SPEAKER_00: This podcast is the Ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church, please visit grandparkway.org.
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you came in um after Lance made announcements, my name is Wade Collier.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm I don't know what I am right now.
SPEAKER_00: I'm in between positions.
SPEAKER_00: I am in limbo.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm in transit.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I have been, and we'll talk a little bit more about this as we we kind of wrap up this becoming series.
SPEAKER_00: I've spent uh the last six wonderful years being a student pastor here at Grand Parkway, um, the longest five-month job anyone has ever experienced in their entire lives.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh and and now we're entering into a new season.
SPEAKER_00: Um but I most importantly this morning have the opportunity to um to be a part of kind of wrapping the bow around this becoming series.
SPEAKER_00: Um if you were handed a worship folder as you came in on the front, there's a road, it says becoming.
SPEAKER_00: Um that's been a four-week series for us.
SPEAKER_00: Um it started uh as we talked about uh change, and then we um went to the process of progress, nice alliteration there.
SPEAKER_00: And then Neil last week um came in and talked about uh what he called, and I like that, the dirty word of the faith, the four-letter word of the faith, discipline.
SPEAKER_00: Um we don't like to talk about discipline, we'd rather have more grace and less law, and we talked about the importance of discipline in this thing of becoming, and so now um I get to be um hopefully the instrument of the Lord and his word this morning and bringing all the different pictures of this mosaic together into a clear picture of mission.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we're gonna talk about this morning is mission.
SPEAKER_00: If you have your Bibles, we're gonna be in 2 Corinthians chapter 5.
SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians chapter 5.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have a Bible, um, two options.
SPEAKER_00: It'll be on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: The majority of the things we talk about will be on the screen behind me.
SPEAKER_00: There also is a hardcover pew Bible somewhere around you can reach and grab that.
SPEAKER_00: And we're on page 966 in that Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Um in I said we we we went from uh we went change and we went progress, we did discipline.
SPEAKER_00: Now we have mission.
SPEAKER_00: And that word mission can be a tricky word.
SPEAKER_00: Um it can it can it can bring about different thoughts, different emotions in some of us.
SPEAKER_00: We hear mission, and some of us we are um and we are on fire for that word mission.
SPEAKER_00: Um whatever we've shaped that in our mind to be, whether that's international missions, um, we if if you've if you've never if you haven't spent much time around Grand Parkway or it's been a while, and I know we um we we kind of have this undulating cycle of folks throughout the summer, which is great.
SPEAKER_00: You will you will always hear from the pulpit here, it is a sin to have a lake house, to have a beach house, to have family and other places and not go see them.
SPEAKER_00: We we say yes, that is worship, go do that.
SPEAKER_00: And but if you if you don't spend a lot of time here in the summers, we're different from a lot of other churches that you've been around because a lot of churches kind of slow down during the summer.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and we do to an extent, we we don't have our midweek studies.
SPEAKER_00: Here we we ramp up, and one of those things that ramps up here is missions.
SPEAKER_00: Um, we've had three mission trips this summer, um, locally, regionally, internationally, um, and we'll continue on in that.
SPEAKER_00: And so you hear missions, and yes, you you yes that you're all about it, and that's just within you, and you can't wait to do more, or you've heard heard these opportunities and you want to jump in.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe for some of you it's it's you're in juxtaposition to that.
SPEAKER_00: You're you're complete opposite.
SPEAKER_00: You hear mission, and that makes you nervous.
SPEAKER_00: And that makes it more than a Sunday faith.
SPEAKER_00: That makes it more than what you feel comfortable with, and we'll we'll we'll revisit that, but it's a stretching of who we are.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe there's some of us that are somewhere in the middle, or maybe on the outside looking in, and we've heard mission.
SPEAKER_00: Missional is a word that's thrown around a lot, especially the last couple of years.
SPEAKER_00: You talk about church, we're a missional church, we do these things.
SPEAKER_00: Um we should all be missional churches, but we'll get to that.
SPEAKER_00: Um in now, there's this world that probably most of us in here don't care about.
SPEAKER_00: There's a big discussion, there's books being written and conferences being launched talking about what is the mission of the church and what is the mission of the believer and all those things.
SPEAKER_00: And all those things are great, and all those things are all a part of what we want to talk about this morning, folding under the mission of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so, what we're gonna do as we read 2 Corinthians 5, these verses 16 through 21 this morning, as we read these verses, what we're going to do is we're gonna ask and answer two questions.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so if you're taking notes, and I think these will come up on the screen, but if you're um if you're interested in this, we're gonna we're gonna talk about what is the mission of God and how does God fold us into that mission?
SPEAKER_00: What role does God have us play in his mission?
SPEAKER_00: And so that is mission work, yes.
SPEAKER_00: That is um the things that we do in India, um, all the way to India, probably our furthest reaching, one of our furthest reaching mission partnerships, or even just a mile and a quarter down the road at the Carol Vance prison unit.
SPEAKER_00: All that is mission, yes, but it all falls under uh this banner of God's mission.
SPEAKER_00: And so um what read with me um 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 16, it'll be on the screen, um, or read along with me.
SPEAKER_00: From now on, therefore we regard no one according to the flesh, even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regarded him thus no longer.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, and the old is passed away, and behold, the new is come.
SPEAKER_00: All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
SPEAKER_00: That is, in Christ, God is reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against him and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.
SPEAKER_00: We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
SPEAKER_00: For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you think through this and you see patterns and you know literature at all, you see this pattern of this word we saw a lot, reconciliation.
SPEAKER_00: I'll give away the answer.
SPEAKER_00: The mission of God, reconciliation.
SPEAKER_00: Reconciliation.
SPEAKER_00: Underline that's a church Bible, underline that, all right?
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about reconciliation this morning.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what I want to do, and and not because it's easy to go and pick the loaf hanging fruit and look at cultural things and bash those, but if we want to look in principled thinking, if we want to operate in principled thinking, we want to look at black and white, and we want to say, what is the mission of God and how do I be a part of that?
SPEAKER_00: We identify the mission of God.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna see that as reconciliation.
SPEAKER_00: We'll kind of unpack that word here in a minute.
SPEAKER_00: But I think as thinking people, because in in at no time as we read through the gospels, we read through the Bibles, we are on this journey of faith, does God ever ask us to remove our mind from our heart or from our faith?
SPEAKER_00: And this, we we're all we are our body, all as one, being created by God.
SPEAKER_00: And so I think what was a responsible thing to do is we ask this question, we answer this question, what is the mission of God?
SPEAKER_00: It's okay, it's okay, everybody look at me.
SPEAKER_00: It's okay to look at things and say, that's not the mission of God.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not politically correct to do so, and it's not socially acceptable to do so, but we we we we we want to narrow in and we want to be as as the hymn that we sang, we want the proclamation of our lives to be the glory of God's name.
SPEAKER_00: And so one way we do that is we are discerning and we're responsible and we think things through, and so I want us to look at three things that are not the mission of God.
SPEAKER_00: And and I'm not gonna single anything out.
SPEAKER_00: I know some people are really excited to think that's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: It's not, you can go back to sleep.
SPEAKER_00: But I do want us to uh point at three different things that are not the mission of God.
SPEAKER_00: The mission of God is not driven by what we think is the most pressing need.
SPEAKER_00: It is not driven by what we think is the most pressing need.
SPEAKER_00: And there are things that are important, and there are things that you are passionate about, and God has made us passionate creatures.
SPEAKER_00: But just because we have made that the gospel in our lives doesn't necessarily mean it is the mission of God.
SPEAKER_00: And we could be super excited against picketing against McDonald's and the pink slime and their chicken nuggets or whatever they're feeding us, right?
SPEAKER_00: And that is that is not the mission of God.
SPEAKER_00: And and uh I kept thinking as I was as I was kind of putting this outline together and kind of shaving things off, the word Coney, the name Coney, kept coming to me.
SPEAKER_00: And I thought about a few months ago when the world found out about Coney.
SPEAKER_00: And Coney is a horrible, horrible mercenary of war and killing kids and child soldiers, and and and that is that is that is not good.
SPEAKER_00: Are we all in agreement of that?
SPEAKER_00: This is not a good thing, right?
SPEAKER_00: But it it speaks to our passions and the way that we feel like things are pressing.
SPEAKER_00: I remember when Coney hit and the documentary movie came out, and then it was on Facebook, and it was on CNN, and it was on Fox News, and it was on Drudge, and then they were coming around and they were, I was watching local news in Houston, and they were going and they were interviewing pastors, and what did they think about that?
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's great.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's great to be culturally aware, but that became the gospel for some people.
SPEAKER_00: But now let's just be honest and keep your it's a rhetorical question.
SPEAKER_00: Think of it, you just keep your answer yourself.
SPEAKER_00: When was the last time you thought about Coney?
SPEAKER_00: But before it was such a pressing need, right?
SPEAKER_00: We had to get the word out and you had to hit like because that was going to change everything.
SPEAKER_00: If you liked it on Facebook, the world was gonna change, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because it's the most pressing need, but the mission of God is not always what we think is the most pressing need.
SPEAKER_00: And falling right in line with that is the mission of God is not always mandated by the culture.
SPEAKER_00: The mission of God is not always mandated by the culture.
SPEAKER_00: And there are good things to be involved in, but that doesn't always mean that they are the mission of God.
SPEAKER_00: And in part of this discussion I was reverencing before of all these people trying to figure out what is the mission of God and what's the mission of church and all these things, you have people picking these different it's hard to not even say this without laughing.
SPEAKER_00: They had they pick these different sermons from Jesus and decide just one of those sermons is the mission of God.
SPEAKER_00: Just one thing that Jesus said, He said reach to the poor.
SPEAKER_00: That's the only thing we're supposed to do.
SPEAKER_00: We're a social gospel church, now that's what we're doing.
SPEAKER_00: And we just pick this one thing.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the problem, and here's where we need to be okay.
SPEAKER_00: This is all good news, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: I had to keep reminding the first service.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's me, maybe I'm too serious.
SPEAKER_00: This is good news that we get to find all this out and then we get to be focused and remove distraction.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's where we are guilty, and maybe it's just me, but if you watch TV, uh, whether it's sitcom, reality TV, even sports, pretty much everything across the gamut, with the exception of documentaries, but watch Discovery Channel, and what I'm about to say will even it's beginning to happen there as well, is marketing people, whether we like it or not, they're smart and they know what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00: And people who sell ad space and people who write shows and people in those production meetings, even though some of the stuff they put on TV, my wife and I always have this joke of there were people who sat around a table and decided that was a good idea.
SPEAKER_00: And then they sent it to other people who decided it was a good idea, and then they put it on TV.
SPEAKER_00: And you're like, why do they well they made money, right?
SPEAKER_00: So they know what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00: But one of the things they've realized is they market to the generation of the teenagers from anywhere from about 13 to about 27 in here in that in that age group.
SPEAKER_00: They'll take that, and if you watch TV and go home and watch this, about every 18 to 22 seconds, my students hear this because I remind them all the time don't be lazy and have an attention span.
SPEAKER_00: Between 18 to 22 seconds, they're constantly changing what's happening on the TV screen.
SPEAKER_00: Because we don't have an attention span longer than that.
SPEAKER_00: And so if we look at our own sinful nature, and and I know everybody's everybody's great, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're all we're all good, right?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And we have these, you're like but weighed but mine.
SPEAKER_00: If you just knew what I was passionate about, that I don't always find it lined up in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: If we take our consumerism and we take our ADD nature and our inability to focus and inability to have any follow-through, and we try to make that the mission, we're just basically saying, God, I'm passionate about this.
SPEAKER_00: I really want you to be passionate about it as well.
SPEAKER_00: And we've we've got it upside down.
SPEAKER_00: And so we we're actually trying to answer these questions differently.
SPEAKER_00: And lastly, is this is God's mission isn't changing?
SPEAKER_00: That's the best news this morning.
SPEAKER_00: God's mission isn't changing.
SPEAKER_00: The things that we read about this reconciliation of Christ, God has been doing it since the beginning of time.
SPEAKER_00: And the God of Revelation, who always was and always is and always will be, is reconciling.
SPEAKER_00: And his mission is the same.
SPEAKER_00: And he's invited us to be a part of that.
SPEAKER_00: And so the first question being, what is God's mission?
SPEAKER_00: The second question being, how does how does God use us within that mission?
SPEAKER_00: If we were to go around this room and kind of take a poll and ask these questions of um, man, where do we uh where do you think that God's mission is for your life?
SPEAKER_00: I I might I would guess the chance would be we'd we'd have a smattering of um a little bit of um to to to know God and enjoy him forever, which is absolutely right.
SPEAKER_00: And some of it would be to love God and love others, and to both of those I say yes.
SPEAKER_00: Really?
SPEAKER_00: We could take both of those, we could pray, we could wrap it up and take it to the house.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: But don't get too excited, we're not gonna do that.
SPEAKER_00: Because if we don't, if if we're not grounded in God's mission, then we take these sayings of knowing God, enjoying him forever.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta ask the question, what God are you enjoying?
SPEAKER_00: If this ministry of reconciliation, here's a great uh here's a great quote from Tozier, if you guys could put that up, about um about this putting the world back to rights.
SPEAKER_00: Putting the world back to rights.
SPEAKER_00: So when we read this, verse 18, all is that all this is from God who through Christ reconciled us, put us right to himself.
SPEAKER_00: And he gave us the ministry of putting it right.
SPEAKER_00: And that is in Christ, God was putting right the world to himself, not counting trespasses against them and entrusting the message of putting it right.
SPEAKER_00: Now we can't do it on our own, and we have some able-bodied people here, but we can't.
SPEAKER_00: I was thinking about this and I started thinking um I'm in a lot of, I mean, kind of in that season of reflection.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure a lot of you can relate to that, just kind of moving from one season of life to another.
SPEAKER_00: Um and and actually, can I just take a minute?
SPEAKER_00: I just want I want to pause here and just say, as we talk about this word mission, as we talk about this position, and I know Lance referenced it before, but um I sent out a couple emails over the last few weeks just to parents of students just saying, hey, this thing's going student ministry.
SPEAKER_00: I think I made a reference a couple times about not being there anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And so um, I've had a lot of concerned emails that Neil has canned me, um, which he keeps trying, but I'm an unstoppable force, he cannot fire me.
SPEAKER_00: Um and then also uh everybody wants to avoid eye contact with me because I think I'm on the way out the door.
SPEAKER_00: Let me uh just take a minute and just tell you, uh, just because we are full disclosure, and because in case you weren't here and you're kind of make making heads of tails of things, um, as of September 1st, we've kind of backed it up for a couple reasons, and I'll tell you that in a second.
SPEAKER_00: Is um I I I have been here for uh for six years as a student minister, and uh it has been six of the best years of my life.
SPEAKER_00: It's been incredible.
SPEAKER_00: And um and God has begun to work in in Grand Parkway and allowed uh me and my family and and and what's going on here in this ministry to be a part of that, as um God had really been disturring in us the need for a full-time missions pastor here at Grand Parkway and a full-time staff person to be a part of that lay-led team.
SPEAKER_00: Um and so as we begin to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Um, in that same season of time, um we had a we had a 19-year-old kid come on with us, Aaron Cotton, um, started working as an intern for us, um, and then he went from intern to unpaid volunteer that I treated like an employee.
SPEAKER_00: Um and then we uh kind of moved him more into a full-time internship and to associate, and then uh it was it was very clear as as God was just kind of orchestrating and fitting all that into place that Aaron was the person to be our student minister here at Grant Parkway and it just became uh this seamless transition.
SPEAKER_00: And so um I say all that just because um, one, we're we're full disclosure, and two, um if you take a preaching class, I'll tell you never to do this.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to offer anybody, anybody have any questions about how that works?
SPEAKER_00: I probably will regret this if anybody does ask a question.
SPEAKER_00: But I just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page moving forward with that.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Going once, going twice, good.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So as we take this mission forward, as we push forward, um, I started thinking about um growing up and I started thinking about um confused missions and confused messages.
SPEAKER_00: And when I was in uh junior high, I took metal shop because it is a great idea to give 12 and 13-year-old boys welding equipment and blowtorches.
SPEAKER_00: That's a super idea.
SPEAKER_00: Throw an angle grinder in there and just turn them loose, right?
SPEAKER_00: And uh I had a I had a teacher who taught metal shop, and his job was, his mission, as given by the school district that I grew up in, was to teach metal shop.
SPEAKER_00: Teach us how to weld, teach us how to not cut our fingers off and all those great things that happened in metal shop.
SPEAKER_00: His job was not, as he convinced himself later, was to come up with crazy conspiracy theories and scare us half to death.
SPEAKER_00: Because I remember, like it was yesterday, standing outside of his classroom, because you weren't allowed, you weren't allowed to go into his class, right, if he wasn't in there, because there were arc welders and blowtorches and angle grinders.
SPEAKER_00: But at least three times a week, he would just turn us loose and just leave, go on smoke break, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so here's you got 13-year-old kids running around their hair on fire and setting each other's hair on fire, and man, look how black my toenail turns when I get heat on it, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so all these things.
SPEAKER_00: But I remember like it was yesterday standing outside of his class, and he said, Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Collier, uh, you're in charge.
SPEAKER_00: It's easy.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's a scary enough thought thinking about me being in charge now, but at 13 years old, right?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, You're in charge.
SPEAKER_00: I just got horrible news.
SPEAKER_00: And I think I was a pretty empathetic kid.
SPEAKER_00: I remember saying, uh, and I and I said his name in the first service, so that will not be going on the podcast, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think because I think he's still a teacher in the city.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I said, uh, well, you know what's going on?
SPEAKER_00: Is there an emergency?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, I just found out.
SPEAKER_00: I can say it with straight face.
SPEAKER_00: I just found out there are subs at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, and they are leaking nuclear waste.
SPEAKER_00: And then he laid out this five-year plan of how it was gonna get into the water system.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are afraid right now, aren't you?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: It was like 20 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be alright.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's gonna get in the water system, and then fish are gonna come, we're gonna eat them, and then we'll all have seven eyes and two tails.
SPEAKER_00: And he was serious about this, and I would, I no, I've never seen his contract.
SPEAKER_00: I never went into the assistant principal's office and opened the file cabinet and looked at junior high metal shop teachers' contract roles, but I'm pretty sure one of the bullet points wasn't scaring the ever-living daylights out of junior high kids with conspiracy theories, right?
SPEAKER_00: But he continues on to this day.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't figured that out.
SPEAKER_00: And so, what was the what what why the whole point of that?
SPEAKER_00: Because you have someone with a clearly defined mission.
SPEAKER_00: Teach kids.
SPEAKER_00: Don't let them cut appendages off, right?
SPEAKER_00: Instruct kids in what he had decided was his passion and these things that he began to infuse in had nothing to do with God.
SPEAKER_00: Or had nothing to do with his job, really, had nothing to do either, but had nothing to do with his job.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And so as we read this again, I won't read it all, but as we read this again, all this is from God.
SPEAKER_00: Who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
SPEAKER_00: That is, in Christ, God is reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against him, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
SPEAKER_00: And I think I said this before, but we this isn't new.
SPEAKER_00: God's message of making things right and drawing those to him.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's something that we need to see.
SPEAKER_00: Here's something that we have to draw in on.
SPEAKER_00: If you have a pen, underline it.
SPEAKER_00: If you're taking notes, write this down.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: All this is from who?
SPEAKER_00: God.
SPEAKER_00: It's from God.
SPEAKER_00: And we have to hear this and we have to believe this, and if nothing else, walk out of here with the understanding that it all comes from God.
SPEAKER_00: And I say that and I say it again and I say it again because we and our nature don't agree with that.
SPEAKER_00: We want a role in this.
SPEAKER_00: We want to have a part.
SPEAKER_00: We want to have a part of our salvation and we want to have a part of this reconciliation, but it says all this is from God.
SPEAKER_00: We want this to be some buddy cop movie, right?
SPEAKER_00: Where we get to be the competent, smart, funny one.
SPEAKER_00: Instead of the goofball who's just lucky to be along for the ride.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you this, everybody look at me.
SPEAKER_00: It is one of the greatiest, that's not a word, it is one of the greatest moments in your life when you accept and embrace that you are lucky to be along for the ride.
SPEAKER_00: And that you've been reconciled.
SPEAKER_00: And that you're you're you're you're not you're not you're not the exception to the rule.
SPEAKER_00: And so God has this ministry of reconciliation, of drawing those to him through mission work, through sharing of the gospel, which we're going to talk about in a minute.
SPEAKER_00: But making it right and drawing, and drawing us in, and then sending us out to be part of that reconciliation.
SPEAKER_00: Which brings us to the second part of the question, or the second question rather, is what is our role?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus sends us out to proclaim the good news.
SPEAKER_00: I'll butcher this and I wrote it, so I should probably read it.
SPEAKER_00: It says this we're on a mission with God.
SPEAKER_00: This is a reminder for me.
SPEAKER_00: We are not in partnership with God because he needs us.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a symbiotic relationship.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna tattoo this on my forehead backwards so I can read this every morning.
SPEAKER_00: Not because I believe and teach a self.
SPEAKER_00: Self-deprecating theology of slugdom, but because the simple fact that God is eternal.
SPEAKER_00: What's the connection?
SPEAKER_00: The God of Revelation 1:8, who always was, always is, and always will be, created, reigns, and will win without you and me.
SPEAKER_00: Good news.
SPEAKER_00: The God who doesn't need us chooses us.
SPEAKER_00: He redeems us.
SPEAKER_00: He reconciles us to himself and displays his goodness by including us in his plan.
SPEAKER_00: So what's his plan?
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 28.
SPEAKER_00: It'll be on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: If you have your Bible, feel free to turn.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 28.
SPEAKER_00: We'll start in verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: If you're there already, what does it say above that paragraph?
SPEAKER_00: The Great Commission.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of us are familiar with this.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us aren't, but all of us can stand to hear it again, especially when it's the question we're trying to answer.
SPEAKER_00: In this ministry of reconciliation, in this ministry, this mission, this mandate, this proclaiming of God's goodness, where does he use us?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus came to him and he said, This all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
SPEAKER_00: Been given to who?
SPEAKER_00: God, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's his.
SPEAKER_00: It's always his.
SPEAKER_00: It always will be his.
SPEAKER_00: But verse 19.
SPEAKER_00: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded to you.
SPEAKER_00: Behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age.
SPEAKER_00: Now here's where we begin to start to land the plane.
SPEAKER_00: Is it's not always easy for us to talk about our faith.
SPEAKER_00: But if we were to take a poll in here, chances are most of us have more comfort and more experience talking about our faith.
SPEAKER_00: And that includes, hey, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what I believe.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's what the Bible teaches, here's what we believe is that we are all on a journey.
SPEAKER_00: We're all on the same journey.
SPEAKER_00: Alright?
SPEAKER_00: It's not 18 different journeys that all lead to one place.
SPEAKER_00: We're all on the same journey.
SPEAKER_00: We're all in different places of that journey.
SPEAKER_00: And some of us, we believe and we strive, and we live for Christ, and some of us, we're still trying to figure out if we believe this whole thing's real.
SPEAKER_00: And some of us fall in between.
SPEAKER_00: But we're all on this journey.
SPEAKER_00: And as we we we look and we think about this faith, and then we we've all had the opportunity to talk about it and think about it and process it that way.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's part one, is God has sent us out to proclaim the truth.
SPEAKER_00: But here's here's part two, and here's here's where we begin to wrap this up.
SPEAKER_00: Is God has also empowered us to enact the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: To enact the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: To act out the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said this, Jesus did this, all the power is Jesus', and he has sent us out to proclaim the gospel, to be a part of making it right.
SPEAKER_00: And by making it right, by pointing others to him.
SPEAKER_00: Last summer I was um a moron and thought I was still 17 years old and decided to jump out of the back of an 18-wheeler.
SPEAKER_00: Um that did not pan out well for me, as you can imagine.
SPEAKER_00: Um and many of you saw me over the last year kind of go from crutches to limping to um still limping some.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I I did such irreparable damage to my knee that uh they had to go in and put all kind of new stuff in there, new muscles and ligaments, and tendons, and a rubber boot and a chicken bone.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what all went in there.
SPEAKER_00: And they did all this work in there.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you had knee surgery before or shoulder surgery or any of those?
SPEAKER_00: All right, pretty common.
SPEAKER_00: And how many of you had the experience where they brought that big medieval torture device where they want you to start moving immediately after that surgery?
SPEAKER_00: Can I show a yeah, she still got your hand up, so you survived.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So um I, because of the extent of what happened, I couldn't do that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh they brought that in, and the doctor immediately was like, get that out of here.
SPEAKER_00: We can't have that anywhere near him.
SPEAKER_00: We have to do so much work in here that we actually have to let it sit sedentary for like three weeks, two weeks, three weeks, something like that.
SPEAKER_00: So if you uh have any experience with this or or have thought this through, as it sits there, all kind of scar tissue develops and all these things happen.
SPEAKER_00: And so I go to physical therapy, and they uh when I first get there, they matched me up with this um this this sweet little lady.
SPEAKER_00: She was from the Philippines or Hades, um, and she uh she we we kind of went through some stuff and then she put me on this chair, and it really was, it was just a metal folding chair, and then she brought over about this eight-foot contraption with a winch on it, hooked it up to a Z71.
SPEAKER_00: No, she hooked it up to a winch and put it on the ground, and she put my knee in there, and she slowly began to crank and began to pull my knee, right?
SPEAKER_00: And I won't go into all the details and make anybody nauseous in here, but there's a there's a little just imagine like a bag of cornflakes that someone's ringing like a rag.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it sounded like.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so they would do that.
SPEAKER_00: And so here is where the the cruel and unusual torture took a whole new level.
SPEAKER_00: After they did it twice, they said, now you're responsible for this.
SPEAKER_00: And so every day, three days or three or four days a week, as I would go in, I would get on there, and they and I was responsible for meeting the goals and cranking this lever and making my knee bend, and the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: They had this other thing with this air compression where I have straightened my leg out, and it was painful and it was horrible, and I get mad at my wife for making me continue to go, and every time I try to think of a reason, she's like, go.
SPEAKER_00: And but what slowly began to happen is through all that pain, and after I crossed over and continued to ascend past the plateaus, I could put more weight on that leg.
SPEAKER_00: And I could put more strength into it.
SPEAKER_00: And then the stuff that I saw guys doing six weeks beforehand, I was like, I will never be able to do that again.
SPEAKER_00: I'll never be able to jump in place, I'll never be able to get on a treadmill or an elliptical, I'll never do it.
SPEAKER_00: I started to be able to do those things.
SPEAKER_00: And so why do I tell you the long, drawn-out story of my rehabilitation?
SPEAKER_00: Because here's my fear, here's what I believe, and here's what I feel as one of your pastors the need to speak to.
SPEAKER_00: Is I think that many of us have no problem talking about our faith.
SPEAKER_00: We have no problem writing posts on social networking sites about our faith.
SPEAKER_00: We have no problem forwarding emails because we love Jesus, and that's what you're supposed to do.
SPEAKER_00: You forward emails, I guess.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all, can someone give me a verse?
SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
SPEAKER_00: We have no problem talking about our faith, but we we do have issues enacting our faith.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think, I don't believe for most of us, it's because we're unable, it's just because it's been so long.
SPEAKER_00: And what happens when you're uh when you hurt a muscle or you hurt something where muscles involved, you have something called atrophy.
SPEAKER_00: And your leg, your your muscle shrink.
SPEAKER_00: For me, my leg shrunk.
SPEAKER_00: And so they now what I'm running into is uh I have this knee brace they gave me, they fitted me for when my leg was about a third of the size it is now.
SPEAKER_00: And so now I'm busting out of this brace because the body is healed, the muscles have grown, and now I can put more weight, and things have begun to happen.
SPEAKER_00: And so for many of us, my fear is when we read about proclaiming the gospel, proclaiming the good news.
SPEAKER_00: And can I say this?
SPEAKER_00: We talked about the last few weeks about this term born again.
SPEAKER_00: And we talked about how it's become almost like nails on a chalkboard for some of us.
SPEAKER_00: It's become almost hokey when we hear born again.
SPEAKER_00: Even for us Christians, if we're at Starbucks and we overhear people talking, we hear born again, we're like, oh, don't say that.
SPEAKER_00: But we talked about reclaiming that.
SPEAKER_00: We went and we looked at the story of Jesus and Nicodemus and what it means to be a Christian, is to literally be born again.
SPEAKER_00: And so let us reclaim that with a proper understanding of God's mission.
SPEAKER_00: And can I say this?
SPEAKER_00: Can we reclaim good news?
SPEAKER_00: Because it's the best news, right?
SPEAKER_00: So if we're gonna amen it and we're gonna believe it, then we gotta enact it.
SPEAKER_00: And we gotta live it.
SPEAKER_00: And we gotta push through the atrophy, and we got to build the strength again to be able to lean and to stand.
SPEAKER_00: And that means having principles.
SPEAKER_00: That means having conviction.
SPEAKER_00: That means that compromise is no longer part of our DNA.
SPEAKER_00: It's not, I'm not saying don't be salt and light.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying don't be like Jesus, but I've yet to see anywhere where there was compromise in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what I can say is somewhat of an authority after 15 years or so of doing youth ministry is generational sin is a real thing.
SPEAKER_00: And I think when we hear generational sin, yes, original sin with Adam.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: But there's also generational sin.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember hearing that.
SPEAKER_00: I became a believer as a teenager, and I started hearing that generational sin.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't really understand it at the time, and I never could get a definition that really connected and fired all cylinders with me.
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't until I got into ministry and started spending time with teenagers and started seeing, oh, that's what generational sin is.
SPEAKER_00: It's the passive attitude in some of us towards sin that our kids have seen and now replicate.
SPEAKER_00: It's the fact that we don't have conversations in our house without yelling, and so now your kids don't know how to handle interaction with other people when they're disagreed with or there's any kind of elevated conversation, and then it turns to anger and it turns to rage and it turns to blurting out ridiculous things that are way beyond their pay grade when it comes to intelligence.
SPEAKER_00: Because all they've heard is yelling at home.
SPEAKER_00: And all they've seen is frustration, and all they've seen is that white lies are okay.
SPEAKER_00: And so, why am I inviting myself into your homes?
SPEAKER_00: Because the mission of God is reconciliation and making that right.
SPEAKER_00: And no one's beyond the pale.
SPEAKER_00: And no one is beyond being reconciled.
SPEAKER_00: And so now what?
SPEAKER_00: How do we how do we finish this?
SPEAKER_00: We were often asked, and I know Neil talks about this a lot and did last week, of um when we don't have um a formal, how come we don't have a formal invitation here at Grant Parkway?
SPEAKER_00: We do.
SPEAKER_00: There's an invitation here every week, and that invitation is twofold.
SPEAKER_00: If you would like to come and talk with somebody about anything you've heard, um, any questions you might have after every service.
SPEAKER_00: There are pastors, prayer partners, elders of this church, they would love to answer any questions you might have.
SPEAKER_00: Um the invitation also is to think and to process what you've heard.
SPEAKER_00: Nowhere, nowhere in the Bible, nowhere in the Bible are we called to separate our minds and our hearts and our faith.
SPEAKER_00: None of that.
SPEAKER_00: It's all God given, all by the great reconciler, right?
SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter 9, uh in verse 1, we find Noah after the flood, and the world is turned upside down, and people have made their mission, their mission, and removed, tried to remove God from the equation.
SPEAKER_00: And God has brought flood and he has brought restoration and reconciliation.
SPEAKER_00: He says to Noah, and God blessed Noah and his sons, and he said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
SPEAKER_00: God never said, Here's the truth.
SPEAKER_00: Now keep it to yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Go forth and multiply.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: God, it is, it's not easy for us to trust you.
SPEAKER_00: It should be.
SPEAKER_00: And you've designed it as such.
SPEAKER_00: But our passions, our enthusiasm for all the wrong things, this inability to follow through makes it difficult.
SPEAKER_00: God, we're not without hope.
SPEAKER_00: You are the God who comes and sets it right.
SPEAKER_00: And you have come and set it right.
SPEAKER_00: And you're setting it right right here, right now, in this room.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming to us, God.
SPEAKER_00: We praise things your name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Well, do me a favor and stand to your feet and put your hands out like this.
SPEAKER_00: Reminded the first service.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't uh there's nothing spiritual about this, there's nothing that's uber important about this posture, other than this is just a great posture to say, I'm ready to receive.
SPEAKER_00: And so let me speak a blessing of you, and we'll be dismissed.
SPEAKER_00: God came to you.
SPEAKER_00: He came to you and he reconciled.
SPEAKER_00: He chose you and he made it right.
SPEAKER_00: Live as such.
SPEAKER_00: In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all have a great week.