Heather and I are going to share this week and, ultimately, what I'm getting from it is God reminding me that he's with us.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, yes, and so the car is still going to break down, because it's a car, but it's not as bad when the mechanics there.
Speaker 2: So what if life has its trouble?
Speaker 2: But the designer was there at the time.
Speaker 2: I'd be a little less freaked out.
Speaker 2: Now you know hello, he is there with us all the time, but our awareness is so skewed that we feel so alone in those times.
Speaker 2: But what if I could?
Speaker 2: I could really practice that awareness of his presence so that, inevitably, when the bumps in the road come, I can remember oh yeah, the creator is there.
Speaker 2: Now I've had problems in my life.
Speaker 2: In fact, I remember being a little kid and I was getting beat up in the street and a car slowed down to watch, and I thought to myself that's an adult, why don't they get out and stop this kid?
Speaker 2: The kid was like four years older than me and I mean, the kid was like in sixth grade and had a beard, you know, and I was like in second grade and this kid's like tearing up my.
Speaker 2: It was so excited to bring this flower I made for my mom.
Speaker 2: He made fun of me for having a flower and beat me in the street and the car watched, you know, and I can remember thinking to myself I wish that I had some help, you know.
Speaker 2: But if we're aware that we have the God of the universe with us, amen.
Speaker 2: Now there are people that are there, sometimes like those adults that drove by and did nothing.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we feel that's and to you, god feels like the spectator and I would really challenge you to allow him to bring an awareness to you that he's a willing participant, an active part of your life.
Speaker 2: Now, I've had people like that that stood and just watched when I had a great need.
Speaker 2: But you know what I'd say about my children.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've ever been around David and you were carrying something, but he's compelled to snatch half of it, if not all of it, out of your hands.
Speaker 2: You don't have to go, you don't have to say, dave, help me with this.
Speaker 2: He's an active participant in the burdens of the people that are around him.
Speaker 2: He's like that emotionally.
Speaker 2: He says to me all the time I can't figure out why people are always opening up to me and dumping out their problems.
Speaker 2: I don't even know him.
Speaker 2: Well, people are thirsty for an active participant in their life and once they see it, they don't walk to it, they run to it, they jump in the arms of that person because we're needing it and we don't realize.
Speaker 2: God, is that for you and I amen?
Speaker 1: However, sometimes we are called to be God with skin on for people.
Speaker 1: Yes, god is there, but what we are called to do as the sacred ones, the holy, set apart ones, as the church of Jesus Christ, we are to be the people that are able to be seen as God.
Speaker 1: It is our hands that are used, it is our resources that are used, it is our time that is spent, it is everything that is the process of us.
Speaker 1: It is whatever you have that is anointing.
Speaker 1: Anointing, I believe in a very small definition, means whatever you have to relieve someone's burden or take off someone's yoke, whatever you have, those are the gifts that we are given in the realm of God.
Speaker 1: To be able to manifest them here in the earth, we pray your kingdom, come, your will be done.
Speaker 1: And then we hoard the gifts.
Speaker 1: Your kingdom, come, your will be done.
Speaker 1: Open our hands and let love be the rule here.
Speaker 2: And I love so much what you're saying and it is so important that we allow ourselves to be used by God.
Speaker 2: But I cannot stress the point enough, for maybe there needs to be a shift in our understanding that he intends to be an active part of your life, because so much of the time we can accept the idea that he's there, but we're certain he's just watching, with His arms folded in tremendous judgment of our failures, when he's as willing to be involved as we are willing to surrender control of those things to Him.
Speaker 2: Amen.
Speaker 2: I just this week I had this revelation that he's not just watching, you know, and that's beautiful, it's very important and it's not to discount what Heather said.
Speaker 2: It's so important for those people that aren't sensing it for us to be able to come in and use our hands and then remind them.
Speaker 2: This is the Lord, but he is well able and willing to be involved in our lives, but oftentimes we're keeping Him at an arms distance.
Speaker 1: And the invitation for all of us is that we would co-create this good work that God is doing among us, this invitation to living differently, to holding the space that God is making for someone else's heart to be encouraged or to be reborn.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we get to do together is receive Holy Communion, and one of the practices of this ritual that is given to the church is to remind ourselves that we are welcomed at the Feast of the Lord, that everything that we need is here in the presence of God, and that what we need is not a thing.
Speaker 1: What we need is more God in our life, and we are offered that every time we gather and every time we come to the table and allow ourselves to be fed.
Speaker 2: Well, we would encourage you those of you that are online, to participate in Communion with us.
Speaker 2: Take this opportunity to gather your Communion elements so that, when it's time to receive, you can receive Communion with us together, because it's something I believe that is so important that we do as a community, whether you're wherever you are in your homes or Starbucks, or wherever in your family rooms or out in the woods with the Wi-Fi that we're all together.
Speaker 2: Partaking of Holy Communion Amen.
Speaker 1: We honor this time right now and honor the presence of love among us and honor the story when Jesus said to his disciples I longed for this time to be with you.
Speaker 1: I wanted so much to celebrate this dinner with you and then offered this and said in as often as you do this, do this in memorial or to remember me.
Speaker 1: There is a hope in the remembering, there is a grace in that hope.
Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this week's sermon.
Speaker 1: If you would like more information about us, visit us online at firstlovechurchorg.